Having fished a broad spectrum of tench waters over the years, I have long since reached the conclusion that there is no universal best approach to catching the species, whether it be baits, tactics, weather conditions or time of day that are under consideration. Moreover, the best way of tackling a given water can and does vary from one part of the season to another, and from one season to another. To illustrate this, let me relate some experiences on three very different tench waters.

The Brick Pond
This small, mature and irregular shaped pool boasts deep, clear water and extensive beds of broad-leaved and Canadian pondweed. Hemmed around by hawthorn and elder, the fishery is to a large degree sheltered from the influence of the wind. The fishing is free, and therefore tends to attract a certain element from the nearby town, resulting in lots of litter. You could fill several bin liners with crisp, sweet and cigarette wrappers? Beer and pop cans and plastic carrier bags then fill them again a couple of weeks later. Despite this, the pool is fundamentally an attractive little water and poses an intriguing challenge to the tench angler, even though the fish rarely weigh more than 5-pounds.

Tench in these old, silt-bottomed pools are often surprisingly cagey. Angler pressure may have some bearing on their circumspect feeding habits, but I think other, unknown factors also play a role. I know of similar, lightly fished water where the tench are also extraordinarily difficult to catch.

Problem
blem at the Brick Pond lies not in attracting fish to enter a swim and feed, for on almost any warm summer day a light carpet of groundbait and particles will see clusters of pin-prick bubbles weaving up to the surface and hanging in the scum. Drop a bait over the feed on delicate float tackle, however, and the response will almost invariably be the same; just a very occasional, slight stirring of the float, apparently as a fish brushes against the line, and sometimes a sharp dip, as if the bait has been mouthed and ejected in a split second.

Knowing that fish are down there and responding to loose offerings tends to suggest that a small tactical variation might be the answer. Believe me, I've been there - more line on the bottom, less line on the bottom, a shot near the hook, all shot off bottom and away from the hook, the lift method and so on. None of these changes made any difference. Perhaps a bolt-rig would have been the answer, but it did not feel right in the circumstances and I only tried it briefly.

I have not mentioned baits so far because the response was the same to all orthodox baits. For the most part I used bread flake, sweetcorn or casters on the hook and usually included hempseed and a little mashed bread and crumb, mixed sloppy, with the feed. A 2AAA insert waggler, 4-pound line direct and hooks between numbers 16 and 10, dependent upon bait, completed the set-up.

In an attempt to discover exactly what was happening I tried to entice fish right into the margin, where I could observe their antics in the clear water. They did not always respond, but sometimes an odd fish would move into water of no more than a foot to 18 inches deep, so long as I remained still and well back from the edge. Once, I set my stall to catch a fish of around 3-pounds that repeatedly came close in response to a light scattering of sweetcorn, hemp and mash. I lowered a kernel of corn on float tackle into the area, introduced a little more feed and retreated into the undergrowth.

After ten minutes, a dark shape drifted up the marginal slope and methodically mopped-up the loose offerings. A few minutes later it melted away. The float had not even moved. Everything except the hook bait had gone. This was repeated three or four times. On the next occasion I was watching the fish, intrigued, when it suddenly bolted. The float followed, but was back on the surface before I even began the motions of a strike. What on Earth could I try next?

I did manage to nail an occasional fish during evenings, when feeding activity as evidenced by the bubbling became noticeably more intense. However, I was still only scratching the surface. That increased activity should have pointed the way forward. I had previously experienced similar problems on a different pool, yet when a friend went along for a nighttime eel session, he found the tench would not leave his lobworms alone.

It was not until another friend, Tim Ridge, decided to extend a visit to the Brick Pond into darkness, and experienced sail away bites, that the penny dropped. For my next visit, I too stopped into darkness. At dusk, I switched the tip of the float for a chemical night-light, and within minutes of making the change, its luminous glow faded into the depths. Problem solved!

Maybe I am a glutton for punishment, but I still want to crack those tench during daylight, and may be back this year for another try.

Common Lane Pit
This clay pit provided a notable example of how it does not pay to become set in your ways as regards an approach to a particular water.

An extensive, reed-fringed fishery, it held a sparse stock of large fish. The difficult fishing and awkward access (the banks were badly overgrown) meant that angling pressure was minimal. Faced with the prospect of long periods of inactivity between bites, Tim Ridge and I needed to find a failsafe method of contacting the tench that picked-up our baits, for it is not easy to maintain total concentration in such circumstances. Bolt-rigs fitted the bill.

We used heavy, homemade in-line groundbait feeders and very short (3-inch long) hook links terminating in buoyant Medusa maggot rigs. The buoyant rigs prevented the maggots from burying into the filamentous blanket weed that carpeted most of the pit's bed.

It worked like a dream. We would sped a carpet of particles into the chosen swim, drop the feeders over the top, and sooner or later one of the rods would be away to a flier. They were big fish too, for Yorkshire (not exactly the epicentre of the specimen tench scene), averaging well over 6-pounds.

However, there was a problem. We were often fishing 24 or 48-hour sessions, and the Medusa maggot presentation fell to pieces during the hours of darkness, due to the prolific bootlace eels. It was simply impossible to keep a bait intact for more than fifteen to twenty minutes. If an eel was not caught during that period, it was a safe bet that the Medusa would be stripped of maggots. The eels were in evidence during daylight too, of course, but they became ten times more active after dark.

