And
now for something completely different. (I'm sure I've heard that
before somewhere).
Having
had a trawl through a few websites, I came across a fishing venue
site called spotfish. I plugged in my postcode and it suggested a few
venues. Most of these I knew about, but one of the closest was new to
me – Sheephouse Farm in Maidenhead. So, for a change I decided to
give it a go, if I'm not careful I end up fishing the same venues, so
I like to mix things up for a change and the attraction of fishing a
tench lake sounded like an interesting diversion.
I
arrived at the venue at 7am. Paid up (£7.50 for one rod) and
wandered down to the lake with my usual pile of gear. I chatted to
one of the regulars who advised I didn't need to go too far out, and
that corn was the in bait at the moment. The things that struck me
straight away were:
- what a lovely peaceful place
- how clear the water was (I could see at least 6 foot down)
- how quickly it dropped off (it was 6 foot down just a few yards out)
- how big the lake was – about 6 acres
- the nice features on the far side that screamed tench (maybe next time)
I
set up on a nice concrete peg with a view to fishing two pole lines.
11 metres straight out, and 11 metres to the left at the bottom of the
slope (about 3 metres from the bank). I potted in a few 4mm pellets and had a
go at plumbing up.
I
had a suitable rig for the inside line (7ft deep) but I had to knock
up a new one for the main line as it was about 12ft deep out there. A
quick 0.8g float set-up to 0.12 line and a 16 hook and I was in
business.
 |
| Deep, clear water near the bank |
I
started with double red maggot - thought this might give me problems
with the smaller fish, but you have to start somewhere. 20 minutes
dead ahead and absolutely nothing. So I tried the left hand line.
Five
minutes later and the float moved a little, and 30 seconds later it
dipped sharply. I struck and yards of no.12 elastic shot out.
Contact. A spirited fight later and I started to see a tench coming
up through the clear water – it was an amazing sight to see the
fish coming up towards the surface (makes such a change from heavily
coloured waters). Before I knew it, there was 4lb of tench in the
landing net.
I
re-fed both lines (trying to concentrate the feed) with a few pellets
plus a pinch of corn and red maggot and went back to the left hand
line. 10 minutes later and a repeat performance. A lovely tench in
clear water was just about to come into netting range when the hook
pulled out. Not ideal, but not a disaster – if I could keep
catching tench like this I didn't care.
I
switched around a bit at this point. Tried the other line (nothing),
and on a trip back to the left hand line I had another bite and
another good tug on the elastic, but again the hook pulled. So I
stepped up to a 14 hook. At this point another angler turned up to my
left (about 20 metres away), although he was relatively quiet, he did
bang some banksticks in and chuck out a few leads... and I never did
get another bite on this line.
I
persevered with the straight ahead line, and a bite on maggot
produced a tench of 4lb 4oz, before losing another. I tried corn
(nothing) back to maggot (small perch) and big pellet (nothing) but
the fish were clearly moving around rather than settling, and the
breeze that had picked up was hampering both feeding and
presentation.
The
perch were tiny, but not so numerous as to be a real pain, and one
switch back to corn produced another tench of 4lb 8oz. Try as a might
for the next two hours, all I could manage was a few small perch. The
few other anglers about had taken the odd fish too, but even they had
dried up as we approach midday.
I
tried a few more tricks, but only perch resulted.
At
about 13:30 I called it quits. This is a very interesting venue and
one I would like to crack – I can see how some folks could catch
well over a dozen fish in a session on the right day. Great scenery,
quiet venue, red kites overhead and well away from the usual
carp-waters (although there are some big grass carp present). I will
be back at some point.
Catch
list:
Tench
- 3
Perch
– 10
Total
weight 13lb
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