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.
