The Sessions - June2021
More Spring Tench and the magical 16th
I signed off last month having had a difficult month looking for a big Tench, my plans for June were to continue with the Tench fishing and start the river season somewhere quiet on the magical 16th.
3 June 2021 – Rosewater.
After four days of lovely sunny weather with temps up to 24 degrees I arrived just before closing at 19:45 hoping to secure one of the two swims I’d been fishing on the Meadow bank. There was only three people fishing but two were in the swims I wanted, as it turned out it was my sister-in-law Jane and her fishing partner and they were doing the night fishing for Carp, so after leading around in the swims further down I went in a swim called “the Logs”, I had the same sand bank feature at eight wraps and it was close enough for an unexpected social.
I put five spombs of bait on the spot, my mix consisted of hemp, sweetcorn, 4mm pellet and a few 12mm Pandemic, and put two method feeders with Pandemic wafters and one on maggot feeder. I wasn’t expecting bites straight away as I have noticed during my sessions in May that the fish don’t come straight onto bait and do drop back for a while when topping up the spot.
In between chatting to Jane I recast every hour until dark and then wound in the maggot rod for the night.
4 June 2021
I was up with the Cookoo at first light, now I love nature and the wildlife we have in our country but that bird just does not stop all day…..
I spombed out another five loads of mix and recast the rods, surprisingly I wasn’t seeing any Tench or Carp rolling, it was very quiet. Jane and her friend had blanked and were packing up at 08:00 and I considered moving to the Green Bin swim when the left hand Pandemic rod melted off resulting in the first Tench of the trip that was a good one and fell off as I was about to net it, very annoying and never gets any easier to take.
I had to wait until 11:00 for the next bite and this came on the same rod and was a Tench at 6-15.
It then started raining and rained all day, the lake got busier and a young lad dropped into the Green Bin swim and promptly caught three Tench while I sat there without another bite, sometimes you have to accept it just isn’t your day so I packed up just before closing and headed home.
13 June 2021 – Rosewater
The start of a week’s annual leave to see in the new river season, my plan was to fish until possibly lunch time on the 15th and then head home, swap the tackle over and move onto a river and I was really looking forward to it.
I arrived just before closing and went on the meadow bank in the Double Bush swim, there was only one other person on the lake and it looked lovely. It had been very hot up to 26 degrees and was still very hot and sticky as I was setting up.
I put two on 45g method feeders with Pandemic wafters, and one on an inline bolt maggot feeder, size 10 Cryogen hook and a worm kebab, putting chopped worm and maggots in the feeder. I put six spombs of mix on the spot, my mix was hemp, sweetcorn, 4mm pellet and dead maggots.
14 June 2021
The first bite was at 02:40 on one of the boilie rods, it was definitely an Eel and it came off. Almost straight away the worm rod was away, this was another Eel at 3-13 and nicely lip hooked with the short hooklinks.
I put another six spombs of mix out at 05:00 and changed one of the boilie rods to a worm kebab and maggot feeder.
I started getting lots of line bites and no takes which made me suspect they were starting to spawn, the water felt very warm and the Carp were certainly getting ready as they could be seen grouping up on the surface.
I had three takes on worm mid-morning, landing a one average Tench and losing two in the marginal weed, one I suspected was an Eel.
I topped the spot up at lunchtime with another five spombs of bait and lost another Tench in the afternoon which was becoming very annoying. On reflection, I’m so confident with my Barbel rig I lose very few, I just haven’t got my Tench rigs right yet and was paying the price.
I had one more bite on the session, this was on the boilie rod and was a very fat Eel at 4-04, the Eels had certainly responded to baiting up with dead maggots and were clearing the swim out, certainly something to consider later in the season I felt.
15 June 2021 – River Derwent
I left Rosewater at 10:00 and went home to change the gear over. I decided to head for the Derwent as I knew I would have it to myself and the Trent was already packed, on some sections people had been camping out since 11th, absolutely crazy!!
I drove up the M1 and arrived at 15:00 to find the carpark empty, it was still hot and sunny and this is where it all started to go wrong….
