It is July and I have yet to catch a tinca this season and bizarrely at the start of the year I set myself the target of catching tench from four different venues. (I managed three in 2005; Everton Grange, Ornamental Lake and the Old River at Newhaven.) So in a bid to get back on track, I decided on an early start the day after England exited the World Cup to Portugal. On something of a whim I decided upon Hatchett Pond and arrived at 6:30 a.m. Cracking morning weather-wise and other than a few ponies and dog walkers I has the pond to myself. Settled for a swim where fish were rolling, just up from the car park and up against the edge of the weed bed. It is very shallow water at this point and I went for a simple running arlsley bomb rig to give myself some distance. Suffice to say despite fish jumping and rolling the tip stayed motionless until out of the blue I had a humdinger of a bite, but by then I was so comatose I failed to react. No more bites ensued and with the day start to get hotter I headed home, as did the England squad.

GG

Firstly Micky Minnow and I were going to head off to Everton after work, then he texted to say he couldn’t make it and then rang to say he was on his way! I couldn’t see any signage for the new lake but settled in what was a favourite swim of mine a few seasons back, on the left hand bank opposite the island. I started off by laying on (I’ve pretty much used a medium Drennan onion, shotted how Billy Lane suggested shotting a zoomer, for 90% of my lake fishing this summer) and then started to set up the carp rod. That was the trigger for the first of three tench, all of which came to bacon grill on the float. The first two tench suggest that not all the small tench have been removedn after all. However, with the third one I thought I’d beaten my PB, but it was not to be; dead on 7lb when weighed with the net and with the net weighing a smidgen over a pound, I’ll put it down as 5lb 12ozs. After that sweetcorn, chickpeas and bacon grill all produced small indications but no further definite bites. This time I flavoured the chick peas with liquid green mussel rather than liquid scopex and they seemed to create a lot of interest, so I’ll stick with that and also my home-made ‘scopeberry paste’ produced a few small knocks on the ledger line. Mickeys had one small tench and a cracking low double carp. Decent piont of Ringwood in The Royal Oak too. Good evening all in all!

GG