tench

August 2025 Part 2 -normal service?

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Sunday 17th I head off to Bowood with weed rake in tow. I was shocked by the extent the reeds/rushes had encroached on the main channel with by my reckoning at least 9 (NINE) swims were now unfishable due to the rushes and weed growth given there are only 25 swims discounting the Pondtail (2) and Stock Pond (2) it was getting dire. I decided to try peg 8, starting at 9 o’clock with the rake and forty minutes later I had a mound of weed behind me and a narrow strip of channel to fish in out to 10m. Dirty, sweaty and knackered I set up the pole and had my first put in as the bell chimed 10. The next two hours were frustrating as despite me bulking the shot making up the 0.8g four inches from the hook the corn bait was being intercepted by hordes of 2-3 inch rudd so that the float was either not cocking or being taken for a wander as the ball of rudd failed to get the corn into their mouths. I had started with just two balls of groundbait with wheat and corn and made the mistake of loose feeding wheat which acted as a dinner bell to the ravenous juvenile rudd. By noon I had smuggled out a solitary roach and ten rudd for a 1-10 total.

Tuesday and I am back at peg 8 fishing 9:10 to 12:10. Same rig but this time starting with three hard balls of groundbait and a full pot of wheat with a few grains of corn. Loose feeding was a no-no, so any additional feed was introduced via a cup. Again the rudd proved to be a nuisance but I managed to get 2 roach, 30 rudd and ,wonders will never cease, my first half decent bream of the season at 2-10 making a 5-12 total.

What a contrast to last season when bream were seemingly plentiful. The weed has to have had a big say on the change, possibly the bream and tench (still not had one yet) are under the weed feeding on natural food.

Back to peg 8 the next day fishing 8:15 to 11:00, hoping that some bream had arrived to mop up the wheat I had thrown in at the end of yesterday’s session. Same rig and tactics, corn bait and 47 rudd and 3 roach gave me a busy session with 5-10 final weight but also dropped 20+ fish that were just holding on to the corn as they were so small.

Next opportunity was Tuesday 26th, I avoided the Bank Holiday week-end ! I decided to pop down to the Pondtail for a session on the whip but also took the Beastmaster rod set up from the visit to High Penn with hybrid feeder and intended to fish this with a 14mm scopex and vanilla boilie to see if there was any interest- there wasn’t! I set up with a 5m whip but was concerned that the reeds were starting to make an appearance here also, I had a couple at 4m directly in front of me so had to be careful when guiding fish in. Feeding wheat and fishing double maggot I only added a small ball of groundbait once bites slowed down a bit. The carp rod cast out towards the far bank lilies to my right remained “sleeping” but the whip attracted 39 roach and 6 perch for about 5lb. Sod’s Law applied once more and with the carp rod inactive the float shot under and a lift brought back the rig minus the hook- a carp !

Final outing this month was Friday 29th back to Peg 8 for a session 9-11:20. Wish I could report something different but the rudd were still there but strangely inactive, or so it seemed. The weather was cooler with a strong ripple on the water, so much so I was wearing my coat and fleece! The result was just 11 rudd for 1-02, however it was the first time I had been bothered by pike, I had a 4oz rudd taken by a pike of 5-6lb that bit through the line after a minute or so, the feed /fishing area erupted several times as the rudd scattered form the pike turning the water into a boiling mass. Hopefully this augers well for the winter pike sessions!

To date I have fished Bowood fewer times at this point of the season than previously but even so the difference has been concerning, so much so I e-mailed the estate office with my concerns regarding the encroachment of the reeds and the detrimental effect it had and may have on the spawning areas for future stocks plus the water clarity being affected by the filtration effect of the thick reed beds and asked if they had any plans to tackle the reeds. I had an acknowledgement and that it was being passed to the Estate manager – who has not yet replied after 2 weeks!

June 20215 Part 2 – slightly longer!

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Well Tuesday and Wednesday had been ruled out for fishing as it was Col’s birthday and I had got tickets for a play at Bath on the day after. However, the best laid plans and all that Tuesday afternoon sees me prone on the bed totally shattered and Wednesday sees us missing our day out in Bath as I spent the day in bed! By Sunday I was feeling a lot better but not good enough to trek down to Bowood so I had a couple of hours at High Penn on the edge of Calne. I last fished it over 30 years ago in a South Cerney v Wooton Bassett evening inter club match but after many years of no fishing Calne had managed to acquire the lease.

