stevetheangler

Friday 7th August saw me back at the pool in my search for the 4+lb tench that’s been eluding me for a couple of seasons … on one session last season I had a 4lb 0oz tench (not from this venue though) and next cast had one of 4lb 1oz which was, and still is, my personal best of species. Since then I have had more 4lb 0oz tench than you can count on the fingers of two hands but still that 4lb 2oz+ fish eludes me….

So I was at the pool at around 0630 – and a few others had beaten me there – and, in fact, one of them was my best mate of fifty years and he was fishing opposite me all morning but I never recognised him – LOL! Anyway, it seemed that they had all decided to fish the pool’s east bank – great as it left the entire west bank to me! Anyway, I trotted (well, to me it was trotting!) up to my chosen swim and completed my usual preliminaries with feed and setting up.

Feed was my usual bait base mix with added dead maggot, particles, floating pond pellets, hemp oil and bloodworm pellets added and dyed ‘electric green’ with powdered food colouring. For a while now I’ve been adding food colouring to my groundbait and I do believe it makes a noticeable difference – my base mix is mainly white bread crumb which can stand out noticeably on most colours of bottom – although in a limestone pit it would be OK I suppose. However, there is a school of thought that light coloured groundbaits can put put fish off due to causing them to be silhouetted against that light coloured background … hence I carry the food colouring in order to change the native colouration to something more conducive. I carry sachets of red, electric green, orange and black colouring – and I’ve found that the green (I think it makes the bait look algae-like) and red to be the best and the ones I use most. I put a level spoonful of the dye I’m using into a small pot of pool water, mix and then wet the groundbait with the dyed water – better than adding the dye to the dry mix and wetting as it gets more uniformally distributed.

Tactics for the day – two leger rods, 8lb main line, 1/2oz bombs on the alarms – one rod with a size 12 Kamasan Animal barbless hook and the other with a size 6 Kamasan B981 barbless hook – I would have used an ‘Animal’ hook in preference for the size 6 but the largest in that range is a size 8. The 12 hooked rod was baited with dendrobaena worm, tipped with a couple of maggot hooked across the centre of the body to keep the worm on, for the whole session and the 6 hooked rod was baited with bread, chilli sausage and bread at various times, each of those baits doing at least 2 hours of service.

Results…

Well, the meat/corn/bread rod –  in the entirety of the 10 hour session – received 2 tiny nudges … and hence no fish hooked or landed…

The worm/maggot fared much better – with 7 tench (2-15, 3-01, 3-02, 3-04, 3-05, 3-09 and 3-10), and 2 small perch and 2 small rudd were landed too – but still that 4-02+ remained uncaught… UNTIL NEXT TIME…. :)