Tench Fishing in the Cotswolds

With the weather finally on the turn my thoughts turn to Tench fishing, I am no longer a member of Somerford AA so a new venue needed to be found.

Asking around a  Lake in Fairford seemed to fit the bill, a 20 acre gravel pit in the Cotswolds, So Tuesday morning gear loaded I set off to explore a new water.

I arrived at the lake late morning after making a small detour to purchase a day ticket.

And did a quick circuit of the lake, it’s a crystal clear lake with marginal tree cover and weed beds, being a bright sunny day with a slight northerly wing blowing I opted to fish into  the wind and soon found a swim with a gravel bar showing at around 20 metres.

My approach was to be two rods on ledgered feeders, one with maggots the other corn, these I cast out to the gravel bar and spoded a mixture of dead maggots, caster corn and hemp over the top.

Bringing in the rods every half hour to top up the feeders , this continued until 4 o clock just as began to have thoughts of blanking or moving swims , when the right hand maggot rod screamed off at last ,this run produced a small Tench of 2 ½ lb small but very welcome.

Soon to be followed by 3 more 2 of around 4lb and the biggest of the day at 5 1/2lb, all on the maggots.

All of which fought well above their weight in the deep clear water, so a very successful day in all I will defiantly return.

 

5 1/2lb the days biggest