Given my state I simply took a 6m margin pole with the intention of fishing corn at 5m. I settled on what I think was old peg 7 on the east bank and plumbing up found about 10ft at 5m; strange how we still use feet for depth and meters for distance!

Left margin
Right margin

I began flicking out some corn and fed micros and 4m through a tosspot, starting on the right and after an hour moving to the left. Both areas being just past the tree line although the right was home of a nuisance snag! First bite came after about 10 minutes a chunky roach about 10 oz.

In the couple of hours I was there I had 10 roach,a rudd and a baby carp of about 2oz for roughly 3-12 including another net roach of about 12oz.

The bonus being that despite it being a hot day with the carp cruising around I was in shade with a breeze in to my face (I even had my fleece on!).

So Wednesday sees me march down to Bowood peg 5 with the rake. Twenty plus minutes of raking sees a clearish area that was just about fishable.

The pile of weed I took out!I managed to start fishing eventually at 10:05 and lasted until 12:30. Fishing 0.16mm to a 14 hook and corn on a homemade float I introduced three balls of groundbait with some wheat, micros and corn. First fish was a net rudd that flipped out of my had before I could take the customary first Bowood fish picture but five minutes later I had another similar sized one that I managed to snap!

I had 16 rudd by the end for 2-04 and bumped a few also, but no sign of any bream or tench. An angler on peg 10 packed up and passed me as I finished raking and he said it had been very hard but had one bream and a small skimmer. It desperately needs some colour and fresh water – the stream that you cross was dry!

Sunday sees me on the Thames at Radcot for the penultimate round of the Summer League. I was drawn in section C as I had requested a short walk with my knee and had fortunately cut right down on the tackle taking a waggler and feeder rod only along with my Bowood box and trolley. C section was down from Grafton lock and the short walk was the longest yet as I drew C10, end peg of the section, except for some unknown reason they had not staggered the pegging as in all other rounds which would have meant I would be about 4 pegs in.

Faced with blazing sun, no shade, about 8 feet of water and little colour I set up the waggler with 3 no 6 shot spread down the line, minnows and tiny bleak had been an issue with maggot so far this season so I had left the maggots at home and based my attack on caster, hemp and wheat, we were not in the running and had a team plan of trying something different! I started by loose feeding caster, hemp and a little wheat about two rod lengths out and third put in had a small bleak, so at least I wouldn’t blank, from thereon I had a further bleak, a minnow, a chublet, a roach and a gudgeon for the princely total of 0-04, the last three hours was biteless despite trying feeder and fishing across for a hopeful chub! I stopped counting the boats, paddle boards and canoes after the twentieth went through!

One more round to go – Clanfield where at least you can park behind your peg! Surprisingly we moved up to 7th as a team!

Bowood beckons as does High Penn, plus Gareth arrives on the 12th and is looking to catch a river barbel as he has not fished for them since the late 1990s. Onward and hopefully upwards.

March 2025 Part 1 – Out with a whimper!

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March 4th I decided that as my knee was still playing up I would go “light” and take a walk down the opposite bank to peg 20 (next to the island). Armed with a waggler and pike rod plus seat-bag I slowly hobbled down to the peg starting at 9:30 and finishing at 12:05. The pike rod was cast out about 20m to the left while the waggler was set up at 20-25m with loose fed maggot and one of my homemade bodied wagglers taking 4AAAwith a couple of no 6 shot as droppers – I wanted to have a positive lift if there was a bite hence the size of droppers.

The lake was untypically flat and with the bright sun I was not too hopeful given the way things had been going, but if you don’t try you won’t succeed as they say. Loose feeding a pinch of maggot every few minutes I had my first bite after 40 minutes a roach, from there on I had had sporadic bites and ended up with nine roach and a skimmer but at the end I hooked a good fish that I played for over 4 minutes getting it in to netting range a couple of times before it finally snapped my 0.10mm hooklength on one of the old platform posts close in. I never saw the fish but I am convinced it was a tench by it’s fight rather than a pike or anything else. No further bites after that loss so it was a case of trudging back to the car wondering what might have been. The only other thing of note was that there were two anglers piking on the last two pegs on the other bank and one had a pike but they both were oblivious to the deer that broke cover and ran along the slope only 20m behind them.

