A brace before lunchtime

 

It's the early bird, according to sagely widom, that catches the worm and what's true of avian eating habits is often also true of angling. To bend the proverb slightly, in my experience it's often the "early angler that catches the tench" and so, with thoughts of tench never currently far from my mind I set the alarm for 5am. In the event, I woke up before 5, crept out of the house and had completed the dog walk and loaded the car by 5:30 and was at the lake for 6:00am and twenty minutes later my line was in the water. 

The pool, unlike me, seemed loathe to awake from its slumber and was giving little away in terms of visual clues. No tench were bubling, no crucians fizzing, small rudd were neither topping for fun or jumping in fear, and even the moorhens who can usually be counted on to amuse with their noisy and distracting antics seemed to have fallen prey to the lake's apathetic vibe.

I underarmed a hair-rigged Robin Red pellet and method feeder rig out into the channel, poured a coffee and settled in for what I suspected might prove to be a long wait in light of the pool's apparent soporofic disposition.

Pete and Eric, two of the lake's regulars, turned up and settled themselves in neighbouring swims, and with their arrival came a change in fortune. My bite alarm sounded its alert and I found myself playing a spirited fish. Gratefully received, the "blank saver" tipped the scales at 4lb 6oz. 

I recast, hopeful that the metaphorical tide was turning and that this first capture would preempt a feeding spell, but the lake reverted to its somnolent stupour. Time seemed to pleasingly slow and "collect" rather than pass in the normal manner, and I leant back in my chair content just to be there, in a world of suspended animation. Normally when fishing my mind is active, hatching plans, ruminating about tactics to outsmart my piscene protagonists, but today my thought processes had taken on a passivity that was in keeping with the surroundings.

A couple of hours went by before a second tench decided to make an appearance, a fish which in size was almost the twin of the first fish, being just a couple of ounces lighter at 4lb 4oz. This concluded the fish catching activity for the day, although I fished on for another couple of hours. 

Dave, who lives on the same street as me and  has recently joined the syndicate popped by for an hour to chat and watch, but I was unable to conjure up any action for him to spectate, my bobbin remaining stubbornly motionless. By half past eleven my tackle was packed away in the car, and after brief chats with Eric and Pete who were fishing on for a while longer I took my leave of the lake. 

On the early morning drive to the pool I had been treated to a wonderfully eccentric and very "British" run of items on Radio 4 as I drove through the lanes of England's "green and pleasant land." (no Satanic mills in the Leicestershire coutryside!). The Shipping Forecast, with its wonderfully evocative names, was followed by "Prayer for the Day" (which I didn't even know was a thing, up until yesterday only knowing "Thought for the Day" which follows a couple of hours later), with the triad being completed by "Farmer's World." The prayer in the second of three progams was a prayer for "peace." With my morning consisting of long periods of pleasant and peaceful inactivity punctuated by a couple of brief interludes of tench catching activity, I think it was answered for me as I found my peace at the pool. 

"Doing the knowledge" (& a new PB)

Lakes, like wives and offspring, have a way of keeping you humble. If the success of my previous two sessions had led me to conclude that catching tench from the pool was going to be easy my next session was to disavow me of any such delusion. I had less than three hours in which to fish, and those three hours were in the afternoon which is rarely prime feeding time for tench, but I arrived with hope and a modicum of expectation. My main objective this season is to get to know the lake and so I chose to experiment and ignore the area which had proved productive and provided all my tench thus far, and instead went for a "walk on the wild side." I have already mentally divided the lake into sections, and one section is dominated by an enormous bed of Norfolk reed and is in an area less tamed than that surrounding the rest of the pool. Despite the reedbeds looking like an obvious hiding and holding up spot for crucians and a likely patrol area for tench my bobbin remained lifeless, my alarm silent. I plan to return to the reedbeds when Spring has fully metamorphosised into Summer, although I suspect it will be with a float rod. My angling inactivity, however, was more than compensated for by the activities of the Reed Warblers as they flew in and out of the reeds, busily doing whatever it is Reed Warblers do.

