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Continuing my quest for an eight pound tench. Normally I like a simple bait - luncheon meat, sweetcorn or a bit of breadflake - but these fish are too wise for that. I had to dust off the O' Thinking Cap.

The water is gin-clear and very weedy, I opted to bait up with hemp and red maggots - the thought being they would be attractive in both smell and movement but be hard to find among the weed. Then in the middle of this would be my hookbaits; snowmen made out of brightly coloured 10mm and 8mm boilies. This is officially the first time I've ever used boilies!

As an extra firework; a bit of exploding green groundbait in the method feeder - so they'd know exactly where it was. They were never going to fall for this sh*t. But after an hour, perhaps two, the alarm screamed away, a fantastic fight and a 6lb 7oz tench was in the net (above). Adding another 2oz to my PB - creeping towards my target.

Then, after loosing several fish to the weed beds I hit a good fish - was this the one I was after? Several heart stopping moments at the snags but eventually she was in the net.

Not quite as heavy as she looked - the scales read 7lb 12oz a new personal best (top photo). What a fish - who cares about those other four ounces? Not me! Not until next time... Blogger's Challenge: There is a gang of perch that go marauding across the lake now and again, so I took a bleak-whip and bagged a few of them - weighing one for Challenge - at 5oz hopefully I'll find a bigger one.

And as darkness and rain descended a couple of eels fell for the old snowman, I weighed one - a 1lb 0oz eel for the Challenge - just getting a few fish on the scorecard...
Posted by Brian at 17:15 Labels: Eel, Lake, PB, PB 16/17, Perch, Tench


