Specimen Fishing Tips | Clear spot or low-lying weed for tench? - Ryan Hayden
I always prefer to fish over clear areas and, as such, raking is something that plays a big part in my tench fishing.
Raking a spot not only allows you to remove weed and debris to allow better presentation, but it also disturbs the bottom and stirs up lots of natural food.
Raking a spot is a big edge for tench
No matter how good you are at chucking a rake, you are only going to achieve a certain distance.
When fishing further out, I’ll always use a feature-finding lead (in my case usually a taped-up sea fishing lead with the prongs cut short) to get an idea of the bottom.
If there is low-lying weed present, I will cast a dozen or so times with the lead to try and clear the area off a bit.
Knowing that some weed may still be present, I’ll then opt for a Method feeder to ensure good presentation.
A cracking near double caught over a clear spot
Specimen Fishing | Wind direction for tench and bream - Gary Knowles
Fish will always follow a warm wind, particularly a south-westerly, so I would look to fish into the face of it. This is particularly true on shallow and uniform lakes, where the wind will quickly push rapidly warming water into the bank.
After a few days of blowing in the same direction the undertow will take the warmer water to the opposite side of the lake, so follow a new wind, but do check the forecast.
Always keep an eye on the forecast
On gravel pits with a lot of lakebed contours it’s hard to predict the effects of the wind. But unless fish are showing I’d still always start in a swim where I’m looking into the wind.
A clonking 20lb 7oz bream
Six steps to your best ever tench
There’s no better time than now to grab your biggest tench. With water temperatures rising rapidly, big tinca's will be feeding heavily in preparation for their annual spawning.Gravel pits and estate lakes are great venues to try and break your tench pb this summer.
Drennan and Sonubaits-backed Simon Ashton has been making the headlines recently for catching some superb big tench from gravel pits at Oxfordshire’s Linear Fisheries. Here are his six steps to beating your PB...
Even when you’re fishing at range you can still rake a small weedy area out, and this will encourage inquisitive tench to come and investigate. You can buy small castable weed rakes from your local tackle shops. Tie one to your spod rod, clip up to the distance you want to fish at and then you can spod out using the same rod if you wish.
This sounds like it goes against everything top anglers will tell you, but when I Spomb out I like to create a fairly wide area of bait so that if my hookbait falls slightly short I will still be on some bait. To make this possible I step back a yard after every cast I make.
After you’ve decided what distance to fish by casting to your marker float or using measuring sticks, tie a bit of marker gum to your mainline around three rod rings away from your reel. It allows you to clip up more easily when recasting to the same spot.
I’ve been catching a lot of tench to over 9lb by hair-rigging pieces of worm on to the hook using a bait bayonet. You can either use a few pieces of a dendrobaena worm or half a lobworm – tench absolutely love them. Tie a bayonet on to a small hair rig and thread it through the sections of your broken-up worm using a bayonet needle.
Very few specimen anglers do this, and I’m not sure why. As any matchman will tell you, tench love chopped worms. I add it to my Spomb mix with hemp and pellets, and use it in my feeder too.
I like to add Sonubaits F1 Pellet flavouring to my pellets for the feeder, while I use Sonubaits 24/7 oil in my spod mix. Carp anglers have been raving about this flavouring for a long while now and they catch big tench and bream all the time by accident, so it stands to reason it will work.
20 fishing tips that will help you think more like a fish
Martin bowler walks us through his top 20 summer fishing tips to help you get to know your quarry and think more like a fish to help you catch more when on the bank. Some of the tips I offer here are quite basic, while others require you to think outside the box and put yourself in the place of the fish...
Polarised sunglasses
Buy yourself a good quality pair of polarised glasses to assist you with fish location. In bright conditions grey is best, if it’s dull go for yellow, while the top all-round colour is brown. Finding your quarry is the most important aspect of angling, in fact more so than any tip, bait or rig.
If you want to grab yourself a pair of polarised sunglasses then check out our buyers guide here
Get up early
Either arrive just before daybreak or sit outside your bivvy at the best time to see any fish showing. Finding the location of your quarry is much easier at dawn when fish rolling or jumping, or bubbles breaking the surface, are likely to give their presence away.
