Clattercote Roach, Pike and Tench — Unexpecting

Yet another mild day forecast for the next. A piking session at Clattercote Reservoir planned. And, Tesco fishmonger's slab is a broad expanse of scrubbed stainless steel on New Years Day. Luckily, there's a single pack of sardines hiding amongst the smoked haddock and Vietnamese river cobbler in the reduced rack.

I'll take along a few worms. Should the sardines prove a bad bet, then I'll wangle fresh baits.

But, I find Mark Wintle extolling the roach potential of this venue on Fishing Magic forum. Apparently it holds fish well into the two-pound bracket and, the average stamp is high. The venue record stands at 2lb 10oz, according to the Canal & River Trust, and given the size of the venue it seems more than plausible. Too much information for me to ignore. I think I'll grab a pint of caster on the way down.

It's painfully low. All the pictures I'd seen beforehand had shown water lapping at the boardwalks but today there's bivvies pitched on the beach below and just a few feet of water out front where I'd planned to float fish. However, there's plenty of depth to be found off the rocky dam...

Martin nabs an ideal peg for fishing two pike rods. Certainly the one I'd race to if I were about to do the same. Setting up to his right, the depths found by the ledgered sardine sleeper are surprising. The line enters the water at near 45 degrees for a shortish lob out and I have plenty of depth to work close up with caster. But I find myself snagging rocks too often for comfort. So I move around to easier prospects within shouting distance. 

Seems a good bet. Four feet of water and a nice clean shelving bed. Very occasionally I'm spotting lazily rolling fish between our positions. Certainly not carp. I fancy they might be large roach. These signs occur always along a line two rod lengths out from the dam. No further, no nearer. And one occurs just a few yards to my right. That's where I concentrate. 

Martin scores a small pike in the morning. Looks like it might prove a good day for runs. Perhaps one of those twenty-pounders we've heard about will trip up later...

However, by mid-afternoon further runs have not come and it's looking grim on the pike front. As for the roach front, well, I'm certain that every free offering I've chucked about the float still sits on the bed ignored. And so I decide that I must go tough it out on the rocks and fish right in the middle of the line of signs I've seen and where they were most frequent. 

As the light begins to fall, finally I have a bite and reel in a very small roach. Martin steals it, holds it in his capacious net, and rigs up a live bait rod. Of course, I think my roach sport is about to begin. So I change the shotting to fish more actively on the drop rather than motionless on the deck. It doesn't quite happen, though an hour later I do get another equally tiny blade. It's desperate stuff!

But then a fish rolls nearby and I spot it clearly. A good sized tench...

Perhaps it was them all along, eh?

There's a dilemma. Should I consider tying a larger hook straight to the four pound mainline? This size 18 will hold a tench of any size should it find a good hold but the 2lb hooklink will struggle should one take the bait.

I don't bother now that I'm catching small roach regularly and thinking large ones may turn up around dusk...

And what's the chance of tench feeding early January? 

Martin comes over and sits behind. A fish rolls in the swim. Down low all I see is the swirl but up high he spots it clearly. It's another tench. 

Of course the next bite comes and I hit what I initially think to be the good roach I've fished all day for. But that's what you get for expecting. For a few brief seconds there's the illusory sensation of just the right kind of middling weight without any great power driving it, but then things do get heavyweight. There's a very strong lunge for the deeps when I know I have tench problems on my hands. But the hook didn't set well. Off it comes.

Oh dear. I can barely see the float by now. It's too dark to be fiddling about changing hook. But I just know that the next bite will come soon enough and it likely won't be from roach! And sure enough, when it's so very dark that the float is seen better by looking slightly askance rather than directly at it, away it slides and a risky bout commences. 

I think I stand half a chance. So does Martin. "Keep the rod high and the line vertical!". He's right. The nearer fish comes the greater the risk of disaster. These rocks are 45 degrees of trouble. Nevertheless, the fight is dour, uneventful, and well-controlled despite the light tackle. Well. It is till the fish finally comes up in the water and the float emerges, when, it suddenly decides enough is enough, stops pussyfooting about, and charges back down to deep water and the safety of the bed...

Where the hook-link breaks three or four inches above the knot, and we part company.

Ah well. Eel at Christmas. New Year tench...

Caught unexpecting again!

Avon Chub — 5-1

A fortnight since I last caught a decent fish, last night I went down the Avon with Martin, carrying along minimal tackle but also the burdensome determination to break what has been something of a dearth of pleasurable activity of late. He was to try cracking a glass ceiling of his own. I was planning to roll meat down a fast chute of shallow water in search of big chub. 

Yep, that's right. Rolling meat — not for barbel. 

This tiring grind has dented my confidence in proven baits, trusted rigs, and my own abilities. It's seen me fishing at local free fisheries, mostly, and trying hard there to find tench, crucians, roach and carp. What I've found in place of all, are respectively birds, weeds, skimmers and crayfishes... 

For tench I turned up at a reedy lake armed with a box of hemp and corn and stupidly fed my shallow gin clear marginal swim with pouches of the mix. Coots arrived as if led by radar and proceeded to eat me out. I moved to deeper water thinking that would defeat them. It did for a while as they contented themselves with those stray yellow magnets that had fallen short. But of course, then they turned their attentions toward the more difficult dives over my baited areas and pushed me home. 

1-0

For crucians I thought I'd have another crack at the little lake nearby where I'd heard reports of their capture. Last time I'd tried it had been too weedy to fish anywhere but the deepest places. This time I  found much of the lake surface choked with mature duckweed fern. In this red mire there was just the one viable swim. A shallow area under deep shade where the duckweed had not flourished so well. All I got for my efforts there were a few tantalising liners as fish brushed the bulk shot, but nothing besides.

