Dawn Tench raid

Up early this morning in search for tench, arriving at the syndicate, not long past dawn I had a wander over to a nice bay with a number of features to fish to. Tactics were fishing hair rigged worm fished heli style, and a mix of groundbait and chopped worm in the feeder, using two rods on alarms. 

Weather was spot on, and with the sun warming up my bald head it was nice to just sit there and soak it in, especially with the wildlife on show including great crested grebes, buzzards and dragonflies. The water is gin clear as well and occasionally fish like to wander close, in this instance a pike of 5lb or so slowly swam past before bolting when it saw me. 

The right hand rod then purred into action out of the blue and I was soon netting a nice tench of 5lb 1oz. 

I didn’t get any action after that, but really enjoyed the few hours just chilling. The river season is nearly here, but I’m intending to split my time between an evening trip to the tees during the week and a weekend trip doing something else, be it fly fishing upper tees, lure fishing for bass or gravel pit tenching. 

Back to tiling the kitchen now!! 

Lift method for gravel pit tench

Been a bit quiet of late, I’ve had a few trips out with the carp gear on the syndicate water without any success. I had a few hours spare this evening, and decided to leave the bite alarms at home, and just take float gear.

Fishing the lift method in 12ft of clear water, I put down a decent bed of hemp, caster and pellet, and fished sweetcorn. Gear consisted of a 12ft 1.25lb drennan specialist avon rod, couple with 6lb line straight through to the hook. No splitshot on the line, with the float and swan shot link being stopped by drennan grippa stops. A size 16 super specialist hook finished off the rig, which provides a very sensitive set up, indicating any sot of feeding near to the hook.

After an hour of nothing, the float twitched, lifted slightly, and then fizzing started. This continued for a short while before the float lifted beautifully and I struck into a nice tench.

Really nice to catch a tench on float, and 20 mins later I struck into my second, only for it to come off. I watched my float into dark, and then walked back to the car, whilst Venus and Jupiter lifted into the night sky. Cracking evening.....and one that i'll hope to repeat soon (perhaps with a larger stamp of tench). Hoping for a little bass trip on the dorset coast this week at some point, as i'm travelling about a fair bit at the moment.

An evening after tench...

Had a few hours spare yesterday evening, and with the clear skies and warmer weather i decided to try for tench. I've been fishing a new water without success to date but the fish in this clear water are mint looking so I was after one....

I was using my new greys prodigy rods with Shimano aero 4000s, and decided to try mussels on one rod and method feeder with boilie on the other - I had been pre baiting with a specific boilie for a month or so so was confident they would work. 

As the sun dropped below the horizon, tench activity became clear with big fish rolling and fizzing indicating feeding fish. After repositioning the rods, I soon started getting the odd liner as a fish was rooting around on the method feeder. With hand hovering over the rod, it soon shot off and a spirited fish resulted in this tench, nothing massive but happy to break my duck on this pond. 

The rivers will soon be open, but I'm quite happy at the moment fishing other places. Considering trying for bass at the weekend which should be interesting