Assess the water
You can only catch what’s in front of you. Specimen fish don’t live in every venue, so be clinical with your assessments. In my experience angling myths very rarely become reality. They are just that – myths!
Pick the battles you can win!
Assess the venue’s potential against angling pressure. If time is limited, one with fewer big fish but receiving less angling pressure can be the better option.
Know your species
Try to understand your quarry, because every species of fish behaves differently. For example, carp don’t like disturbance and so I leave my baits in place at daybreak. Tench, however, are much more likely to investigate a recast or a fresh bout of spombing, so I always carry out these tasks at dawn.
Look to the sea
Take a carp rod with you on your coastal holiday. Bream, bass, pollack and wrasse are all catchable on lures or bait for minimal additional outlay.
Hire a skipper
Book a charter boat to go sea fishing this summer but realise, as with any other form of fishing, that there are good, bad and indifferent anglers or, in this case, skippers. Use social media to investigate a boat’s potential, find a good one and it will be a great day out.
Use fishmeal
In summer, when the fish are still recovering from spawning, most species adore fishmeal and its high oil content. Be it pellet, boilie or groundbait you won’t go too far wrong with this food source.
Lure them out on the feeder
Give the Method feeder a go for barbel. It’s a great way of baiting the swim without the need for PVA. Combine this with a short hooklength when they’re feeding aggressively, or go longer if bites prove hard to come by.
Think about the weather
If it rains the the rivers start to rise or colour up in summer, go barbel fishing. such conditions are sure to trigger them into feeding
Take your time
In margins over 12ft deep try a slider float and you will catch more than on the lead. The most crucial aspect of this type of fishing is plumbing up, so take your time to guarantee the hookbait is just kissing the bottom.
Give your groundbait a boost
When preparing groundbait, add any liquids to water used to dampen it, not directly on to the dry mix. This will guarantee even distribution.
Overcome suspicious fish
Wary barbel will look out for your hook when feeding and ignore the attached bait if they spot it. To overcome this in clear water I fish half a boilie on a short hair. The flat side falls over the metalwork like a cup, concealing it from view.
Don't leave it to luck
For a big bag of tench, rake the swim the night before fishing, and prebait. Luck alone is never to be trusted, but effort will pay off.
Visit your local tackle shop
Slightly better deals might be available on the Internet, but who will supply your fresh bait? Nobody knows the local waters better than your local tackle dealer, so give him your custom.
Move around
For summer chub, roaming the river with a gallon of maggots and a trotting set-up takes some beating. Find a shoal and then feed on a ‘little and often’ basis until you see their white mouths working in overdrive. The catching part is very simple by comparison.
Don't forget the roach
River roach populations are on their way back to healthy levels, and weir pools are the place to look for them in summer, when there is extra oxygen in the water. This is especially true at the start of the season.
Go mini
Bread, corn and caster all have their place in roach fishing, but don’t ignore mini boilies and pellets too, even on the rivers. They’re small fish-proof, and roach adore them.
Don't sit still
Don’t just sit there when things are quiet, as you can almost always win a bite. For example, sometimes carp aren’t interested in feeding on the bottom, so why not try a zig rig (above)or a floater? It always pays to have a back-up plan, be it a tactical change or baiting up another spot.
Try something new this summer
From a trout in a reservoir to a mullet in an estuary, most options are open to everyone and relatively cheap to put into action. We are very fortunate to live in a country packed full of angling opportunities, so do make the most of them.
Six steps to casting feeders further
here’s little point in having the correct rig, lovingly-prepared bait and groundbait and a good peg to fish if you can’t cast your feeder far enough in the first place.
You may think that you can cast well and put a feeder out a long way, but there are always a few little things that can be added to your technique that’ll put 10 or 20 more yards on the cast. On many waters, where casting further than the anglers around you might be important, these little improvements will mean more fish.