2-0

Roach fishing has become a matter of jostling for desired pegs and then wading through skimmer bream. Bread takes a while to attract roach in this canal unless dropped amongst them. It takes no time at all to attract little bream who seem to have flourished after a couple seasons of very successful recruitment. However, this population explosion is creating a very popular venue. So much so that five or six anglers are seen every day in popular spots. Three or four years ago I'd only see that many in a fortnight. 

3-0

Carp were a target because I'd inadvertently found some the week before. I'd turned up with my pole in search of silver bream, baited a likely looking dent in the far bank brambles with hemp and caster, and dropped in. Not two minutes later a large swirl erupted under the trailing briars. Attention fixed upon it in wonder at what might have caused it, I looked back to the float but it wasn't there. I found myself attached to what felt like a sodden sofa cushion. But it was not that. It was moving the wrong way. I fancied I'd foul-hooked some kind of large fish.

Or at least I presume it was fouled, because no amount of effort on my part would shift it and it seemed to think it had snagged a scale on a thorn. Rising in the shallow water, the fish rolled sideways when I saw the orange/brown flank and large individual scales of a big mirror carp. It succeeded in shifting the hook and vanished quite unperturbed.

Of course, having witnessed at least two carp and large ones at that, meant effort had to be made to catch one. So I pre-baited that swim every morning for a week with the same mix and the addition of a little corn. Early one morning I fished again suitably armed. But succeeded only in having the hooks stripped clean of corn by the crayfish that my hopeful campaign had drawn in from all around. 

4-0

And then I went with Martin one evening to a new water. Reputed to hold crucians in excess of four pounds it seemed worth a shot. I could not buy a bite yet Martin two pegs along caught from the outset and continued in that vein of success through till dark Eventually I did manage three F1 carp, who looked remarkably crucian like. Well, that illusion didn't last for long when Martin brought down a real one for comparison and then had two more, and tench too. 

5-0

Rolling commences at 6 O'clock. The river level is very low but in the chute it seems plentiful enough. Fast paced, gin clear, and with the bright pink bait highly visible I believe I cannot go wrong. However, a few short trots down brings forth nothing. A few longer forays finds a single pluck. It's only when the bait reaches such great distance downstream that hooking fish will be to court disaster that I begin receiving indications that I've discovered the lie of my quarry. 

1-0

That spot happens to be at the head of the next swim downstream. That peg happens to be vacant. So I occupy it. There's a tricky problem though. The fast water there is some distance out from the bank. And there's a large pool of still water to be negotiated between and flanked each side by dense beds of reeds. Reaching where I'd found the fish to be is a matter of wading out half way, stripping loads of line from the centre-pin and luzzing the meat out to them. But it proves hopeless. Fifteen yards away and fishing at right angles to it, I cannot control the bait in the flow and I'm not in touch with it. It feels plain wrong.  

2-0

So I return to the bank and hatch a plan. There's a second rod in the quiver. Trouble is it's been used for fishing single grains of corn for carp, it's now too dark to tie on a hair, and I don't seem to have brought any along ready-tied. To compound matters the weight is three-ounces. That means I cannot cast all the way from the bank and have a hope in hell of keeping the soft bait on the hook without a stalk of grass jammed in the gape because the weight of the lead plunging through the water at speed will rip it through most every time and leave me fishing bare-hooked. But if I should employ a stalk to achieve a trusted cast that will then impede the strike.

I'm on the horns of a dilemma. 

So I hook the meat through, push the float stop up the line turning the bolt rig into a running rig so that the buoyant bait may pull a little line through the eye of the swivel when the heavy lead enters the water. Hopefully cushioning the shock. Then wade out and lob the rig as low as possible to where I want it hoping for a soft splashdown. I think it's OK. Returning to bank I find I've left my rod rest heads at home and have three useless sticks. Never mind. I wind the bank-stick camera swivel attachment in and rest the rod on that. 

The tip bangs hard over, springs back, but no there's hook up...

3-0

I repeat the procedure. A really savage take but a hopeless, fumbled, late strike

4-0

And again! 

5-0

It's now dark and wading out a matter of safe route memory. I have an iPhone torch but no lanyard and no fish is worth that cost. Time has all but run down and this will be last chance cast should I risk it  Nevertheless, I trust my footings by now so out I go. Once out there all alone up to my waist in the drink and the dark I consider staying put and fishing by touch alone, but don't. I feel that the only way a fish is going get pricked and hooked with such sharp and violent bangs is not by my flailing away, but by having the hook pull through the meat on a very tight line. 

I can just see the rod now. Then I've an idea. I flip the bait runner off then wind the spool back till the rod tip is bent right over against the weight of the lead but just below tripping point. A sprung trap. Should a fish take then I'm betting it'll dislodge so violently that the work will be done hands free. Within a minute the tip twitches, springs back straight, and then lurches toward the water.  Fish on! 

There's a little night vision coming on by now. So I wade again to control the angles of the fight. Glad of that when the fish becomes weeded. From the bank that would have become a real problem but beneath a vertical line extraction should be a simple matter. And then, when I have it beaten, I'll just walk it back to the bank and chin it out. The fish emerges into the clear, gradually tires, arises in the water, when I see a pair of big white lips.  

The takes may have been strident ones but all along I knew they were never arising from barbel. Too many in too short a time. Chub are what I set out for and eventually, that's what I get. My best for some time and since 2009 the only five-pounder. And I'm sure of that as I heave her onto the grass.

5-1

That's her weight , and the scores! 

Martin, who's camped in an upstream peg in pursuit of his first double of the season, has yet another single to add to a capture tally standing at 12. Made of sterner stuff than I, he's quite unperturbed.

13-0 

I couldn't bear it!

