Let’s talk tench rigs!

For my first session I went with an all- out Method feeder approach. This involved fishing 35g flatbed feeders with short, 4ins supple braid hooklinks. If a tench picked up the hookbait it would almost instantly hook itself against the weight of the feeder.

Although I just don’t think the tench were there on the first trip, as I’m sure many of us do, I spent the next couple of days mulling over what I could have done differently. The spot had felt fairly soft and silty and I wondered if the short hooklinks had been getting lost in whatever detritus was down there. I decided to try something slightly different on the second trip and went with 1.5oz inline leads and slightly longer hooklinks of around 6ins using the same supple braid material. These were then cast out with small PVA bags of either 4mm pellets and crushed boilies or casters. The bags were not only used to add a pile of bait around the hookbait, but also to prevent the hooklink from tangling on the cast or as it fell through the water.

So far it’s 3- 0 to the inline lead rigs, but I’m not discounting the Method just yet! I think I’ll just save that for when the fish properly get up the marginal shelf and I’m fishing over a much cleaner raked spot.

As for hookbait, I simply pick something that matches an item from the loosefeed mix, such as a grain of fake corn, a couple of artificial casters or a 10mm boilie. As the tench grub around picking up different items, it’s incredibly difficult for them to identify which is the hookbait.

On the Method, I used 4ins of Korum Xpert 10lb braid Drennan 35g flatbed Method Drennan Super Specialist Barbel Size 12 HOOKLINK FEEDER HOOK