Sunday 9th was my next visit and I had decided to just go on the Pondtail as my knee was playing up and it being the last week-end of the season I was expecting it to be busy. How wrong could I be! On arrival there was one car and he was fishing peg 2 on the Pondtail, so I ended up fishing the waggler on peg 1 starting at 9:30. Loose feeding did not seem to work after an hour I mixed up three handfuls of groundbait and started to introduce small marbles every couple of casts. This seemed to work and I managed 6 roach up to 12noon when I packed up. The angler on peg 2 had only one small roach so in relative terms I didn’t fare too badly! The pic shows only 5 roach as I missed the net with one!!!!

The next week had little opportunity for fishing with the funeral of Pete Sarahs, the stalwart of Peatmoor, who I had accompanied all over the country with the junior teams and helped to run the junior matches with at Peatmoor for over 15 years, taking place on the Monday,car into garage on Thursday before heading to Yorkshire the same day and Wednesday taken up with meeting a fellow angler after some floats. Tuesday then was my last visit to Bowood and I made the walk down to peg 20 again. This time there was a very strong, cold wind blowing straight down the lake towards me creating a big tow on the water, so much so it was akin to trotting a river. Even 18inches overdepth did not help and I gave up the ghost at 11:15 biteless and not having seen any indication of fish, even the grebes were more interested in their courtship rituals than fishing! So ended another season at Bowood. A great beginning but a struggle there after- I caught half my total weight of fish for the season in the first three weeks!

Now a tale of some fish! Gareth decided he fancied another trip to Thailand this week-end so he organised a trip to a lake usually reserved for locals- taxi to Hong Kong,fly to Bangkok via Hong Kong on Saturday, stay in the airport hotel and be collected 6am Sunday, hour journey to the lake, fish 9 hours then return to airport, get back late Sunday and work Monday! Oh to be young again! Six year old Zachary was going with him and the guide set him up with a light spinning rod as the main tackle was to heavy for him. Unfortunately the clutch on the reel could not cope with the red-tailed catfish and even tightened fully the catfish still took line! Anyway they had a good visit with 32 red tail catfish and 1 tambaqui. Estimated total weight 1270lbs. Zachary caught two 20kilo catfish!

All his own work!

June 2024 part 2b- Struggles and successes

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I had the opportunity to get to Bowood a couple of times before the Pellet Guys Pairs at Makins, so Monday 24th sees me trudge down the field, now occupied by sheep, to Peg 1. The colour had dropped considerably but there was still sufficient for me to give it a go. Shadows moving through the water gave a big hint that the colour would soon be gone but I set up as previously and introduced two cups of loose groundbait with some wheat and about 5-6 pieces of corn. Starting at 8:45 I fished through until 11:45 and things did not look good at small rudd were attacking the corn and their slightly bigger brethren were taking it. Eventually I had a bream of 3-08 followed by further ones of 3-10, 3-02, 3-06, 4-01, 3-06 and 3-02 together with 9 rudd, a small skimmer and a roach this gave me a 25-07 total.

I had brought the rake with me and intended to prepare some swims as Peg 1 would no longer produce with the colour dropping out. To my horror Peg 3 was gone, the posts were there but the platform boards had gone and the access was blocked by reeds! Moving up to peg 4 I was pleased to see it had a good colour and after putting the rake through a couple of times for minimal weed I decided raking would not be necessary for the other swims.

Next day I was back at Bowood, this time at peg 4 and fished 8:50 to 11:20 by which time it was getting very hot and I called it a day. The session was another that you dream about, apart from16 bream I also had a tench of 4-15 and a pike of 5-01 that took a fancy to the corn, combined with 8 rudd a roach and two small skimmers I surpassed the 50lb mark again with 56-06. Groundbait was cupped in loose again but this time I used a 0.5g Chianti style homemade float. Over the five sessions in June I have averaged over 49lb but only used half a tin of corn and a litre of wheat.

So Friday sees me travel up to Makins Fishery, just outside Nuneaton for the Pellet Guys Pairs two dayer. The format is simple in that the pairs are drawn so that there is a Makins regular teamed up with an MFS angler, the Makins anglers are on three lakes and the MFS on a separate three lakes with each lake treated as a section so the pair with the lowest points win after two days. Day one and I draw peg 30 on Lizard which is a nice short walk from the car!

