A fish, I can’t believe it, an actual fish

That's a tench, that is

I started fishing a new venue a month or so ago. I’ve known about it for a while but I always thought it was a club water, it wasn’t and I’m glad I’ve got myself down there. However after the first three trips I was beginning to wish I hadn’t!

I’d lost four fish and missed a number of runs. All these fish came from a spot I’d pre-baited, spending hours priming. Last night however was a complete fluke. I arrived at the lake about 7pm to find four anglers already fishing, one of them was in MY swim, how dare he.

I decided to fish the far bank next to Steve ‘blag master’ Philips, I’d had a bad day at work and it was late so I literally chucked one rod 20 yards out into ‘the trench’ and the other rod was flicked alongside the overhanging trees to my right. Both rods were fished with imitation maggots on the hook, ‘critically’ balanced apparently…

I sat in Steve’s peg talking about how lazy I was and that I didn’t have a chance of catching, whilst saying this, I could hear a strange fizzing noise coming from the direction of my rods. “Can’t be my reel.” I thought, “The alarm would be going off” We resumed our chat but after another 20 seconds or so the noise was still there so I went off to check, the bobbin’ was hugging my ‘trench’ rod and the clutch was going ‘sick’.

The line must have gone down the side of the roller. Any hows, I played this tench, which felt like a good one, for a solid five minutes, even managing to step into the water in my boat shoes (forgot my wellies). To my amazement it actually went into the landing mat, I had caught a fish! Maybe I’ll go on some sort of heroic run of catching fish now? Double after double? Maybe.