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Dave Coster's Fishing Diary - July
The draw for the match was at the Kings Arms pub and I ended up with peg 35 at the Kirkstead end. This turned out to be a very shallow and weedy swim. You need a few proper bream, or maybe a big tench or two to frame here so my main line of attack was the feeder, fished three quarters of the way across. Only a couple of tiny fish resulted and most of the time it was a case of winding in tackle covered in thick weed. Apart from a good tench being lost by the angler to my left, nobody caught much in my area. The match was won by Roger Wakenshaw with three big slabs weighing 18lb 4oz.
I failed miserably to catch any tench during my visits to Denton Reservoir back in June. This month I decided a different approach was required. For my next outing on the venue my main line of attack was going to be a 15ft float rod combined with a 1.0g pole float, fished down the margins on the dam wall. I put in a soft bed of groundbait and over the top of this loose fed casters and pellets. Maggot hook baits were a waste of time as these were constantly snaffled up by small perch. Casters attracted perch too but not quite as readily. I also tried soft pellets on the hook but these brought no interest at all. In the end I stayed with double caster on a size 14 hook, finding darker shells avoided the perch, giving better chances of something bigger eventually finding my bait.
After a couple of hours, I got the first signs that tench were grubbing around, spotting a few fizzes of small bubbles around by baited area. As is normally the case with tench, when I finally connected with one, the bite on my sensitive pole float was like lightening. However, it was not the big lump I was hoping for, but still a perfect looking tinca of around one pound.
It took another couple of hours before I finally latched into a proper rod bender and it was several minutes before I started to get the upper hand with my relatively light tackle. The fish bolted into every underwater weed bed it could find, but each time this happened, by applying gently increased pressure, I managed to coax it out. I eventually slid my landing net under a very wild, thick set tench of around 6lbs and that was the end of the action.
The problem with venues like Denton, which get fished a lot for carp, is finding the right baits to excite fish like tench into a proper feeding frenzy. I think these fish get a lot of free spodded particle baits intended for carp and are never that hungry. So, for my next trip I decided to put lots of casters and chopped worm through a cage feeder, baits I don’t think the inhabitants of this water see a lot of.
First job was to find a clear spot to fish in this very weedy venue. I spent a good 15 minutes casting a bomb around the swim before I discovered a clear patch in around four feet of water, just short of a gravel bar, 30 metres out. Well worth the effort, otherwise, similar to the River Witham, you can end up cranking in weed all day!
I clipped up my main line and kept the feeder going down the same hole for the next two hours, only catching the odd small perch. I was just beginning to wonder if my new approach was going to work when my quivertip sailed round. The fish nearly ripped my feeder rod off its rest and I had to hastily unclip my reel line, otherwise it would have snapped my 0.15mm hook length. This was a proper wild fish with a lot of weight behind it. As I coaxed it nearer, I could feel those juddering movements that only tench give you. I managed to get its head up and soon a nice 6lb fish was in my landing net.
Luckily, I had counted the number of turns of line on my reel in relation to the distance I had been fishing, so I was able to clip up to the same spot pretty quickly. Over the next hour three more good fish came my way, ranging between 5 and 7lbs, before the weather took a turn for the worse and the action switched off.
I went home happy, feeling I was at last getting to grips with this tricky Grantham AA venue. But I still feel I have unfinished business there, because there are rumours of double figure bream, which of course I aim to target next!
I couldn’t wet a line in the Grantham Canal in July as it was completely choked with weed. The accompanying photograph is of the swim in the turning bay, where I had a great catch of bream and tench back in June. Hard to believe now! It has been completely clogged up with duck weed and floating rafts of rushes.
I really don’t get what is going on with this waterway. People from the Canal and Rivers Trust can regularly be seen keeping the banks neat and tidy, and yet the canal itself is almost covered in weed from one end to the other. Surely the most important part of a canal is its water and the wildlife that goes with it. Neatly trimming grass verges along the towpath is somewhat secondary in my opinion!
My mate Andy Griffiths was in the area at the end of July so we visited the River Trent, opposite the Power Station at Newark Dyke. It’s many years since I fished the Trent and it was great to get a proper 13ft river feeder rod back into action. Fishing upstream of the weir, I found I could just hold bottom with a 30g open-end feeder, providing I fed a bow of line out. The bow method results in virtually unmissable drop-back bites, providing your feeder is just holding bottom. Combined with having a bow in your line and a critically balanced feeder, anything pulling on the hook length dislodges the tackle. This was a method I used a lot on the River Thames many years ago and it can be absolutely deadly.
I soon got back into the flow of things and caught a couple of decent bream early doors. The river was running very clear and after that it was small perch, roach and bleak. Next peg down, Andy struggled to begin with, but when he started dropping his feeder a bit shorter, he also had a couple of slabs, plus a whopping 2.5lb perch. Not easy fishing, but that is good reason for a return visit!