Canal Tench & Bream — Foul Play

After the weekend's debacles down the Avon, the following Monday chasing elusive tench on a fickle canal seemed a better prospect than thrashing a mardy river on its bones. The session proved touchy. The weather was broken overcast, and breezy, but for a change this wind felt to be an improving one. The kind of wind that blows an angler good things.

As I mentioned before. Wind acts upon canals in strange ways. On a route running generally East to West a canal might turn due South and North. Therefore wind will be blowing straight down portions of it no matter where the wind comes from. Other parts will be flat calm with wind coming across. Some areas will be scum traps where buoyant rubbish is pushed and held by opposing movements. Logs, cans, tarps & turds, dead sheep & rats, domestic cats, you name it.

Today the wind is a warm South-westerly and blowing obliquely across the long straight between the M6 bend and Bridge 11. Calm at the head and ruffled at the foot. You'd not think there much of a force acting upon it but there's transverse waves of some amplitude travelling backwards at ten yard intervals which are the surface signs of undertow — the subsurface current set up by water pushed one way having nowhere to go but backwards when it encounters a force that won't give. In this case it's not a solid bank, but a great weight of liquid that is not moving anywhere because it is trapped by forces coming from somewhere along the line northwards. 

It's choppy at my peg because it's aligned directly along the wind direction, but the water is not towing so it's easy to fish regardless. However invigorating I feel this wind might be, it's not going to culminate in a feeding frenzy just yet. Later this evening I reckon. Maybe tomorrow morning. For now bites are regularly spaced at twenty-five minute intervals. And it's all about bream...

The first is no improvement on my previous challenge best, but the second is. At 3lb 7oz it is one of the canal's elders. They really don't run much larger than four-pound hereabouts. A five-pounder is the  ancient specimen that I have never seen. Pleased with gaining a notch up the canal leader-board, I then turn full attention toward tench. They are possible here in daylight, but are hard work. 

There's a boat through every ten to twenty minutes, but worse, there's a gaggle of mallards chasing every damn scrap thrown in. Each time I cast they shoot across to investigate. Every time I put in mash they scoot over and peck up the floating debris. Trouble is, one of the buggers has learned to dive for ground-bait. No pre-baiting here then...

After another fruitless half-hour and the third or fourth near miss with this intelligent, errant foul, I pack up, head home, and go out on my afternoon round.

Returning that evening, calm has fallen upon the waters. It is pleasantly warm and I know I'll catch straight off the bat without the aid of ground-bait. I toss some in anyhow. Plenty, actually. Foul play is elsewhere. Sure enough there's an immediate procession of bream. But no tench. Tench are what I really need right now having already caught bream respectable enough for my purposes. They'll keep and no doubt improve because there's no avoiding them the year round. But I'm buggered in my plan if I can't manage a decent canal tench before end of summer...

Dusk arrives and night falls. When I cannot see the float well enough I retire it. A local acquaintance, Joe, turns up on his bike, pulls a tinny from his backpack, cracks it open, and we talk about fishing. I decide to put a feeder full of ground-bait laced with plenty of corn to one of our shared (but shared and secret) hotspots and the hook baited with a single grain. Around and about, and after dark, tench and sometimes carp are almost guaranteed to fall given weather heading in the right direction. And I really do believe that tonight, it is...

The crucial bite takes just ten minutes to secure. The rod is my roach rod and the tackle light roach ledger. At first it seems to be another bream because it does breamy things like plod and splash, but suddenly this bream wakes up to its predicament and becomes a certain tench. Then I'm in trouble. Luckily, it's surely not a cock, despite the powerful surges, because males hug the bottom like a neodymium magnet to sheet steel where this fish chooses its battleground mid-water.

And that's a very good thing to my mind. Hens do tend to weigh more, and are somewhat less tricky!

After five minutes or so I have her beaten and net her. We both guess three pounds, more or less. I get the four-pound Salters from the bag but they bottom out. Get out the 11 pound set when we're amazed to have the needle plunge to four and a half pounds, jiggle, and then settle at seven ounces past the mark.

How deceptively small fish can look by the LED torch light of an iPhone... 

But the weight is agreed upon. Now I can sleep on my canal tench laurels knowing canal carp and silver bream are next on the agenda. And they will both be adversaries that may take just a little longer in the doing...

If indeed, they're do-able! 

The sweet smell of tench, and success!

Canal Tench — Small Reward

Well, I opened my canal tench account this afternoon. Have had two sessions prior though. One with Keith Sunday evening when we both blanked outright on an evening when fishy interest was very hard to come by in persistent rain. And a couple of hours on Monday morning when I managed to wangle a single half-pound roach from three or four pernickity bites. 

Changeable weather patterns affect canal fishing more than other venues because they have even width and take circuitous routes and so they are assaulted by wind in very complex ways. But a nice steady spell of warmth and calm will see it balance up, I'm sure. And I think were about to get just that.

 

Today was just as useless even though the weather was more settled than it has been of late. No interest whatsoever for an hour and a half and then this little lady came along. I do think she's the smallest tench I have ever caught in a canal.  Nevertheless, I progress another couple of notches up the canal board because of her and what was the scabbiest roach I ever caught anywhere, I reckon.

So scabby in fact that I couldn't take a picture and embarrass him further...

Good to see young tench here. Recruitment is good and the future of the population assured. Not so good to see roach in bad condition, though. Not worried unduly. The usual run of them are plump and pristine.

Canal Tench — This Useless Hour

Wake at 4am. Try to get back to sleep but orexins have already kicked in and are firmly lodged on my receptors. That's buggered my circadian rhythm then, which I guess I'd better realign with an evening's alcohol abstinence at some point soonish...

What on earth can be done with such a hushed hour of the day? Pad silently about the house in dressing gown and slippers at a loss for things to do — make a cup of tea — look out the window at nothing happening. At least my inbox isn't yet cluttered with pokes from friends I didn't know I had or alerts that 26th July is some company's birthday I'll never buy a thing from.