From left to right – left margin, front of peg and right margin. The margin on the left was deep over 3 feet and sloping out sharply, the right margin was a lot shallower but still with a slope. I planned on two areas in front the first at 10m and the second at 2+2 plus the margins, I also set up a shallow rig which went unused! Starting on the short line in 5-6ft of water on 4mm meat feeding meat and 4mm pellets I could only get a couple of roach and one solitary carp when I tried corn over it there was no joy either. The 10m line produced a roach so I ended up looking at the margins, apart from one carp from the right, all my fish came from the left one. Unfortunately the only area I could get interest was very close to the tree which had roots into the water I ended up being snapped 4 times by fish going into the roots despite being on 0.20mm and lost a further two to hook pulls. I did manage to extract eight carp including a koi close to double figures and weighed in 36-10 for joint 5th on the lake, beating the anglers near me.

Day two sees me draw peg 10 on Severn.

The margins looked featureless and on plumbing up were very sharply sloping with no flat spots and about three feet deep. The weather was very sunny and hot and although the point of the island was crying out for me to put a method feeder there I didn’t feel as it would be that productive in the hot weather as the fish were high in the water and were looking as if they may be getting ready to spawn again. Same set ups as previously and the 2+2 line only produce a few twitches before a two pound carp came to the net and that is how it stayed until the last hour of the six hour match. Despite making changes and trying the margins plus straight lead there was no joy apart from two hook pulls and being snapped on the paste by a good fish when I think the lane caught on the jagged dorsal fin. Fish were coming in to the left hand margin but were spooked if they touched the line or each other! Straight lead down the margin with a longish tail produced one liner and that was it. I was now in desperation mode so I cupped in 3 cups of loose groundbait and a cup of micros and began to put 10 4mm pellets in every few minutes. This began to get the fish wait longer and by the weigh in I had somehow managed to get 24-10 which put me 8th on the lake. To put it in context, the angler on my right who had tried the island tipped back as he reckoned he had just over 20lb and the one on my left weighed in 26-08, so I felt I had not done as badly as I feared, just that area was the worst on the lake on that day. Needless to say we came nowhere as a pair!

July beckons with the arrival of Gareth et al for a couple of weeks, so Bowood will be on the agenda.

June 2024 -part 2a, musings

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When I was coaching I used the mantra of the 3Fs when working with newcomers in particular. The 3 Fs are find the fish, find the depth, feed the fish. I used this as in most cases with newcomers if they can get these three elements correct they stand a better chance of catching and remaining in the sport. Find the fish is not always easy to explain but essentially if on a commercial then there will be fish in front of you and in the margins but on natural waters you are looking for a variety of things – wind, vegetation, overhanging bushes, flow, etc.. This combined with finding the depth, not just where you are casting but the whole area in front of you can give you a picture of what lies beneath the surface and identify further fish holding spots – deeper areas, drop offs, slopes, etc… This then gives you a better chance to target the correct area of the swim. Finally feeding the fish, I generally try to instill a little and often approach as this will often produce more consistently than handfuls of bait being thrown in sporadically which tends to be the case with newcomers. The choice of bait also comes into this but along with presentation are the next steps in a newcomer’s journey.

So how does this fit in with my fishing? Last season after 9 years of trying I finally got a 50lb weight out of Bowood after several near misses. This may not seem much in these days of three figure weights in commercials but we are talking of a water that is not stocked, is predominantly bream and tench and only a small part is available for fishing. At the start of the season the larger fish tend to congregate in the shallows for spawning and feeding but are only willing to feed with colour in the water. Now already my first trip to Bowood resulted in a 52lb weight as there was plenty of colour in peg 1, I did not expect the colour to be there when two days later I returned but the water was still highly coloured so I set up again on Peg 1 (no other angler tends to attempt to fish it as it is so shallow and weedy other than the odd one who reads the blog!).

The Ugly Duckling rig was brought into play again (2x no6 shot were added to the bulk to dot it down), the thinking behind the rig is that the 1g bulk tends to get it down past any rudd lurking but with the bulk set an inch or so off bottom it is easy to ensure the bait is past any weed. Anyway with plumbing up I had determined there was a hole three inches deeper slightly to the right of me at 10m. Using last session as a guide I introduced two full large pots of loose groundbait with a dozen grains of corn and 20-30 pieces of wheat, corn went on the hook straight away.It was not long before a bream of 3-06 was in the net, several others followed before I hooked something slightly better that turned out to be one of 5-12.

Baits were steady and if tailed off a pot of loose brought them back, all the while I was firing out a pinch of wheat every put in. At one point it went quiet before the float went under and the elastic streamed out, following a feisty fight a tench of 6lb lay in my net!

