Spombing maggots by the gallon for Tench & Bream

After our fairly successful session at Higham Farm last year, Shane and I decided on a return trip this Spring, again for 24 hours and again targeting the resident tench.

Shane had hatched a plan of attack and I liked it.  I really liked it.  This time we would fish on the Specimen Lake, which can only be fished on a 24 hour ticket.  Because of this, it tends to only attract carp anglers so the numerous other species resident in the lake only ever see the bank when they pick up a disgruntled carper's bait!  Specimen tench and bream were definitely on the cards, plus who knows what large roach and perch could lurk in there.

Besides fishing this lake, our approach was a little unorthodox too.  Rather than simply using scaled-back carp tactics, we would go armed with a couple of gallons of maggots each and fish positively by feeding aggresively - by introducing a large bed of maggots via a spomb, then topping the swims up when necessary.

I chose to hair rig a mixture of buoyant Drennan imitation maggots and live maggots to create a balanced Medusa bait designed to hover just above the lake bed, without any putty of shot to anchor it. 

To create the maggot medusa I threaded an imitation maggot lengthways onto the hair, followed by a small tied-on rig ring.  Then I threaded a mixture of real and fake maggots onto some 4lb mono with an eyed needle, passed the needle through the rig ring and then tied it off.  This is a really tidy way to attach numerous maggots to a hair.  Some anglers prefer to fish with just a couple of fake maggots but in this instance I wanted a big bait (I wouldn't have complained too much if one of the specimen lake's "nuisance fish" carp picked up my bait!) that would stand out over the large bed of loosefed maggots.

My balanced maggot medusa rig ready to fish on the helicopter rig setup.

My medusa rig for the margin rod, clearly showing the fake maggot on the hair and two fake maggots tied on with the real ones.  Also note this bait is glugged & ready to cast.

Shane got off work earlier than I did and had prepared the swims by the time I arrived.  With only a couple of hours daylight left I quickly got settled in and cast out.  I could have gone with a swimfeeder to introduce free offerings close to my hookbait, but I opted instead for PVA stockings stuffed with maggots.

My two baited spots were a marginal corner with overhanging bushes to my right, and at the bottom of the drop-off from an island straight in front of me.  

For the margin rig I opted for a free-running rig with an Avid Carp PVA bag clip attached to the lead eye:

PVA stocking full of maggots, attached to the lead eye via an Avid Carp PVA clip

Free-running leger rig ready to flick into the margin

For the island rig I setup an inline lead to be fished helicopter-style, with a PVA bag clip attached to what would be the hooklink swivel if it was fished inline:

My adapted in-line lead setup to fish helicopter style.  This was a really effective rig, both as an anti-tagle rig and as a fish-catching rig.

The helicopter rig loaded up and ready to cast out.

Things started well for me, as I quickly landed 2 bream - including a new PB of 7lb 15oz - and a perch before sunset, then everything went quiet.

A good bream from Higham Farm specimen lake - a very promising start...

I got plenty of sleep because my alarms barely sounded all night. I did recast the rigs with fresh maggot stockings a couple of times, to keep some bait going in.

Just before daybreak I was awoken by a screaming run on the margin rod. After a gutsy fight around the tree roots and low branches to my right, I got the shakes. I could see I was attached to a nice tench which would easily break my very modest PB. I finally had control of the fish and was guiding it across the surface towards my landing net when everything went slack! Hook pull! Damn it!

I swore quietly at myself for letting a golden opportunity for a PB tench slip through my fingers. Then I snapped myself out of my navel gazing and hastily rebaited the rod (I also changed the hook for a different pattern, just in case) and dropped the rig back in the marginal spot. I didn't have to wait long for this rod to scream away again and - although not a PB - I soon had a lovely tench on the bank.

A lovely tench which almost made up for the bigger one I lost earlier.

That was it for the margin rod, no more bites were forthcoming. But in the first hour of daylight the other rod began to see some action again. A shoal of bream had moved back over the bait - almost 12 hours after they last gave me a bite - and I proceeded to land a couple from in front of the island in a frantic hour before things went dead for the whole day.
 

