Winds of Change

It's getting so you've got to get your blog written quickly these days - before the obvious titles get pinched.

With a big swing in the wind direction, from easterly to a balmy south-westerly, it was time to try again for the tench and bream. I've got a new bivvy I wanted to try out so I opted for a 30hr session this week, fishing for the tench during the day, with maggots as bait, and the bream at night.

Advantage me?

The wind was blowing into one corner of the pit and I was quite surprised to find no-one fishing there when I arrived. A c*rp fisher was nearby but I had the corner swim to myself and the wind was blowing steadily onto my bank. It was a warm wind, not a bit like the biting cold one of last week and I knew it would be warming the water steadily. Question was, "would it be enough?" This is turning out to be a very cold spring and the cyprinids are taking their time waking up this year.

I did a bit of plumbing and got set up with three rods, two of them close in in twelve feet of water and a third, fishing method, further out and to the right in fifteen feet. The close-in rods were baited with maggot but the further one had corn on one hook and mini-boilies on the other. No weed this early in the year so it's ok to use two hooks and by fishing them helicopter style on a lead-core leader the rig is safe should a break-off occur.

After a while the bailiff came round and told me things had been very slow. Only odd tench and bream had been showing and nothing of any great size. We both commented on the advantage of the warm wind that I had and he told me how he might have been in my swim if I had not got there first - that's the beauty of shift work of course!

A Result - of Sorts

Did I catch? Well yes I did but it was slow, just as the bailiff had said. I picked up a 6lb 12oz tench on the method rod at four in the morning and it turned out to be my only bite. Corn was the successful bait once again - it generally knocks spots off most baits on the waters I fish for both tench and bream. The fish was pretty lean for the time of year with no signs of a build-up of spawn yet - it sure is a cold spring and I doubt that the tench will spawn before July this year.

I went round to talk to the bailiff in the morning and all he had had was line bites. Looks like it might be a long haul to a big fish this spring.

More Tench - and a Bream!

Well the tench fishing has been rather good, with loads of 6lb+ fish but I haven't had anything to beat the nine pounder this season. The tench spawned shortly after catching that one and their weights dropped a fair bit but there are still some nice fish to be had. I've changed my approach somewhat and have been fishing with bream in mind for a couple of sessions now. So it's away with the maggots and blockend feeders and on with the "method" rigs. I've been using the heaviest Fox method feeders and fishing the hooklengths helicopter style on sections of ESP leadcore. Coupled with a heavy rod (2.25lbTC) I'm able to pack a big ball of bait onto the feeder and whack it out a long way where, hopefully, the bream are waiting. I've only managed one bream so far, this 11lb 11oz specimen which picked up the sweetcorn baited hook and ran towards me with the feeder giving an unmissable dropback bite. I hooked another bream but sadly, it came off halfway in.

The rig works well for tench too and with the tench now averaging around 7lb they are well worth catching. I had this one of 8lb 2oz last night a little after 2am. Forgive the manic stare, I was in the land of nod when it took the bait and hadn't fully recovered by the time I took the photograph. I'm really pleased with the way my self-takes are coming out these days. The Jessops adaptor coupled with the swivel screen on the Canon make self takes a doddle even in the dark.

See how different this fish looks compared to the spawny nine pounder below.