A bit of an update

Since my last blog offering, life has very much got in the way of my fishing career. Being self employed, it's important that I make hay whilst the sun shines and the sun has been shining brightly in my little plumbing world. I have managed a couple of trips down to the syndicate, unfortunately, the tench spawned early this year due to the sudden increase in water temperature caused by the tropical spell of sunshine we had in May, this coupled with the explosion of weed growth and natural food availability has made the fishing even more tricky. I did manage to land a couple of tench, the best of which being a 6lb 8oz male fish, but alas, nothing which troubled the 10lb target I’ve set myself down there. The 7lber I had caught in the first blog has been the biggest so far this season. 

6lb 8oz of syndicate tench

I've been able to drop in for some short sessions with the float rod on one of our club waters and have managed to land a couple of tench, the biggest one going just over 5lb, the size of the fish isn’t really relevant if you can catch them on a centerpin and a float rod. With that in mind, I’m heading back down the syndicate tomorrow armed with two glass fibre Bruce and Walker MKiv’s and one split cane Bruce and Walker MKiv, believe it or not, the glass fibre rods are mine and have just been resto-modded with Fuji reel seats, the split cane is of course Dads, I’ve teamed the split cane up with a JW Youngs Rolling Pin to try and at least make it look like I’m using an appropriate vintage reel, his other two split canes are so worn out in the handles that I’ve had to drop them off at the rod builders for some new cork. Don’t worry, I won’t get Fuji reel seats put on them, I’ll carry on with the old rings. 

5lb of gold on the pin

As you probably know already, photography was a huge passion of Dads, I can remember him sitting for hours by the Valerian plants outside the house trying to get shots of the hummingbird hawk moths, I’ve been doing the same recently, but with an IPhone instead of a digital camera, I’ll be honest, I’m pretty pleased with the results, just gutted that I can’t show him. 

Hopefully I’ll have something else to write about after tomorrows outing, I’m going for an all-natural bait approach, low resistance rigs and bite indication with a view to potentially hooking the perch, eels, tench, carp or anything else that likes a juicy worm… Tufties are a distinct possibility as well (as is a blank!) 

Tight lines,

Benno.