Firstly, this session was planned the day before after realising that all year, I haven’t caught a decent sized Tench. All the Tench I have caught before were roughly half a pound all caught from Priory Lakes in Ruskington. So to get a better stamp of Tench, I was thinking back to last year where I had a fantastic Tench session of roughly 40lbs, see picture below.
According to my knowledge, Tench feed at dawn and dusk. As I share the car with my mum who was at work in the morning means that I had to settle for a dusk session. I liked this because it meant I can be lazy and have a lay in; after all it was Sunday anyways. Bait wise, due to financial limitations and other commitments, I was unable to make a visit to my tackle shop to get some maggots, so I had to settle for what I already had, sweet corn. I wasn’t too bothered about sweet corn because I know I have caught a good sized Tench at Burton using sweet corn, but I would have liked to have different baits that I know Tench like such as maggots, prawns and even some worms.
This allowed me to set my targets for the session which is explained below:
Target Species: Tench (To beat my yearly best of just under 1lb)
Net Weight: 20lbs would be nice, but not important as I am after a good sized Tench.
Pre-Session Plans and Rig
Before setting off to Burton for the fishing, I made 3 rigs on what I thought would be suitable for catching a good Tench, but I was aware that there will be Carp and maybe a few Crucian Carp in the vicinity, so I ensured I had a good strong set up to pull the hard fighting Carp and hopefully Tench away from the lily pads as I shall be fishing close to them. After all, I want to hook a fish and net it, not hook and net lily pads. As you can tell, I planned to fish the margins next to the lily pads so I would need 6ft line maximum as I don’t know how deep the margins may be yet, but shouldn’t be more than 6ft from surface to bottom. Below is my idea of rig:
From the pole, which is a Preston Innovations Red Carp Power margin pole, fitted with grade 18 elastic, I needed a strong elastic to be able to play the fish strongly away from the lily pads and also not too strong so I can play the fish properly without bullying once guided away from the lily pads. The line I used was Browning Cenitan 6lbs line which is 0.165mm diameter, straight through to the hook which is a size 16 Preston PR21 as I find them perfect for hooking sweet corn, in fact, I would urge anybody to use this hook when using sweet corn because I haven’t missed a bite using this hook. About 3 inches away from the hook are 2 small size 12 pole shots to ensure that the hook bait is kept over the feed and that if the hook bait moves, it still looks natural, half way down between the float and the hook is another size 12 shot, this shot is to make sure that the float sits perfectly in the water only showing 1cm of its tip.
As I had 2 shots 3 inches from the hook, this meant that when I plumb the depth, I have to make sure that when the plummet hits the bottom, the float’s tip must be roughly 4 inches out of the water. Now, it was time to go to the venue.
Arriving at Burton Pedwardine
Most anglers I have noticed just look for a peg that is suitable for themselves and hope to catch fish from whatever there is in their swim. The best thing to do if you want to catch Tench is to inspect the pegs where the hotspots can be, such as reeds, lily pads, over hanging trees or even tree roots. The trick is to look for small bubbles appearing on the surface, these are caused by Tench hence the name, “Tench bubbles”. I couldn’t see any bubbles when I inspected the place and the peg I fished on where I caught lots of Tench in one session wasn’t available, so I decided to settle with peg 12 because the wind was blowing towards it, and the lily pads looked very Tench like.
As you can see, they are very Tench like lily pads and I felt I stand a great chance of catching a decent Tench from there. I had a good look at where I’ll fish and the bailiff came a long and I paid my day ticket of a fiver, and he informed me that the place was fishing very well at the moment. Advised me to go to the lily pads, which is what I planned to do anyways. I got my pole out and got the rig out, so I decided to plumb up first before deciding what float to use.
The red dot in the picture shows where I plan to fish and it was about 3 and a half foot deep, so I decided to use the float shown in the picture, which is a 50g Drennan Choppa float. The small stem, the small tip and the oval body made it perfect for that swim as there was a fair bit of wind.
The weather was mild, with the odd moment of sunshine with dark clouds indicating that it’ll rain later on in the session. As I was about to get started, a friend of mine arrived and as I was on a double peg, he decided to fish next to me and help me take photographs of some of the fish I catch, hopefully, a Tench.
Once everything was rigged up and loose fed, it was just past 3pm, and I started fishing. The first ten minutes was very quiet in terms of activity in my swim, but the wildlife wasn’t. I could hear pigeons cooing, a woodpecker trying to knock itself out... well that what it looked like it was doing. Also, I could hear a few ducks quacking, fish jumping about in the distance, generally, it was a very peaceful surrounding and I could just relax and not care if I blanked.
Then the float moved... but didn’t go under, so I slowly grabbed both hands on my pole as I was resting it across my lap using my elbow to support it. “Come on...” I was whispering under my breath and the float did a Paul Daniels... it disappeared so I struck and connected with a good sized fish. It was fighting more like a Carp, but in my mind, I was hoping it was a Tench, the fish gave up pretty quickly and surfaced, it was a small carp. I netted the Carp and slipped it in the keep net; the Carp was roughly 3lbs.
