Tench Heaven?

Over the past five years or so I've been trying to catch a double figure tench from the Northwest of England. It's a tall order, tench in most of my local waters struggle to reach half that size and even in the very best waters it's really only possible to achieve when the fish are in heavily spawn in May and June. I was in no doubt when I selected my new water that it held fish of such size so that's one big piece of the jigsaw but there's another piece that I can't legislate for and that's luck.

This week I managed three short sessions after the tench - with thoughts of bream also as an added bonus. The first session I spent on my own, it was still, cold morning when very few fish were showing and the bobbins were motionless for most of the time. The bream were certainly not in residence as was evidenced by the total lack of line bites. Eventually however a bobbin did twitch its way up to the butt and the strike met a solid resistence. It was a lively little tench of five pounds or so which fought hard until it reach the dense marginal weed where it buried itself deeply. A few moments of tugging and pulling eventually saw the feeder fly out of the water as the hook pulled free.

A short while later I had a repeat performance when a second tench was lost in the weed. I didn't actually see this one but it felt a similar size to the first and so I wasn't desperately unhappy at losing it. These two incidents forced me to reexamine my tackle. I had already stepped up my hooklengths after losing a bream last week and this time I decided that the size fourteen hooks I was using were too small and so changed them for size twelves.

The next day I was joined by Denis and on arrival at the swim I gave him the option to choose which side to fish, the left or the right. He chose the right, as I knew he would and we both set about the business of setting up our rods and baiting the swim. I baited up with a pint of white maggots using a spod, cast in two feeder rigs and sat back to await the action. It was slow again but we did get the occasional twitchy line bite before at around 6.30 my nearest bobbin twitched its way up to the butt. I struck and at once I knew I was into a heavy fish. The fight was unspectacular and dogged, mainly because the fish had quickly collected a lot of weed on the line around its head and soon it was within netting range.

"Looks a good 'un." I said, "It certainly does." said Denis as he slid the net under it. We hauled it onto the bank and I could see this was a very good tench. At 9lbs 7oz on the scales it was my biggest ever tench from the Northwest and that bit closer to my long term target. It wasn't a spawny fish this one either, just a very big framed female.

After the obligatory photographs we slipped it back and got back to the fishing. We caught nothing else that morning but two more incidents did take place. Denis saw a monstrous tench roll as he was spodding in his maggots. He described it as "at least" as big as the one I had caught earlier. Then a little while after he hooked a big tench which unfortunately shed the hook. He's decided to go with softer rods after that coming down from 2lb test curve rods to 1.25lb. Would it work for him next day?

Day three was a tough one. A strong wind was blowing right into our faces making it difficult to feed and to cast and making bite indication tricky too. We went through the routine of spodding out some maggots, set up the gear and waited. Before long I had a steady run up and struck into what felt like a big bream. Denis grabbed the net but within a few seconds the rod sprung back - another lost fish. I rebaited and cast again.

Long hours passed before anything else and then I started to get line bites. These became more and more frequent and I was sure some bream had moved into the swim. Eventually I struck at a more positive indication and hooked a heavy fish that started to kite to the right. It felt like a bream with no kicking or head shaking, just a dead weight and constant kiting to the side. I pulled it slowly in and expected to see a big bronze flank come into view but no, it was a big green flank instead. It was another tench and a good one. Once under the rod tip it remembered it was a tench and started to scrap quite hard. This was a dangerous time with a fresh fish and all that weed to contend with and I breathed a huge sigh of relief when Denis lifted the net under my prize.

This fish was quite a different shape to the nine, quite spawny and shorter in length it weighed 8lb 6oz - not to be sniffed at.

We had no more action and week two at the new pit ended with just those two big tench. Is this where I'll catch my Northwest double? Is this water going to turn out to be our tench heaven? I guess only time will tell!

Job Done!

Ok, my three months of employment has finally come to an end. Money in the bank, courtesy of the Office for National Statistics and I'm a free agent again ready to catch some fish. The job caused me to miss the end of the pike fishing season and I had to shelve any plans to make the annual pilgrimage to Scotland so the money was hard won but it did enable me to invest in a novel piece of equipment - more about that later in the season I think.

In the modern age, May herald's the start of the tench and bream fishing season for me. Previous years have seen me at a particular water in the North West where I've taken tench to over nine pounds and bream to more than twelve but I've decided a change is in order. I've never been one for sticking at the same place for year after year like some, I prefer to fish around a bit so I've moved on.

