TIME FOR TENCH

Having moved house i decided to have a walk round a local lake i used to fish over 10 years ago which now happens to be at the end of my road. I had a nice slow walk around one evening and the place has hardly changed, nor has the bailiff who instantly recognised me even though i,m a couple of stone heavier and have face fur which he hasn,t seen. It was quite nice catching up with him he hadn,t changed a bit. Anyway as i slowly crept into a nice overgrown corner i spied a big paint brush tail waving at me from the nearside margin. On looking closer it was clear that there was a couple of good sized tench grubbing around the roots of some reeds. That was all the incentive i needed and the next day i was in the tackle room making up some rigs to have a go for these tench before they moved off.

Due to the vegetation covering this little corner i decided to tie up some popped up artificial bait rigs. As you can see they looked the bees knees in my viewing class, ok its an empty posh pate jar. I got the rest of my gear ready  ET Sneeker rods, shimano baitrunners, 8lb Ultima flourocarbon mainline and Korda flourocarbon hooklinks as well as the usual paraphernalia, grtabbed some pellets and set of for a couple of hours after work. I used the Sneeker rods as although they are a bit heavy for tench really, they do have a nice softish action and would cope ok with any carp that might put in an appearance. Also seeing as though i would be fishing in a tight snaggy swim i didn,t want to risk teathering any fish if they got snagged in the reeds.






I had a cracking couple of hours fishing catching 3 bream to just over 4lb and a lovely tench of 4lb 12oz. And the Sneekers performed admirably giving a nice account of the fight without feeling as though they were outgunning the fish. One thing i will say though is that i won,t be using the method feeder again as the bream absolutely go crazy over it. My alarms were signalling constantly and i could see the rod tips twanging about as the bream were knocking the method ball about. I changed to small bags of pellets with the artificial corn pop ups as hook baits and still got a lot of knocks but they resulted in more hook ups, even though a few dropped off they were only small fish. I,m going to be spending a good few evenings on this water i reckon, it would be rude not too as its only a 2 min trip down the road in the car. Beats sitting in front of the tv.........



 Another little video, this time of a small bream.
My short session tackle..

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