The first problem was the locks, they had changed the padlocks around and not changed the combinations so initially I couldn’t get in, after thinking it through I checked my bag and found last season’s card still there with last year’s combination, I tried that and it worked so I was in.
The car park was very overgrown and looking through the fence so was the path to the river so it would be a difficult walk to the swim. I unloaded the car and got the barrow set up, loaded the gear onto it and pushed it through the gate, the first bump I came to stopped the barrow dead and it sheared the wheel bracket off destroying the barrow!! The swim was a good 600-700m down the field so I had no choice but to do it in two trips and carry the gear. There were no livestock in the fields so the grass was 2-3 feet high all the way and hiding all the holes and humps.
I got the gear to the swim and could see there had been no bank side maintenance by the club and I would have to cut the swim out. The nettles were 3-4 feet high and a good 15-20 feet from the edge of the river. I had no choice and got to work with the shears, it took me an hour but I had a suitable path to the river and cut out openings for the rods and landing fish. It was so hot I had to strip down to a t-shirt and my arms were raw with nettle stings right up to my arm pits which made for an uncomfortable night.
Once that was done I set the swim up, cooked some dinner and put a bit of bait in ready for midnight, despite all the problems it was great to be out on my favourite river for the first night, it looked stunning and I couldn’t wait to start.
The magical 16 June 2021
I put one rod on a15mm Pandemic hard hooker and the other on a 15mm Asbo hard hooker with pva bags and cast them in at midnight. I’d baited up with half a pint of hemp and 10 boilies of each flavour and expected bites pretty quickly, but that is not how it worked out.
I didn’t get a touch, which was very surprising as the area is normally very reliable; I packed up at 10:30 and made the two trips back to the car. There was one other angler on the river in the morning, he like me had fallen in love with the Derwent and after a chat had fired up my enthusiasm for the place again after a couple of seasons of not fishing it very much. I made the commitment to return soon and baited up my secret spot that was still very overgrown with the remaining half kg of 12mm Pandemic.
Rosewater
I planned to do another 48 hours after Tench as I really hoped for a double before they spawned. I drove home from the Derwent, popped to the supermarket for food and the tackle shop for four pints of maggots. I then swapped the tackle over, loaded the car and drove to the lake.
I arrived an hour before closing and found it quite busy with one angler in the Green Bin swim and others further down, I didn’t fancy dropping in between other people so drove round to the opposite side of the lake to try a different area. This is where my not so magical 16th continued, I got my leading rod out of the car and took the spomb off and went to get my leading lead that I keep in my alarms case on top of my tackle bag to find that in my hast to get out I had left my alarms case at home……
I couldn’t believe it, no alarms, bobbins or sticks, and not enough time to drive home and return so I had no choice but to ask Rachel if I could defer the session for a later date and go home for a recharge and a rethink. I am guilty of trying to pack too much into my days at times and this was a classic example of rushing around and poor preparation.
17 June 2021 – River Trent, Sutton
As forecast the weather had changed with a 10 degrees drop, cloudy, muggy and northerly winds. I decided to head back to a river for 24 hours so my first job was to freeze the four pints of maggots for a later date and swap the tackle over. Before packing the car I double checked everything so that I did not have the same disaster as the day before. I popped to the gym for recharge and then left home for the Trent at lunchtime.
As normal most people start to pull off the river after the first night as it is generally slow going, and this year was no exception. There had not been too much caught other than one very notable capture by Ian who caught a new PB at 18-04 from Gunthorpe, very well done mate and well deserved, especially the way he caught it, but that is his storey for another day.
I had an idea of where I wanted to go if it was free, so on the way up I called Jude and he told me the swim I wanted would be free by the time I arrived and there was no one else anywhere near the area so that would be perfect for me so I headed straight for Sutton.
