“For me it’s not properly spring until the tench start feeding”
EVERY year around this time, I tell myself optimistic lies.
With the arrival of spring I look for those familiar annual signs and rituals that provide hope and reassurance that the world isn’t going mad – like the first rising trout of the year, or the first session of T-shirt weather.
Of course, the fish can be as confused as humans when it comes to today’s non-binary jumble of confused seasons. For me, it’s not properly spring until the tench start feeding and you can go fishing without seven layers of clothing.
Arriving right on the cusp of these spring breakthroughs came my local club match at Greenways, the classic tench stretch of the Tiverton Canal. On a fine day it’s like a Monet painting, on a crap day it’s more like one of those messy works of modern art where even the most bohemian of us wonder what the heck it all means. But which place would we find?
Both heaven and hell came our way, truth be told. I drew a lovely looking peg among the best half-dozen in the match, but it was also quite brutally exposed to the wind.
My excitement would have to be tempered, at least while I left my chopped worm lines to settle. Ominously, I couldn’t even find tiny roach down the inside. Had we fools prematurely conned ourselves into thinking it was spring?
Switching to the worm line, the float settled for barely 10 seconds, before giving a little lift and taking a walk. A split second later, elastic was being wrenched out by what could only be that first tench of spring.
A great start, but would it be plain sailing from then on in? My dreams of suntan weather and a bulging keepnet never quite materialised, sadly.
All my neighbours got on to the worm line and started catching. But I couldn’t buy a bite for the next hour, while the wind picked up and it became one of those Irish weather days, with sunshine, icy winds and driving rain all competing.
On the next peg, it was quite refreshing to witness Mike Pickford’s winning bag of seven tench on the lead in a match where pole fishing is so dominant. With that stiff breeze, I half suspect he was the only angler able to keep his bait perfectly still.
I only managed one more tench, but it was a fine fish that dwarfed the first. There were happy faces and a rainbow on the horizon at the weigh-in.
A true optimist might even have described it as spring-like.
“Both heaven and hell came our way, truth be told”