Two bests in one session

ADRIAN Eves’ first session of the year targeting bream and tench turned into a real red letter trip during which he landed double figure examples of both species.

Arriving at a southern stillwater which he has been focusing his attentions on for the past four years, he found the lake much quieter than he’d been expecting and was able to drop in to one of his favourite swims at the shallower end.

“I knew there was a very good transitional area where the soft silt moves on to hard silt or clay and then on to a small gravel strip,” said the Fox and Dynamite Baits consultant.

“With several years’ experience of this extremely difficult water I felt that too much bait would be a mistake, so I just put out a small bed of 6mm betaine pellets mixed with krill groundbait, maggots and sweetcorn.”

With three rods cast over the top he received his first take towards the end of the first night when a 10lb 6oz tench picked up his two pieces of hair-rigged corn mounted on a size 10 Fox Kuro S2 hook and a 5ins Coretex hooklink.

“If I had gone home with just this fish I’d have been delighted. The very next morning, however, I had a much slower take and this time it was a huge male bream of exactly 15lb. It was in prime pre-spawning condition and even put up a fight.”

This time it was a bunch of maggots fished on a size 12 maggot clip and a small mesh PVA bag filled with maggots and a few pellets did the business for Adrian.

“Amazingly, on the third and final morning I had the same tench again! This time I just unhooked it in the margins, before ending the trip with a 22lb common. It could hardly have been a better session and after some of the gruelling visits I’ve had over the last four years it was great to be rewarded with two species at very big weights.”