Mostly Tench!

Last weekend I was mostly dodging heavy showers of the wet stuff and catching Tench. The first session was late on Saturday, I had a few jobs to do in the morning so headed up to Ryton for a late afternoon/evening fish. I ended up on 'Rogers peg'  at the back of the island. (I renovated this peg four years ago and it's still going strong) The lake was fairly busy and with the wind blowing into that end of the lake it seemed the obvious place to go, the Tench thought the same.

I was casting one rod to the tree's and the other to the back of the island but it didn't seem to matter where they went I kept getting false takes and runs after a few minutes in the water, the bait size had been upped to try and deter the little tinkers but a few still managed to get their lips around the baits and the hook.

Is it a shame to waste boilies on these?

I managed to get five nice fish but lost loads just after hooking.

Dodging the heavy showers again.

Sunday, I was at the lake again with Barry, I fished on 'Morris's, Barry was on the peg with no name and Paul was already set up and catching on the log swim, three bailiff's on the lake at once, watch out you night fishers!

Now, what do you call a gathering of bailiffs?

I fished one rod on the bottom with PVA bags the other a roving chod, the bag rod didn't get touched by anything all afternoon and seeing as this method has had similar results a few weeks ago whilst fishing off Morris's, I'm going to have to rethink this rod's presentation for my next visit to this swim.

After a slow start, Barry was doing rather well next door catching a few small Rudd, after a change from maggot to worm he started to get a better stamp of fish with Tench and some better sized Rudd.

Don't they look good and this wasn't a big one!

I had to wait till last orders and was having a chat with Barry and Paul (Not the bailiff, another Paul that fishes the lake) that's when I heard on of the alarms scream out a one toner, we'd had a couple of heavy showers that afternoon so it was a very slippery run round to my pod, it was the 'chod' rod that was off and I quickly picked it up and lifted into a fish. It didn't seem to be very substantial and came across the lake towards me easily, I thought it was a Tench as it started to fight back once it got into the shallows, however, it really started to wake up and the powerful lunges were too strong for a tinker, it was a carp.

'Bendy'

Once netted it was given a name, Barry looked into the net and called out "it's bendy", I think he'd caught this one before. This fish was recognisable due to it's deformed spine and shortened rear end, I think I caught this fish a few years ago myself when it was only a couple of pound but I can't find the photo to confirm it. Bendy weighed in at nine pound, fourteen ounces and was a fine end to a long biteless session.