It's all comin together!

[Anthony78]

Hi Guy's, Thought I'd bore you all with a write up of our day's fishing. Hope you don't mind.

 

With the Wingham Fish-in only a few weeks away myself and Cliff have been getting a few practice session in on our local estate lake. Now ordinarily light float rods and small wagglers on the marginal shelf would be the tactics for this lake and accounts for some good bags of tench but there aren't many pegs at Wingham that lend themselves to this style of fishing. So to brush up on our medium range feeder fishing tactics we decided to fish to the same spots but from the oposite side of the lake which means that we'd be casting around 40 - 50 yards to an area the size of a dinner table in order to get our rigs in the usual tench hotspots.

 

Our first practice session was a couple of weeks ago and our approach was to find the spots with a marker rod and to then spod a large amount of hemp, maggots and grounbait over the clear spots found. Once the bombardment was over it was then time to experiment with some rigs to find a presentation that we'd be confident casting out at Wingham. Now bare in mind that we normally fish intimate little waters with float gear or fast flowing rivers for barbel and chub so spod, marker work and mini bolt rigs is not a style of fishing we do very often but it's something we're very keen to learn.

In that session we managed a few small tench but more importantly we had settled on a couple of rigs that would do the business. One was a mini bolt rig fished inside a PVA bag with maggots and stick mix and the other a maggot feeder, short hooklength and a couple of rubber grubs on the hair.

 

Today's session:

 

Well we decided that we'd have another go with these new found tactics and headed back to the lake at dawn. Cliff was there first and was dissapointed to hear that he would have to pack up his gear and move as half the lake had been booked up for a match which meant that we'd have to move down to the shallow area of the lake. Now this time of the year this end of the lake is completely choked with weed and presenting anything other than float gear is almost impossible. Hasten to say the couple of hours spent here were fruitless and a chat to the match organiser, as our preferred pegs were not being fished, meant that we were upping sticks and moving again.

As we've had some colder nights followed by easterly winds during the days this week we decided that we wouldn't go over the top with the bait so a couple of maggot feeders were attached and launched the 40 or so yards to the far bank trees. After 45 minutes of regular casting I got my first run which came in without any dramas and once it was in the net it was obvious that she was full of spawn and in fantastic condition. On the scales she went 6lb 4oz and was a new estate lake pb for me and a cracking fish to boot.

Here's a pic.

 

 

An hour later and another run resulted in another spawnbound female at 5lb 14oz, could this day get any better!!

 

A quiet spell for a couple of hours meant that we were beginning to think that we'd seen all the action we were going to get for today. but then I heard an alarm sounding from Cliff's swim and when I looked up I noticed that he was well bent in to a good fish and it was making a powerful run towards some nearby snags. He did very well to guide it into open water and when it surfaced it was obvious that this was going to be another very special fish and Cliff's pb of 3lb 8oz was well and truly smashed. On the scales she went 6lb 5oz and a new pb for a very happy Cliff.

Here she is.

 

 

Now I know these fish are not monsters compared to gravil pit fish but for estate lake tench these are a very good size so we finished the day 2 very happy bunnies.

 

It was a fantistic day and I now have one thing to say:

 

Bring on the Wingham tench!!!!

 

Ant

[Andrew Burgess]

Well done lads - at least it paying off

[Andy Macfarlane]

Stoppit!! Me and Andy_1984 were just discussing at length our ideas for next week's attempt at the tinkers. Second outing of the year for the green goblins.

 

Making me jealous....lol

[Anderoo]

Congratulations to you both, especially Cliff and his new PB There's nothing like a confidence boost is there. If you're coming to Wingham maybe those new PBs won't last very long...

[Steve Burke]

Well done the pair of you! Cracking fish from such a water. :clap2:

[Anthony78]

Well done lads - at least it paying off

 

Thanks Andrew, It is indeed.

 

Stoppit!! Me and Andy_1984 were just discussing at length our ideas for next week's attempt at the tinkers. Second outing of the year for the green goblins.

 

Making me jealous....lol

 

Hey Andy, I hope to see some pics of your tinkers.....Ok, That just sounds wrong!!!

 

 

Congratulations to you both, especially Cliff and his new PB There's nothing like a confidence boost is there. If you're coming to Wingham maybe those new PBs won't last very long...

 

Hi Andrew,

As you know I used tactics similar to these at Wingham last year and they catered for 13 beautiful tench to a new pb of 7lb 6oz but that was the last time I used them and we don't have lakes around here where tactics like this are required. Cliff hasn't used these tactics before so it was all new to him. These couple of sessions were exactly what we needed and to catch a pb each was enough to give us the confidence to know that if we're on fish at Wingham then we should be able to catch em.

 

 

Well done the pair of you! Cracking fish from such a water. :clap2:

 

Thanks Steve, we sometimes have to remind ourselves that lakes like Wingham are very rare and without paying alot of money to fish syndicates or travelling 100's of miles we can only fish for what is within our reach and even fish of this size are very special. As you rightly said they are good fish for an estate lake and would probably be considered a specimen by some. We hope to see some bigger ones in a couple of weeks

[Dales]

Some cracking fish lads and seems like you have your tactics sorted if you get down to Wingham. As Anderoo has already said, the way things are going at the moment at Wingham you could both be in with a chance of new PB's if you get to fish this year.

[Anthony78]

Hi Dales,

Our names are down so just waiting for a confirmation email now. This is probably the most important email of the whole year for me. 

 

Hope to see you there.

 

Ant