stevetheangler

It being Friday 5th July I took off at 0530 to my angling club’s tench pool in Staffordshire arriving at around 0610. I’d intended fishing a different swim to the one which I’d fished the previous few sessions and on arrival drove up towards that swim…  On arrival at the pool I had noticed that there was a car parked halfway down to my destination but thought that’d I be OK but, in fact, the angler was in the actual swim I wanted :( And so I drove back down the pool and went to my ‘usual’ swim instead. I fished until 1800 – so it was roughly a 12 hour session. Weather was fine with blue skies and temps rising over the day up to about 26°C.

Before tackling up I deposited about 0.5-0.75Kg of barely damp groundbait laced with hemp, wheat and maize by use of my spomb. Actually my baited area was within 10 yards out at the edge of a patch of lily pads so distance-wise the spomb was not really necessary but as the groundbait was only barely damp (not enough to ball it) in order to fall as a ‘cloud’ it was an ideal method to get that bait out and all within tight bounds. During fishing I further topped up the area every few minutes by catapulting out small quantities of maggots – using around 2 pints over the whole 12 hour session.

Tackle was the laying-on float set up as used in previous sessions – so I won’t go any further into that – look back if you really want to know! :)

OK – first cast was made around 0640 with maggot on the hook and all looked promising with the water looking like someone had deposited a ton of Alka Seltzer in there with all the tench bubbles rising – however, it was to be 1015 before the first fish – a tench (Tinca Tinca) of 2lb 13 oz was landed on worm with only 2 missed bites preceeding that . The next capture was to be a small (2-3oz) perch (Perca Fluviatilis) at 1055. At about this point the other guy on the water came around (a committee man on the sit-on lawn mower doing a bit of tidying up) and said that his catch also consisted of one tench and one perch – and that the water in front of him was ‘hissing’ with tench too but they didn’t seem interested in any sort of bait.

Anyway, I’ll itemise the results below – but worth pointing out that I did take to using bait dips – swapping flavours (Bloodworm and Crab & Mussel) willy nilly really .

Results:

• 1015… Tench… 2lb 13oz… worm
• 1055… Perch… 2-3oz… worm
• 1205… Perch…8oz… small meat cube, artificial maggot, crab& mussel dipped.
• 1255… Perch…13oz… small meat cube, artificial maggot, bloodworm dipped.
• 1325… Tench… 2lb 3oz… meat, crab&mussel
• 1440… Bream… 15oz… meat, crab&mussel
• 1545… Tench… 3lb 1oz… meat, crab& mussel

Changed hook from a size 16 to a size 12 at this point as, using the meat cubes, I seemed to miss a lot of bites and so increased size to better match the bait.

• 1600… Bream… 3lb 13oz… meat, bloodworm

And that was the day basically… a few bites missed, especially when having changed to the small (1/8″ – 1/4″) cubes of meat and on the size 16 hook. Bites seemed to come in bunches too .. probably a bite a cast for 20-30mins followed by 1-2 hours before next one.

The most enjoyable thing on the day – which also proved the fish were around even if not taking baits – was watching the float reacting to the tail currents of nearby fish, the float just gently swaying on the water surface… and sometimes the still float would start to sway, followed a few seconds later by a patch of bubbles rising and bursting alongside, and then the float just lifted… Wonderful!! :)

Pics of the day:

Sorry to say I didn’t actually take any!! :(
But to make up I’m adding some generic pictures of the species caught…