Set me up to catch

[Steve Burt]

Just bought a years ticket on a clay pit with tench to 11lbs as my biggest is a 4.5lber i am very excited. what i want to know is how to target the big tench heres the rules;
No boilies, peas nuts or pulses
No hooks bigger than a 12

the lake has tench carp bream:-( rudd perch roach

So go ahead and tell me the rigs and baits you would use and i'll try them over the next few weeks and get all the glory!

[BoldBear]

Tench have small red eyes which are fairly sensitive to light and they usually come into the shallower margins in the early mornings and late evenings.
Once the sun gets high in the sky they tend to move into deeper water although if you can follow them you can usually carry on catching them.
Tench are not avid night feeders although you can occasionally catch one still feeding at night, but not very often.

On level bottomed lakes without deeper areas they usually feed on or off for most of the day with a slight lull around midday.

In the early mornings I like fishing breadflake, corn, casters or small redworms close in near beds of lillies using a light waggler with a reel loaded with 5 or 6lb line and with a size 14 or 12 sharp hook; fishing about 5" overdepth, or fishing the lift method with a short 3" hooklength.
I like to feed tiny pellets or a good Tench groundbait containing bloodmeal or mollases.

However; the larger Tench in our estate lake tend to be caught tight against the lilly beds further out at range; and I usually have to change over to a light leger and use pellets or small boilies which are coated in soft halibut or monster crab paste which disolves slowly and draws the Tench to the hook and also feed small pellets either with a catapult or in a PVA mesh stocking attatched to the weight. I may also need to step up my line strength slightly in case I hook a Carp or an exceptionally large Tinca.

On our club waters I have noticed that once the lillies start dying off and changing colour in the late autumn the larger Tench appear to start moving away from the lilly beds into more open water unlike the smaller Tench which probably still need to hide from predators. I suspect that this may be because the lillies start to rot and give off an unpleasant odour, but I may have this totally wrong.

Anyway tight lines and good luck

Keith (BoldBear)