Get the right ‘drop’
This is the length of line between feeder and rod-tip before you cast. If it is too short, then you won’t achieve the force to cast far enough – around 5ft of line is ideal, allowing you to really compress the rod.
use your other hand
Too many anglers cast using just the hand and arm holding the rod around the reel. This is wrong. Your other hand that’s on the bottom of the handle is just as important, as this should ‘pull’ on the rod as you cast, creating speed on the cast to propel the feeder further.
point where you cast
When the cast is finished, the rod should be pointing directly to the spot where the feeder has gone into the water. This will tell you that you’ve been accurate, and is achieved by following through with the rod in a straight line as the feeder flies through the air.
Release at the right point
When to release line from the spool mid-cast makes a big difference. It should happen when the rod is roughly pointing to 11 o’clock on an imaginary clock – 12 o’clock will be the point immediately above your head. Let go too early and the feeder will go in a more upward direction, while too late and it will crash into the water 20 yards out!
use the right type of rod
Modern feeder rods are designed for casting a long way, so don’t be afraid to put a lot of force into the chuck and fully compress the rod. It might look as though it’s bending alarmingly, but that’s what it’s built to do – the rod won’t break!
Stand to attention
For really long casts, you’ll have to stand up. This creates more clearance behind you to get the right ‘drop’ between feeder and rod, and also allows you to use the weight of your body to propel the cast.
Catch more tench on a float
Dai Gribble celebrates the best way to catch tench this spring by sharing his favourite way of catching them
Welcome to the glorious world of tenching on the float, where the angler can be taken on a roller-coaster ride from peaceful reflection to high-octane action in seconds.
One man who simply loves waggler fishing for tench is Korum’s Dai Gribble, a former Drennan Cup champion. We met up with the 49-year-old Staffordshire all-rounder to find out why those anglers who shun floatfishing for tench are missing out.
Simplicity the key
Unlike Dai’s feeder fishing tactics, which dictate the need for specialist rods, floatfishing for tench can be undertaken with a standard commercial float set-up. Any decent float rod combined with a quality 6lb mainline is ideal. This will generally be fished straight through to a size 10-18 hook, depending on the hookbait.
“Gravel pit tench are very simple creatures, so there is no need to tie ludicrously complicated float set-ups with wildly intricate shotting patterns. I think that the ideal mixture is a balance of strength and sensitivity,” said Dai.
This deliberately simple approach extends to Dai’s choice of float – either a straight peacock waggler, or, if the day is very windy, a long-bristled Driftbeater. “Tench anglers collect floats like specimen carpers collect pop-ups,” Dai added, with a chuckle.
“I have loads of floats that I have never, ever used, but that still doesn’t stop me buying more… just in case they might come in!” On the day, Dai’s chosen tool was a 2g Preston Innovations Dura Wag.
The beauty of these floats is that they are modular, allowing you to change tops if required as well as change the loading from maximum to very little by removing the brass weights at the base of the float.
Dai’s float rig was set to fish 1ins overdepth, with just two No4 shot and one No6 down the line. If the wind or tow increased, he could move the float up the line and ‘lay on’ by up to 12ins with the dropper shot being laid on the lakebed to help anchor the rig.
A spread of baits
Float tactics encourage you to chop and change your hookbaits much more than you would otherwise do when using legering techniques to target tench.
“On the feeder, I use red maggots most of the time – in both the feeder itself and on the hook – because I am only recasting every hour or two. They are a bait that I have the utmost confidence in when gravel pit fishing for tench,” explained Dai.
“With floatfishing, I’m recasting every 10 or 20 minutes, so this means I’m more inclined to give a kernel of sweetcorn or a soft hooker pellet a go for that period.”
Dai likes to fish his baits in rotation on the float and often takes quite a selection to try out on the day. Predictably, red maggots still play a big part in his approach, but they are often backed up by other tempting morsels such as casters, worms, hooker pellets, sweetcorn, hemp and bread.
“Tench can be very finicky feeders. Some days they’ll come freely to any hookbait, while on others they will not touch maggots and casters but will hang themselves every cast or put-in on, say, a grain of corn. Having a range of change baits enables you to go through this selection process.
“The fish will often give away their presence by sending up bubbles or knocking the float when you’re fishing close in. This means you can feed very accurately and judge how much to introduce against the number of bites and amount of activity in the swim.”
