Tench Target - Making a Start

This entry was posted on 26th April, 2017

The start of the spring campaign came straight after my syndicate had reopened in late March and I had planned to do an overnighter during the week after work. With the weather being unseasonably mild and the trees having buds on them early this year, I think it caused a lot of people – including me – to think that the tench were up for a feed. The warm sun had made an appearance a lot more regularly than it usually does in early April and it really felt like spring tench weather. With the tench rolling in their normal areas over the deeper parts of the lake, it got the enthusiasm going.

For the first couple of sessions, I targeted an area at about 80 yards with methods feeders in around 14ft of water. This was an area I'd caught bream from in the past and I had all the information about the swim on my phone, so I didn’t need to spend a lot of time at the beginning feature finding. As it was still early in the season and the fish not really feeding, I only put out about eight Spombs of a particle mix of seeds and hemp, to which I added extra hemp and a small amount of halibut pellets. I also included some 6mm Manilla Pellets from StickyBaits, as I like to use something really sweet smelling in my mixes. With the baiting up done and the rods taped up at their distance, I retreated back to the brolly to put the new rigs on. I had made these before the session had started. When fishing for bream at night, I have a couple of favourite rigs which I always turn to. As I was fishing with a method feeder, it was a short 18lb Super Natural Hooklink from Korda and a size 12 Korda Mixa Hook on the business end. For hook bait, it would have to be Enterprise fake corn soaked in flavour as my number one choice and I usually use a Sonubait Pineapple Pop-Up on my other rod to keep the variety.

Since it is getting lighter in the evenings, I find it helpful to keep watching the water for as long as you can to see what is going on around the lake and not just in your swim, as there's been many a time I have packed up in the morning to move onto showing fish. The fishing was slow on the first few sessions as expected but there were a few liners after dark, which I hadn't had on this lake before. I put these down to roach, which had been making more of an appearance over the last few years. My latest session was over Easter Bank Holiday. I had done an overnighter with fishing buddy Darryn and it would have been the first day session we had fished so, with the tench in mind, I changed my bait a little by adding a pint of casters and a couple of pints of red maggots. To cut a long story short, after a good night talking fishing, we had no success. By the next lunchtime, I had decided to move to another lake on the complex and get the float rod out for a few hours.

After packing up and moving, I found a swim which I'd had a lot of tench out of in the past. I put in a few handfuls of pellets in, and the same of hemp, and went back to the van to get my float rod. I had rigged up a Greys 12' 1.25lb Specialist Float Rod with a new Daiwa Ninja Feeder Reel, loaded with 6lb line. I also had it set up on the slider with a 3AA Drennan Peacock Float and a Guru Hook on the business end. I had the choice of maggots, casters and worms, but I started off with three small red worms on the hook. These got hammered within a foot of falling through the water by rudd, so I swapped over to half a lobworm and then sat back and waited. After about half an hour I started to get bubbles come up in the swim and then the float started to dance about and lift out of the water but on striking there was nothing, so, after a few short words to myself, I put the bait back into the same area and sat back. It didn't take long for the next bite and this time there was something pulling back hard, trying to find the snags and trees either side of me. The first tench of the spring was in the net and, to be honest, I couldn't care what size it was as it was just nice to have a hard fighting tench on the other end of the line. The fact it was on the float rod made it all the more satisfying.



Over the next couple of hours, I had two more tench, of which one was around the 6lb mark. I was really enjoying watching the float and the tench ripping the bottom up, sending big plumes of bubbles up next to the float, sitting there thinking that float must go in a minute. After that session and with the big lakes still not fishing, I decided to take a week off fishing again, give in the other half, and go on holiday to somewhere warm. To be honest, I don’t think I am going to miss out on much as the forecast looks like it is going to be cold. Hopefully, by the time I return, there will be a bit more activity on the feeding front and the sport will pick up. So, until the next blog, tight lines, and be lucky with catching your target species.