Hard Going

Its been a while seen my last post, been busy with work, life and an occasional fishing session.

The morning was cold and bright, not exceptional tench fishing conditions, but I was itching to give it a go.

I arrived nice and early and parked the car up, but I wasn't going to have the lake to mysekf. With two cars already parked up, I feared my favourite swim would be taken.

I barrowed the gear up the hill and had a look about, there was a bivvy set up of both side of the lake, and one was alarmingly close to where I wanted to fish.
Fortunately, they were a couple of swims away and I settled in to the favoured swim. The water level was lower than expected and it would make fishing difficult with the frost under foot.

I soon had the pod setup with three rods all fished less than 40 yards from the bank, two baits were tucked into the margins left and right close to the reeds.

Breakfast and tea was soon on the stove and just as the kettle had boiled the right hand rod was away and the spool was spinning. Picked up the rod and locked down. the rod bent over nicely and after a short fight the paddle tail of a tench kicked on the surface.

The tench was soon subdued and I slid it into the net. Not bad on a cold April morning.

It was quickly unhooked and slid back into cold water.

Another bag of hemp and casters were soon on the rig and it was swung out to the margins.

Time to sit back and enjoy the breakfast and brew. That was the last time I was to enjoy the comforts of the chair.

With the final slurp of the tea, the middle method feeder rig was away and as the rod bent over, the tell tale plod of a bream on the line was all to apparent. It same in like a wet sack, and was soon in the net. a fish in the four pound bracket, which seems to be the average size for the lake.

Rebait, recast and as the feeder hit the water, the right hand marginal rod was away again. Plod, plod, any other bream. This time it was unhooked in the net in the water and soon was away. Rebait, recast and middle rod is off again. Mmmmmm I wonder if this is, yep a bream.

For the next 3 hours it was bream city and it didn't matter what range or what bait I had on, they devoured the lot.

By 2pm, I'd had enough and with bait running out, I packed up. As I was packing up, the lake surface was live with rolling bream of various sizes and had I had the bait, I could have easily bagged 100lb of slabs in quick time. But in the end 15 bream averaging 4lb and a solitary tench was enough.

Whilst the air temperature was cold, it was nice to see the abundance of wildlife over the lake and in the edges. Moorhens were busying themselves with nest building, the Barn Owl was making frequent hunts in the growing grass and even the carp were jumping. As the final piece of gear was loaded onto the barrow, a solitary House Martin skimmed the surface of the lake in search of emerging bugs.