Catch up part 2 - Tench curse over.

I don't know what it is about me but I always push my luck with the timing when going after some species throughout the year and end up having some kind of mare. You see I had been gagging to catch me some tench but in truth I have wanted to catch them on the float rather than sitting behind rods and buzzers, for which I don't have too much love right now. Three sessions attempting to catch a tench in the margins at Napton on float and caster and the highlight of catching a few hundred average perch was the one male fish who seemed to think his capture was the crescendo of some kind of mating ritual and proceeded to ejaculate all over my right leg, the dirty bugger. Anyway, back on the subject of tench; after watching them rolling at forty yards as the milt dried into my trouser leg I concluded that to break my tench curse before I had to make a libation I would have to give in a pull out the bite alarms, dust off the Avon rods and fling a few feeders to put this tench mare to bed for the year. 

Instead of Napton however I opted to head back to Ryton for a short session, as this water-filled sand pit is always the first venue where the tench get going round these parts. It's been almost a year since I had been back to Ryton and in that time the payment system for the car park had changed, as had the charge making this an expensive club water when combined with the annoying stocking fee charged by the club. Money aside, this is a reliable water for tench and that's what I needed: a session of confidence boosting captures.

Catch fish I did... catch tench I did not! Somewhere in the three hundred and sixty five odd days since I had last fished Ryton my mind had seemingly blanked the fact that this once tench heaven had been ruined by the appearance of generation of bream, so greedy and annoying that even the dedicated carp anglers who seemed to frequent this water have abandoned it to mother nature. Literally those bream might soon be behind the ruin of one of Warwickshire's great tench waters. The dam b$*#%£s eat anything you cast in, and worst of all there is obviously tench still around but the bream just get to your baits first.

After four hours of three pound bream shitting up my gear and scoffing down just about every morsel of bait, I finally got a blinding run which resulted in me being connected to a fish that did not fight like a Tesco bag full of silt. Thank god it turned out to be a lovely beautiful green tench.

Quite literally after I watched that fish swim I reeled in my second rod, packed away my gear and went home to mow the lawn. Yes, I actually voluntarily stopped fishing whilst I still had time to fish and went home to do the garden, and honestly I can't see me going back to Ryton for any serious fishing in the future. 

Little did I know that my next outing after tench would end on a much higher note than my last. This time and with my duck broken I headed back to Napton to try and get back in tune with the tench fish there. On arriving I was met with a joyful sight: British waterways, the CRT or whatever people control the canals, had been pumping dirty muddy water into the clear waters of Napton for a couple of days it would seem and seeing the happy little fishes topping all over the dirty water I thought a good day could be on the cards.

After a quick subtle racking of the swim using my mini stealth rake, which makes little more disturbance than a spod, I was happy that the swim I was about to start fishing was clear of weed and debris. With the water now even cloudier than before I deposited a few loose balls of ground bait laced with casters and corn onto the spot. 

One and a half hours later I was convinced that I had in some way ruined the swim. Maybe the rake, stealthy as it is, was too much or simply the fish weren't comfortable in the new dirty water. Whatever it was they weren't biting. A quick reccy down the bank revealed nobody was fairing any better and rather than make a rash move to another area I opted to sit it out and play out my gamble on raking the swim. My patience paid off when a small patch of bubbles emanated at the back of the raked area. The tench were here and on course for my bait. A few knocks and nudges later and the float rose from the water slowly in a very deliberate manner and a tench was on. In a hectic spell I landed five pristine tench, both males and female between two and five pounds all only two rod lengths out.

Little did I know there was still better to come. I have often said that although outwardly I may essentially look like I am tench fishing at Napton, the fact remains that I always fish here with crucians in mind. By that I mean I fish very sensitive rigs strong enough to stop tench and refined enough to trip up shy and very rare ancient crucians that ghost around this venue driving us a bit mad. Thank god I do always fish this way as not long after watching another tench swim off and recasting my rig I spotted a suspicious flip of fish a bit further out than my float. The last time I saw this sort of thing here I had an absolute red letter day.

The next bite was nothing to shout home about. A small rise in the float preceded a slow slide away and I fully expected to be playing a tench. The fight was different though and I soon suspected a big rudd was the culprit. When I saw a huge dinner plate size golden side roll under the rod tip I in no uncertain terms pooped myself. It was a huge crucian! Luckily there was no fuss and it went into my net quickly before I realised it was hooked by the smallest possible amount of flesh and could have easily come off. But it didn't and as I folded back the net my eyes lit up at the sight that lay before me. The size of these old fish is shocking when you see them out of the water and if it weren't for them being so thin in the back these fish would easily be contenders for the UK record.

The weight though doesn't matter to me, all I cared about is that fact that after all my efforts over the last few years chasing after these wonderfully rare little group of highly prized fish, I am lucky enough to have captured another one and I think my face says it all...

You'd think that having put number five on the bank might have satiated my urges to catch these wondrous fish. Well it hasn't! And in fact the sight of that fabulous fish just serves as fuel to the fires of my desire to catch more. Hence I will be resident for most of the summer at Napton I should think now.

Catch up part 1 - Lure sessions of yaw.