Sweetly does it
Once the swim has been raked and fed – usually with a handful of red maggots – and the tackle set-up, Dai will kickstart his session on particle baits such as maggots, casters, hemp and sweetcorn.
If there are lots of small rudd and other silverfish in the water, Dai will ball-in snooker ball-sized balls of groundbait containing particles to create a carpet of food and ensure some of the hookbait gets to the lakebed intact.
“Around five or six balls is perfect to start with. I use a mixture of fishmeal crumb, combined with molasses to create a sweet mix,” explained Dai.
He will then top up the swim little-and-often, so there’s always food in the swim – but not so much that it overfeeds the tench or, indeed, too little so they clear the swim and move on. “It’ll be a small ball every 15 minutes or a pouchful of particles, depending upon the action,” explained Dai.
With the sun rising steadily, it wasn’t long before Dai’s tactics paid dividends. His neon-orange float tip wobbled briefly, before burying. He duly swept the rod back and hooked into the fish. Sliding the 5lb male tench into the folds of his net, the look on his face said it all.
Six steps to catching tench this spring
If there’s one species that is associated with spring more than any other, it’s the tench.
Certainly among the UK’s most beautiful fish species, tench love all stillwaters and come in a variety of different hues, influenced by the colour of the water in which they live. They are known for their hard-fighting qualities so don’t be tempted to fish too fine, especially if you’re presenting a bait close to weed and lilies, where they like to live.
Pole fishing is productive, and you’ll catch well on the feeder too, but nothing beats watching a float sat close to a patch of lilies. At this time of year, early and late are the best times to go in search of tench.
Try to get to your water at first light or late in the afternoon, although sometimes you will catch in the heat of the day. As the tench season progresses the bigger fish, especially those that have been caught a few times, may become wary of big baits and you will then catch more with maggots and casters.
Tench love sweetcorn, but instead of using corn directly on the hook, it is often better to
hair-rig it, even when floatfishing. Two pieces of hair-rigged corn like this will be picked up without hesitation by a big tench when fished on the bottom.
Presenting your hookbait in this fashion will also help convert more bites into fish, as the hookpoint cannot be masked by the bait. Yellow corn is always favoured at the start of the tench season, but many big fish have also been taken on sweetcorn that’s been dyed red, especially when it’s fished over a red groundbait such as Van den Eynde Expo.
As far as hooks are concerned, use something like a size 14 or 12 strong, wide-gape pattern with a slightly inturned point that will stay in once the fish is hooked.
A mixture of chopped worm, micro pellets, casters and maggots provides a brilliant bed of bait for luring tench. But you can’t possibly catapult it in. This is when combining pole and waggler really works.
Use your pole cup to deposit this mix beyond the marginal shelf where tench patrol, then you can still use the traditional ‘lift method’ on your waggler rod over the top.
As the season progresses, you sometimes need to think outside the box where bait is concerned for tench. Tench start to get caught on some strange baits as they feed more readily. Marzipan and macaroni cheese are worth a go, probably because of their yellow colour.
Make yourself a weed rake to scrape the bottom clear of weed and debris, and to stir it up. Simply take two rake heads, stick them back to back using cable ties and attach a long, strong rope. Throw it into your swim, allow it to sink and drag it back slowly to sweep the bottom. Once you have finished, introduce some pellets, hemp, corn or casters to hold the fish.
When fishing the pole line, always cup your feed in. Tench love to feed over a bed of bait, and having it all in one neat pile will help increase the numberof bites you get. Marginal lily beds are a perfect place to start, as tench love nothing better than to patrol around the stems.
Start your session by introducing half-a-dozen balls of a rich, sweet groundbait containing lots of particles and leave it alone for a while until hopefully you see signs of fish in the swim. Tench will often show themselves by rolling at the surface. When you see this, lower a pole rig over your feed and you’ll soon catch.
After feeding a swim for tench, watch for tell-tale ‘pinprick’ bubbles appearing at the surface. These are created by the fish rooting around the bottom for food and expelling air through their gills.
Fish a decent-sized bait among the bubbles and you’re likely to get a bite within minutes. Just make sure you feed a variety of different food to ensure the fish do not become preoccupied with just one offering. This can happen, especially if you are feeding micro-pellets