A pair of decent bream from a small specimen carp lake

I was fishing on a 24 hour ticket and I knew I would be leaving just before the feeding spell had kicked in the evening before. I prepared the swim during the afternoon, laying down more bait, then packed everything up except the rods, alarms, bait and net. I started getting line bites and very tentative bites, but nothing proper and soon my 24 hours was up and I had to vacate the swim. I learned a lot about the venue's potential, and also about fishing with maggots for larger fish - a technique I'll be using plenty in future.

The Best of my Barbel fishing from last Summer

New Years resolution:  Update my blog more regularly!

Three-quarters of the river season has already flown by since I last wrote, which is extremely slack of me, but hopefully there are still a few people out there interested in reading, so I'll update on how my Summer fishing went and then I plan to do a small post on what I've done since (unfortunately not many fish to write about since November!), by which point I should be back in the habit of writing on here more regularly.

The good news is that the fishing I did over the Summer was generally excellent!  I concentrated on a single river, the Derbyshire Derwent, and on a single species, Barbel.

The regular rain certainly helped this Summer, keeping the levels topped up and keeping the barbel feeding confidently.  So many times in the past 4 or 5 seasons, I've heard anglers moaning - on the bank and on the internet - about the low river levels making barbel fishing difficult.  Personally, I never moaned because I still managed to find a good few fish, but I must say that sport was definitely better this season with a bit of extra water and colour in the system.

I've recently published an article on FishingMagic covering the tactics I employed last year and I have an idea for a magazine feature ready for the beginning of the 2013/14 season too, so I won't cover any of that here but all of the fish were caught using large open-end swimfeeders filled with groundbait, mixed pellets and hemp, in conjunction with long mono hooklengths and a mixture of baits.

As usual, my barbel sessions were short, after-work affairs where I started in daylight but fished on into darkness.  I caught a lot of barbel in the 8 to 10lb bracket, with a few going a bit larger.  I was also very pleased to land a pair of smaller fish though.  People I speak to on the bank have shared my concerns over the seeming lack of small barbel in our local rivers.  Regular floods in the Summers surely haven't helped with recruitment, but there does seem to be a distinct lack of fish below 6lb in the Dove, Derwent and Trent.  So, when I had my first barbel double hook-up, I was glad to see a pristine smallish barbel drop into the net.  After a bit of a struggle I also landed the second barbel without letting the first escape!  What a surprise, after landing nothing even close to this size for quite some time, both fish were like peas in a pod!  Two fish of around the 4lb mark which were obviously of the same year class and probably shoal-mates.  They were both fighting fit and after a quick snap which was sadly blurred by a raindrop on the lens, they were quickly returned to hopefully become the next generation of Derwent heavyweights.  You can now read my article - "A Summer of Barbel" - on Fishing Magic.

 

Double hook-up landed!

Here are some of the best shots of a number of 8-10lb barbel that I landed last Summer:

For the first time I took more than three double-figure barbel in a Summer which, considering that I maybe fit in 15 to 18 sessions averaging 4 hours each, I don't think is bad going.  These fish went 10lb 1oz:

10lb 7oz:

10lb 8oz (which I later realised was a recapture of the fish above, 17 days later):

And to top off the lot, I managed to land myself a new PB!  This fish was landed about an hour before the double hook-up above, from the same swim.  Clearly the larger Derwent fish aren't in such an abundance that they only mix with individuals of a similar size and year class, as these fish must surely have been shoaled together to be caught from the same place in such quick succession.  The fish put up an epic scrap, one that I was sure I would lose at several points, which I've described in the FishingMagic article.  The fish weighed 13lb 1oz and added almost 2lb to my personal best.

Other Species

The only brief distraction I had, in terms of other species, was a couple of very short sessions tench fishing.  I chose to fish with the most simple tactics, and used the Lift Method in the margins to land a few hard-fighting tench.

I also used a centrepin reel on a stillwater for the first time and thankfully landed a fish on it too:

I have another article pending about my trips to Brierley Park Pond, where I caught these tench.

