Tench and Bream

A slim 7 pounder slips back into the lake.

Late May: Tench: one of my favourite fish, and they always have been. Probably always will be.  There is something about their colour and that smooth muscular shape, a real fish shape that imbues them with that "must catch" essence that I am unable to resist, as well as a powerful fight when hooked.   They can be easy to catch, or, given a suitable water, they can be a nightmare to find and hook.  That green and the contrasting red eye will always draw me in and I have so far fished three different waters for tench this year.   One easy water with small fish did not hold my attention for long.  I would have stayed longer, had the crucians I was also catching, been pure crucian, and not part goldfish. Another water, rumoured to hold the odd tench did, and 4 trips produced 3 fish. A good result with one of the fish becoming a new personal best, despite being a long, slim, fit fish with no signs of any spawn in it.  Such are early season fish, especially after a long hard Winter's fast. 

The third lake is what I consider to be an easy water.  Not lacking some good fish though, as a number of fish well over 6 pounds soon demonstrated by falling to my baits.   But the predictability of almost certain catches soon paled with me, and the time was ripe to go and try a hard water, one which I thought might hold some good ones.

So I arrived at the lake, early, about 4am, tackled up, cast quickly and the lobworm soon attracted a small perch, and a second bite at the same spot was probably another small perch.  But to my left a fish rolled: obviously a tench, a majestically slow roll, barely rippling the surface.  Had I not seen the fish, the ripple could have been put down as a small roach.  Two or three other fish rolled, and so I cast to the left.   As another good fish rolled right besides my float, the tension mounted.   Two bites followed, long slow runs of the float, but both fish were missed. Inexplicably missed.  7 AM now, and all has gone quiet, but the day remains dull, cloudy but rain free, and so hopes remain high.
And so it was to remain, throughout the day.  No bites, little sign of fish, no carp jumping, nothing.  So I occupied my time watching the wildlife.  In the margins scattered over a wide area near to me

Massed Toadpoles

were a great number of toadpoles.   The tadpoles of toads are blacker and with shorter tails than those of frogs.   Also they taste dreadful, so nothing eats them.   As the day progressed, the toadpoles gathered near the very edge of the water, forming a huge black wriggling mass.   Thousands of them. I don't know why they concentrated so, as there seemed to be little food for them.  A foot further out was a feast of silkweed.  The tench remained elusive though.  I did see a couple of tench cruising above the elodea though, small fish of maybe three pounds, but tench, and in the right area of the lake.   As evening approached a roach took a bait, a handsome but quite dark fish of some six or seven ounces, and a prelude to an evening rise of fish. 

As darkness approached, fish started to roll with quite large splashes.  Tench , I was sure,  and lots of them over an area of some 30 yards square, within casting range but outside my baited area.  I was perhaps rather silly to think they were tench as it happens: for they were not.  Good big fish though, each trying to make the most surface disturbance it could, as it breached, and over a ten minute period, at least a hundred such fish showed.  They continued to roll but in reducing numbers, and I started to get bites.  Easy slow bites which I was unable to hit.  I finally hooked one briefly, and the line came back with a large scale on the hook point.   I now assumed carp were responsible, but was to be proved wrong yet again.  So amateurish of me, I should have known far better.  Finally, after at least half a dozen inexplicably missed bites I hooked one.  A bream, 7-4.   On bread.  Two more followed: a fish of maybe six something, and then a 9-8.  All three fish were hooked just outside their mouths.  I have no explanation for this effect, all the bites were the usual big bream, slow rise of the bobbins. I never used to miss bites like these back in the old Cheshire Meres Big Bream days, early 70's..   More bites were missed.  I continued to fish after dawn, and on through a second night.   The day finally gave me my first tench from the lake, a male of 5-1.  Something of a Nemo this fish, one of its pectorals being small and deformed.  But a tench.  

As evening arrived the bream moved back in again.  5 more fish being landed, with three more hooked just outside their mouths.   All on bread, the bait being hooked conventionally, no hair rig, or other fancy doomahdiddle rig in use.   The fish were again quite good ones, with a 9-13, 9-0, and 8-13 the three best fish. All in all I missed a lot of what would normally be very easy-to-hit bream bites, and hooking six from those eight fish just outside the mouth was weird. I put it down to the roughness of the breams' skin allowing the line to stay in closer contact with the fish, maybe even catching the line itself, and the following strike hitting home outside the mouth, as the fish played with, rather than eating, the bread.   But any other theories held by readers would be most welcome. As all the fish had head tubercles, I assume all the fish were males.

 I have stopped fishing the lake, for the bream were most unpleasant to the touch, and in this spawning condition, my interference with their lives was probably not for the best, even though I am sure double figure fish were there for the taking...and on the float too!   I'll go back, maybe in September to try specifically for those bream, once they have regained their condition.

Robins and a Pike.

One of the pleasures of a day's angling is the inevitable presence of that little red-breasted bird, the common robin.   And they are very common: rare is the angling day when one of the little fellows is not tramping about all over your gear, clomping about on your rods with his feet, or standing on your boot looking askance into the maggot box, asking to be fed.
 
Robins have always, in the UK at least, been very tame, and fairly unafraid of anglers and gardeners.  With patience they can be trained to feed from the hand. They used to follow wild boar about in the forests, and as the boars rooted around in the ground for roots and whatever else they might find, the robins would stand around, close by, picking up any insects or worms that were disturbed.   Nowadays they follow the gardener, or the angler, in much the same way, But remember, whilst  that robin is looking quizzically at you as you sit on the riverbank, that what the bird is really thinking is: "When is that lazy pig going to do some work  and stir up my food for me?"

But a few days ago, whilst fishing, I did not see a robin all day. Probably the first time this year that I have not been treated to its presence.  Most unusual. The damn thing was probably off mating, or feeding its young, or its mate.  Extremely selfish of it.  No: all I saw were water birds, a few flyover pigeons, crows and gulls.  On the land all I saw was one lonely great tit in a nearby tree.

But I was not to be without a companion.  Eight or nine times during the day a little ten inch pike ventured into water near my feet, water just some six inches deep, and very clear.    It would swim away, but 30 minutes later it would be back, its fins wavering slightly as it kept station just above the sandy bottom of the lake.  On its 6th visit I decided to throw it a maggot.   The robin didn't want them today, maybe the pike would?   And much to my surprise it did, taking eight or nine maggots over the course of an hour.   It would watch the maggot sink past its snout, then the fish would sneak up to within a couple of inches, and make a determined, if slightly slow, strike and swallow the maggot.   Once it seemed to choke a little, and spat out the maggot, along with a small toadpole (if that isn't a word, it should be).   All of the growth stages of toads are supposed to taste very bad, and I assume that taste is what caused the pike to reject the maggot.    Eventually it lost interest in such small food items, and drifted off to seek larger prey.   Even when the birds are absent, there is always something of interest to see when fishing.