This spring the tench fishing seems to have taken longer than normal to wake up. In April I started fishing a local pit that’s pretty deep and suffered a run of four blanks followed by my first fish of the season – not a tench but a 2lb 13oz perch!

More recently I visited Linear Fisheries in Oxford and finally put a few tench on the bank. On my first trip all was quiet apart from a few carp until the second morning when the tench switched on for a couple of hours and I landed four up to 8lb 2oz. Just as soon as they’d switched on they disappeared, possibly due to a number of carp arriving in the swim!

On my second trip I finally settled on a swim tucked away in a corner and on the first evening saw a number of tench roll in the area convincing me I’d chosen well. Despite getting up and baiting at 4.30am by 8am I hadn’t had a bite. I then started getting line bites followed by actual bites. The fish fed throughout the day and whenever it went quiet a spod or two of bait soon got them feeding again. I ended the day with 14 tench, the best being three “nines”, a brace at 9lb 2oz and a stunning looking fish of 9lb 8oz. The next day I continued to catch – and ended up with another five, which surprisingly were all males, the best 8lb 12oz, which fought like a 20lb carp!

Not surprisingly on my return the following week I chose the same swim and on arrival at 4pm cast out two feeders whilst getting my bivvy sorted.  Within half an hour an 8lb 6oz tench roared off and it was clear that despite a cool wind the fish were still in the vicinity.  By  8.30pm I’d had no further indications so was a little surprised when I had another bite. The fish quickly got buried in thick weed but soon came out as I increased the pressure and soon after a large tench was in the net. It looked a bit bigger than the “nines” and the scales confirmed this to be so, settling at 10lb 6oz.  A double figure tench guarantees that whatever else I catch this spring I will consider my tench fishing in 2011 a success.

I was using my normal tactics for tench – Quick-load feeders with Korum Readi-Heli rigs and Preston Reflo hooklengths and S3 hooks in 12 and 14. Hookbait were the ever-reliable red maggots or rubber maggots fished on hair rigs. The most important part of this approach is to bait regularly and my spod mix is made up of 4mm Elips pellets, Sonu Hemp and Maples, and 2mm S-Pellets together with dead or live maggots and a few casters.