stevetheangler

Monday, July 8th, Liz and I set off for the main tench water of one of my clubs (KF/DH/BP). And, as easily surmised from the title of this post, the current run of misfortunes was soon to be discovered to be continuing…. although after a bad start the day settled slightly better…

We set off at 0630 hoping to get a spot on the pool … a recent spell of good catches having been reported including one catch of 69 tench in one spell had put the pool ‘into view’ … plus there was a post made on the club’s Facebook page that on the day the Anglers’ Mail would be there with an ex-club secretary preparing for a ‘float fishing for tench’ feature … however, on arrival, there were 3 vehicles on the club car park but, in fact, we only spotted one pair on the far side further down the pool, the others presumably fishing one of the two carp pools also on-site … and the ‘tench feature’ folks didn’t arrive into their ‘reserved’ swim, well not whilst we were there but possibly the other two spotted could have been they but I would have thought there’d have been three in the group – angler, writer and photographer. Anyway, no else turned up on our pool either for all the time we were there… not fishing anyway but the usual ‘passers by’ (ramblers, dog walkers, etc) started passing behind just around midday.

So, arrived, had our choice of swims and we selected the closest – not just out of ease, although that is an enticement at any time, but the swim comfortably held both of us, is a good productive swim usually but that can be said of anywhere on this pool (19 acre lake actually), and tench bubbles were abundant in front…. all very promising so far … but then I started to tackle up and calamity struck….

OK … the walk from the car park to this water is a fair old walk through woodland and along narrow tracks with some low branches but at least it is downhill … however, the return journey is thus necessarily uphill and usually gets to be undertaken in the full heat of the day at this time of year … and a barrow is more a hindrance than help as the tracks are rutted and longs grass covers even going downhill and uphill in the heat its a killer … when I first joined the club I took a barrow and 1 hour 40 minutes from starting back from the water I was on my 5th sit down and breather and sure a heart attack was imminent and was still a way away from the car! So, given this, its definitely a travel as light as you can venue, and so Liz and I ‘share’ our tackles as much as we can – generally I take my rucksack containing my tackle (pared down slightly) to share to which Liz adds her own minor quantity of personal bits’n’bobs (catapults, alarms, etc), and we take a bag of food and drink, a bag of baits, and lightweight camping seats and one rod holdall with our four rods plus banksticks and landing net poles – still sounds a lot but remember this is for 2 people and really not that much more than a single person’s. All easy to carry between two although we did take a small trolley to carry the bait and food/drink bags on. I carried the rods, the Korum Mat Bag and the rucksack whilst Liz pulled the trolley loaded with bags and chairs and carried a small bucket. Now all of this was fine … what was NOT fine was, when unpacking, that, as part of the prepping the loads, I’d removed items unlikely to be needed BUT hadn’t remembered that I’d taken things out when I went river fishing on the previous session that needed to be re-added … and among those things were my bite alarms and bobbins which were a CRUCIAL requirement as we’d only taken ledgering gear… Liz was fine having transferred hers from her own bag … but didn’t have any spares either. So, a lot of time was spent trying to improvise some sort of indicating system including the old pre-bobbin ‘stick across the line’ thing but that wasn’t perfect and in the end I resorted to a very slack freespool set up on one rod whilst I touch ledgered with the other keeping a sort of watch (can’t be done 100%) on the lines as well for signs of twitching…. all-in-all a far from perfect or relaxing method…. and to top it all I opened my worm box – and they’d become a slushy mess of skins which I should have checked before taking! Those got mixed into the feeder mix…

We both fished cage feeders – Liz with maggot, sweetcorn and, I think, meat – myself with sweetcorn and meat with first casts around 0815.

Plenty of tench ‘fizz’ around our feeders all session (packed in at 1500) but very little in way of actual bites, just minor nudges/trembles/plucks but around 0900 Liz had a small black spotted roach on maggot – not diseased (‘black spot’), just a natural colouration of this water’s roach I believe. Liz also had one good take, definitely from a tench, but lost it to a line break, possibly my fault as I’d tied her a stop knot as her feeder stop but when trying to adjust the length of tail the knot seemed locked solid but Liz was happy with where it was sitting so we left it as it was … and the line break was exactly at that knot so seemed it added a weak spot to the line… :(

Myself, despite the troubles of indication I did manage one decent tench on a bite that set the spool on the freespooled rod ‘whizzing’ … a very reasonable 3lb 11oz female taken on sweetcorn…

 … but apart from that nothing. And the meat didn’t get a bite from either of us – in fact, the meat bait I retrieved at the end of the day was the one I’d cast in at the very start…

Day ended as usual, stopping at the local for a beer and scratchings before heading home….

PLANS:

Well, as can be seen from the photo, today I’m going to have a shave!! And tomorrow I had planned to fish the River Severn but, again, plans have been thwarted, this time by ducks! Across the river the owner runs a duck shoot and its reported that he’s released his ‘stock’ on to the river – a figure of 2000+ birds has been mentioned – and reports are that these ducks are making fishing in all forms impossible due to constantly snagging lines, grabbing baits as they hit the water, etc. So, my plans are now to visit the ‘tench’ water of another of my clubs that the last few times I visited hadn’t fished too well BUT it seems that it has picked up with the warm weather – and it is regarded by me as warm weather pool and rarely fishes well until around this time of year although, as always, there have been exceptions to the rule the most notable being a few years back when I was catching tench throughout the Oct-March period and, in fact, tench were the only thing I could catch at that time!

So…. now feeling confident for tomorrow :)