Sywell Reservoir
Tench
Tinca Tinca
A hard fighting, distinctive fish with olive green flanks, yellow bellow, red eyes, and large paddle like fins. With two barbules on upper lip.
A common fish in estate lakes, reservoirs, gravel pits, and some slow flowing rivers. It is most common in central and southern England, and in recent years, the tench has grown to enormous sizes in southern gravel pits, and reservoirs.
The Tenchfishers is a small group dedicated to the research, and pursuit of the tench as a species.
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I decided to put pen to paper and write this
piece because Sywell has always been a special angling venue
for me, and I had so many good days fishing there during 1990’s,
which I will never forget.
Sywell first got in the angling news in the
early 1960’s when the exploits of anglers such as Bob
Church, and Len Head, first got publicised. In those day’s,
a tench of 5lb+ was a very big fish, and in the 60’s a
fish of that size was very uncommon. But Sywell reservoir (true
to form) was at that time producing them quite regularly. Sywell
in the 60’s was relatively unknown nationally as a big
fish water, and it was the exploits of a small group of pioneering
anglers who first put Sywell on the map as a big tench venue,
as a large amount of big 5lb+ fish were caught, which were serious
tench in those days!
 Over
the years, Sywell Reservoir continued to produce numbers of
big fish, and the venue record for tench increased in the late
1960’s, when well known big fish angler Phil Smith caught
a 6lb 10oz tench from the venue, which was at the time a monstrous
fish, and the fishing continued to be very prolific! However,
by the early 70’s the fishing on Sywell appeared to be
in decline, as the tench year classes of the time appeared to
be dieing out, and by the mid 70’s the tench population
had almost disappeared and Sywell Reservoir as a big fish venue
was eventually forgotten about, (for the time being)!
However, the summer of 1976 proved to be a
big year for the famous venue, for reasons that are not immediately
apparent. The long hot dry summer of 1976 proved to be an excellent
year for spawning fish on the reservoir and a new breed of resident
tench soon became established! By the early 1980’s, some
anglers began catching tench again, and these ‘new’
fish began to appear in anglers catches more and more often.
These juvenile fish were young fit deep bodied tench, with a
fast growth rate and they proved to be the new life blood of
this famous water.
By the mid 1980’s large catches of tench
between 5-6lb again began to hit the headlines locally, and
by 1988, large numbers of tench to nearly 9lb were caught from
Sywell, and it now became apparent the 80 acre venue was definitely
back as a big tench water, and more and more specialist anglers
began seriously fishing the reservoir, as the word soon got
around.
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