A guy called Steve was still packing away when I arrived, we had a good chat for perhaps two hours and agreed to meet up for a session soon before he left for home. He’d had a couple of fish but did not know the swim as well as I did and had not had his baits in the right area. I got the Deeper to work so that I could put bank markers on the spots I was looking for, this took two trots down the river and I had stones on the bank marking the casting spots. With the river low and clear I went for banded Elips on a size 12 hook on my usual set up. I put six spoppers of hemp, a handful of pellet and ten 12mm Pandemic on the first marker, knowing that some of it would go down to the second marker baiting both spots. At 17:30 I was ready to cast out, it was a simple case of walking down to each marker and flicking the rigs out and feeling them down onto the spot.
It didn’t take long and an hour later I had a take on the upstream rod and landed an 8plus, the other rod went straight away and I had two of similar size in the same net.
The left hand rod went 90 minutes later with my first double of the season at 10-01. After each fish I was putting a handful of Elips on the spot to top it up.
Just before 22:00, the left went again and this one felt a good fish, it put up such a fight and defied it’s size, although a good one at 11-00 I thought it was going to be much bigger.
The bites came fairly regularly through the night and I finished up with nine Barbel and a Chub with the two doubles being the biggest. I topped the swim up with another six spoppers of hemp in the morning and kept going until 13:30 on the 18th packing up in the pouring rain.
What started as a week of full of promise and anticipation it did not turn out that way, I’d hoped to do at least 6-7 nights on the bank and ended up only doing four, but I kept going and finished it well with a good session on the Trent.
25 June 2021 – Rosewater
The cooler weather had continued with low pressure and day temps of 18-19 degrees with a lot of cloud, I had the 48 hour session in the bank so decided to have one last go for this Spring. I arrived just before closing a secured the Double Bush swim and got set up. The weed was coming up fast but it looked lovely and was not very busy at all. I put six spombs of mix on the spot, my mix for this trip was hemp, 4mm pellet, dead maggots a few 12mm Pandemic and then while that was settling made a few small changes to my rigs.
I increased the length on my leader to 60cm and shortened the hooklinks to two and half inches. I started with one on a 45g method feeder with a Pandemic wafter, one on a 60g inline maggot feeder with a lobworm section on the hair and one on a 60g inline maggot feeder with one fake maggot and two real on a size 12 hook. Tench were rolling as I cast out so I felt confident I would get some action.
By 23:00 I’d had two Eels on worm and one on maggot and no Tench so I reeled both those rods in for the night and recast the method feeder.
26 June 2021
The boilie rod went early morning with the first Tench of the trip a male at 6-13. I got all the rods fishing again by 05:00, it was warm and cloudy with light rain and looked spot on.
I had two on maggots straight away, a 6-09 and a smaller one so changed the worm rod over to maggot and the bites kept coming with two landed and two hook pulls in the weed. I topped up the spot with three spombs of mix at 08:00 and the swim went quiet for a while.
The bites started again an hour later and kept coming all day with lots landed but frustratingly quite a few hook pulls as I tried to bring them through the weed, I still didn’t feel I had the rig right so did play around with it a bit and tried Supplex again using a Palomar to tie it on with and pushing the fake maggot over the eye to form a line aligner, this proved quite successful and was nailing them in the bottom lip.
I fished through the day topping up the spot with a few spombs of mix at lunch and tea time and caught consistently all day.
27 June 2021
I’d put two out on method feeders and Pandemic for the night hooking and losing one Carp in the weed. The maggots were back on for 05:00 and I continued where I’d left off with regular takes finishing the session at 11:00.
It was a good one with 21 Tench to 6-14, 7 Eels and 2 Carp, frustratingly I had 9 hook pulls, 5 missed takes that could have been liners and 1 lost to a snag, a busy session to end my Tench fishing for this Spring, with none over 7 pound on this trip they had clearly spawned so I would have to wait another season for my hoped for double.
I had an email from the BRFC stating they were meeting this month so my Crucian record claim would be considered, Nick stated he did not see any problem so I’m hoping that next month I will be able to share the good news….fingers are all crossed.
Until next month, tight lines and be lucky 😊
Big thanks to my sponsors for their continued support,