For the last month or so the tench fishing has been far from fantastic. The weather has been very inconsistent with hot conditions followed by heavy rain for most of the time, making water temperatures very unstable. I have managed a handful of fish to just over 8lb but no real monsters. Time to get some bites!

A couple of the lads from work were planing an evening on a commercial fishery and they invited me along. I am far from an expert when it comes to this style of fishing so I decided to keep things simple and just fish one method to the best of my ability.

I opted for a running rig which incorporated a small cage feeder, a korum quick change bead and a hooklength of 0.17 powerline to a korum ready tied size 14 hookhair with a quickstop.

I prepared some 2mm ‘fin perfect’ feed pellet to use in the feeder. I prepared them by soaking them in water for 2 minutes before draining and leaving to stand for 10 minutes. This is exactly to Andy Findlays guidelines and the pellets were perfect. For hookbaits I opted for 8mm ‘s’ pellet and small cylinders of Spam of about the same size.

I chose a peg fishing to the back of an island with a cast of about 20yds and fished clipped up to maintain accuracy. I re-cast the feeder about every 5 minutes, each time with the 2mm-pellet feed and a couple of 6mm ‘s’ pellets in the feeder.

I was into fish almost straight away and after an hour the carp were fizzing like crazy in the swim. Over the course of the evening I landed ghost, common and mirrors ending up with 23 in total for a guessed weight of around a 100lb.

I realised a few things during the session. Rig bits like quick-change beads and quickstops do make your fishing easy. Hooklengths can be changed speedily and there is no messing around with fiddley boilie stops.
A quality, high attract feed pellet that you can prepare at the bankside in minutes and hook pellets that are ready straight from the bag. If you combine all these things you fish more efficiently and catch more fish.

I had a thoroughly enjoyable evenings fishing and I will definitely be doing it again.