Tench - Spring Experiments

The river season ended with me snaring a super pike that would have undoubtedly been my first Avon twenty. Unfortunately, whilst readying myself to weigh the fish,it managed to escape without a photo nor confirmation of its weight. Not ideal, but always next year even though it haunted me for days. 

With 3 months to go before the rivers reopen, my attention turned to tench in early April. With a session booked on gravel pit at the end of May, I was keen to try out rigs on an easier water.

I started with two rods, both armed with helicopter rigs. Red maggots were the used in the feeder and on the hook. Presentations included a buoyant rubber maggot mounted as an aligner together with a couple of real ones on size 12 and 14 Korum Grappler hooks to a 4" of fluorocarbon hooklink, thus creating a bolt rig effect.

The addition of foam pops the bait up

The heli rig (left) and the inline feeder

 

Proceedings started modestly with hooked fish but an unusually high number of tench shedding the hook on the heli rigs. I suspected the 60g feeders were the culprit and the spirited fish were shaking the hooks free especially as I was not fishing much more than 25 yards or so. A reduction to 45g seemed to solve the issue along with setting up one of the rods with an inline Drennan feeder. I concluded that at close range the inline feeder had much better hooking properties compared to the helicopter setup. However, casting accuracy at longer distances saw the heli rigs come out on top. With more confidence in the actual setups, my next job was to attract more bites. 

At this stage they were not occurring as frequently as I expected so another bit of research was needed. This is when I decided to eliminate hair rigs and aligners and instead place a piece of red rig foam alongside 2 maggots directly on to a size 12 hook. This presented the maggots popped up a few inches off the bottom. The results were game changing. Tench were hitting the bait with regularity and hook ups were very efficient. With the inline method and the lighter feeder on the heli rigs, my catch rate upped significantly. The sessions were only short, a few hours from late afternoon until the light went but many a tench adorned my net and provided me with lots of confidence in my end tackle. The tench weren't huge with them all weighing in around the 3-5lb range but they provided super sport. It was important that when experimenting, I found a water that would provide me with the opportunity to receive enough bites to draw some conclusions. With the pit visit planned, I now had some clear methods to employ and the hope of bigger tench to come. Of course, my next blog will be all about my quest for some larger tench. 

A plump tench taken as the sun set

If you enjoyed the post and the site more generally, then please let me know. It's always nice to know when people are visiting. Also, do ask questions if you have them and don't forget my Facebook space too. Thanks for reading.