Met Office says there'll be rain by noon but it's a mild dry morning and I think to myself, 'what the heck'. I'll get dressed, bike down the cut, and go earn myself a handful of challenge points if I can't find good reason not to. Will catch something. Might catch well. I hunt around the house for good reasons not to, nevertheless, but there's none to be found. Fishing, I decide, is about the very best thing that can be done with this useless hour. 

For reasons of health and safety not a lot of leisure activities are allowed here. You might die from a 40KV arc, or be beaten to death by irate basin inhabitants.  No soul has had their days  concluded by either fate in living memory, and the fishing, even though carbon rods actually throb in the electrified atmos, is always worth the risk! 

What I really enjoy about the early stages of such competitions as this, is this. They allow me to go fish uncluttered by the baggage of wanting lots of fish or fish that weigh lots. I can just go out and catch whatever there is to catch without vision funnelled down the wrong end of the telescope. If one species won't play ball then play ball with another that will. Not catching? Then try another approach, move to another peg or indeed, another fishery. Caught what's sufficient? Then go catch something else sufficient. Everything counts, and time is not wasted wanting what you can't have.

Hell, I'm even thinking of taking along two types of bait next time! 

But on this morning bait will be bread and ledgered too because bread is in the bag from Friday night and a bread ledgering rod is made up in the quiver. I might be wide awake but I'm still lazy. Target at my preferred spot will be firstly, tench, but I know that bream will show for sure. And roach, rudd, silver bream and hybrids are possible too.

And it doesn't take long for the first, which as expected is a bream. Not worth the weighing, though I guess a pound and a quarter. There will be better to come for certain. And 20 minutes later, sure enough, 13 snotty points flop into the net in the form of another just under three pounds. My chosen spot is nothing if not predictable.

There's a couple of friendly lads fishing nearby. They've enjoyed an overnight session, have lost a big carp too, but they have a little nugget of information for me that I think might just make a big difference here. A zander was also caught in the night but on a large bait that I'm very familiar with but have never employed on the canal. But it wasn't that a zander was caught that was the interesting thing. What was, was that nothing else was. Though all night long their buzzers were beeping and their bobbins jumping...

Sport today isn't as frantic as it can be. There's days here when just a piece of bread flicked to the right spot and without ground bait about it will see fish hitting the net every five or ten minutes and a thirty pound bag amassed in just a few hours. But this morning is steady. A bite every twenty minutes or so and mashed bread needs feeding regularly to keep the pot on slow simmer.  

A brace of slightly smaller bream show but then a huge wrench of a bite flies the tip around bending the rod to the rest and I'm connected to what's briefly a very convincing impression of that tench I came for.  But, the initial burst of speed and power soon falters and I see what I reckon is a hybrid coming in. Never mind. She'll do. They count too.

Shame she wasn't a proper roach at 2lb 2oz. Nonetheless, my improper madam earns a very respectable 29 hybrid points, rounds off this two hour session for a total score of 42, and progresses my name upward a notch on the leader board. 

All went according to plan bar the lack of tench. But there's always the evening to come when I think they may well show themselves and show themselves to a new bait. Might just stay out late and correct the tempo of my days.

Canal Tench — Dustbin Lids & Farthing Kites

Location: Coventry Canal. Subject: tench. Swim: particular. Arrival time: critical.

Four O'clock in the afternoon is a little too late in the day to be certain of securing it and so I thought we'd probably not get the right peg because it is the most desired swim on any canal round these parts. Either side of it you'd think the cut was entirely fish-less the way some local anglers behave about it but we did get it and set up in it. About half an hour after we'd settled down a couple of well-known middle aged lads, bikes strapped up with tackle and hung down with bait buckets arrive for their pre-planned canal carp overnighter.

Round the corner, no doubt, they were brimming with optimism, laughing and smiling as they discussed the night ahead and how best to go about it, but now on the home straight and with us two interlopers in plain view — they approach — flying faces like a pair of farthing kites!

We're fishing, of course, right where they'd planned to be...

You'd think they'd either have gone home and forgot about it or more likely set up nearby and fished till our planned departure some time after dark, but no. They plonk down dejectedly on the bench to our left and do nothing. It'll be a quarter of a day before we'll move but they're going to sit and grumble and glower at us till that long distant moment arrives.

"Jeff, when you've finished fiddling with that fag come over here and feel my rod' Says Martin, "It's throbbing!"

Sure enough, stroking my hand along his stiff, sleek, black length, it is...

"That'll be your electric magnetism, mate". Says I.

My circle hook experiment continues. As before, one rod fishes a traditional J hook, the other a circle pattern. Both are baited with corn and both use the same helicopter rig with six-inch hook-lengths. What would the canal tench make of the difference, if and when they turned up?

I thought my first run (and what a belter it was)! should confirm things but picking the rod up and winding down to the fish it was clearly not a tench but a bream. However, at the net it looked for a brief second like a very big roach — and I do wish it had been because it went 2lb 6oz on the scales. A hybrid but a very nicely proportioned one more roach in appearance than bream.

As with the roach caught the previous session, once again the circle hook hold was perfect with the fish hooked squarely through the lower lip and as before, dead centrally. This fish's mouth was very much like a pure roach's mouth, in fact. And that was duly noted as — and later turned out be — significant.

All the tench I'd caught at Lemington Lakes (see previous post) were hooked the very same way. However, all the bass I have ever caught on circle hooks (and once I began using them it quickly became a running total of many hundreds) were all hooked in the scissors and remarkably all were hooked in the lower left hand side of the jaw but never the right and the result was the same whether ledgering or trotting a float down a creek. That has to be because bass snatch up food items and just like J Edgar Hoover, they never turn left.