Two days later, and my next session following the reedbed blank saw me return to the area from which I'd caught all my tench to date. I arrived at the lake at 6:00am, with a light wind and a noticable chill in the air. Three hours passed with the pool appearing to be in an implacable, passive mood. There was no bubbling or fizzing to behold, and only the occasional leap of a small silver fish, doubtless being harried by marauding perch. I started to rehearse the usual platitudes in my mind: "it's a tricky lake and you're new on it", "manage your expectations, you're currently in a learning phase, Jon" and, as the first hint of desperation began to surface: "just one fish is all it takes." 

By now, the weather had grown milder and the chill receded, when the pleasant calm was interrupted by the shrill alert of the alarm. The fish, which turned out to be a fine male of 5lb 7oz, fought well before surrendering to the indignity of the landing net, camera and scales.

Shortly afterwards another tench was tempted beyond its ability to resist, but dogged resistance for a couple of minutes gave way to that horrible slack feeling that accompanies a hook pull. However, I wasn't too disappointed as one of my faults as an angler (of which there are many) is that once I've had my first decent fish of the day and have removed the "monkey from my shoulder", I lack the single-minded ambition to press home my advantage, not posessing the requisite greed and avarice that is the requirement and hallmark of the really good angler.

An hour elapsed before I was once again called into action, the fish exhibiting a slow but determined and dogged desire to avoid making my full acquaintance before eventually conceding defeat. As soon as I saw the tench in the net I knew that this was my biggest from the pool to date, and so it turned out to be, registering a weight of 6lb 8oz, a new PB. 

After the weighing and photographing rituals were completed (thanks is due to Eric who was fishing a couple of swims down from me for the photos) and the fish returned to its natural habitat, I decided to pack up in leisurely fashion and after briefly chatting with Eric and Pete exited the lake, locked the gate and headed back to suburbia.

Ever since first walking round the lake, I have always maintained that my first season on it will be predominantly an exercise in learning. In the days before SatNavs made everything easy, would-be taxi drivers would spend weeks pouring over detailed road maps learning routes and street names, an activity known as "doing the knowledge." As I begin the journey of getting to know the moods and foibles of the pool, I feel as if engaged on a similar task. My five sessions to date have resulted in seven tench (four of which have exceeded 5lbs in weight) but have also seen me twice leave the lake with a dry landing net. My two attemps at building a swim with groundbait and loose feed have failed to elicit any fish, and float fishing has also, thus far, proved fruitless. All seven tench have fallen to small hair rigged pellets and Method feeder and a "trapping" approach that relies on placing the bait in areas that tench are likely to patrol, recasting only a couple of times an hour, and waiting for a fish's interest and curiosity to be piqued as it passes through. 

There is much knowledge still to acquire, and its acquisition will only come as a result of experience, trying new things, and putting in the hours. I have much to learn but I'm beginning to see the veracity in the words my infants school teacher told me over half a century ago: "it's fun to learn." I didn't believe her then. I do now.

(A perfect) morning has broken

 

Fishing is always good, even the "bad sessions", but yesterday morning was perfect. Not because I fished perfectly (I didn't, my human imperfection and fallibility being just as evident in my angling as in the rest of my life!), but because there was nothing about it that I retrospectively would have wished to be different. 

An early start saw me arrive at the lake shortly after 6am and by 6:30 I had a bait in the water. I opted for a swim that gave me a number of options and elected to employ the Method feeder and hair rigged pellet approach that had worked for me on my previous visit. My first cast had been in the water for about half an hour when the bite alarm alerted me to the fact that an inquisitive tench had made an error of judgement, and a brief but lively tussle ensued before the fish saw my side of the argument and submitted to the folds of the net. The scales showed a pleasing weight of 5lb 5oz and after admiring her and taking a couple of quick photographs she was returned to her watery home.