In total I had 17 bream again plus the tench, for 56-09 I also had two rudd and a roach which I didn’t count!

As you can see I weigh the fish in the landing net as I go along and note down the weight (minus the net).

Friday was my next opportunity to go and I was expecting to try pegs further up the field with the colour potentially having gone. On arrival there were two anglers where I was intending to fish but I checked Peg 1 and unbelievably the colour was still in the water, without further ado I set up once again, thinking surely I can’t be lucky again! I fished the exact same way, starting at 8:45 and ending at 11:45 (reason why later!) but I did not get 17 bream this time – I got 18 plus two tench of 4-01 and 2-08 for a 58-15 total, again I have discounted the solitary roach I had on corn!

I had planned to fish a bit longer but all of a sudden after the last bream at 11:45 there seemed to be a surge of water and a load of floating decaying weed covered the water in front of me, once I had packed up the weed had floated back out of the swim!

Cheesey what?

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More than 45 years ago I learned the secret art of  cheese fishing – not for chub in a river but for roach and tench in a park lake! Brynmill Park, Swansea was the venue, home of small roach and cheese fish of wondrous proportions in the eyes of a teenager more used to catching 1oz fish!

PCD-04863Alas Brynmill Park no longer allows fishing but the skills learned from the gurus of the day – Alan Godrich and Paul Huxtable- live on. Poles were not available then, you could get fibre glass telescopic whips up to 6m, elastics unheard of, everything was rod and line.

Alan developed a method of catching the better roach using cheese  just over his rod top in about 3 foot of water. A pointed stick float was dotted with strung out shot to an 18 or 20 hook and a piece of cheese was moulded around the hook so that it was soft and just covered the hook. Small pieces were moulded and rolled as loose feed, only half a dozen at a time, one after the other they were tossed around the pimpled stick, the process repeated every five minutes or so. Bites when they came were dictated by the size of fish! The bigger fish rarely submerged the float, usually a minute lift or dip were all you would get, occasionally just a ripple emanating from the tip of the float, the medium to small fish would just submerge the float. Bait was interesting, Cheddar was the favorite closely followed by Red Leicester for the roach, but Caerphilly picked out the odd tench although it was a sod to keep on the hook!

Today’s weaponry makes it far easier to fish cheese at a greater distance and when combined with a micro pellet loose feed can prove deadly- especially for bream! Most commercial waters these days are fed with pellet, either by the anglers or the owners as a supplement to the anglers bait. Fish become accustomed to pellet but can also become wary, particularly the silvers who often have to wait for any left overs from the carp. Cheese can score as so few people think of using cheese it becomes a new flavour/food for the pellet fed fish and will pick out the older and wiser (usually bigger) specimens in the swim.

So how do I fish cheese today? Depending on the venue, the depth of water will dictate how far out you need to fish. You are looking for a flat bottom with at least 3 feet of water, at Blacklands I am fishing at 8m in 6-7 feet (as the depth is constant) but I would not try cheese any deeper than this unless there was a large head of big roach present. The basic rules still apply, float pimpled, strung out shot if in a shallower swim, my rig at Blacklands has a bulk 2 feet away from the hook and 2 no 10 droppers to a 6 inch hook length of 0.10mm Shogun, with a 20 0r 18 barbless B911. Elastics are very much dependent, as always,  upon the size of fish likely to be encountered. At Blacklands I tend to opt for a no 6 latex, but have an 6-8 hollow rig set up as well if the bigger skimmers or roach move in, although generally I tend to stay on the no 6.

I use two types of float for my cheese fishing, both homemade; the first is a 0.5g version of the “Roach” with a 1.5mm tip for those times when you want a delicate approach and may want to string the shot out later in the day,

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the second is a long glass stemmed diamond body variant taking 1g with a 2mm tip. I use this second float when I am confident that there are skimmers around and want to get the cheese down fast. Pimpling the 2mm tip gives a good visual marker even in wind affected water while the long stem gets down past any surface tow.

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I prime the swim with a handful of micro pellet and half a dozen “pellets” of cheese cupped in, this is left for at least an hour and is topped up with a similar amount every 30 minutes.

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When I go over the swim I am expecting a bite within 5 minutes but this time the bites can be sail-aways if coming from bream or skimmers but the big roach give the same type of bite as all those years ago!