Well I am back after a brief blogging hiatus and holy cow, have I got some catching up to do here. In short I have not been hiding under some out of place rock in the corner of a field in upstate New York, nor have I been tied to a chair blindfolded in an abandoned factory in Nuneaton. Instead my life has exploded as much did my garden when the UK finally dragged its shivering land mass through spring, and that is in part why I find myself not just writing a catch-up blog but in fact a series of catch up blogs to cover this blacked out period.

Really, I feel as if my feet have barely touched the floor since the start of May. Away from fishing it seems half the organizations in the world wanted oversized promotional printed balloons, and half of them wanted them in half the time it takes to print them. Add to that my enormous garden which exploded like a claymore full of brambles which I have taken by the thorns and am currently still fighting, section by section, to make safe for the now super inquisitive BB; a brief and rare sunny holiday has been enjoyed in Wales with the family and if all that wasn't enough I have gone fishing crazy with the arrival of the warmth, fishing so many sessions since I last wrote that the only way to recall what I have done is by the pictures I've left on blank pages of this blog! So here we go back in time in the style of H G Wells time machine...back past green tench...past trips to far away fisheries...past the Morlocks and Eloi....back back in time to...Radford bottom Lock!

Yes, apparently the furthest back I can remember from these pictures was a fishing trip onto the Canal with my good friend and fellow blogger Mick from Piscatorial Quagswagging where we went in search of his old nemesis the Zander, and from what I recall it was a pretty good session for me. The chilly grip of winter still clung to spring as the two of us met up deep in the Warwickshire countryside. Mick was already fishing when I arrived with two gaudy floats positioned very professionally along the hull of a moored boat. Not long after saying hello one of the previously mentioned floats did a little dally before tootling off down the canal. Ever the experienced zed basher, Mick waited and waited before striking hard into nothing. The bite though was enough for me to cast my dead line along the hull of the boat, before being a right cheeky begger and poaching out his water by casting a light drop shot rig in between the lines of the dead bait rods. It only took a few casts to catch a tiny schoolie zed from right the trench next to the boat.

After moving through a few other swims we arrived at an area where I can remember thinking, 'I don't like the look of this'. As always my hunch was wrong and my float was soon heading off very quickly down the canal. Convinced a zander was the culprit, I was shocked when after a brief tussle a long spawned out perch rolled into my net. For all the dead baits I've cast into to canals I think I have only ever caught three perch on them. A month or so earlier this perch would have been quite a beast but at this point it was a very long way off regaining any condition.

Through the morning we tried all the known spots, one that looked perfect for zander and a ton we tried just to cover water. With three dead bait rods and one lure rod we covered just about every inch of water we could, with not much success at all really. It wasn't until we backtracked to the moored boat that we finally got some reward by way of a proper bus job; not one, but three fish all came along in the same few minutes of madness. My dead rod was the first to spring into life followed by Mick's. For some reason I chucked mine back out straight away with my fish in the net and whilst Mick waited for his active but unmoving float to go, I landed a second zed instantly to make myself a nice brace of schoolies.

Mick left not long after this, with cooking duties to attend to, but with a little more time to hand I stuck around to have a play around the lock with the dropshot rod. I love drop shotting and with some new Realistic shad spilt tails to try out it seemed the perfect time to try the out. There seemed to be small zander hanging out all round the features of the lock. Literally I did not seem to be able to go wrong! I took them off the stony incline into the lock mouth, from tight to the wall, from of the snag pile collected at the end of the overflow run and in the eddy it formed. Either these lures were the bomb or I was very lucky on this occasion. I think I added six more small zedlets to my tally before I left and it left me pondering the question...

Maybe I should take up competition lure fishing?

Whilst on the subject of lure fishing I have to regale one of my most exciting recent lure fishing experiences I've had, which happened not long after my canal zander adventure. A little while ago I bought at a very reasonable price some of these savage gear 3D suicide ducks.

Literally the 26g versions of these lures I bought retail at the insane price of £15 per lure. I have to be honest and truthful and say that I am far too stingy to ever throw a fifteen quid lure in a lake, but at half price I was hooked into buying a pair and after watching the online promo videos I was dying to fling these out. I had originally gone up to Napton to tench fish but after spending hours watching a motionless float and rolling tench in the middle of the lake, I packed away the float gear and pulled out a lure rod and ducks to see if I could tempt a pike to strike in the shallows at the south end of the lake.

After covering all the shallow water with the duck lure and being convinced I was fishing well, I was about to give up under the assumption that the pike were unwilling to come up and take something off the top. The water I was casting in was getting deeper and I never thought for a moment that a pike would be hanging round mid-water in such deep water. That was until on one retrieve when I was sure I spotted the water swell up like a fish had just struck but missed. Half thinking I'd spooked carp lying under the surface, I cast again hoping it was, in fact, a pike. A lo and behold it was! I cast well beyond where I thought it happened and just as the lure came into the target zone a wake appeared six feet behind the lure. I slowed my retrieve just slightly and boom, the fish accelerated into and right through the duck sending water everywhere and disappearing in a boil. It wasn't the biggest pike I have ever caught but damn it was the most exciting and one that has lit a fire to do some more surface lure fishing as soon as I get a chance  

Oh, and I went back and bought another pair of those lures next time I passed that shop to make sure I have these super exiting ducklings in my lure armoury for many years to come.