We needed baits that were immune, or at least resilient to their attention, yet which remained attractive to the tench and more particularly the bream, which we regarded as more likely nighttime feeders. Boilies seemed the obvious choice, but despite experimenting with several varieties, we could not buy a bite with them. True, they attracted less attention from the eels, but they drew no response whatsoever from the tench or bream.

Other baits seemed similarly unproductive. I tried cubes of bread crust one night, experiencing a succession of line bites from the bream, but no proper takes. In the end I lost all confidence in bread, because I could not be sure that the soft baits had remained intact through all the bream activity. A more robust bait was required.
Eventually, Tim had a little success using a commercially produced paste, formulated primarily for the carp angling market. It was not particularly robust, nor was it immune to the attention of eels, but at least he caught a few nighttime bream using it, which was progress of sorts.

During my next session, I decided to mould some of the paste around a boilie. If the paste was whittled away by eels, at least I would still have a bait in the water. An hour into darkness I had a stuttering run, and caught a 9lb loz bream. Result!

Let me reiterate that at this stage we had never caught a tench from the pit during darkness, and never caught one on any bait except the Medusa maggots. Disregarding this, at daybreak following my success with the bream, I decided to retain a boilie on one of the rods (no paste though), while switching to the Medusa maggots on the other. I had a surprise: fishing both rods to the same bed of particles, there came two reel-churning runs, resulting in tench of 7lb 3oz and 5lb 13oz. Both took the boilie!

That was my last session on the pit for that particular year. The following May I returned for a 48-hour session and decided to continue in the same vein - boilie and maggot during the day, boilies on both rods at night. To cut a long story short, I caught six tench. Three of them came during darkness, and all six took boilies! The trend has continued to the present day. The change in bait preference might be accounted for by the fact that several anglers had been feeding boilies in an attempt to wean the tench onto them. I am still unable to fathom why they started feeding at night, though.

For the record, most of my success came on Mainline's Grange CSL boilies, home made so that they could be rolled to a small- size and soft consistency. I have tried adding maplecreme flavouring, but am not sure if it has made a difference one way or the other. Tim has enjoyed good results on Nash Scopex-Squid ready-made pop-ups in the 10mm size. I am sure other makes and varieties would be effective, too.

Shipton Pond
This was a small, pear-shaped water, outwardly very similar to the Brick Pond that I fished regularly around 20 years ago. Clustering sallow, hawthorn and dog rose fringed the fishery, and there were large beds of broad-leaved pondweed around the margin and at the wide end. The pool did not produce tench of exceptional size, but what interested me was the distinct pattern in feeding behaviour that was followed during the seasons I fished there. In those days, opening day in Yorkshire was June 1st.

Traditional timing
During the first couple of months of the season, the tench followed the traditional early and late feeding periods, typical of many small to middle sized, established stillwaters. Float fished baits such as sweetcorn, flake, worm and caster over light carpets of feed scored, with the early morning spell having the edge. The tench usually switched off at around 9am, though this could vary according to the weather conditions. On mild, overcast days it was sometimes possible to continue picking up odd fish through until lunchtime.

The pool contained a handful of bream, a few big, horny old fish that had failed to breed, and had thrived on the lack of competition afforded by their small numbers. A specimen of exactly 8lb was landed in 1975, which I maintain was an incredible fish for a half-acre pond in the north of England. I became fascinated by those bream and decided to spend a few night sessions on the fishery in an attempt to catch one. My tactics were fundamentally little changed from those used for the tench. I used a betalight float, but during the early weeks of the season bites were very rare during darkness, either from bream or the more prolific tench.

During my first night session I scattered a few loose crusts around the weedbeds in the hope of tempting a carp, though I was not at all sure that the pool contained the species. In the early hours, audible sucking noises began to emanate from the area where the crusts had accumulated. I picked up a spare rod, already tackled-up, dunked a freelined crust and flicked it into position, then folded some silver paper over the line between reel and butt ring. Fifteen-pound line to a number 4 hook would just about hold a heavyweight carp out of the weedbeds, I figured. Ten minutes later the loose line rustled through the rod rings, even before the silver paper started to rise. My ‘heavyweight carp’ was in fact a 3lb 6oz tench. I soon discovered that this was not a fluke. Those early season tench regularly fell for floating baits during darkness, but would not look at them in daylight.

Changed feeding
of July/ beginning of August, the feeding pattern changed. Early morning and evening feeding was increasingly cagey, but during darkness, the usual betalight float tactics now tempted bold and frequent bites. Big baits such as lobworms, which tended to be ignored during daylight, were taken decisively at night. Floating baits continued to work, too.

As autumn began to take a grip around mid-September, there came another transformation. Daytime action now became the norm, and it was not necessary to be on the banks early or late. Bites came right through the daylight hours, especially if light conditions were a little subdued, such as when there was good cloud cover. In my experience, caster was the most productive bait at this time of year, especially when fed on a little and often basis and supplemented with small balls of sloppy mashed bread and brown crumb. (Incidentally, on established tench fisheries, that is to say small, silt-bottomed pools as opposed to big pits and reservoirs, I have found a mix of sloppy mash and crumb to be a potent attractor of the species, more so than either ingredient used alone). Top early season baits such as bread flake and sweetcorn now seemed much less effective. This state of affairs continued until the first hard frosts, usually around the end of October/beginning of November, effectively put an end to tench sport for another year.

So there we have it – varied responses on different waters from the same species. The moral is that a consistently successful tench angler must always be open-minded and adaptable in his approach.

The article orginally appeared in Coarse Angling Today