My new water is quite a big place so there's plenty of choice swim-wise but after a few days I'm beginning to understand how popular it is. Three early morning starts (very early) saw me competing for the swim I wanted and indeed I only got into it once. It wasn't easy either, I had several line bites on the first morning but didn't catch anything and then had two mornings where the bobbins didn't move at all. The fish were there alright, they taunted me by rolling and splashing in front of me but they weren't to be tempted.

There were other problems too. A layer of bottom weed carpets this lake, bistort I think, although I'm not an expert and this presents a number of problems. I started off using bolt tactics with heavy feeders and short hooklengths but soon abandoned this idea. The feeders were getting well stuck in the weed and I'm sure the baited hook was simply being buried by it. I soon changed to more traditional paternoster and running feeder rigs to combat this, hoping that the longer hooklengths would allow the bait to settle on top of the weed rather than be swamped by it.

Day four saw me arrive at dawn with some company. Denis had joined me this time and we were fortunate enough to get the swim we wanted, indeed we didn't see another angler all morning. Several nice tench rolled in front of us as we were tackling up and with heavy cloud cover and warm muggy conditions our expectation was high. We spodded in a couple of pints of maggots, cast in our loaded feeders and sat back to await developments.

It wasn't long before the action started, indeed the line bites began almost immediately and before long I had a more positive indication which saw me strike into a heavy fish. It didn't end happily however as the fish ran into thick marginal weed where it became stuck. A few moments of heaving by me on one end and the fish on the other saw the 4.12lb hooklength snap and it was gone. I replaced the hooklength with a heavier one, 5.14lb this time and recast and sure enough another run ensued. I landed this one, a nice bream of 10lbs 5oz which fought well (for a bream).


An hour passed with many line bites keeping me on the edge of my seat before another positive indication which resulted in the capture of a spirited 6lb 2oz tench. I was a very happy bunny at this point with both target species in the bag and finished off the morning with another bream which went 8lb 14oz.

That was it for my return to fishing in 2011, job done and lessons learned. I'll be after those tench and bream again next week. Denis? well he didn't have much luck I'm afraid, perhaps it'll be his turn next.

Last Gasp

Ok I managed to squeeze in a couple more pike fishing trips before the end of the traditional piking season. First one was a trip that had been planned for some weeks to Chew valley. I had originally planned to go for four days but the new job got in the way of this and I had to cut it down to two. On the upside, it gave me the chance to fish with old friend Paul Brown again. Regular readers will recall that my last trip out with Paul, back in October, proved fruitful for him as he took a fine 23 pounder on his first cast of the day.

This trip was somewhat different. the lake had been fishing very well with quite a lot of thirty pounders being caught but it had slowed considerably. The combination of angling pressure and the approaching spawning season had put the fish down and even the most experienced locals told me they had been struggling.

Day one was over before it began. We made our way to the lodge and joined the throng of pikers for breakfast but there were mutterings amongst the staff that we might not be allowed out due to the strong winds. Nine o'clock came and the decision was made - sure enough it was too windy and we would not be allowed to go out in the boats. Paul claimed back his money for the boat and we headed off for a day's lure fishing on a local gravel pit.

The gravel pit didn't produce at all. We both raised the same jack a few times but neither of us actually had a take and we headed back to Paul's house at the end of the day glad to get out of the wind and to sink a pint or two.

Next day we were back at Chew and this time we did get out ok but the fishing was dire. Nothing took our deadbaits and nothing hit our lures, a total blank. We did see a very big pike caught by someone on the bank but that was the only fish we saw all day so it was a disappointing trip all in all, only made bearable by the wonderful hospitality shown to me by Paul and his wife Ali.

My other trip was a different affair altogether. I took Mrs Edwards for a weekend to Scotland where we were to fish the Lake of Menteith for a day. We treated ourselves rather and stayed at the Forest Hills Hotel and Resort at Aberfoyle - very nice.

The day's fishing went quite well really, no big fish to us but we had some sport and the sun shone a fair bit. It didn't rain or snow either, quite rarely for Menteith. Overall most people struggled but there were four twenty pounders caught along with ten other double figure fish and lots of jacks between thirty boats.

What was particularly pleasing was that three of those doubles came to our boat. I took our biggest fish, a fourteen and a half pounder that took a Burt but it was my only pike of the day. Mrs Edwards did rather better with five runs to her deadbaits, four of which she boated. She caught a three pounder, an eight pounder, a ten pounder and a thirteen pounder.

I didn't hear of anyone getting more than four pike on the day so in my books, that makes her top rod!

Out With A Whimper

Ok so I've had a quiet time just lately. Mrs Edwards was off work for a while and I took the opportunity to spend a little time in her company then I planned to get stuck right in to the piking.

