Where do they go

[terry t shirt]

It Occured to me that the species we target tend to have windows in the year where we target them.

Tench being a classic example we get them late spring early summer but come august they seem to decline/ dissapear. If it was the weather i could understand but that doesnt really make sense as its still warm so i assume they must still be feeding so where do they go.

The tench is just an example i know some lakes i fish seem to have no roach/rudd until july august then its a fish a chuck. Bream i've always tended to target sept / oct so why are they harder to catch at other times of year(excluding winter)

 

Ideas?

[Dales]

It's hard one and something I have often thought about. I have not come up with a reason for it but was wondering do fish tend to shoal up to a certain extent at certain times of the year which is when we tend to be targeting them or at least seem to catch them in bigger bags and then do they break up into smaller groups and so almost seem to disappear as they are spread out in a water in smallish groups and so you only tend to pick off the odd fish. But it does seem sometimes like they have just up and left only to return the same time next year.

 

Could it be that at certain times of the year they get preoccupied on certain food stuffs and so do not touch anglers baits, it may explain why Tench seem abundant in Spring and early Summer, but when natural food items are plentyful by late summer they do not seem to get caught as often.

 

To be honest I think I am clutching at straws and am at a lost to understand why

[Rusty]

Good question and tench are probably the species for a definite cut off date. Would barbel fall into that category too? I've never fished for them in winter.

 

They must still be there during winter so perhaps their metabolism slows right down and they hole up in a comfortable spot with minimal feeding activity.

[terry t shirt]

.

 

They must still be there during winter so perhaps their metabolism slows right down and they hole up in a comfortable spot with minimal feeding activity.

 

 

i can understand the slowing metabolism in winter but that doesnt explain why in the height of summer a lot of waters appear to be devoid of fish yet we know they are there.

[tincatinca]

Been looking at Google earth for hours but have still not found the buggers

[wyeknot]

It Occured to me that the species we target tend to have windows in the year where we target them.

Tench being a classic example we get them late spring early summer but come august they seem to decline/ dissapear. If it was the weather i could understand but that doesnt really make sense as its still warm so i assume they must still be feeding so where do they go.

The tench is just an example i know some lakes i fish seem to have no roach/rudd until july august then its a fish a chuck. Bream i've always tended to target sept / oct so why are they harder to catch at other times of year(excluding winter)

 

Ideas?

 

Certainly tench are easier to catch in the spring and early summer because they are shoaling up ready for spawning. Some of this is also because they need to feed up to produce the eggs and milt but some is also due to competitive feeding in the shoal. Small bream can be easy to catch when the shoal moves into your swim for the same competitive feeding reason. But you try catching them big ones though when they only go around in small groups .

 

Tench can be caught all year round though. One of my fellow Tenchfishers caught at least one tench every month for 27 consecutive months but he did have to be careful where he fished.

 

Steve C.

[chesters1]

not sure why tench get hard to find but there's a few swims where they can be caught all year round ,not so readily ofcourse but they're there if your lucky.

good roach generally like it cool at the local pond but this year have been caught in abundance in even hot weather.

if we knew all anglings secrets then it wouldnt be worth bothering with

Edited August 12, 2010 by chesters1

[Anderoo]

This is a really good question.

 

The tench part has already been answered - they group up and feed hard in the build-up to spawning, then disperse and feed less hard, and this coincides with the summer bounty of natural food, so they can afford to be picky too.

 

On one lake I fish, there are no small roach, rudd or perch to be seen or caught until mid-summer, at which point they are everywhere. So they were either in the swims and not feeding on our baits, or out of fishing range. It is very strange. I think they must be out of range because small fish like that are normally hard to avoid. However, when they do come in close in summer and start to be caught a lot, it's clear that there are thousands of them, so for the rest of the year is there really a vast, dense shoal of these fish out in the middle? If so, why are there pike in the margins?

 

A similar thing happens in rivers each winter, the small fish shoal up and leave great lengths of water almost empty. I'm sure this is why you can then go and catch nothing but big chub, for example. It is simply because there aren't any tiddlers there to intercept the bait.

 

On waters where the fish seem to disappear during summer, I would bet that it's because there is a glut of natural, microscopic food, and preoccupation means our baits are ignored.

 

September and October are great months for almost all coarse species. They know winter is coming and the food is getting harder to find, and so become more vulnerable.