Well here we go the first Tench trip of the season

As most of you know I prefer to spend my tench fishing on Horseshoe lake at Leachlade. I will be spending sometime there again this year. Now for those of you who don’t know last year they had a terrible fish kill (carp) on the water. All sorts of experts were call in to find the source of the problem but none were found. I’m not going to write all the details on this blog as I’m sure it’s better to read Miles, Horseshoe blog.

There have been some comments in angling circles about how many carp had died, the number will of course will not be known. Personally it’s none of my business and I’m not close enough to the lake to have detailed knowledge. But it does lead me to a very interesting situation that happened on the two days I was on the water this week.

I arrived on Tuesday morning at 6am and moved to a swim out in the main lake. The weather was hot and sunny. I fished for the first few hours without a hint of the tench rolling or showing anywhere on the huge expanse of the lake I could see. I needed to get to the office, and on my walk around summer bay I could see a few of the carp were on the surface. Normally when the temperatures are in the 20’s the carp pile into the bay. Not now though. Those that I saw were not the large monsters that are normally around. A few of the carp anglers had a few of the stocked fish of last year which are going around 12-17lb mark which they were disappointed by. The good news for me was that a few tench had started to be caught by the carp guys.

They were not happy carpers!

With nothing showing I decided to move into summer bay during the afternoon.

My mate was there to greet me again. You need to watch out because he has a habit of jumping up on the bed in the middle of the night.

Black panther of Leachlade

Now here in summer bay  and the rest of the lake the water is down by a good foot or so and the weed hasn’t started to grow just yet. I could see the swans feeding on the bottom near where I was fishing so spodding out maggots at the moment would have been a waste of money. So I just kept recasting the feeders to top the swim up. Throughout the evening a few smaller carp were moving around. Together with a good hatch of flies.

Clouds of flies

I fished my normal swim feeder and 3 plastic maggots and two popped up fake sweetcorn again feeding maggots. Nothing happened during the night but at first light I had screaming take on the popped up corn and after a good fight a 16lb mirror lay in the bottom of the net.

That was it for the morning other than another carp fisher catching a 25lb common. As lunch time approached the wind just dropped and the complete lake was still, which is a very rare event when the sun is high in the sky. So I though that a walk around the whole lake might just show me where the tench were. I saw nothing for about 80% of the walk but there in winter bay where the wind, well light breeze had been blowing for about a week showed a couple of hundred carp on the surface in some shallow water. Some of these were real lumps of fish, and for me to guess the weight would be impossible.

Now why were these fish here and not in summer bay as they normally are? Could it be that the wind forced them there or could it be the shallow water there now means that there is no need to go to the shallower warmer water of summer bay. Who knows but I’m sure with the rumor’s of the big fish kill I wouldn’t write off Horseshoe producing some great carp this year. It might not be so prolific as previous years but I’m sure it will provide a few pb’s.

It’s very interesting that it was only me walking around looking the others preferring to stay put…..as they say you just don’t know whats around the corner! This year might just see a different Horseshoe lake be prepared to do something different as the fish might be doing the same.

The heat of the afternoon had my nets man dozing off and not paying any attention. And that’s when I knew that if he cannot smell fish then it’s time to go.

Nets man a