That wraps up the highlights of my Summer captures and my intention is to be back in the next few days to summarise my Autumn & Winter fishing so far.

R.I.P. Terry Lampard

Between me starting to write this post and me publishing it, I was saddened to hear of the sudden passing of one of greatest specimen anglers of all time, Terry Lampard. His captures and achievements over the decades speak for themselves and, having never met him, I can't add much that hasn't already been said elsewhere. What I can say is that he was an inspiration to a great many anglers - myself included - and widely revered & respected. Never one to shout his own praises, Terry was understated and humble, possibly even unaware of just how good an angler he was, or of the number of anglers he inspired.

Terry's death is a very sad loss to angling, but his contribution to specimen fishing over a great many years will ensure he will never be forgotten. My thoughts go out to his family and friends.


Ian Welch has written a brief and eloquent Obituary of Terry Lampard on FishingMagic which explains a little about his life and summarises and some of his captures and achievements.

See, I can still catch perch!

Sorry everyone, this post is almost 2 months late!  I started typing it shortly after the session and then never got the time to finish it!  So for now, here's a slightly rushed post, but I've a fair bit of fishing planned in the near future so expect a flurry of activity on here very soon!

A couple of weeks after the rivers closed I headed to local fishery, Tibshelf Ponds, to target the resident perch which are numerous (It used to be my local water and I would catch several every time I fished there as a child), but I had an incling that there were some really large ones there to be caught too.

I set up with a combination of a swimfeeder rod (switching between a groundbait feeder & maggot feeder) and a heavy pole float fished on a new bolognese rod that I'd bought and was keen to try out.  Bolognese rods have never really taken off in the UK, they are designed to fish the deep canals & slow rivers of mainland Europe, and they're basically a telescopic whip (mine's 6 metres long) with a reel seat and a rod ring on every section.  They're not very good for casting, but I bought mine to allow me to fish very light with the sensitivity and precision of a pole, but with the playing abilities of a rod and reel, especially beneficial when a large fish is hooked.  In reality, it's not quite as good as a pole or rod & reel, but I don't like relying on a piece of elastic to "play" my fish for me, so it's a useable substitute for a pole that caters to my own desires and stupid prejudices!

Over the course of the day I landed most of my perch on the float and was amazed at the fights on the bolognese.  Even modest 6oz fish would feel like 1lb+ brutes as they fought against the huge rod; it made catching small perch so much more fun and then when a 1lb 3oz fish finally took a liking to my worms, it gave me a proper tussle!

The bites dried up around the middle part of the day, as they so often do with perch, but eventually my air-injected lobworm started receiving some serious fishy attention.  I missed bite after bite - probably small perch - whether I struck immediately or let the run develop made no difference, I just couldn't connect!  Then I managed to connect with the next three consecutive bites!  The first fish kept me guessing all the way to the net.  It was fighting hard but didn't feel like a perch and I couldn't decide between perch, tench or carp.  A flash of green gave me a moment of hope, but as it surfaced properly a rubbery yellow mouth gave it away; it was a tench.  Next cast I struck at a very perch-like sharp, stuttering run, which turned into a head-thrashing, hectic, perch-like fight.  After a close encounter with some submerged Norfolk reeds a perch looking easily 2lbs graced the net.  Unfortunately, this pot-bellied, thuggish-looking perch (check out its protruding bottom lip!) had recently spawned, so that pot-belly was empty and she weighed 2 ounces shy of 2lbs, making it my biggest bait-caught perch to date (for some reason, all my biggies take lures!) and a personal best for that water. 

Darkness was fast approaching and the fish were hard on the feed, so I quickly re-cast.  About 10 minutes later I got another run which turned out to be yet another species, a chub of around 3lb.  It wasn't what I came for but it was a lovely fish and would be one of the fish I used to catch in my teens, which were stocked at about 4oz, 15 or so years ago.  I still have photos of my beaming face behind a tiny chub at Tibby ponds!

Anyway, here is the photo of the perch.  A bit more writing to follow soon I promise!