Tench, roach and hybrids, and probably all bottom grazers, clearly don't do that. They'll pick up the bait with their heads down, rise up in the water, and straighten up. Also, unlike bass or perch, pike and zander too, all of whom have generally similar jaw arrangements, such fish are not predators and don't have pronounced 'scissors'.

I wondered, though, if the circle pattern would snare the inevitable by-catch of all my canal sessions to date — bream — a fish with an extensible tube for a mouth...

The answer seemed to be, no, they wouldn't, because Martin was landing one after the other while my circle line to his immediate right was twitching away, the bobbin jumping about every now and then, but without true runs developing. I thought it must be bream taking the corn but the hook failing to prick. I was pretty certain it had nothing to do with tench what with Martin hauling bream after bream just yards away.

Then at last, the right hander fishing the J hook sprang to life and a fish was on, but then it was off again. In a fraction of a second it was lost but not before sending up a large vortex wherein Martin spied a big orange tail. A carp. The hook-link had snapped clean off near the swivel. An unfelt wind knot or a nick in the line had lost me a good fish.

I changed the rods over, the J hook now fishing amongst the bream. Certain I'd have a bream in ten minutes, I was proved right and my theory that circle hooks will not easily catch them possibly gaining credence.

Imagine that, you, you died-in-the-wool tunnel-visionary carp fanatic, you. If circles will catch tench reliably (and I intend to prove it) then they will certainly catch your species reliably too, but even better than that. If they won't also catch bream, in fact make it almost impossible for them to hook themselves, well, then we have just about the most perfect hook for the long-winded job of laying carefully planned traps for the chosen few but avoiding the attentions of the unchosen many, do we not?

We'll see...

Departing when it was clear that tench would not show we left the peg open to the farthing kites.

I have it on reliable account they caught now't besides dustbin lids...

Early Season Tench — The Width of a Circle

Last year the tench season lasted about three days according to some. Depends what you mean exactly by 'the tench season,' though, doesn't it? If you say that three days was the entire time frame in which a specimen was to be caught at maximum weight before spawning commenced, then yes. It really was that brief.

So very brief that I blinked and missed it. Not that I missed blinkin' much by all accounts. It was dire at best.

I decided to put out an experimental rod equipped with a circle hook. I've used them before for tench and with startling results, results that I'll publish one day but not before catching a few by the same method from fisheries altogether less easy than Lemington Lakes where I conducted my initial experiments (hooking in excess of thirty in the five hour session but losing not a single one...) and at far greater weights.

Circle hooks really do work with thick lipped fish you know. It's just that you need to get the gape bang on or you lose them due to the mechanics of their hook-up. Get it right and it clamps down on the lip like a padlock ensuring that the hooked fish will never come off but just slightly too small a gape and it cannot get a proper hold. That means using hooks that look outsized for the intended quarry but actually are not.

Anyhow, I chucked that rod out left and fished a standard J hook rig at right. Both employed corn — two grains side hooked on the circle hook and two hair rigged on the standard. Martin fished two rods with worm on the hook and large feeders packed with groundbait and chopped worm.

He had the first run. A perch. I had the second. A roach.

I thought it a good enough roach for a photo considering that just two years ago they were unheard of at this venue unless young blades caught by the occasional match angler. They started to show up as by-catch on tench rigs at around the half-pound mark and have come in well over the pound recently. This was a lovely looking fish of 14 ounces.

On the J Hook ?

Nope...

It was caught on the circle hook, was hooked perfectly in the lower lip, and that's food for thought...

Then Mr Rat made a visit and then Mrs Water-Vole too. Rodent bait spill battle entertainment whilst we whiled away the hours for the first of the expected tench of our evening

Martin had the third run. Another perch. I had the fourth run. A tench at last!

It was on for a minute or so before it was gone. Gape slightly too small I'm afraid and no doubt I'll explain exactly why that was the case at some length and in great detail at some future point but in a nutshell, the gape of the hook I was using will hook up but never let go of every tench that takes the bait up to a certain size but will not hook any fish above that weight. However, I don't actually know what the watershed weight for this particular gape size is!

Sounds mad? Circle hooks are...

But when they work... they're super bad!

Fifth run was Martin's. A perch exactly the same size as both of his previous brace. Worms won't work for tench here then...

There was no sixth run. So, we had our lake mate, James, take trophy shots of ourselves holding a couple of stand-in specimens we'd caught earlier...

And I'll tell you all about them...

Soon enough!

Canal Tench — Bream #14

With the first feature of a new Total Coarse Fishing series hitting the shelves tomorrow morning, I thought I'd better get out there, do my job and promote sales by catching one of the little tincas the piece is all about. 

Of course magazines don't magically appear in a puff of smoke overnight. The pictures were taken two months ago and the copy written a week later. That makes for difficulties all round when the piece has to be topical at high season for whichever species it's about and for tench, or at least pleasure fishing for tench, that's right now. 

I was after a canal specimen back in May, and that's double difficult. It's not a pit where tench can be almost guaranteed to behave in a certain fashion as the water warms through spring, it's an out and out summer venue where tench are concerned, however, despite cool water and blanking outright for nigh on six hours I did actually hook one at the last but then a snag got itself into the argument and won! 

Tough titty for me... 

Not strictly necessary for the feature though which is more dreaming of catching than actually catching — anticipating exactly the short balmy nights we're enjoying at this very moment when from experience I know tench exit the safety of their weedy daytime abode in the marina and go on patrol in the canal proper. 

I thought I'd give the hours around dawn my best shot so got there by three in the morning intending to fish till six or seven. 

First thing I put out a heavy duty sleeper rod fishing bolt rigged corn well down the far bank shelf hoping to arrest the attention of the more adventurous tench and perhaps even carp, then readied a beefy (but not to the point of overkill...) float rod intending to fish bread well up the shelf in shallow water near cover at first light.

