THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD.

     I walked a long and difficult road to catch my very first Tench as a teenager. In those days, I was fishing South-west London's Royal Parks and couldn't catch one to save my life. Within a few days of leaving school and starting work I'd located all the keen anglers in my drawing office. One day whilst talking fishing when I should have been working I mentioned to workmate Bob about my failure to have ever caught a Tench. He kindly offered to take me to a lake where catching one was inevitable. Not only was it the lake that I had been fishing fruitlessly for months, he took me to my favourite swim. He was right, they were easy to catch; not only did I have my first ever Tench on the bank within half an hour but I caught it fishing exactly as I had been doing all along. Such are the inconsistencies of life.

     I never had much trouble catching them after that. We fished the Halls Angling (later, RMC) gravel pits all of which were gin clear, rich waters, full of canadian pond weed and we established methods that have certainly served me well ever since. We also fished smaller, more natural pools and eventually became moderately proficient at extracting Tench from among the fallen trees and Lily pads. Fast forward fifty years and after decades of fishing waters fundamentally free of snags, I find myself fishing one that has all of the aforementioned hazards and all those lessons are having to be re-learned.

     Tench are fine fish but they don't really excite me in the same way that large Roach, Bream and Crucians do. For a start, despite my early difficulties, I find them, generally speaking, a lot easier to catch, or at least hook these days. The problem I have been having lately is that they are making my Crucian quest really difficult. Efforts to catch them have given me a better insight into more effective Tench fishing methods, so while it is a frustration it's not all bad news.

     My initial efforts employed my Sealey Rover, not quite an avon rod but definitely a sturdier piece of split cane than, for example, my Octofloats. Fishing small baits, namely maggots, casters and bread punch, to hopefully excite a stray Crucian caught me only Tench but caught them far earlier in the spring than other members were managing. It backfired in that too many, maybe 50% of those hooked, reached sanctuary and were lost. Even those that I landed had only come to the net on damaged line, the product of brief entanglements with fallen trees and burgeoning weedbeds.

     Resorting to the pole and fishing for Rudd and Crucians in even tighter swims was I suppose doomed to failure as Tench after tench beat me up. In two mornings using 4lbs hooklengths, I hooked eight tench and landed just two fish. This clearly could not go on. It was unfair on the fish, upsetting and frustrating for me and in the end I took the methods that had proved effective from these failures and stepped up the tools used to employ them. At the first go it proved successful, for the Tench anyway.

     I fed casters, the best Tench bait by a mile in my opinion, every cast whether I was getting bites or not. Casts would never last longer than 15 minutes maximum; after all one can never be sure that the bait is not obscured or smothered in weed. Size 18 and 16 hooks suit one or two casters respectively and personally I have found that I miss fewer bites when using smaller hooks. Floats need only be heavy enough to cast accurately but that generally means heavier than I would like when using heavier rods. Because a Carp rod won't flex against the float it won't propel the tackle to the swim, you have to rely on weight to do it. Consequently when I ended up using a Carp rod with an 8lbs mainline and a 6lbs hooklength, a 5BB float was the minimum I could get away with.

     Despite these minor difficulties the changes worked. The first fish barely fought and was overpowered quickly. It wasn't particularly large anyway. My 18 hooks opened up to lose the next two fish. Forged hooks had already been ordered by the time I struck into the fourth and by then I'd moved up to a sixteen and it worked perfectly bringing a superb 7lbs plus fish to the net after a ferocious struggle. Minor adjustments to come then but at least I can now fish in the same way but closer to cover. Hopefully that will bring me some more nice Tench but , please God, some Crucians.