10/06/2026 - June 16th The start of a new coarse fishing season

float at a drunken angles when tench fishing

With only a few days to the start of a new season, it's also the date of the next issue of Recontours magazine available free to everyone just Google Raconteurs.

Tackle for my Tench fishing, will be an Andrew Davies 11-foot Kennet Perfection, a much-improved rod from the original Kennet Perfections, which I thought were on the soft side, ideal for smaller species, but not for Tench, more so when you are fishing weedy waters.

Ted Oliver's tapers enabled the building of a much better rod, with a stiffer action. I will match this with a 4 ½” X 1” centre pin reel, known as the “Atom”, a strange name for a centre pin reel, holding some 50 yards of 8lb breaking strain line.

I have a selection of these excellent sliding floats, my reason for using a sliding float, is “Crabtree” is quite deep in some places, the slider makes fishing a lot easier.

Having put on a float stop, I will thread the line through one of Micky Erends sliding quill floats, often with a crimson tip, made to take 5BB shot. Depending on what bait I decide to use I will tie on a barbless hook, between sizes 12's and 8's using a Palomar knot.

The swims where I fish for Tench at Crabtree, is usually silt with masses of decaying leaves. It's Ideal, as the Tench can dig into the soft bottom in search of bloodworms etc. I will use a small plummet to check the depth of water, not my usual heavy one. Having checked the depth, I will add a few inches of line between hook and a BB shot, then lightly pinch 4BB shot halfway between the float and the single BB shot four inches from the hook.

My baits will be mussels, lobworms, corn, bread flake and crust, if I can get some good gentles, I will probably take two pints. Often, they end up feeding the birds. I will have a large bowl of mashed bread,, adding a lot of crumbs to get the right consistency.

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I will add samples of the hook baits. if I choose to use mussels, they with be chopped into small pieces, the same with lobworms, corn hemp and sometimes gentles will be added, if I use the gentles, I will make sure they are dead so they don't crawl away, but remain visible. When using lobworms, it helps if you use a hyperendemic syringe to inject air into the tail of the worm, also when using worms on a barbless hook use a small piece of rubber or an imitation plastic maggot, this will stop the worm wriggling off the hook.

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