Tench spawning

[Jason Inskip]

I'm sure a lot of you will be thinking about tench and those wonderful fizzy bubbles at the moment, but after all this filthy weather, I haven't seen any evidence of tinca spawning where I live in Hampshire.

 

Has anyone seen any sign that the tench have begun to spawn?

 

Jason

[The Diamond Geezer]

Jason Inskip:

I'm sure a lot of you will be thinking about tench and those wonderful fizzy bubbles at the moment, but after all this filthy weather, I haven't seen any evidence of tinca spawning where I live in Hampshire.

 

Has anyone seen any sign that the tench have begun to spawn?

 

Jason

Well, you can't get much further South than Hants so the water should reach tench-spawning-temp soonest, depending on the depth e.g at Steve Burke's Wingham fishery "the tench normally spawn late June as the water is big and deep and takes a long time to warm up and cool down"

 

So keep your eyes peeled Can't be long now

 

DG

 

[ 21. May 2003, 04:23 PM: Message edited by: The Diamond Geezer ]

[Chris Plumb]

No! I was always under the impression that tinca often left it quite late to spawn often not till August...

 

 

Chris

[The Diamond Geezer]

Chris Plumb:

No! I was always under the impression that tinca often left it quite late to spawn often not till August...

Chris

Tench spawn later in the year than most of the other cyprindae species and require temperatures of between 18 - 20 C to spawn. Spawning therefore is normally restricted to late June and July.

 

DG

[Alan Pearce]

Diamonds pretty spot on, in old money, tench need 69.5F to be successful with their spawning.

 

Alan.

[poledark]

I,m not to far from Wingham, and the tench and carp have spawned in thelarge pits near me already. This is the earliest that I have seen carp spawn, but have caught loads of spawn filled tench in other big deep pits during May in previous years.

 

Water temp in the pits around Canterbury (a few miles from Wingham) was 59F on Monday last.

 

On the subject of water temps, I have been taking these religously for many years and one thing which has emerged consistently is that big pits are the same temp as small pits.

The mixing up of the layers by the wind is VERY effective, and I rarely found any significant difference at depths up to 12feet.

You only have to see the huge undertows that are created to see how easily the water is displaced from one end of a big pit to the other. Indeed the deeper the water then the bigger the undertow.

 

My method is to chuck a TM tied to a length of line out into the lake, wait a few minutes and then pull it back quickly and read it. I then chuck it back in and remove it at the end of the day.

 

This time of year the water temp can rise by 3 or 4 degrees in a single day, for example on Monday last the temp actually rose by 2 degrees between 10-30am and 7-00pm, this on a 26acre lake

As a matter of interest what constitutes "deep"? Most of the pits that I have fished have been dug with excavator type machines, which reach down about 12 foot max, and so depths of ten or twelve feet are fairly common. Many others were only dug down to about 8 or 9 feet, this seems to be the commonest depth.

Down here in the Stour valley the pits seem to have been "dug" with draglines and are what I would class as shallow, i.e. down to around 5 or 6 feet, and due to the relative shallowness, the undertow effect is not so strong.

I have seen pits of 8ft or more really churning around, but this rarely happens on shallow waters to the same degree.

Den

 

[ 22. May 2003, 10:56 PM: Message edited by: poledark ]

[jonathan]

Anyone know if they are at it on sywell at the mo'? Also anybody had any results there recently?

[Steve Burke]

I've just come back from a tenching trip at Wingham and there's no sign of spawn in the fish. Either they haven't started filling out yet (almost certain) or they've already spawned (most unlikely).

 

Everything is well behind this year at Wingham, with just a few small strands of weed on the Coarse Lake. The tench have never spawned there until the weed is well up.

 

One of the reasons is that Wingham is just a few miles from the coast in 2 directions, both to the north and the east. We've had lots of NE winds off the cold sea this spring and, although it's been warm at home 20 miles away, it's been cold at Wingham as a result. Indeed the air temperature on 2 occasions reached 16C (61F) at home but was only 6C (43F) at Wingham! Additionally the rain and hail from the recent heavy showers has kept the water temperature low. I didn't take it today, but on Monday it was 12C (54F).

 

In fact tench can spawn in fits and starts right the way through to August. Unlike many other species some individuals spawn early, some spawn late. In fact it's something that I've been discussing lately with Jim Gibbinson. However, all are delayed by the cool weather we've been having lately.

 

It's very rare that I disagree with Den, but in this instance I do: deep lakes take longer to warm up than shallow ones. What's probably most important is the ratio of depth to surface area. It's why the sea is cooler than lakes at this time of year.

 

The Coarse Lake at Wingham averages 10ft with a maximum of 23ft and few shallows. (Note that this is deeper than the pits that Den mentions in the neighbouring Stour Valley.) On the other hand the Carp Lake averages 6ft with a maximum of 15ft and extensive shallows.

 

The carp on my Carp Lake start feeding hard earlier in the spring compared with the Coarse Lake for this reason. They also spawn earlier, and at the moment are producing spawn but haven't yet dropped it.

 

Whilst I don't disagree with Den about undertow mixing the water at this time of year, in my experience depth is only one factor. In fact undertow can be worse on some shallow lakes than deep ones. It seems to be the contours of the lake that are important, with gravel bars and weedbeds having a major effect. For instance undertow is rarely marked at Wingham for these reasons.

 

Whether the tench at Wingham will have spawned before the Fish-In in 2 weeks time is therefore in my opinion very unlikely - unless of course we have a sustained heatwave.

[Ed Matysiak]

Dont jump the gun Jason, its only May.