Two other club members, Pete and Eric, arrived as I was playing the fish, and set up a couple of swims to my left. One of the beauties of the pool is the way that even when other anglers are on the lake, the plentiful bankside trees and foliage ensure that you have your own private slice of paradise and it still feels as if you have the lake to yourself. That's not to say that I'm a curmodgenly or unsociable angler (both Pete and Eric visited my swim for a chat, and I theirs) but there is something magical in our fast-paced, overstimulated modern world, of feeling alone in nature, with just the antics of the waterfowl and sound of birdsong for company.

I didn't have to wait too long after recasting for my reverie to be disturbed, the welcome intrusion to my daydreaming turning out to be a tench of 3lb 14oz. Following the group's rules, both sides of the fish were photographed and put on the group WhatsApp along with a record of its weight.

More than happy with the brace, I recast and decided to permit myself another hour of fishing before surrendering to the responsibilities of "real life" (why do we only describe the more onerous or tedious aspects of life as "real"?), rebaited, recast and almost exactly an hour later found myself attached to my third and final fish of the morning. At 3lb 10oz, it proved to be the smallest fish of the day and was, like the other two, in fine, healthy condition.

I packed up at a leisurely place, bade farewell to the others and set off on my pleasant 20 minute homeward drive through the countryside. On arriving home I checked the group WhatsApp to discover that shortly after my departure Eric had landed a glorious crucian of exactly 2lb in weight. It really had been a perfect morning.

Commencing the puzzle

 

My first two sessions on the  tench lake confirmed what I'd already guessed: catching won't be easy, but the challenge of solving the puzzle and the atmosphere that the lake exudes will make the experience a pleasure, albeit at times a frustrating one. My debut at the lake saw me meet a few of the other syndicate members, all of whom were friendly and welcoming, and begin the process of making plans and formulating a few provisional conclusions which are likely, of course, in time be revisited and revised. 

I set up in a corner which offered tree cover on both sides and in which emerging lilly pads could be seen below the water's surface. In a month or so, when the lillies have broken through the water's film and are displayed in all of their glory it will have the appearance of being exactly the type of tench swim that Bernard Venables would have created for Mr Crabtree to fish. It goes without saying that Mr Crabtree and Peter would have landed half a dozen tench between them, whereas my float remained motionless all morning. I had elected to float fish with sweetcorn as bait, and my first retrospective tentative wondering revolves around whether the "yellow peril" (normally my "go-to" tench bait) may be less than suited to this venue. This is a wild and lightly fished lake, and  its inhabitants are not dependent on angler's bait, unlike their cousins in commercial fisheries. Being lightly fished for, they may not even see sweetcorn as a food source and its highly visual garish brightness may be a cue for caution rather than attraction. Perhaps, so my early thinking goes, trusting to more natural baits such as maggots or worms might prove more productive. However, despite not even managing to elicit a single bite from the resident tench or tremble on the float, I thoroughly enjoyed my first visit to the lake. A large bumble bee kept me company for a while, industriously buzzing around my swim before departing to be busy elsewhere, a moorhen watched her nest, while a trio of coots engaged in playful mock combat with each other, a red kite soared and rode the thermals overhead, and there was a pleasant backing track produced by the constant birdsong. There are worse places to blank!

Seven days later and I was back. Throughout the week I had been forming plans and constructing theories, all the while aware that I'm at that intoxicating but frustrating period with a new lake in which you don't even know what you don't know. I arrived at the lake at 6:30am and, watched by a herd of inquisitive young cows, unlocked the gate. I was alone on the lake, and had the place to myself for the entirity of my stay. I tackled up one rod on the float with maggots as bait, while the other rod was set up with a Method feeder and hair rigged small Robin Red pellet as bait. Almost three fishless hours had passed when the bite alarm screeched to life as a fish made off for the centre of the lake. After a determined tussle the tench resigned itself to the folds of the net, and on the scales registered a satsfying 5lb 4oz. 

