OVERNIGHT TENCHING

Saturday just gone saw me getting a pass from 'she who must be obeyed' to spend the night fishing as she was off out with friends. Now i only found this out saturday morning so i promptly rushed through my days work, loaded up 'The Beast' and shot over to my syndicate water to try for tench and maybe a carp. Unfortunately after a check around the water and ear marking a couple of swims, when i actually went back to them they were taken by carpers, bummer. Oh well i thought i,ll settle for a swim which i,ve had my eye on for a while, but lo and behold when i got there a chappie was there chucking lures for the resident pike. I spent the next half hour or so chatting with this chap, he was a nice guy, before loading up the barrow and walking around to the next swim along. By 6.30 i had 3 rods set up, 2 for the carp and one for tench. I,d seen bream and possibly tench rolling to the left of this swim so i was hopeful.

 I baited the area i,d seen the fish roll with a right old concoction of hemp, seeds, pellets, corn, groundbait and a few crushed boilies which i had soaked in hemp oil, Mainline pineapple active ade and Sticky Baits bloodworm liquid. I spombed a couple of kilos out to a fairly tight area at 30 yards as this was where the rolls had been. I then baited an area to my right 5 yards out from some reeds with about half kilo of boilies for the hopefully patrolling carp to find. As you can see from the picture it was pretty weedy for 25 ft out in front of the swim until the depth dropped to 6ft where it eased up a bit.

On the tench spot i was using a method rig with artificial corn on the hook. I was using Pallatrax's bloodworm and maggot crush for the first time and have to say its cracking stuff. I gave the mix a good dose of molasses as this sweet goo seems to be a tench magnet when i,ve used it before. This rig was cast every 20 minutes or so to help build up even more attraction in the swim. Over the scattered boilies i cast a critically balanced boilie hookbait, balanced so it would just gently settle on the silk weed which i,d found on the bottom. The third rod i set up a naked chod rig and regularly moved it around to try and locate any carp. This was baited with a white chocolate pop-up which i had soaking in the pink almond goo from Korda. It looked and smelt great but was horrible and sticky and easily stained anything that it touched, i ended up covered in pink marks on my hands, arms and legs, but its meant to be good stuff as my mate Ryan has been having good success with the stuff.

Once i was happy the rods were on their spots nicely and the swim was tidy and everything sorted, i settled down to make my dinner. Texas style steak with mushrooms and sliced peppers, who said you had to rough it when fishing. Dinner devoured and a nice Latte downed i sat outside the bivvy watching the water as the light slowly started to fade. There was quite a lot of action with silvers flipping on the surface as well as a few bream rolling and i even heard a carp bosh out further up the bank. My expectations were high as i,d been having quite a few beeps on the tench rod as fish were knocking the method ball around to get at the goodies inside. Finally i had an absolute screamer of a run on the tench rod which resulted in a huge slick, from my hemp oil i believe, appear on the surface above my rig. I jumped for the rod but the run was over before i,d even picked it up. The speed it shot off had to of been a carp, and considering most of the carp in this water are over 20lb i was a bit gutted to say the least.

Nothing else happened for a couple of hours until a twitchy bite resulted in this bream of about 6lb at 10pm on the method. After that fish it was a quite night and i managed to sleep best part through the night without disturbance. I awoke the following morning to the sun already beating in through the bivvy door and a pair of ducks feeding beneath my rods. I fished on for another couple of hours but didn,t catch anything else. I did have a brief take on the chod rig but i suspect that it may of been from a bream rather than the intended carp. All in all it was a lovely evening to sit by the waters edge and much better than sitting at home watching crap on the tv.

Later on that afternoon we took the dogs for a nice long walk at St Peters in Bradwell and spent a couple of hours walking along the shoreline. As always i was right at the waters edge looking in the little pools to see if i could find any life or anything of interest. I do love this part of the Essex coastline, it might not be rugged and as beautiful as the South West counties but if you sit and take in the beauty of the area you will see it matches any other shoreline in the UK. While i was watching Harry swim around in the shallow water here it made me realise its about time for me to get ready for my next challenge. Catching a stingray from the Essex coast...........