It’s a long time since
I updated this. Partly due to a self-imposed break and also down to the fact
that my tench season so far hasn’t exactly got off to a flyer. In short I’ve barely
caught a fish for two and a half months.
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| First of the season. |
One trip to a large
reservoir in sub tropical temperatures gave Hannibal and myself a total blank
for what was, for once, not a short session. Eleven hours in the baking sun,
for nil, nada, zilch.
My visits to one of
the local meres gave me one lost tench in 5 or so short outings and not much
else, now this place has been kind to me in years past and I strongly believe
that I should have had my landing net slimed up by now. So I had a total rethink
of my tackle and tactics and decided to change.
My target this year
has been to move away from two leger rods and use the float each session with
the second rod on the alarm using a method feeder or pva bag. Regardless,
neither have had anything like the desired effect so the rods were stripped and
I started again.
The float set up had
been standard 6lb mainline, coupled with a hi-tec hook link of either 4 or 6lb.
I changed the reel line to hi-tec mainline of about 5lb, this aided casting and
would also make life a little easier when slider fishing, the thinner diameter
also allowed me to use a lighter float.
On the second rod I
had been using a flat method feeder with groundbait but decided to go back to
the straight lead, with a boilie on the hook, using a pva stocking filled with
pellets/boilies and a nice bag mix of ground pellet and boilie to hopefully
increase the attraction.
Saturday I arrived at
first light and a very fine rain greeted my arrival. The bag mix was really
strong smelling, so strong I could smell it as I was walking to my swim. The
reason soon became clear upon arrival; said mix had emptied out of the
container and covered the entire contents of the rucksack. Tremendous. By hook
or by crook I rescued most of it and very soon was casting a pva bag and boilie
hookbait to what had been a productive area a few years before. On the float
line I fire a few pult full’s of corn and 6mm pellets, double corn hookbait
under a 4bb wag, it’s 5am and we’re off!
I was soon joined by a
little vole-y/mouse-y thing who was sneaking out to nick bits of pellet and
corn, sadly though, he was a bit camera shy. Still, I waited patiently, camera
hooked around my wrist, one eye on the float, the other waiting for the
critter. I look round to see the float sail away, strike, fish on, camera
swinging wildly on my ‘rod hand’. This is interesting; I’ve never played a fish
with a camera swinging around my wrist before.
A very spirited scrap
and at 6am a tench of 4.6 hits the net, my first of the year, yeeeehaaaa. The very next cast a 2lb snotty is
landed and the cast after that another tinca of about 4lb. Three fish in half
an hour, I’m officially ace, once again.
It’s clear they’re on
the corn, so my boilie bait is changed for a real/artificial corn combo on the
second rod, a pva bag of pellets is attached and recast and within minutes I have a take but the fish comes off.
Next cast a really decent sized bream is landed without any dramas but the hook
gets stuck in the net which slows down my rhythm, I then find that my scales
have given up the ghost so a potential PB goes back unweighed!
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| Probable PB |
The fish seem to have
backed away from the float line and all the action is on the leger rod as again
the corn combo is taken and the delk sings. The fish feels like a bream and
comes in quite easily, but underneath the rod tip it remembers it’s a tench
after all. Thirty metres with no hassle, the next thing it has swam around a clump of rushes, twice, and then tried to find open water, brilliant. I stab the landing net
through the reeds but the cord doesn’t have the same degree of purchase as a metal framed
spoon would have done, however after a bit of impromptu weed dragging the biggest tinca
of the day is in the mesh which looks about 5.8.
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| Bream |
At 9am I’m ready for
the off when the float buries and something shoots off to my right ripping line
off the reel, I get the rod hard down to my left but can do nothing and after
about thirty seconds the hook pulls. Never mind. Time to go.
A few thoughts. There’s
fishing, and then there’s catching. Fishing is easy but getting back into the
zone of catching and at the same time keeping things fluid takes me some time when I’ve had a
barren spell. I would have made more of that session today had I been used to actually catching fish and not been as rusty, still, I can’t complain, I'm somewhere near where I want to be.
