After a couple of mediocre trips fishing for tench I decided a change of tactics was required.

The water I’ve been fishing seems to have gone backwards for the tench in the last couple of seasons. As a result beds of casters or maggots are not always being eaten quickly and are lying around for longer than previously. This led me to suspect that the carp might be feeding on the beds of bait.

What a contrast to two years ago when it seemed the tench would clear as many maggots as you could throw at them. Combined with the disturbance caused by casting feeders and playing tench this meant the carp would give a going tench swim a wide berth! The declining tench numbers seems to have been noticed by the carp anglers on the lake – two years ago they were nearly all using tiger nuts to avoid tench but now they’re back on boilies and only catching the odd tinca.

With this in mind I decided to hedge my bets and tackle up with gear that would give me a good chance of landing a carp should I hook one. I upped my line to 12lb Korum and fished bunches of four or six maggots on a popped-up hair rig rather than the normal two or three. Hook was a Size 8 S3 barbed.  I also introduced bait with large Korum PVA mesh bags rather than with a feeder to minimise disturbance and do away with a feeder that might spook carp.

The weather took a turn for the worse on Friday night and at 2am I was woken by a screaming run in the pouring rain that I knew instantly must be a carp. Part 1 of the plan had worked – now to get it in! After twenty minutes battling with it a long, lean common came over the net . At no time did I feel out of control and whilst the 2.2lb Neoteric wouldn’t be everyone’s choice of rod for carp it coped admirably with the carp. The fish weighed 25lb 6oz – that’s the third carp I’ve landed from the lake in the last couple of seasons and they’ve all been within ounces of 25lb! Not a bad bonus fish whilst waiting for tench! Ironically one of the carp lads has recently lost a number of fish to hook pulls on his new long-range rods – it just shows that you don’t have to use beefy gear if there isn’t too much weed about.

In the morning I did manage a tench of about 6lb. The rest of the day was quiet and then heavy overnight rain on the second night seemed to put off the carp and tench.

This weekend I’m fishing a different lake and looking forward to trying the Sonubaits session boilies which smell and taste fantastic. I’ll let you know how I get on.