Tench Fishing Tactics with Archie Braddock

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

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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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Archie Braddock’s Flavour of Fishing Filming saved by floating deads Screaming Reels, a popular fishing programme of its day, got in touch to see if I thought I could catch for the cameras using the largely unknown dead maggot approach.

Full of confidence, I said yes, but when the filming day drew near I thought I’d better fish it a couple of days before, just to test the water. Although Canadian pondweed grew to the surface in places, the bottom was usually clean, but not this time. A fine, filamentous algae covered the bottom to a depth of 2-3 inches. Disaster! It had the consistency of candyfloss and would mask the hook baits.

Back at home I racked my brains, and finally realised I’d have to pop the baits up at least three inches. Would floating, live maggots still float after being frozen to death? Yes, they would.

I spent most of a day semisubmerging live maggots in a little water to make them float, then drying them by letting them wriggle between two towels. After a lot of work, I finished up with three pints of floating deads, and the filming day was saved.

Four maggots on a size 10 hook lifted it handsomely, and all it needed was a No.1 shot three inches below the bait to leave it popped-up just clear of that algae layer. I caught eight or nine tench, including a 6-pounder. Job done, and a valuable new technique added to my armoury.

After three years and hundreds of tench caught by myself and other anglers on the water, not one of them had reached 8 lb. I’d done all I could; it was time to move on.

Secret paste in disguise

n I couldn’t help but admire this beautiful tench.

The answer proved to be my super soft paste, described in the bream article last week. I modified it slightly by adding a flavour at the mixing stage, usually Maple, at 4 ml per egg.

Due to that soft bottom and lack of small fish, I took the gamble of hair-rigging a 10 mm cork ball, close to a strong, size 8 hook, to mould the paste around. This didn’t pop the bait up, just prevented it sinking into the blanket weed. With a fishmeal-packed Method feeder on the end of the line, and a 6-in. helicopter hook link just above it, I had a killer rig (see photo).

Now the big fish came my way, including 8- and 9-pounders.

My catches sparked interest from the assembled specialist anglers, and more than one had a sneaky look at my set-up, in the guise of helping me net a fish. Fortunately, I’d anticipated this by painting the cork balls red. The paste always washed off when rewinding from a long cast, so all the curious ever saw was a red 10 mm ‘boilie’.

I had another good couple of years catching quality fish, but eventually angling pressure slowed catches right down, as it

Dream turns into a circus Melbourne Pool, in Derbyshire, is a large and shallow estate lake (I never did find 5 ft of water) with a bottom covered in blanket weed, due to sunlight penetrating through its clear water.

It was said that the tench there were nearer to 6 lb than 5 lb, and that 7s were taken regularly, with a few whispers of 8s. The blanket weed would not be a problem with my popped-up dead maggots, but because of the shallow water, abundant birdlife and visiting public, it was necessary to cast well out away from the disturbance.

Once I’d sorted out some powerful rods and 10 lb line, I found I could fish comfortably at 60-70 yards, using my tight line, bolt rig approach.

I didn’t use the Whopper Dropper here, as its bulk meant that air resistance reduced its casting range, but I did modify some feeders, to give me what amounted to a half-size Whopper Dropper; the main

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n My feeder rig to beat the weed.

feature being the bomb separated from the feeder’s body.

This meant that the bomb could sink into the blanket weed an inch or two without dragging the feeder in with it. I added some bran flakes to my groundbait, which caused the feeder-plugged groundbait to disintegrate rapidly when the feeder hit the bottom, allowing some dead maggots to fall out. The main bulk of them flushed out when I wound in for a recast, which I did about every 40 minutes.

My tactics worked like a dream. I was catching good bags of tench from the off, anything from half a dozen to 20 or more per trip. I didn’t get an 8-pounder in my first five years on the water, but 6s were regular and good 7s

came along often enough to keep me interested. I only fished from mid-March to mid-June, as weed growth made the water virtually unfishable by the end of June, which suited me fine, as I was already back on the rivers by then.

I generally out-fished the locals, and ‘maggots’ was my basic answer to enquiries about my bait, as I tried to keep the fishing under the radar. However, it did leak out, and as the venue was day ticket and allowed night fishing, eventually the long-stay bivvy boys appeared, taking up the swims for days on end.

One angler claimed a totally inaccurate catch of an 11 lb bream and a 10 lb tench in one night, naming the venue in the local press. That ruined

it, as anglers from far and wide descended. Weekends became a circus. Why do overnight anglers need beer and bright lanterns to fish?

The owners had had enough, night fishing and day tickets were banned, and a limit of 30 anglers was imposed. With prices raised, it basically became an expensive syndicate.

This brought a new breed of angler, proper specialists who introduced Method feeder fishing, boilies and plastic corn. They started making good catches, including fish of 8 lb, and I found my dead maggot approach taking a back seat, so I moved onto plastic baits myself, getting some good fish, but I needed a new edge, due to the angling pressure.

n Paste around a cork ball brought the bigger tench, including this one weighing 9 lb 8 oz.

n My helicopter, Method feeder rig, with a ‘boilie’ (a cork ball painted red).

always does, so I moved on.

That experience proved invaluable.

Nowadays, with two rods, one set up for dead maggots and the other for paste fishing, I feel I could go to any tench water in the country and expect to catch.

I hope you’ve found some inspiration from this mini series, helping you to catch some quality fish.

Good luck, Arch

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