After putting another grain of sweet corn and gently placing the rig back in the margins near the lily pads. Everything went quiet with the odd Carp breaking the silence by leaping in the water. It started to rain a little bit, so I shipped my rig back in and set up my umbrella, which is a Preston Flat Back, which did a tremendous job of keeping me and my equipment dry.
An hour passed and I was thinking, this is a difficult day and I had the bailiff’s words “It’s fishing well...” ringing in my head because it was difficult and at the moment, I just couldn’t buy a bite. SO I had to go back to the drawing board and rethink of another idea. Whilst I was thinking of an idea, I managed to catch a good size Carp of about 7lbs which went straight into the keep net.
Straight away after rebaiting, I hooked into a small fish and it turned out to be a Crucian and I thought, I better take a photo of this fish, so I asked my friend to do the honours. Then the swim went dead for a very long time.
I had a brilliant idea and thought about what anglers do after their session, simple, they dump all their bait in the margins next to the peg. So, I got another rig out, which had the same set up as the rig I was using for the lily pads.
The idea was to fish 6 inches out of the peg and 6 inches away. This turned out to be one of the best ideas I have thought about doing, the depth was roughly 2ft and Tench bubbles appeared whilst I was putting the sweet corn on the hook. This was very promising indeed. So I lowered the bait gently and within minutes, the float started to dip, for minutes, the float never buried, but dipped gently, it was really testing my patience as I want to strike at every dip. So I waited, and waited... I looked at the float and gave it a cold stare; I must have scared it off because it said “see ya” and shot straight under!
I lifted into the fish gently as there was no need to strike due to the nature of the take. The fish headed to the lily pads on the right and I felt my pole tip shoot towards the fish as it took me by surprise. This wasn’t a Tench, but a Carp, and a big Carp too. After lots of struggling and pulling, I finally landed the Carp and it was a beautiful fish, scale and fin perfect. It turned out to be my best ever Carp I have landed, a good healthy 12lbs, a new personal best. Turns out the Guinness advert is right, good things come to those who wait.
As it had been raining, the ground was wet, so I took it up the bank with my friend and unhooked it for a photograph. As 3 hours have passed, we thought about the other fish in the keep net and decided to take a net photo of my fish after 3 hours.
The picture above doesn’t do the fish any justice at all, but it was possibly, one of the hardest fighting and leanest Carp I have caught. The picture below is the net after 3 hours, the 12lb Carp being at the top, the first fish of the day at 3lbs in the middle, the 7lb Carp on the bottom and of course, the Crucian, not a true Crucian, but a hybrid.
I thought that I could have done better, but I was happy after my 3 hour catch, but it didn’t feel complete, because the aim of the session was to catch a good size Tench at 1lb minimum. So far, they have proved to be elusive. There was roughly just over an hour of daylight left and I thought, I came here to catch a Tench and I won’t give up, not just yet.
The heavens opened again and I put my bait in again, I was running dangerously low on sweet corn, so I had to be careful with my loose feeding and rebaiting. As the heavens receded, the float started to move, it went left, right, up, then down and I struck into it. Nothing, but it wouldn’t stay up in the water, so I brought the pole in and it turned out a small skimmer was attached to it. I unhooked it and unfortunately, I was unable to get a picture at the time due to fish’s welfare as it was deeply hooked and it was a pretty difficult struggle to unhook. I’m happy to say the fish was returned unharmed and released.
I was pushing it a bit because it was very close to darkness and I was out of sweet corn. So I set my phone’s alarm to go off on the hour, so I can fish right till the end because I came to catch a Tench, and I refuse to give up easily. Within 1 minute to go before my phone alarm goes off, the float goes under without any warning at all and I strike, nothing. The minute I put it back in, it goes and hooks itself and gives me a good long battle. It was pretty dark at the time, and I could only just see and I thought, once I landed this, I’m off.
When the fish surfaced, my heart raced, it was a Tench and a good one too. I was nervous in landing it because I waited and worked hard for this fish, and after a few nerve shattering moments, the Tench was finally landed!
It was just less than 2lbs, which means I succeeded my aim of catching a good sized Tench with 1lb being the minimum acceptable weight. I felt very happy and to me, this is what fishing is all about, fishing turns us men into boys because the excitement of catching the fish I desperately wanted rivals the excitement of getting what I wanted for Christmas as a young boy.
Summary
Fish caught:
Carp: 4 (Biggest was 12lbs, new PB)
Crucian: 1
Skimmer: 1
Tench: 1 (Just under 2lbs)
In summary, I achieved the aims of the session, but I felt I could achieve more if I had more varieties of baits. The lily pads I felt were stretching out pretty far into the lake and I was pretty much fishing near the deepest, flat point of the lake. Perhaps I should have picked a different peg where the lily pads were closer and more aligned with the margins so I am fishing shallower than 3 and a half ft, maybe in a part where its 2ft deep, maybe I would have had a few more Tench there. The only way to find out is to visit the place again and test the theory myself.
I feel I know what to do to catch a Tench at this venue and will be fishing this venue for more Tench, and hopefully land a good bag of Tench and Silvers next time using maggots, maybe on the pole in the margins or with a maggot feeder, I would use a feeder but groundbait is prohibited, so a maggot feeder may have to do.
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