A tale of tench, carp, and brick walls - blog update

Remember the Pringles advert, once you pop you can't stop? Well when you stop blogging it's a right job getting started again. Blimey it's well two months since I put finger to keyboard, a poor show indeed. Truth be known work has been busy and I am also in the process of slowly winding down my gardening business and moving into another enterprise, meanwhile it's a case of balancing the two which is far from easy. Add a few Korum Fish Camp attendances into the equation, other coaching commitments and a considerable amount of time spent on club business, bank maintenance and bailiffing, and in hindsight it's not really a surprise that I fell out of step with my writing. But at the end of the day I do this because I enjoy it and I don't want it to fall by the wayside so let's get back on track. Feel free to give me a good kick if I lapse again!

Big River Trent barbel - mission accomplished

Although I had made a conscious decision to do more barbel fishing on the river Trent this season circumstances had until recently limited the time that I had available to devote to that plan. Although on paper the Level Two Angling Coach course takes up six classroom days over four weekends there is also the need to spend some considerable amount of time at home and on the bank carrying out practice sessions and planning. In theory I could have got away with spending less time on this but as the course went on I found myself revising my ideas constantly and in effect I went over the same ground a number of times which in hindsight was the right thing to do and is actually a fundamental part of the principles of coaching. The upshot of this is that I didn't really get stuck into a fishing campaign over the summer months. Short barbel sessions fitted in well but the Trent fish are much more cooperative after dark and short summer nights meant a lack of sleep which was too much for me to handle on a regular basis. A few outings for other species have broken up my time but effectively I've been down to one, or at the most two, sessions of only a few hours per week for a good while and that wasn't helped by me catching shingles, it never rains does it! The start of October saw me complete my course and it was time to snap out of the doldrums and get stuck in to some fishing proper once again, with the nights now drawing in fast it was prime time to get back to the Trent.

River Trent barbel fishing - learning the ropes

The river Trent is about twenty minutes from my front door at its closest point yet over the years I have neglected it greatly in preference for the more intimate rivers that feed into it, namely the Soar and Derwent. I was probably fifteen or so when I caught my first Trent barbel, miniature rockets from Clifton Grove that did nasty things to a nine foot Silstar Matchpicker, almost as brutal as attempting to cast a 2oz feeder on the poor rod but that was the best I had available at the time and so it had to do.

Pocket rockets from down "The Grove"

Since those very distant days I have hardly targeted the rivers whiskered residents at all bar a handful of sessions in the last three years where a few larger residents have graced the net. Wether it be whilst playing fish or just going through the process of actually fishing you can be left with no doubt that what the Trent lacks in intimacy it certainly makes up for in raw power, not to mention it's huge appetite for gobbling up any tackle that you dare to risk by casting into it, she can be one unforgiving lady alright.

Estate lake tenching - all change

After a decent previous weeks fishing I was back at the tench lake for a couple of evening sessions after work. News from those already fishing when I arrived on both days wasn't exactly encouraging, the place had more or less switched off. Only the odd fish was getting caught and not a lot was showing either. One of my sessions coincided with a good heavy downpour which I fully expected to flick the feeding switch but no, they just weren't having it.

I had the chance to get in an early session on the Saturday and was in two minds wether to bother as it looked so grim but I decided to go for it and I was bankside before 5am. Only one other angler was on the water and we had a quick chat before I got set up a bit further along the field bank.The swim I chose is one of the few left on the lake that actually has any feature to fish to, that being the far bank which juts out forming a peninsula complete with overhanging tree's. My left hand rod was belted out at range to the end of the treeline while the other rod was fished much shorter and to the right, both rigged up with maggot feeders and fake maggot hookbaits.

It wasn't long after I had settled down that I noticed Ian into a fish and so i wandered up for a look. It turned out to me a cracker at 8lb+ and so I helped out with the pictures before returning to keep working my feeders. Ian was in again fairly soon and once again it was a quality tench of over 7lb. The camera man was starting to get that bridesmaid feeling and that was reinforced when Ian made his hattrick though this one wasn't of any great size.