The Big Fish Column

Spring finally began to make its presence felt around local fisheries last week and catches, while still well below par for the time of year, were at least much improved.

Tench have been particularly slow to feature this spring but are now beginning to make an appearance despite the falling evening temperatures.

The signs are at least positive and now the species are moving the results should continue to improve.

Tench were on Jason Marshall’s mind when he visited one of the Twyford pits last week where he set up to fish a cage feeder packed with brown crumb, corn and mini pellets and a couple of grains of corn on a size 10 hook to 6lb line.

Jason had fished a couple of biteless sessions on the fishery in previous weeks but knew the tench were likely to switch on at any time and was delighted when his persistence was finally rewarded with a fine, plump early morning fish of 6lb 2oz.

Although tench have been slow to wake up, bream have been a little more active and have been the mainstay of many anglers fishing the more natural gravel pit venues during the past couple of weeks.

No particularly large fish have been reported by local anglers but there have been some excellent catches including a 10-fish catch to Burnham’s Gary Newell last week.

Gary targeted a local pit with a double rod approach fishing a pellet on one and sweetcorn on the other, both over a large bed of groundbait which included plenty of pellets, corn, hemp and maggots bound together with a fishmeal and crumb based base mix.

An overnight session brought Gary nine fish in the 5-7lb bracket with one, distinctly bigger than the others tipping the scales at 8lb 14oz.

Whilst the larger pits are just beginning to wake up the commercials are finally beginning to move into top gear and catches around the area have been buoyant with venues such as Woolwich Green, Royal Berkshire, Pondwood and West End all now producing consistently.

Woolwich Green and Royal Berkshire have been in particularly fine form with the former responding well to float or feeder tactics for bream, small carp and the odd tench in nets to 75lb, and the latter producing good numbers of double figure carp including 14lb 12oz and 18lb fish to Windsor’s Richard Nicholson, who legered a lump of meat in the margins of Lake 2.

I’m told the roach in Royal Berkshire are still providing excellent sport too so there might just be time to get over there and bag up on a few before they slow down a little in the warmer water temperatures.

Any anglers wishing to report catches may contact me on 07780 75513 or ian@bigfishtrail.com