I rebaited and recast and half an hour later the same rod was off again. This time the culprit was slightly smaller, but still a very welcome fish at 4lb 14oz. 

I fished on for a further hour enjoying the sights and sounds of the lake while both my float and my bobbin resolutely refused to move even a millimeter.. It would be premature in the extreme at this stage to come to any conclusions regarding the lake and how to frequently fool its inhabitants, but every session in this my first year will be a jigsaw piece in a bigger puzzle. What already seems clear is that this is not a body of water that will give up its residents lightly, and that she will at times prove to be a moody and capricious, yet always beautiful mistress. Of this, however, I am certain: whatever ups and downs and "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" the lake deals me this summer, I'm going to thoroughly enjoy myself and squeeze every bit of enjoyment I can out of the resumption of my tench fishing escapades, almost thirty years after I last regularly pursued the species. It is (and some will get the pun) just what the doctor ordered. 

Project Tinca

 

I can still remember my first ever tench. Fishing intentionally for tench with a brown crumb filled open feeder and sweetcorn hookbait on my local club lake on an after school evening aged 14, the Fairy Liquid bottle-top shot up to the Milbro rod's glass fibre butt and a brief tussle resulted in the capture of a lovely olive flanked tench of somewhere around three pound in weight. The following years saw me embark on a tench fishing apprenticeship that resulted in me catch my favourite quarry on float, feeder and on the then still "new fangled" tactic of bolt rig and boilie, with Richworth Salmon Supreme boilies proving the favourite of the club lake tench. As the 1980's drew to a close I caught what remains my biggest ever tench, a fish that weighed just over five pounds, and have barely fished for them since ...... until now. 

That's not to say that I haven't caught any tench in the following decades, but these have been chance encounters while engaging in general float fishing, often while using traditional split cane rods and centre pin reels. The tench captured have ranged from tiny, slippery "bars of soap" (there are few fish sweeter looking than a small tench of four to six ounces) to respectable fish of two or three pounds that put a pleasing bend in the cane and gave a good account of themselves, but none have been intentionally targetted or sought after.

However, all of that looks set to change. While my winters spent in pursuit of perch are a pretty standard permanent feature, I'm always conscious of a slight sense of aimlessness in my summer fishing. That's not to suggest that I don't enjoy fishing in the warmer months or that I fail to concentrate sufficiently while doing so, but there is rarely an ongoing deliberate focus that sees me through the whole summer. I flit from water to water and from species to species as I wait for the temperature to drop, the days to shorten and my perch obsession to resume. 

The reason for the change is that I've just joined a very small club of less than thirty members who have have access to and run a small, wild and mostly untamed lake hidden in a lovely corner of rural England. The lake's environs are far less supressed and domesticated than the sanitised commercial fisheries that dominate the modern UK angling scene, and its lightly managed state forms a large part of its attraction.

But beyond the attractiveness of a lake unsullied by onsite cafes and tackle shops is the prospect of what lives and swims in its depths. In addition to the ubiquitous small roach and rudd and the perch who feed on them, the pool is inhabited by a good head of tench and genuine English crucian carp, many of the latter sourced from the private breeding ponds of the country's foremost crucian expert and enthusiast, a now nanogenearian former English teacher and author. I have no expectation that either the tench or the crucians will prove easy to catch. Neither is dependant on angler's bait as a primary food source, and crucians in particular are notoriously finicky, but the liklihood that each noteable fish caught will have been hard earned makes the anticipation of fishing for them all the more seductive. I supect that this is a lake destined to "get under my skin" and to provide a puzzle that even though it may turn out to have the beating of me, will be engrossing and fun to engage with. I love a project..... 

Farm pond carping

I can't remember if I read it or heard it or even where I read or heard it, but the phrase has stayed with me: "The English countryside is less a place than an idea." Whoever it was who first made the observation is, in my opinion, bang on the money. Not just an idea but an ideal, and within the ideal lies, for me, another ideal, that of the farm pond. Of all the places that it's possible to catch carp, my favourite, is a genuine farm pond on a working farm. The carp don't have to be big (in such venues they rarely are- a double is still a big fish and a mid double a monster) but there's something almost magical about a small body of water full of carp that are the progeny of their forefathers who were first stocked into their agrarian setting years ago in simpler times. It was to such a pond that my son and I set off for today, for a few hours of mid- April carp bothering activity.

