I had been told there was a pond near London that contained tench, a fish I've wanted to catch for some time (I've only caught one, once while watching someone else's rod). The only details of this pond were it's location and it may contain tench.
So on Friday the plan was to head to
Cannon Hill pond for a couple of hours before continuing my quest for a Thames bream, fishing in the last couple of hours of daylight at Kingston.
It was quite busy, the first person I asked said they had caught 2 small tench - they were in there. I found a likely looking spot and set up an over depth waggler and fished white maggots. First cast a rudd, second cast a tench - only small but I'd caught my target fish.
My first tench by design. Yay.I continued to catch small fish, roach, rudd and tench. The thing I like about a new water is not knowing what you are going to catch, this was proved after about an hour when I caught a goldfish! My camera phone had packed in by this point, so no photo.
My first brown goldfish (I didn't get a photo of the orange one).
I couldn't tear myself away so I fished into the dark. I caught loads of roach and rudd, 23 tench, 4 carp, a goldfish (orange) and a brown goldfish. No big fish, I asked the locals and they said it was mostly small fish with the odd big carp, they had all heard of tench over a pound but nobody I spoke to had caught one.
It was a great afternoon and I'll definitely be back. I'd like to catch a big tench, say 5lb, I think it's a bit late in the year to start now - so I think it'll be a target next summer.
RIP camera phone, you battled frost and snow while pike fishing, got covered in eel slime, got dropped in the water while carp fishing and died on the banks of Cannon Common pond trying to photograph a goldfish...