Bream #1

First cast I couldn't actually see the float, but could see where it wasn't. The bread was taken within minutes and the culprit bream. It was taken again ten minutes later, again by a bream. They were really snotty ones too and loused up the terminal tackle something rotten!

The sleeper rod continued hitting the snooze button for the next two hours but suddenly it sprang to life, sank back down again, and went back to sleep for the rest of the session. 

A liner.

In the meantime the float rod was making busy cooking up bream breakfast fit for a canal king, catching one after the other. 

The reeds began to quiver and part trembling as large fish I really hoped were tench made their way along the far bank. 

But could I catch them? Could I heck as like... 

Bream #13

More bream, and then there were seven, and ten bream, soon twelve, and then unlucky for some, thirteeen... 

It was totting up to the kind of catch a matchman would gladly die for. All around the pound to two-pound mark it would have amounted to an impressive bag if I'd brought a keep net, but hadn't. 

I came for tench, and tench alone.

Earlier I'd dropped my last slice of bread in the cut, fished it out, but got there too late and it became a sodden mush. 

No choice but fish on with it I then found to my relief that even very wet bread can still be cast and used to catch fish with. 

You learn something new every day when fishing, don't you?

Soggy mush

Snotty buggers!

Down to the last few discs I thought of packing in because the bream were becoming irksome now but I thought a last cast or two worthwhile because those fish — whatever they were — they were still knocking the vegetables about over there.

Tight to the reeds — a bite, a strike, a feeble flutter and Bream #14 coming home to daddy... and then, by a miracle, Bream #14 woke up and started being like a tench! 

Off it went here and there, and though canal bream can do this when they have a mind to, there's a difference. When they get feisty they occupy the surface and you see them gliding about but when tench start getting angry they run deep, stay down and you don't see them till they're beat. 

This had to be a tench...

At last! 

Sure enough, after a minute or three up came a mean green submarine, 'splash!' and into the net with her.

Phew, I thought they'd vanished but at the last a lovely fish made all the more lovely by the situation.

Lucky too, because if it had been Bream #14 instead of Tench #1 then I think I might well have denied the king of the canal his morning feast and eaten her for breakfast myself, there and then, snot and all.

Handy passerby pressed into service for photo does very good job —
angler reads instruction manual, 'On Tench, and How to Hold Them ...'

Total Coarse Fishing Magazine - August 2013 Issue - in the shops tomorrow morning, Wednesday 10th July.

Canal Tench — On The Wrong Wavelength

The weather appeared spot on for a night session on the canal. There's a six-pounder I just know is about and want to catch more than anything this summer and the combination of threatening rain and warm humid air seemed just so for a bit of hectic sport.

Strangely the weather man disagreed with my prognosis, his charts showing no rain whatsoever till late afternoon on the morrow. They should get out the office more and smell the skies instead of tracking it remotely. It was going to rain within hours, not tens of, and sooner on the morrow than he thought

Well, I settled in around 1:30 AM ignoring my own weather sense, trusting to his, and intending to fish through dawn and well into morning. On arrival I was dismayed to find the hot spot a scum trap, the water smothered in plant debris and amongst it all, that vile willow silk that accumulates on the line and jams in rod rings. I should have turned tail there and then...

First problem was the blue starlight attached to my float. They look bright enough close up but far off they become near invisible, the short wavelength of light emitting making them appear dimmer the further off they're cast. It was useless and the willow silk a bloody nightmare, jamming in the tip ring exactly at netting distance giving me little chance against a fish requiring a bit of stick, close-up.

I persevered with the two problems an hour or more then rifled through my slum of a fishing bag for a replacement light. Dead, dead, dead. Every one was past its sell by date, but then one of just the right length of lightwave was found tucked into a nook and looked promising.

'Snap!'

Alive!

The red glow is just the wavelength needed. Amazing how far off a red light no matter how dim can be seen, which is why they decorate tall structures with them I suppose — so that planes don't crash in low and occluded light...

One problem solved I sat back to fish in comfort, and it was very comfortable sitting there in daywear with no one about and not a breath of wind to disturb the tranquil peace. Then a huge ripple spread across the black water. A big tench for sure because carp just don't do that around here...

I would have enjoyed the tension of the wait if it weren't for the willow silk. In the water for ten minutes was about as long as it could stay without accumulating more than was safe. I tried everything but in the end settled on frequent recasting when I found that made it slightly less of a problem.

Then it passed down through the rings and made its way and then trapped itself behind the third from last. Teasing the stuff away from the line with fingernails, and when they proved useless, teeth, I pulled the line and...

'Snap!'

"Holy Fricking Shit!"

A wreck. The rod tip dangling like a limp dick, it's flexing carbon stiffness flaccid and impotent. A hundred quids worth of expensive carbon with its lovely tactile full cork butt and sexy whippings down the pan in an instant. A moment of horror.

They can flex all day long, can't they? But they don't like straight line compression against even the smallest strain, and will break against five pounds of line force, won't they?

I should have known better — it wasn't the first time it'd happened.

"Oh no, here it comes!"

I pack the gear and head off just about the very cusp of dawn. It falls in big spattering gobs and feels slippy underfoot on newly dampened earth. They just cannot get it right what with their mainframe computers and state of the art gadgets when all anyone needs is a pine cone, a well versed weather eye and good strong nose for what's coming along. Rain. Of course this had to happen just as wasn't and was predicted, suffering a disaster out in the dark in clothing failing to anticipate the inevitable on bad advice.

Boats huddle there set against the bank like painted driftwood, hard to make out one from the other with their lights extinguished. We reach the junction where the gloom lightens with approaching streetlamps. The woods are not pitch black as they were — nor so brooding and oppressive to walk through now the light is coming up.

