It's hard to openly admit you have been doing things wrong. So with a pip in my craw, I confess. "I think I've been doing it wrong". You see after returning back to as far from the sea as you can get in this isle, I began tench fishing in earnest. Now I suppose a week of lead chucking could in some tiny way be to blame for my fishing faux pas but as well I have to point some of the blame on the modern fishing influences. Sometime recently I wrote the words 'chucking feeders into the stratosphere' and those words after last weekend kind of haunt me.
My first session after tench I hit the bank early and my first, like every cast of that session, involved me firing two method feeders as far as my Avon rods possibly could. On that occasion I had four runs and landed only two average tench from a very prolific water. I didn't think much of it to be honest and just attributed the poor show to the wrong conditions or some other external factor.
In the days between my first and second session I pondered if I may have gone a little over board using what in retrospect might be more of a late summer bait rather than an early summer bait. Hence on trip two I switched from a less fishy high food content mix and to a more sweet mix and minimal feed option. That session was worse! I took only one fish and had two half-hearted enquires. I left that second session scratching my head as I had seen other fish getting caught around the lake and I knew the bait I was using has in the past caught fish in near sub-zero temps.
Sometimes when the fishing is too easy I get a bit put off truth told and conversely any challenge quickly become obsessions. True to form I became a little fanatical about the quandary before me and believing my bait was good I started considering the dynamics of my rig. But truthfully I have landed literally hundreds of tench on the method rigs I use so I really did not think that was my problem. By the time of my third outing on the same pool fishing in the same area, I was still no closer to what I thought was the answer. I again set up stall in a similar area though this time I had four other anglers down the bank in sight. The session went exactly the same was as before and by mid-morning I was only two runs and one tench in and thinking this was going to be another disappointment. It was around then that I was scanning the pool looking for a move when I spotted a bent rod. I watched as the gentleman in question netted a tench. Two casts later a second came from his spot only a slight lob from the bank and it clicked! I had fallen foul of myself and outside influences. Could it be so simple as I was fishing too far out at the end of my cast?
After retrieving one rig and recasting it a quarter of the distance out I sat back and ran through my previous two and half sessions, only to conclude that yes every single cast had been aimed towards the centre of the lake. I had barely enough time to finish trying to kick my own arse before the indicator sounded a much more savage run than I had heard since tench fishing began this year. The insane head banging and general spryness told me a small male tench was on the end of my line and rather than pull him onto the bank I left him in the net to unhook; I never even lifted the net out before recasting both rods onto a similar line to begin a final two hours of activity.
It's almost embarrassing to admit that this small change where I quite literally reeled it in a bit on the cast had made such a gargantuan difference but it did. It wasn't total madness but there was a marked increase in the regularity of the runs and from scratching one fish in the first four hours the tench came along like one...
Two...
Three...
Four...
I bumped two others off as well trying to get them in a bit quick. Really I could hardly believe that with all my years of fishing I had been so stupid as to miss a very obvious answer to getting bites.
Truthfully I have to accept all blame for my mistake and as frankly it only affects me then it's neither here or there. But I can say that since Sky has begun replaying the carp fishing back catalogue on Discovery I have, as always, been feeding on a visual diet of long range casting intermixed with articles in magazines were shots of bent rods pepper accounts on catching ‘em far out. I suppose this brings to admit I have in some way been influenced by the media, which sounds terrible now I've written it, BUT! who amongst us can say they haven't been influenced themselves in some way. It may of just been a fancy solution to what is a pointless problem or just a shiny thing we go out and buy, but either way we can't deny that in this modern world media easily influences what we do, how we fish and what we buy.
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