Yesterday I had my first day this year on Taywood Chertsey South lake still looking for some more big tench. I didn’t start until about two thirty in the afternoon and spent a little time at the water in reconnaissance I decided to fish one of my favourite swims on the motorway bank. I set up my two Sportex 1 1/4 lb test curve legering rods, one with a maggot feeder, the other with a semi fixed lead and hair rigged paste. Both rods were fished on buzzers with drop off indicators whilst I used a plummet on a twenty foot float rod to explore the margins. On this motorway bank the marginal shelf common to most gravel pits is about twenty feet out and drops into fifteen feet of water in some places.
My first bite came on the maggot feeder shortly after I had made about six or eight casts without a hook length to put a carpet of bait on the bottom of the drop off on the left hand side of the swim. The indicator lifted in a series of hesitant jerks but the strike met with no resistance, it was probably a line bite.
Over the next couple of hours I remained biteless so I reeled in the the paste rig rod and set up the long float rod with a sensitive waggler. Whilst I was doing this the buzzer on the maggot feeder rod went off in a long bleep as the indicator was lifted steadilly to the rod ring, again the strike was met with no resistance?
The long float rod proved to be a problem to fish with as the surrounding bushes had grown quite a lot since the last time I fished this swim. It was almost impossible to get room for a back cast and my right wrist was not yet strong enough after the sprain to flex the action of the rod for an under arm flick. I finally managed to get the float where I wanted it and fed maggots and hemp on a little and often basis.
I had already had two bites - not a bad result for this area of what is a very hard fishery and I was not expecting to see the float slide away so confidently. The result was not a big tench nor even a big bream but an eel about a pound and a half that seemed to be hooked right down it’s throat, as they always are, about four inches from its bum.
I packed up after that and went home to work on a sliding float rig that will allow me to use a managable sized rod, I may have to put a larger bore tip ring on one of my stepped up Harrisons. The reason for this is that a sliding float does just that and is stopped at the correct depth by a stop knot, tied in a separate piece of line, around the main line. Because of the depth the stop knot would be somewhere near the reel on the cast and would have to travel through most of the rod rings, the tip ring is always the one that causes the problems being the smallest. This is particulary exacerbated by the use of the heavier than usual six pound main line required for the large fish in this lake.
I will report on my progress.
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