Napton Res

After looking at reports of great tench catches from Napton I decided to make my first visit on Saturday morning.

On arrival I read the board and discovered there was a match pegged all along the one side of the larger lake, and all of the pegs along "the causeway" were taken...where to fish? As the smaller lake had no one on it walked around to the far side next the over flow and set up, out of the wind and quite comfortable. The conditions were not ideal for tench fishing with crystal clear watch and bight sunlight but due to having left over bait from my earlier visit to Ryton I decided to give it a go.

In a similar vein to the previous evening i put two bed of bait down about 35 yards out on to which I put a cut down pop up with a cage feeder helicopter rig. After about an hour a couple of guys that had fished the causeway came round to have a chat and commented that the fishing was very poor, in fact the match was only won with a couple of fish...not great for such a prolific tench fishery! As I spoke to them about a whole range of fishy subjects my left hand rod ran away...only for me to miss it by a mile due to being on the bank away from my rods...at this point I joked that this would be my only run of the day!

The lads recommended that I moved to the causeway as they were the hot pegs on the fishery.(perhaps a mistake!) Though I fished the peg hard for the next 5 hours I failed to get another bite, the only positive being that no one else did either.

Perhaps the conditions were not right? Wind in the wrong direction, to sunny and clear water?

I will go back to this fishery as there must be some truth in the stories!

Better luck next time.