Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Tinkering for tench – Kevin Durman
A few clever rig tweaks resulted in one of Korum’s Kevin Durman’s best-ever tench sessions…
WITH so many gravel pits near my Kent home it is no surprise that I spend most of my time angling on them. As a specimen angler my year is broken down into segments fishing for the different species that the big pits hold. In May and early June my time is spent in search of tench, more often than not on the Larkfield complex run by Medway Valley Fisheries. Just about all the big clubs in Kent have banned plastic baits so I had to come up with a new way to create the mag-aligner that has
served me well for many years. The mag-aligner itself is method of creating a kicker using a rubber maggot that is slid down the line, placed over the eye of the hook and down the shank with two or three real maggots then added. It’s a popular winter method for carp anglers and I use a scaled-down version of when fishing for tench. Carp anglers have, for a long time, used shrink tubing to improve the mechanics of their rigs by helping the hook to flip over and deliver a better hook hold. This got me thinking and I began searching for a suitable product for my tench rigs. After lots of experimentation with a variety of substitutes I found the answer that I’d been looking for. I now use red electrical heat shrink tube in the smallest size available, either 1mm or 1.2mm. It took me a while to find it as it’s not something any of the electrical wholesalers stock. Eventually, I found what I was after on eBay. After a few duff purchases of the wrong sizes of tube, I found the one I wanted.
Rigs for wary tench
My rigs consist of a 5in, 10lb Korum Snapper Fluorocarbon hooklength and a size 10 Xpert specimen hook. I use a 15mm length of the red shrink tube, with 12mm pushed down the shank of the hook and 3mm angled at 45° inwards above the eye. The hooklength is attached to a Korum adjustable Heli Rig Kit which is fished 8in above a 2oz Combi Feeder. The tench in Larkfield are pretty heavily pressured so I decided to make a few other tweaks to my set-up. The water is gin clear at times so, to give myself every advantage, I went for a fluorocarbon mainline. With a camouflaged hook, hooklink and mainline I felt I had come up with an effective presentation and I completed it by adding a Taska Tungsten Rig Boom to the Heli Kit just to make sure everything is pinned down and as flflush to the lakebed as possible.
Putting it to the test
For the rig’s first outing I decided to fifish the venue’s Railway Lake. This is one of the quieter waters on the fishery and one I had always planned on fishing. The ideal time to spot tench rolling is dawn and a lake will often seem alive with them as the sun starts to make its way over the horizon. Unfortunately, I arrived in late afternoon and fish-spotting proved fruitless. But tench, just like carp, will follow the wind and with a good ripple pushing into one corner of the lake I headed in that direction. After a bit of plumbing I found a lovely plateau the size of two snooker tables. This suited me perfectly as I prefer having all my rods in one area rather than spreading them about. I positioned one bang in the middle and the other two either side near where the plateau dropped. With 9ft on top and 16ft all around it was just the kind of dining table I like to fifish on. My favourite mix of Sonubaits tinned Hemp and 2mm Krill Pellets went in – not
loads, just 10 medium Spombs and then the fluorocarbon maggot heli rigs were cast over the top. I’d been set up for two hours and early in the evening I saw a couple of tench roll directly over the plateau. I knew my location was spot on and my confidence was high. Sure enough, is wasn’t long before the first tench of the session slipped into the net. The previous season I had two trips on Railway without a bite so just the one tench would have been an improvement. But I was hopeful that the tench would be feeding well. To say what followed over the course of the next 48 hours was an improvement would be an understatement! I went on to hook and land 16 beautiful Railway tench up to 9lb 14oz. I am an Angling Trust Level 2 licensed coach and got to show this rig to a number of clients when doing tutorials who
then caught personal bests using it.
For me, seeing others have success is one of the greatest rewards in angling and why I got into coaching in the fifirst place. So there you go. Something else to ponder over and play with which I hope this brings you some success.