We were accompanied by a friend of my son's who had never previously been fishing, and so the pond we selected was chosen not only for its pleasing surroundings, but also because the carp of this particular lake are notably fecund, and many years of succesful spawning have not led (as they probably should have done) to the farmer thinning out the stocks, and so the fish exist in the lake in permanently hungry abundance, with the result that we could almost guarantee that his angling duck would be broken several times over during the course of a short morning session.

We opted to fish two rods between the three of us to ensure that there always be one of either myself or my son able to act as coach-cum-ghillie for his pal. One rod was fished on the Method, with the other a lighter set-up utilising a 3BB porcupine quill float and a centre-pin reel. The conditions were challenging while the fishing, as anticipated, was not. The wind howled and whistled and whipped accross the pond, but the three of us were soon steadily catching, and by the time we decided to call stumps, we had probably brought something in the region of forty carp to the bank. Sweetcorn had proved the fish's downfall on the float, while a small hair-rigged Robin Red pellet had brought success on the Method.

In all honesty, the fishing on the pond is, although compensated for by the attractive setting, too easy to retain the interest for long of an experienced angler, unless he or she is one of those irritating types who insists on counting every fish and shouting out regular updates with each one landed. "Fifty four, fifty five .... oooh that's number fifty six", the self-aggrandising and voluble angler sadly unaware that no-one else is in the remotest bit interested in their accumulating tally. 

We retreated to the welcome warmth of the car, and although I suspect we have failed to recruit my son's friend to the regular "brotherhood of the angle" (otherwise known as the ranks of the addicted) all three of us had enjoyed a peaceful and pleasurable morning in a quintessentially English pastoral environment, and in our modern world of loudly competing voices, volatile echo chambers, and tensions between nations, such peace is to be prized.  

 

Mediocrity is my middle name

The title of this piece is somewhat misleading. My actual middle name is Murray (which isn't much better!), but my angling results at the moment hover perilously between the categories of mediocre and disappointing. After several years of relative success, especially with specimen sized perch, 2024 saw a downturn in my fortunes with no fish of noteable size of any species banked, and so far 2025 seems determined to prolong the run of piscatorial underacheivement. The irony, though, is that last year was one of my most enjoyable seasons for quite some time, largely because almost all of my sessions were fished in the company of my son, or with some of the good friends who I've collected over the course of my angling years, or both. 

Today's expedition, a few snatched hours on an early April morning, saw me once again fail to set the angling world ablaze with my escapades, as my friend David and I visited a local lake. I arrived before David and had my first carp on the bank just twenty minutes after making my first cast and before his arrival. I had decided, on a whim, to eschew my normal centre pin and quill float approach, in favour of a Method feeder, with a 2 pound test curve rod, freespool reel and bite alarm. Some regular readers may now be throwing their hands up in horror and recoiling at such wanton backsliding into "traditional angling" heresy, but there are times when a solid screaming tone on the alarms and a rod jerking and bending as the fish tears off feels like exactly what I need, besides which I consider laziness, in moderation, as much a virtue as a flaw. 

Shortly after landing that first carp, a second tore off with my hair rigged Robin Red pellet in its mouth, only for the hook to pull as I drew it towards the net. However, with one fish banked and another hooked and almost landed and less than half an hour gone, I felt confident that the morning would go on to provide a steady procession of fish to the unhooking mat. It didn't. 

David arrived and set up in the swim next to me, which enabled us to pass the time chatting and catching up with each other's news and lives, which in the event was no bad thing in light of the absence of anything much in the way of angling action!