The rain has released the smell of industry into the air. I take deep sniff. As we enter the deserted main street the dogs tear around the corner and disappear into the little close of houses and I notice the odour of woods replaced by that of tarmac. We reach the end of the towpath.

Dumping the tackle in the stairway corner I make my way to the kitchen. The dogs itching from the damp rub their flanks against the sofa rolling crazily about on the rug. We bring the outside to the inside, the oak floor glistening in sodden trainer and padprints. They escape the open door...

I order the errant dogs — "in!"

"Ah crap, out of tea!"

But, it tastes as good as it could considering it took two to make it up to strength. I hestitate to drink the stuff it looks so dishwashy. Fishing a brace of cold damp teabags out of the 'used pot' on the kitchen work top next to the sink I chuck them in the mug and pour scalding water over in the hope of a half decent cuppa...

"Not so bad... not so good" 

Clearly on the wrong wavelength I hit the sack.

Canal Tench — Unglorious and in Vain

From whatever age I began to fish for tench I've always held that the first day of the season, the 'Glorious Sixteenth,' must be reserved for them and them only. Whenever that age was, it was very long time ago and in those days the close season really meant something to anglers because they couldn't fish at all and so the end of it truly was cause for celebration, not just a long past-its-sell-by date marking the end of a rather eccentric but typically British silly season. 

The only reason we can't fish rivers March through June is because of the hilariously absurd catch twenty two situation where scientific evidence is required to scrap that license exclusion but cannot be got because anglers must fish rivers at that time to provide the evidence but are not allowed to. So far as I'm concerned the term 'close season' no longer has currency because the season for coarse angling continues throughout the year without stop except where the water moves of its own accord. A nonsense — and if anything nowadays it is the 'non season.'

Anyway, I digress before I even begin. I still do go tench fishing to this very day on the sixteenth of June. Yesterday was no different but the squally weather was horrible for tench fishing how I like it (which is dead still and flat calm) at midnight of the fifteenth so I decided instead to go when the weather seemed to be heading for perfection, which was midnight of the sixteenth. 

I cast my line at the last second of the day and shouted 'Hooray!' but unlike the past when a whole lake would erupt with cheers and fireworks and whatnot, there was no one around to share the moment with but Oscar the dog.

It was a beautiful quiet night though and inky black too because the street lamps of the lane behind were extinguished for the first time in memory and thin high cloud masked the moon and stars.

I expected bites immediately, but sat there expectantly watching the dull red glow of a handmade night fishing float for the first three hours without so much as a sniff of one. I knew they'd come though, they always do where I was fishing.

Just before dawn the red tip finally made its way under, I struck into what I really thought would be a tench, steeled myself for the cut and thrust, but got only flap and plod. Nevertheless bream are often followed by tench in the dark hours, and so I cast back to the same spot and sat back to await the first tinca of the new 'anti-non season.'

The bite when it came came fast. Just seconds after I'd sat down I was up and at it, but once again, a slab. Ah well, this wasn't the plan at all. Sure enough, the next cast barely had time to cock before it was away and under. I felt the same sluggish resistance for a second and then it was off the hook.

Sunset at sunrise on the Coventry Canal

And that was pretty much that. The bites ceased as suddenly as they'd come — three in the three minutes it takes to land and unhook two bream and lose a third, but only three in the full six hours. I stayed on to see if light would bring the tench around but they never showed. My 'Glorious Sixteenth' was nothing but wholly unglorious and in vain.

Not that it matters much nowadays when there's another day as glorious, tomorrow...

Afore Ye Go — One in a Million

We arrived outside the locked gates long before opening time having calculated and allowed for the M25 but found it flowing along smoothly. It had been raining for days and was still falling now but predicted to break and clear around midday leaving us a dry afternoon but would remain overcast the whole day which we all agreed was what we wanted hoping it might extend the morning feeding spell and keep it going right through till closing time. Come 7:00 AM open they swung as a club member arrived so we followed on behind not to fish but for a speculative first look at the water in question — Harris Lake.

What we saw was not exactly what we'd bargained for, in fact it was something that would condition the entire day and change all our plans radically because the lake today was not what I'd become accustomed to fishing. Where before it had always been stirred by the activities of feeding fish to the colour of weak milk tea, to our genuine horror and dismay, it was absolutely gin clear...

I thought the rains may have fed the stream-fed lake with so much new water that it had all but replaced its entire volume and coming in cold it may have put the fish down to the point where they'd stopped moving and feeding. The bed of the entire margin of the lake was visible up to three feet down. Despite the warm air it may as well have been mid-winter the way it looked so we'd have to fish fine & far off because there'd be no fishing tight to the reeds today.

Martin chose to ledger over a large bed of spodded in bait from the Railway Bank while Danny Everitt and I walked around to the opposite bank in search of signs of fish that were eventually found when we spotted a few small patches of bubbles arising in the swims below the big silver birch at the island gap. Having seen nothing anywhere else this had to be the place to be, though given the conditions I thought things would be all but impossible even for the relatively easy tench let alone the tricky crucian carp.

For a while it remained calm so bite registration was fairly easy at three rods lengths distance and first cast over a handful of bait my float rose slightly and slipped under for the first fish of the day who at first might just have been the target when I saw a flash of gold...

"Dan, crucian! "

... but within ten seconds clearly wasn't when it began to take line and create problems close up where the only advantage the clarity would lend us became apparent when I realised tench could be netted early by guiding them straight into the easily visible meshes of a deeply submerged long handled net waiting right at the bed of the lake and without having to tire and surface them first.

A plump golden tench slipped back to gin clear water...

