Tench Fishing Tactics with Archie Braddock

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Archie Braddock’s

Flavour of Fishing

MINI SERIE S

In the final part of this mini series, Archie explains how bait and tackle innovation brought tench success.

Dead good tench tactics T

ENCH are widespread in this country. They are found in every sort of stillwater, from small farm ponds to huge gravel pits, canals, drains and even rivers. There was a time when a 6 lb fish was a season’s highlight, the record standing at just over 8 lb, but the past two or three decades have brought a large increase in average weight, but not everywhere. Generally speaking, the south of the country has the biggest fish, with many waters capable of producing tench of over 10 lb. In the Midlands, where I am based, a 7-pounder is a good fish, and there are very few waters that throw up tench over 8 lb consistently. However, I suspect that most anglers would be more than happy with a tench catch that included fish of 5 lb or more, and I can remember when a tench of that size was just a dream to me. As a teenager, I regularly got up at 2.30am, and by dawn I would be presenting bread flake under a porcupine float alongside lily pads on one of my local lakes. Usually I would have visited the swim the night before, to bait it with mashed bread. I did sometimes suffer a blank, but generally I’d get a bite as soon as it was light enough to see

a float. Most of my fish were between 2 lb and 3 lb 8 oz (I never did get a 4), but the sight of a 3 lb fish in the first rays of sunlight, with mist still on the water, was a magical experience. I wonder what could be done today, with liquidised bread and flavours? After many years of float fishing bread or worms on various local waters, it was in the 1980s when I made a breakthrough in tench fishing:

dead maggots. In my book Fantastic Feeder Fishing I outlined my development of this bait, attempting to catch some huge rudd from a very silty gravel pit. What I did find was that I now had a brilliant tench bait, and I was soon catching 4 lb and 5 lb fish, an occasional one of 6 lb, and one mighty fish of 7 lb 10 oz. Today I always start with dead maggots, on any tench water.

Here’s how I currently prepare dead maggots. Having purchased two or three pints, I riddle off the maize or sawdust that they come in, then split them into one pint lots. My chosen flavour is then applied via a pipette, usually 3-4 ml per pint. While the maggots absorb the flavour, I write the date 8 MAY 2018

From Yorkshire down to Kent, deads have produced for me first time out, although I hasten to add that 90 per cent of my tench fishing is done within half an hour’s travel of my Long Eaton home. I even caught in winter, picking up tench on dead maggots while trying to catch other species.

n In my early years of tenching, I’d fish at the crack of dawn, targeting tench on float-fished bread or worms, presented close to lily pads.

Make my Whopper Dropper

Deadly preparation

• 24 anglersmail.com

n My first 8 lb tench fell to dead maggots.

and the flavour used on labels, sticking them onto plastic carrier bags. After 15 minutes, I place one pint of maggots in each bag, seal them and place them in the freezer. Give them at least 48 hours before use, as they’ll wake up at 24 hours, and aim to use them within about 3 months.

n In the 1980s I found that dead maggots were a deadly bait for tench.

Although I caught fish everywhere on deads, it was when I managed to obtain a ticket for a special gravel pit in Leicestershire that I learned how deadly they could be. I made a recce trip to the water before fishing it, and found the local bailiff just packing up at 1pm. He had started at 8am and caught 12 tench, six of them over 6 lb. This was fantastic fishing in the early ’80s, with a 6 lb fish still a notable one, and it also told me that there was a good head of tench in the water. I decided it would need quite a lot of feed. Enter the Whopper Dropper. The photo shows the finished article, and I made it out of a piece of plastic drainage pipe, easily available from plumbing outlets. Tape a piece of strong plastic tubing along it, to take heavy

braid threaded through it, with a snap link at one end, to take a bomb, a ring at the other, to tie on the main line, and you’re good to go. My chosen feed was a 50:50 mix of dead maggots and hemp, trapped by flavoured groundbait plugs at each end, just like a giant, open-ended feeder. Cast it to your chosen spot, give it a few seconds to absorb water, and then strike the contents out. It delivered roughly four fillings per pint of bait, and I never baited less than five pints, with a minimum of 20 casts before setting up to fish. Nowadays you could use a Spomb, but my Whopper Dropper does deliver feed to the lakebed rather than just the surface. My main flavour at that time was Maple, in the groundbait and on the bait. The fishing rig was a groundbait

n The Whopper Dropper – what a whopper!

feeder on the end of the line, carrying the same content as the Whopper Dropper, and a 6-in. helicopter rig just up the line from it, with a size 10 hook baited with four dead maggots. Fishing the rig on a tight line, I caught immediately, fish of 4 lb, 5 lb, 6 lb and one or two of 7 lb. As that first season progressed,

I increased my baiting, sometimes going up to ten pints, and my catches soared. By the end of the season I’d had more than 80 fish averaging over 5 lb, with six of them over 7 lb – phenomenal fishing for my area.

Continued over›› 8 MAY 2018 anglersmail.com 25


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