Boys are Back in Town

What, I hear you say, no blog entries for nearly a month! Edwards must be struggling. Well you would be right, the tench fishing has been quite hard work for the last few trips. I've not been blanking, in fact I've not blanked at all but what I've caught has been fairly unspectacular. Four days fishing has produced just four tench and strangely enough, every one of them has been a male fish. Male tench are nice to catch, they fight like stink, but they aren't as big as their female counterparts, especially at this time of year and the biggest I've had over the last month weighed 6lbs 8oz. It's been a long wait in between bites and most of the fish have come to corn fished at range but on the last session I was determined to get them feeding closer in. I ladled in half a gallon of maggots just twenty yard out and fished two rods over it, one on maggot and the other on worm. As a contingency I also fished a method feeder rod some fifty yards out and as you might expect, that's the one that produced my only tench of the day - another male.

I picked up a few pretty little perch on the worm rod but the maggot rod remained untouched with just the odd line bite to move the bobbin. I had to leave at seven in the evening and I packed up the method rod first. As I turned to put away one of the other rods the bobbin on the worm rod slid steadily upwards. I struck into a heavy, ponderous fish which steadily took line for maybe thirty seconds before the hook pulled out. That was the fish I was after, no doubt about it. The line was covered in tench slime when I reeled in just to confirm that I had, indeed, lost a big female tench. I cursed as I put away my remaining gear, back to work the next day and no chance of a fish until next week. Bah!