I added a second fish, a surprise barbel, before David eventually got off the mark with an F1. I am no fan of barbel, coarse fishing's monarch of moving water, being stocked in lakes and ponds but the fish gave a spirited fight and was a welcome diversion  from inactivity.

Although the Spring sun was bright in the sky, a chill Easterly wind kept the temperature down and the  other anglers around the lake (of which there were more than is normal for this pond) were similarly struggling with only the odd fish being landed. My final fish of the morning was a bream, enabling me to console myself with the fact that what I'd lacked in numbers had been compensated for by variety. David was less fortunate, his second and final fish completing for him a brace of F1s. 

By lunchtime I was back home with my net drying in the garden and my tackle neatly and safely enconsed in the garage. Perhaps it's an age thing - I am, after all, now a grandfather and rapidly approaching my seventh decade - but these days I find myself measuring success less in relation to size or numbers ("just as well", I hear you say) but, rather, in terms of enjoyment and, fortunately for me, I've enjoyed both of my, mostly fishless, excursions of 2025 to date. As many a bankside sage has informed me: "it's called fishing, not catching" and from such a truism I draw comfort!

All Quiet on the Eastern Fen

 

The big wide world beyond the Fenland scene in which I'd inserted myself was going more than a little bit crazy. The established order of things was rapidly being turned upside down, and between the two of them a narcissistic US President with an over-inflated ego and no real understanding of international diplomacy and a Russian dictator with aggressive imperialistic designs were making a mess of things and bringing us closer to a global war than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis. But on the Sixteen Foot drain as I screwed my eyes up against the wind and stared at my pike float, for a few hours the world shrunk, its problems temporarily forgotten, and I was happy to surrender the totality of my concentration to the, ultimately unsuccesful, attempt to add to my (admittedly meager) tally of Fenland pike. 

I make an annual pilgrimage (an apt description considering the company with whom I make it) to the Fens with a small bunch of fellow members of the Christian Anglers group, a club that now numbers around 120 fisherfolk whose common bonds are fishing and faith, and on this occasion the group included both my son and one of my brothers. 

To say that the Fenland drains can be inhospitable and less than easy to fish is to dabble in understatement, but this yearly event is one that proves all of the cliches and truisms of angling to be accurate: there really is more to fishing than catching fish, and while we descend on the drain knowing that only a few of us will catch we make the journey equally confident that such knowledge doesn't bother us. 

It was probably slightly less than an hour after setting up that the first pike of the day was landed, a jack of perhaps five pounds making its way angrily into my brother Andy's landing net. We all took this to be an encouraging sign, although experience told us that the Sixteen Foot drain was likely to be capricious and (as with swallows and summers) one pike is no guarantee of whatever may or may not ensue.

The morning wore on, and as lunchtime (bacon rolls, cooked by one of our number and shared by all,  always form a part of this particular get-together) grew closer, Matt struck into a pike which it soon became clear was significantly bigger than the day's first fish. A short tussle resulted in him displaying what would be the best fish of the day, a mean and magnificent looking female of fourteen pounds and six ounces. 

Morning gave way to afternoon and as the sky turned cloudier and the wind grew colder, Ray, who runs this stretch of water, appeared with warm sausage rolls to keep morale and spirits high. John, fishing at the far end of the row of anglers managed a brace of early afternoon jacks to complete the day's catching. 

Most of those fishing had travelled reasonable distances to do so, and with a darkening sky taking on a more threatening demeanour, we gathered to present Matt with the trophy for the day's largest specimen, to say our goodbyes, and to offer a brief prayer of thanks for what had been a thoroughly enjoyable day and another one for our friend and club member Roy, in advance of his imminent surgery.

Maybe next year will see me renew my own personal bankside acquaintance with the gloriously green and mottled pike of the Fens but, while I have only limited confidence that this may prove to be the case, I have no such hesitation in my certainty that next year's event will be as rich and full of pleasure as all its predecessors have been. As our friends in the Flyfishers Club would have it: "Piscator non solum piscatur."