It's Tench Time

No blog entry for more than a month. Well it's not so surprising, April's always a funny time of year and I haven't fished much. A trip to Scotland didn't produce anything exciting, just small pike. I did come close to a big one when I had a six pounder grabbed by something much larger as I was bringing it to the boat but the big one let go, just leaving the jack with some pretty impressive scars. I fished that area quite intensively for some hours after that but I didn't catch the culprit. I guess it's possible that the jack was grabbed again on its return to the water and devoured in which case the big pike might not have been so interested in my baits and lures with its belly full.

This week was the start of my tench campaign for 2010. This is going to be a short campaign for sure as I have other projects in mind but I was fortunate enough to kick off with a fish, albeit a relatively small one. Denis and I got to the lake just after first light but we were disappointed to find the swims we wanted taken. No matter, it was a wednesday morning so there was plenty of space and we headed off to the opposite side of the lake. It may have been a blessing in disguise since the day was a cold one and we got a fair bit of rain thrown at us but the swims we were in were sheltered and we missed the worst of it.

It's a late spring this year after a very cold winter so heavy feeding would not be a good idea and maggots were to be the first line of attack. I fished two maggot rods, one with a simple running rig and the other with a short hooklink and heavy feeder fished semi-fixed. I don't like fishing this way to be honest, I would prefer to fish two running rigs with long drops on the bobbins so as to get early indications in the way of line bites. I can't deny though, the bolt rig setup works and is very efficient, especially in pressured waters, which this one now is!

I set up a third rod as well. This was a new rod which I built myself from a 2.75lb tc Harrison Chimera blank. I've built this rod specifically for long range bream fishing and this was to be its first outing. I rigged this to fish "method feeder" style using pineapple flavour boilies on the hook and a very stiff groundbait mix moulded around the feeder. It's easy to make a very stiff mix, just add some liquidised corn to the mix and the starch from the corn stiffens it nicely.

First bite came on the maggot bolt feeder rig. Typical sort of thing, one bleep followed by a screamer and before long I had the first tench of the season in the net, 5lb 12oz. I was a little surprised to see how much spawn the fish was carrying considering how cold the spring is, not sure how much longer it'll be holding on to it.

A while later I had a drop back bite on the method feeder rod but when I lifted the rod I failed to connect with anything - need to work on the rig a bit more I think. I finished the day with one more fish, a jack of around four pounds which took the ubiquitous slider. I'm determined to do more lure fishing this summer, it breaks the fishing up nicely when you're waiting for that one run from a big tench or majestic bream.