A bit to soon

With four days off work over the Easter bank holiday it would have been rude not to do a session for the tench and bream, I am very new to this kind of fishing, in fact this will be my 2nd season in pursuit of these species. I was lucky enough to have received some birthday money at the beginning of the month so I put the money to good use and bought myself a pair of Drennan series seven 1.75lb avon rods, it took me a few short sessions to get to grips with these rods their nothing like the pike and carp rods in my arsenal, much lighter and the action is very soft so much so I struggled casting with them (all the gear, no idea) back to the session. I opted to fish an area where I had options of fishing deep and shallow water, its still a little early in the season the water temperatures are still a little bit cool and the underwater vegetation hasn't really started to bloom as yet and with warm sunny weather on the cards for the next few days I thought I might pick up a fish or two moving into the shallow water. We arrived to our chosen swims on Thursday afternoon, Me, Mike and Sefo and a gap of 40 yds or so between us, we all fished two rods each, Sefo fish both his rods on the method feeder, he was after the bream, Mike and I fished one Method feeder and one on the maggot feeder. My first job was to get a bit of bait out, I set the clip on my spod rod about 45yds and put half a dozen spods of hemp out, I then pegged out my spod rod up the bank so I could set my other rods the same, I fished both my rods the same distance out but 20yds apart. We finally settled down, had some tea and enjoyed a bottle of beer as the sun went down then chatted fishing for the next hour or so before finally going to sleep. At 01.05am I got woken by a few beeps on my left hand rod, this was my method feeder

rod, by the time i'd got of my bed chair and slipped on my boots it had began to take line, not a screamer just slow and steady, I lifted the rod and wound into the fish, at first the fish just came in as I turned the reel handle but when the fish was about 20 yds out it started to put up a bit of a fight, there was no need for a light this evening the moon was so bright and by the time the fish was 5 yds from the net I could see it was a good bream. I un hooked the fish and put it in my recovery/weigh sling and put the fish back in the water then got my scales and headlight out, 10lb 02oz, a new PB by a long way. This was to be the first bream I had caught by design, over the years I've caught many bream whilst fishing for other species and never weighed one, I reckon the biggest bream I had caught previously was no more than 6lb so this double certainly put a smile on my face. I woke Sefo and our Mike to take some photos but more so to show them just how big they are in here (I've heard they go to around 14lb in this venue). Nothing more happened during the night so about an hour after first light I had a recast and enjoyed the beginning of a hot sunny day. At about 10am I decided to spod out some more hemp, casters and maggot on my right hand rod, I had no signs of fish movement around this rod but the bloody tufties had been down on my bait all night and had probably cleared the lot. An hour or so pasted when I got a few liners and it wasn't long after that that I got my next run, I played the fish to about 5' from the landing net and pulled out it was a bream of about 7lb. I recast the rod to the same place and sat back

with a beer and the Saints Wigan good Friday game on the radio (that was painful) just as Wigan run in their 3rd try I had a good run on my right hand rod again, this fish had a bit more about it than the bream,  I soon got the fish to the net it was a scrappy little tench of just over 4lb, after 2 blank sessions I finally managed one of my other target species albeit not a big one. That was it, we stayed on for one more night but other than a tufty nothing else was landed, all in all it was a good session and I took a lot away from it, lets see what May brings?