Wingham Fish-In 2015 Catch Reports & Thanks

[Dales]

f you have some piccies shove them on here although if there aren't any i wont believe you know ....

I never like to put them up as i always look a right numpty in them, but I know they do amuse some AN members so each year I try to take a few. One day i will get a photo of me with an eel looking all relaxed and cool like the pics you see in the mags of eel specimen hunters, I have come to the conclusion that the eels they have in their photos are either dead or druged or both.

 

Anyway I have added the pics of myself showing 100% control over my prey Well maybe not 100% but at least i had 2 hands on them which is more control then I ever managed in some eel pics

Edited April 28, 2015 by Dales

[Anthony78]

Wingham Fish-in 2015:

 

Firstly a massive thank you from myself, my girlfriend Vicky, Cliff and his wife Julie to all the bailiffs, old and new, for all their hard work and shear determination to make this fish-in happen again this year. This fish-in literally would not have happened if it weren't for you guys so thank you all.

 

Secondly another big thank you to Peggy for an awesome BBQ and given that the burgess boys were not there, there was plenty to go around so seconds had to be in order

 

Thirdly I must thank Steve himself as we have been fishing the Wingham fish-ins for nearly 10 years now and it's still the highlight of our fishing year.

 

Also thanks to Steve C for the welcome bacon butty which went down a treat on Saturday morning.

 

The auction, now it's bad enough watching items on eBay going for silly money and not being able to bid on them because of my ever growing collection but to be in a room watching items generously donated to the bailiffs go for silly money had me reaching for my wallet....twice . I came away with a new rod and reel, which I didn't really need, but at least I knew that my money was going to a good cause.

Next year I'll definitely be donating something myself......I wonder if anyone would want an 18ft float rod .

 

 

Ok so onto the fishing, now some of you may have heard that I had quite a successful weekend. To be honest this is an understatement as this is by far the best tench session I have ever had in my life. 20 tench came to my rods over the 3 days with 4 of them being over the 8lb mark and the largest going 8lb 9oz, just 5oz shy of my pb set at last years fish-in.

This year Steve chose 'Big island platform' as my home for the weekend. As the name suggests, the swim had an island at around 70 yards and a number of bars running straight out from the bank and ending at 50 yards with a 9ft channel running the length of the island. After speaking to Anderoo in the clubhouse and some of the other members I'd almost decided where to fish before even seeing the swim with only a little plumbing around with the marker to find the exact spot to drop the rigs on. As the fish-in was earlier this year I listened to the advice from Steve regarding the tench still feeding in the silt due to the lack of food on top of the bars.

I dropped my right and middle rod onto a spot where 2 bars met in the hope to intersect fish moving along either of them. My left rod was cast to an area which, when I dragged the marker over it, felt like glass. Lovely smooth silt which had clearly been fed on and an area similar in nature to the one I caught my pb from last year.

On the right and middle rod, both fished at 50 yards, I wanted to experiment a little with baits so, on the right rod I fished a double fake caster hook bait with a golf ball sized bag of the real thing nicked onto the hook. The middle rod, fished to the same area, was armed with double fake maggot and a small bag of red maggots nicked on for good measure. These rods were not fished over any bait other than what I was putting in via the PVA bags. The caster rig was the first to go so both of these rods were then changed to this for the remainder of the day and night with 5 of the 20 fish falling to this method over the weekend.

The left hand rod was fished at 46 yards over around 10 medium spombs of dark groundbait (black crumb and expo) with very little in the way of freebies. I was going to be fishing a method ball over this so I wanted this to be what the tench homed in on instead of a large area of particles which are so popular with tench fishing nowadays.

 

In summary I caught fish on both methods but it was the method feeder which was producing most of the bites. I was having to wait a while between them though! This got me thinking that perhaps I was still giving them too much food and they weren't feeding aggressively enough for the method to be the most effective.........well method. They clearly liked the mix I was using though so I decided to move my middle rod over to my left spot and fish a small stick of the method mix threaded onto the hook link. I actually turned to my girlfriend Vicky and said "if my middle rod goes in the next few minutes I could be onto something". 10 minutes later and 'beeeeeeeeep!'. Although I had to tweak things around a bit to keep the fish coming the majority of my haul came from the method or the small stick fished in conjunction with a scaled down bolt rig.

 

Here's my list of tench for the weekend in order of capture:

5lb 11oz (Male)

6lb 2oz (Female)

8lb 9oz (F)

5lb 13oz (M)

4lb 15oz (M)

7lb (F)

8lb 1oz (F)

4lb 14oz (M) (almost positive that this was a recapture of the above 4lb 15oz fish)

5lb 9oz (M)

4lb 9oz (M)

2lb (F)

8lb 1oz (F)

5lb 14oz (F)

5lb 6oz (F)

8lb 8oz (F)

3lb (F)

2lb (F)

5lb 8oz (F)

3lb 8oz (M)

5lb 11oz (F)

 

Here's the pics of the 4 x 8's caught along with a surprise visitor we had on Sunday morning:

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 28, 2015 by Anthony78

[Steve Walker]

Love the grass snake, one swam past me Saturday morning.

[Dick Dastardly]

_{Great to see some good catchs. Even better to see there are eels left in the carp lake! Wonder why none at all showed last fish in? We had to move out of Andrews house this weekend (and a struggle it was to meet the deadline for completion!) so we couldn't even visit for a quick social let alone fish. First we've missed in many years feel really guilty we weren't even able to get down to help out the rest of the team prior either. Everything should be back to normal for next year and hope to catch up with you all then}

[Steve Burke]

I've found a case for some polarised sunglasses in my car. If you've lost it please e-mail me your address via the Wingham website and I'll post it to you.

[Anderoo]

Great report Ant, and congrats on a really good result! Love the photo of the grass snake.

[Andrew]

Great stuff Matt on your new PB, 7lb 7oz

 

Cracking tench Maddog, stunning mate,

 

Great reoprt/read Anderoo and Dales

 

Anthony, brilliant stuff mate, and a cracking catch rate. :clap3:

Edited April 29, 2015 by Andrew

[Steve Walker]

_{Great to see some good catchs. Even better to see there are eels left in the carp lake! Wonder why none at all showed last fish in? We had to move out of Andrews house this weekend (and a struggle it was to meet the deadline for completion!) so we couldn't even visit for a quick social let alone fish. First we've missed in many years feel really guilty we weren't even able to get down to help out the rest of the team prior either. Everything should be back to normal for next year and hope to catch up with you all then}

 

The absence of the Burgess brothers was commented upon! I think it's the first one I've been to that Elton hasn't made, too.

[Steve Burke]

Here's an e-mail report from Tony Brooks who came to the Fish-In as my guest as thanks for lending us a fishfinder.

You may of heard that I managed a tench yesterday afternoon, despite the weather!!

A pretty male a touch over 6lb but with quite a marked red tinge, so please see attached for your perusal.

I found the fishfinder ok, thanks for the invitation to enjoy Wingham again.

Hope the fishing continues to develop as you hope and good luck with the big bream quest!!

[Steve Walker]

One of Maddog's tench also has a red tinge;