A pattern emergies ?

Tue 2nd June 2009

Once again I fished the Tench Lake and this time in the peg next to last weeks.  This is where Steve had fished at the weekend and another chap I had spoken to had blanked on the previous week.  Suprisingly there were still no captures from this peg despite it producing some of the biggest fish to have come out of the lake in recent seasons, that I know of anyway!  I blanked spectacularly with out a single touch all day.


The weather was hot and sunny with little or no breeze.  The fish were probably other wise occupied with spawning activities.  I didn't see any fish all day and it makes me wonder if they have moved to another part of the lake, where it is shallower perhaps?

I will be back again in a week or two as I plan to fish a reservoir on my club ticket for my next Tench trip.

Quick its all kicked off ! ... OK or maybe not..!!

After finishing an exam in the morning for my Construction Course, I was in urgent need of a wind down, back to the Tench lake I went again arriving about 1:30 pm. This time I was in a peg I'd never fished before on the north east bank. I had been baiting up a swim over a gravel bar with hemp, castor and dead maggots for the previous four days. The afternoon weather was overcast with a warm westerly breeze blowing across the lake straight towards me. I fired in about 10 balls of groundbait and spodded in another 1/2 gallon of hemp, pellet and corn over the area before setting up my rods.


After an hour I stared to get the odd bleep, and then suddenly the left hand corn rod took off. I struck and was pleased to feel the fish was on. It came in straight at me and didn't really fight that much doing a good impression of a Bream, however when I got her head up on the surface it turned out to be a Tench after all.

The fish weighed 4lb 1oz and was in good nick but was quite wiry curling its body up and making it difficult to get a good photo of her. It looked like quite a young fish to me and I could see no evidence of any sporn. I put her quickly back and recast the rod.


Straight away I had a dropped run on the RH fake maggot rod and as soon as I had sorted this rod; the fake corn did the business again on the LH rod. I struck into what felt like a better fish, it kited to my right and headed up the lake. I must have been a bit too heavy handed trying to turn it as I felt the disappointing jolt of the rod springing back at me when the hook pulled! Never mind I thought, just get the rod back out there quickly while they're still feeding.
I brought the maggot rod in to change the rig over to a piece of fake corn. As I was in the process of doing this the other LH corn rod was away again! This time I heeded my earlier lesson and gave the fish some line and allowed it to run for a while. It kited to the right in the same direction as the earlier fish I'd just lost and was soon in towards the bank to my right, heading under an overhanging tree. Now was the time to give it some "stick" or risk being snagged, so I bullied the fish away from the tree – praying!

The fish stayed deep generally, but I did see a boil on the surface under the tree's branches at one stage. Thankfully it started to give in and came towards me and the waiting net. After a little tussle in front of me, again staying deep, the fish finally relented and rose up through the surface layers and into the net. It had put up a good fight, more like a Carp than a Tench and I soon realised why when I saw the size if it's fins.


At 5lb 9oz it's by far the largest male fish I have ever seen, let alone caught. So I now had a Male Tench PB of 5lb 9oz, which was a nice bonus.


I had been texting Steve with progress updates, whipping him up into a frenzy, when I spoke on the phone shortly after the capture of the male. He said he would be bringing his float rod down for a quick session that evening.



The second fish had been landed an hour after the first at 4:15pm, and the action continued for a while with a few more dropped runs until about 6pm when Steve arrived. The wind had picked up by now and the temperature was dropping slightly. I caught no more fish and only had a dropped run on the RH maggot rod by the time I packed up at 10pm. There had been no further noticeable activity over my baited area but in the next swim along to my right I saw about 6 or 7 fish rolling at dusk. These were at about the same range of 30 yards out and one or two of them looked quite decent, so I guess they had moved on, my bait not enough to hold them.

Steve blanked in the next peg on my left, which is a pity as it could all have been so different if the fish had headed his way. Still, yet another lesson learned this one about feeding spells. The feeding spell I had enjoyed was from about 3pm through to 5pm before the fish started to move on.

The Pre-baiting begins....

Tue 19th May 2009

I visited the Tench Lake again but unfortunatly blanked this time. All was not lost though as I started off a Pre-baiting campaign on a new peg Steve and myself will be fishing over a few sessions. The swim has a deep margin of 8 ft that gradually slopes up to about 5 or 6 ft by 30 yards out, after this it levels out to a bar of a couple of feet deep, before dropping off again on the other side at 40 yards plus.
I baited two spots, one with a cast to my left at around 75 deg near to some clumps of weed 30 yards out. The second spot in the near margin to my right just an under arm chuck away, near the bottom of the shelf in about 8ft of water.

The weather was cool with a strong southerly wind blowing straight in my face which caused a chop on the surface. There were no bites forthcoming for the first few hours and then only some liners later on. These I assume were fish moving across the swim at a point probably half way between me and the baited area, because the line coming from the feeder back to the rod would be well sunk until about that point I'm sure. I also recieved a liner on the margin rod, all of these coming during the last hour of daylight.

Darkness finally fell at around 9:30pm and I packed away a bit disappointed but never the less optimistic for the coming sessions on here. The recent cold spell of weather has possibly slowed down the feeding activity of the fish on the lake? I never saw any Tench rolling anywhere on the lake all session and only saw two fish splash, one of which was a Roach or Rudd. The other fish surfaced over the baited area in the margin and seemed quite large. I didn't see what it was and only heard it splash but I saw the large ring pools it left in its wake. It could quite well have been a Pike harassing some Roach or small Tench feeding on the bait I had thrown in? Usually when a large Bream or Tench rolls you don't hear any sound, it is more like a dolphin porpoising unless, like you sometimes witness with Tench and especially Carp, the fish breaches half out the water and splashes down onto their side.

I will also be baiting a gravel bar that I have located in another peg about 100 yards down the lake. At the moment I think the plan Steve and myself have made will be to concentrate on these two areas over the next few sessions, all depending on the results we get over the next couple of weeks.
Steve has already been out to continue with the baiting of this swim, and I will be out over the next day or two to start pre-baiting the gravel bar I found in the other peg.


Note: Sun 24th May Steve fished the same peg but blanked, he said he had fish bubbling on the gravel bar and saw Tench rolling there at dusk over the bait. He had nothing from the margin swim, however When I was there in the morning prebaiting the other gravel bar, we saw a (possible) Crucian jump over the bait at about 8:00am (hmmm...interesting). It looked a good fish at least 2lb +