"This is it." I told her, "The big push, I'm taking the boat out and I won't be back until I've caught something whorthwhile." I couldn't be sure that I didn't detect a little smirk on her face as I said this, maybe she was happy that I'd ventured forth to discover my Nirvana or maybe it was something else. I went to bed early, car already packed with gear and boat primed at the ready.

I woke at stupid o'clock, dragged my weary body down the stairs and pulled on the obligatory layer-after-layer of high tech thermal gear before stepping out into the night. It was still and misty but cold nonetheless and at such an hour, the streets were mine alone. I hitched up the boat and set off on the lonely roads - I had a long way to go.

I passed through the suburbs and a short stretch of countryside until I reached the motorway where I knew I could relax. I joined the little traffic that there was, almost all of it heavy goods, switched on the cruise control and radio and settled back into my seat, bliss!

Ten minutes later my heart leapt as I was catapulted out of my comfort zone by the dreadful sight of showers of sparks in the rear view mirror. I signalled and drifted across to the hard shoulder and getting out, I discovered the source of the problem. The trailer lighting board had come adrift so that one of the metal arms which had held it in place was dragging along the tarmac - hence the sparks.

I shoved it back into place and screwed down the holding bolt as tight as I could before testing the lights - nothing. AARRGGH, now what? I fiddled and jiggled around with the plug and managed to get some life out of the thing. Soon the rear lights were working, then the brake lights. The right hand indicator sprung into life but the left hand one stubbornly refused to comply. Nothing I did was able to persuade it to work so I gave up on it. "I'll risk it." I thought. There was no-one about anyway.

The rest of the journey passed withoiut incident and I arrived in good time at the lake - it was still dark. Two cars with their trailers were parked by the slipway and I recognise one of them as that belonging to my good friend Kevin but he was nowhere to be seen. I loaded up the boat and launched before ringing him to find out where he was fishing. He had been keener than me and he was already setup at a favourite spot so I set off in a different direction, not wanting to compete for his fish.

The dawn arrived, along with a fair bit of drizzle and while there was early promise in the way of some brightness in the sky, this soon fizzled out and a grey, cold day was established. I anchored up at a spot I refer to as the "saddle". This is an area where the lake bed is shaped like a saddle with a high point at each end and a ridge-cum-trough in between, you get the idea.

The action wasn't long in coming and the first bait was taken within a few minutes. I struck at once but the fish didn't stay connected and after a couple of kicks the line went slack. Ah well, it happens. Not long afterwards a second bait was taken and I pulled in a nice fat double of around fourteen pounds. The fish was in excellent condition as they often are in this little fished area of the lake.

Within minutes another float disapperaed and I pulled in a fish of around eight pounds then shortly afterwards I got a fast run on a legered bait and connected with a beautiful chunky fish of 15lbs 11oz. Things were definitely looking good but I was conscious of the fact that all of the fish lately were coming in the first and the last hours of daylight. It was still only nine o'clock when I put the fifteen pounder back but it soon became apparent that the morning feeding spell was over and no more runs came my way.

At around eleven, I reeled in all four rods but as I reeled in the third, I spotted a mid double figure fish chasing after the float. I dropped the bait on it but it didn't want to know and although I spent a little time trying to catch it on lures it wasn't to be and I pulled up the anchors. I then spent a couple of hours trolling around with a replicant fished deep. This produced nothing but it did give me the chance to trace out a 35ft contour and save the trace on the GPS. This will pay dividends in the future.

At 2 o'clock I anchored up at a spot I had fished before a few times. I cast out the four baits and waited. Soon enough a legered sardine was picked up in deepish water and I struck into a decent fish which, as it happened, went 18lb 14oz. Although this was the biggest fish of the day so far I was a little disappointed as it was in poor condition. Thin and tatty it had probably weighed much more at some time in its life but it looked like it was going back. I took a quick pic of it on the deck then slipped it back.

Soon afterwards I caught an eight pounder and the light slowly started to fade. It was just before five o'clock when the dreadful thing happened. My phone rang and the person on the other end offered me a job!!! " You start tomorrow." he told me.

"That's that then for this season" I thought. I packed up, towed the boat back home and was up bright and early the next day to start my training. It's only a 3 month contract but I'm going to be too busy for fishing for a while now...

...or am I?

Ready For Spring

The cold weather continues. Not the intense freeze that we had last month but generally, it's still cold and water temperatures are still hovering around the point where water turns hard. I'm a bit fed up of it now and ready for Spring but I'm still getting out and more importantly, still catching.

