Early Spring Tench.

 On Saturday morning I made the trip down to Marsh Farm, a fishery I had visited last year twice in search of Crucian Carp and got plagued by Tench, this time round it was in search of Tench as it's probably too cool for the Crucian's to be feeding hard, April onwards will certainly be the time to target them, but in the meantime even though we have cold nights and rain/hail storms passing through the Tench should still be on the feed.

Not the biggest but probably the most pristine.

 I was joined by Richard and Brian for the days fishing where we had no real expectations and simply went for a day out and relax, my personal best Tench of 7lb 15oz caught in 2010 is still the number to beat but even though there are Tench at the farm that can beat that I simply wanted to enjoy the sporadic sunshine and get my line pulled, on the other hand Brian and Richard's Tench PB's are not as large, hence a PB here for them both could have been easily achievable.

Not breaking any records.

Nasty looking weather.

 The day out did provide us with quite a lot of fun and all of us were catching fish but we were made to wait until the afternoon, with a hail storm seeming to be the catalyst, float fishing maggots over a big bed of loose maggot feed, Brian and I managed 9 and 6 respectively each, even Richard got in on the act with 3 Tench but the Bream also showed up with almost a dozen caught between the other two, apart from the Tench for me, a solo Roach put in an appearance and for all my hard work on the Harris Lake which didn't pay off it was Richardson Lake that delivered, which is why it is the match lake and much easier to catch from, but come the warmer months Harris Lake will see me a few times as I try to achieve a new personal best for the species which coincidentally was set in 1998 (3lb 1oz).

 A good day out and we were also joined by a pair of Red Kites which unfortunately stayed very high up in the sky, but was constantly reminded of their presence through the loud squawking and occasionally stooping much closer to the ground but still too high up for me to not get a picture, until mid-late April Crucian......