It wasn't long before Dan had one too, so at least we'd chosen something like a good place to be but then the wind picked up creating a ripple through our swims that looked as if it would persist the whole day long making things even tougher than they were already. We'd both discovering a cut off point beyond which fish would not venture but that point just happened to be just a little too far off for comfort and that combined with the ripple proved to be the most immediately trying and eventually tiring thing imaginable when wanting to strike at small indications on the float tip. It was just very difficult to discern them at the best of times and when it was at its worst, almost impossible to see anything less decisive than a huge lift or complete absence of red tip above water.

Under the circumstances, for the first time in my life I really wished I had a very long and expensive pole to fish with rather than a rod because that would have been at least half the answer... 

The resident tern entertains me expertly picking floating casters from the surface. Conditions may not seem half as bad as I make out here, but the camera is zoomed right in, the float is miles off and this is as calm as it ever was 

The worst thing was that crucians began to prime here and there proving they were feeding too but seemed impossible to catch. There was nothing to do but persist and put up with it because at least they were there to be caught if only we could work out a way to beat the conditions. I could imagine my entire rig — shot, line, float, hook and all — visible between surface and bed and though a tench came by now and then and tripped up in greed...

I couldn't imagine crucians falling for it.

We both went as fine as we dared. Danny abandoned his waggler and went over to the lift method employing an old windbeater onion float with a long antennae and after a while stopped playing with all other baits but caster feeding a constant trickle and with a single on the hook. I stayed with my usual rig but tied on a much finer hooklength, moved the bulk up as far as possible without ruining the presentation and stuck with a tiny prawn section fished over regular but sparing caster feed.

Small, but a hard nut...

By noon I'd banked a three more tench up to five pounds but I'd a case of impending eye strain so went up the leeward end where the water was flat calm for a well earned break.

Again fishing far off, at least I could see bites there and they came along soon enough. Even at ten rod lengths  small movements could be made out and eventually the float rose in the water half an inch when I struck into not the hoped for crucian but yet another tench. 

Martin who was nearby came over when he saw what a struggle I had with it! A tremendous fight and for a while I believed I'd hooked a big girl well over six-pounds only to be confronted with the smallest yet. You have to respect tench when they fight as hard as they do even if they're a bit of a trial when after something less difficult to bank but far harder to hook. 

After that the bites vanished and all was still. The sun came out briefly and it was warm and bright for a while. Then Baz Peck suddenly turned up at my side down London way on work but dropping by to see us there. As we chatted my phone rang, Danny calling to announce the best possible news after nigh on six hours of struggle...

"Jeff, a big crucian...!"

As I mentioned in the preamble to this blog post, if and when you catch a crucian at this venue and given enough hard work you certainly will then it is bound to be your new personal best so hours of effort are amply rewarded. Sure enough this fish was Danny's best by a good margin and a great looker too. 

Handshakes and back slaps all round then!

Needless to say I had no choice then but go back around and resume battle against the wind abandoning what after initial promise had become a very comfortably pleasant but totally unproductive peg that I knew full well wouldn't improve.

Martin persisting on the Railway bank had yet to bank a fish and though he was plagued by line bites wasn't hooking up to true ones if indeed he was getting any. He too reported crucians topping and bubbles appearing but despite visible signs was having a very hard time of it. 

As soon as I resumed I'd yet another tench to contend with... 

They are lovely fish and in great condition too but at Harris there's a point where you begin to believe that's all you will ever catch. After my seventh at a steady rate of one per hour I began running experiments in desperation having little to lose by them and hopefully something to gain.

Despite my rig's normal propensity toward showing alarming two, three and even four inch lifts of the antennae, even tench were not producing them today. Yet Danny's crucian bite when it finally came was a big decisive lift on what was actually a very similar set up.  

Fish were acting cagily over bait, knew there was something decidedly iffy about it because they could see it so easily, and taking it gingerly if they even bothered to try so I slid the trigger shot from its usual position an inch from the hook right down to the top of the spade end. It looked silly but first bite was a nice big lift!

"Ahh! ... not another bloody tench"

A golden near five pounder

On Birch Bank (it's about time someone named it!) we finished the day beaten up by the strain of watching far off floats but Danny took a further two small crucians amongst the tench for his day-long and is it transpired correct strategy of fine line, meagre feed and tiny bait, whilst Martin over on Railway Bank did manage a tench or two by his heavy-duty approach, in the end.

It was absolutely knackering!

I caught tench and only tench. Not even a roach, rudd or bream came by for me and that I thought unusual because they do usually. It was so desperate that if Martin had had a rake and rope in the boot of the car I wouldn't have hesitated to go fetch it, chuck it out, stir things up and tip the balance in my favour. I even considered chucking soil in but looking about the green sward couldn't see enough of it to make the required difference unless I started digging up the banks!

I guess the conditions we faced were highly unusual ones for what is almost mid-summer on a lake usually coloured enough by now to fish right under the staging in two feet of water or even less and certain should you be quiet enough that the fish won't know you're there at all. And that was sufficient to put the whole trip out of kilter.

I'll wind up with this thought for you to contend with should you be considering a visit soon ~

Because not a single crucian besides Danny's hard-earned trio was caught between twenty skilled anglers fishing all kinds of various baits, methods and approaches for what stacked up on the day to a grand total of no less than 260 man hours of solid concentrated fishing, from the opening of the fishery gates at dawn till their final closing at dusk — that's just one crucian in every eighty six and half, or if you'd like it explained in really horrifying terms, every 5,200 man minutes or 312,000 man seconds. But, if Danny had wound up with just the one rather than a trio then the decisive bite would have occurred within a fraction of one second out of very nearly a million! 

It was long way to travel for tench of a size I can catch from my local canal and where such a stamp is quite remarkable, not ordinary, but not a long way to go for great big crucians because it's one of the only options available in the country and though the numbers can tough to beat even when you're getting it half right, they're simply appalling otherwise.

So, don't make our mistake — phone and seek assurances that the water on Harris Lake is well-coloured... 

Afore Ye Go!