I had a day on the syndicate lake this week. I only caught one pike, a fish of 9lb 14oz which I thought might be my first double from the water but it wasn't to be. I got it on the bank and then realised I'd made a stupid mistake in leaving my forceps at home. Fortunately the hooks were right on the edge of the mouth so I was able to unhook it with my fingers but that was the end of my day's fishing. You just can't fish for pike without adequate unhooking gear so i packed up early and went home.

It was particularly disappointing since I had just discovered where the pike were. They had herded thousands of roach into a large reedbed and were sitting at the edge of the reeds making occasional forays into the vegetation, ploughing into the bait fish and taking a mouthful. I was astonished at how many roach were there, packed like sardines in a can in just a few inches of water. They went berserk every time a predator attacked, making quite a noise, which is how I discovered where they were. Look at the short film and you'll know what I mean.


After that it was out with the boat for a couple of days. Denis joined me but we found it quite tough, as did all the others fishing the lake at the time. To cut a long story short we had just nine pike between us with the biggest one weighing 19lbs 1oz. I caught this on a legered sardine in quite deep water very late in the day. Indeed a pattern is forming with regard to times of captures. We're getting very few runs in the middle part of the day just now, almost everything is coming in the first and last hours of daylight. That's the behaviour I expect later in the year, after the start of March, the pike can usually be caught all day long in January but then, this is no ordinary winter.



I had three doubles in all and one of them, an eleven pounder, was quite spectacular in that it was almost pure white. It wasn't an albino, just very very pale. Fish sometimes turn pale like this if they're living in very coloured water but of course this one was in very clear water so there must be some other reason for this phenomenon. Perhaps the fish was blind, although it's eyes looked clear enough.



That's 31 doubles since the start of the pike season but another week without a twenty pounder. Just where are those big fish right now?

Deep Thinking

Two contrasting weeks of piking have taught me a lesson which I needed to learn.

We're well into January now and the pike season is at its height - a time when I should be making hay and getting some big fish in the boat. It's been tough though and while results are picking up, they have done so at a slower rate than I would have liked.

The first week i was out with Denis for three days - three very wet days as it turned out. Fishing in the rain is never that much fun and when you're out in a boat it's worse still. My boat has a folding cuddy which keeps the worst of the rain off but when there are two of you, and baits and floats are spread around all over the place, the cuddy obscures your view and I don't like to use it. Fishing a mixture of float legered baits and plain legered ones helps a bit but it's not a big boat and there's not much room for two under the shelter.

So it was that we both got wet, then wetter and finally wettest. Three wet days and it gets through even the best waterproofs and we were both glad to get home at the end of it. The quality of the fishing made it worse with just two single figure fish and a twelve pounder to me although Denis did better with four doubles up to fifteen pounds.

What was noticeable was that the fish we had came from deeper water than usual and that the usual productive swims were almost devoid of fish. I spent some time thinking about this and wondering why it had come about and eventually the old grey cells kicked into gear. The exceptionally cold winter has created a condition in our lakes which doesn't always happen, turnover!

Turnover happens when the surface layers cool to four degrees centigrade, when water is at its densest. This causes a complete breakdown of any thermal stratification which has been present in the water column and leads to a total mixing of the upper and lower layers of the lake. This gives the pike access to the deeper layers which, ordinarily, they would avoid due to the very low oxygen levels that exist down there. Oxygen levels are high in the deep water after turnover and since there is food down there, in the form of Charr in particular, the pike will be spending much of their time very deep just now.

Turnover, if it happens at all in this country, usually takes place quite late in the winter after the coldest time of late January. If turnover takes place late, its effect is less pronounced since by early February light levels are starting to improve and we're getting close to spawning time, thus making the shallow water attractive. This season I expect it happened in the first week of December, two months early and this will have had a big effect on the fish, both pike and preyfish.

Armed with this thought I set forth on my second trip, another three day jaunt. No rain this time, indeed the weather was positively balmy, but I resolved to fish new swims and to fish deep. It paid off in terms of numbers of fish but I didn't get the big one I wanted. In three days I managed eight pike, all of them over ten pounds with the best five all over fifteen. These went 15.04, 15.10, 16.06, 17.00 and 17.06
All the fish came from swims I haven't fished before and all came from deep water.

It looks like I might make sense of this season after all but there's one other thing I have to mention. On a water whose size is measured in thousands of acres it really isn't necessary to anchor up right next to someone else - as the people in this picture did. You can see my float in the foreground there, couldn't they find their own swim?

