“Sometimes the key to successful angling is not to fish at all”
IF THERE’S one lesson that hot, sultry weather teaches us, it’s that timing is critical to successful fishing. After all, boiling conditions and those iffy hours in the middle of the day are so often the kiss of death. But what should you do instead, given a few hours to kill?
Even in ideal conditions, sometimes the best tactic is not to fish at all, but to feed your swim and come back later. Savvy carp anglers now do this routinely, fully aware that fish are more likely to feed if they’re spared an immediate assault course of lines and rigs. But what about the rest of us?
Given a baking hot day on the canal, I’d hoped to show my mate Lee Armishaw some quality tench fishing. Looking at the bright skies, though, I fancied we’d be better off drinking beer instead. And I wasn’t joking!
As pleasant as our pub lunch was, I still felt we needed to give it longer, and so rather than pester the tench we took a walk. Rudd are still obliging even with the sun high in the sky, so picking a few off with a fly rod was a great way to spend another couple of hours.
Back to our original spot, and a transformation had taken place. Even with more cloud cover, I was shocked at what we saw. Our two baited spots were no longer gin-clear, but well and truly stirred up. We could hardly tackle up fast enough!
I feel a bit disingenuous to say it only took five minutes to get a bite, seeing as we’d left the fish alone for the whole afternoon. The action was frantic from that point, as the fish just kept coming. Within the first hour alone we’d had four tench and some decent perch to boot.
It almost seemed too easy compared to previous trips, but the only glaring difference had been introducing plenty of hemp and dead maggots, and leaving the fish well alone for a while. Could this be why I’d not managed a real red-letter haul of tench on recent visits? I’d managed hits of two or three fish over short sessions, but the response never seemed to last.
Tellingly, every bite was decisive this time and at no point did we need to rest the swim. And this wasn’t even on dusk, but hours before packing up time! Lee continued to catch after I’d gone and we ended up with 14 cracking tench between us. All of which brings me back to the same, seemingly odd piece of advice – sometimes the key to successful angling is not to fish at all, until you’ve given your quarry a few hours of unfettered feeding.
“Our baited spots were no longer gin-clear, but well and truly stirred up”