June 13th Little Horseshoe

Richard Snelson who is in the Tench Fishers ask me if he could spend a while just looking at what I use tackle wise and how I approach tench fishing in general. Richard is a very accomplished fly fisherman and wanted to turn his hand to a bit of coarse fishing.

We decided that Little Horseshoe might be a good option it’s about halfway between our respective homes. After having a very nice breakfast in the nearby cafe we made our way to the fishery.

The previous days downpour had given way to slightly cloudy sky but the temperature was much higher at about 18c. This was the first significant rain that we had had for some months so I was unsure what effect this might have on the tench fishing.

The lake has plenty of features and can be quite deep in places. I chose a swim where it went down to about 16 ft at about 20yds which was at the bottom of the shelf. There was some weed on the downward slope that I just needed to clear. The bottom had some gravel so we used inline feeders and red maggots (plastic).

When we first arrived there was some fizzing from tench along the bank, so something was active. However as the day wore on these disappeared.

Since we cast out at 9am there had been a few line bites which I thought could have been smaller fish mopping up some of the hemp and frozen maggots that we had put out.

Then at 12.30 we had a good take on the left hand rod and after the thing got stuck in the weed a few times we bundled a nice looking perch into the landing net. It looked a decent size and certainly over 2lbs. So we let it recover in the landing net whilst I recast and sorted out the weighing and camera kit.

On the scales she went 2lbs 11oz and was quite hollow.

Then at 1.25pm I lost what I think was a tench in the weed, followed by a fish falling off the hook which i think was another perch. We were getting plenty of line bites as the time went by.

At 2.05pm I had another take and landed a roach of 1lbs 3oz.

Sadly the time moved on and we didn’t have another touch or see any signs of the tench, or the 430 carp that are supposed to be in there.

At 9pm a little disappointed Richard and I said our goodbyes and looked forward to fishing together again soon.