Cold Turkey

What a tough end to the year! We had the coldest December for 120 years and not only were most of the stillwaters frozen (including the very large ones) but many stretches of river froze over as well. The bad weather conspired along with the Christmas festivities to prevent me from fishing altogether for fully three weeks and by the time New Year was over and done I was becoming stir crazy. January 3rd was a bank holiday, I try to avoid fishing on public holidays since the waters are invariably busy but I was desperate to wet a line so decided to take the boat out for a couple of days.

An early start almost ended in disaster the jockey wheel fell off my trailer as I was getting the boat out of its garage. Exactly how this happened I'm not too sure but it appears that during the very cold weather, when temperatures dipped down below minus 15 degrees locally, the bolts holding the jockey wheel to the trailer must have contracted so much that they snapped the lugs off the jockey wheel. As soon as I started to move the trailer the wheel fell off and the drawbar fell to earth with a clunk.

I managed to patch this up temporarily and set out an hour later than planned, meaning that I arrived well after first light and after a number of other anglers were already out fishing. This delay was important since it meant that my first, second and third choice swims were already taken and it left me scratching around trying to find fish on the sounder. It came home to me how lucky I am to be able to fish midweek most of the time. People who work monday to friday must be faced with this problem all the time and I don't doubt it impacts on their catches a great deal.

The day was grey and cold, very cold and the fish were very hard to find. I ended the day fishless, not a great start to 2011, and made my way back to the slipway in the dark where I encountered two other anglers. They had blanked as well but told me another piker they'd spoken to had had six fish, five of them jacks.

After cooking up some curry and rice I made my bed in the car and, exhausted, was asleep before eight but I awoke little more than an hour later when I experienced a strange rumbling, shaking feeling. I looked out expecting to see a vehicle driving past but there was none, nor was there a boat chugging by. I fell asleep again, mystified as to the cause of the disturbance and was awoken many hours later to the sound of rain hammering on the roof of the car.

It was soon time to get up, though the prospect of going out in such awful weather didn't inspire me and I switched on the radio as I made my first brew of the day. The news reporter revealed the source of the strange rumbling I'd experienced during the night, a minor earthquake had occurred in North Yorkshire and though that was many miles away, I had been aware of it due to the quietness of my location. What's more, the dawn was to bring another natural phenomenon in the way of a partial eclipse of the sun - what would the pike think of all this?

I got out at first light, successfully avoiding the few remaining ice floes and made my way to my first choice swim. Sure enough there were familiar arches on the trace from the sounder, betraying the presence of a number of large fish, probably pike. The downpour continued though and after getting four baits out in the water I raised my collapsible cuddy and snuggled down under the shelter it offered. I soon picked up a pike of around nine pounds on a mackerel head, a pretty fish which had a busted gill raker and expected more action to follow but it wasn't to be and in time I moved on.

I dropped into several more swims, watching the fishfinder intently at each one, looking for those telltale arches and eventually found what I was looking for. Several big fish were holding close to a dropoff in 29ft of water. I marked their position using an "H" block marker, anchored up and started to fish. The rain stopped but the wind picked up markedly and this swim was in a very exposed location so I started to get quite uncomfortable. The waves were building bigger and bigger and as each one slammed into the boat I was pitched forward, only to be dumped back down on my chair as the trough followed the wave.

It was early afternoon, I had only a couple of hours left before I had to go and I had just about made my mind up to move to quieter water when one of the floats disappeared beneath the waves. I swept back the rod and pulled in a scrappy fourteen pounder which was quickly unhooked and returned. A few minutes later a second float dipped and I subsequently boated an eight pounder. My mind was made up for me then, I had to sit tight and ride out the waves.

After another hour the wind had subsided a little and I was glad I had stayed put but I only had until three oclock to fish before I had to go home. It was two thirty when I got my next run, a screamer which was ripping line from the baitrunner on a legered bait right from the off. I pulled into this fish while it was still running fast and the rod bucked hard as a result. This was a very hard fighting fish and for a time I thought I might be into something a bit special so I was just a little disappointed when I got it to the boat and saw that it was only a mid double.

During the fight the baitrunner on the other legered bait had buzzed a few times. I thought this had been caused by the hard fighting fish pulling the boat around but as I netted the pike it continued to run and started to pick up speed, it was another run! I left the first fish in the net in the water and picked up the second rod, winding down hard and hooking into my fifth pike of the day. This was a fish of similar size and I was forced to hand-land this one, the net being already occupied.

I quickly took a picture of the two pike together in the net but I was till being tossed around by the wind and the picture suffers a little from camera shake as you can see. Both fish were fourteen pounds odd, the biggest being short of the fifteen pound mark by just two ounces and had I the time available I would have seen the day out in this spot but it was time to go.

Wind, rain, earthquakes and eclipses what a start to 2011, what will the rest of the year bring?