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.

http://www.tenchfishers.net

SYWELL MEMORIES
Angling Exploits On A Famous Tench Water - Part 1

Over the last 40 years, Sywell Reservoir has been one of the most prolific big tench waters in the country, which has produced quite literally thousands of big tench to many anglers who have visited its banks. This clear weedy reservoir has always been known as a top specimen venue but has never quite produced tench to a size that will shake the British record. However, for sheer numbers of specimen sized fish, this 80 acre Northamptonshire venue just has to be the best specimen tench water in the country!

Today (relativly speaking), Sywell Reservoir is now in decline, and current catch statistics suggest the best years in terms of fishing are now in the past, (at least for the foreseeable future). However I was lucky enough to fish Sywell for eight years, from 1989 to 1997, when the venue peaked as a big tench water, and a staggering amount of large tench were caught during those years, by many anglers.

To be honest, Sywell was always an ‘open secret’, and by the mid nineties A LOT of anglers were visiting the place, and many angers were catching big fish. A week would not go by without at least one angler publishing HIS catch in the Angling Times, or Anglers Mail, and very soon Sywell was common knowledge within the angling fraternity, and angler’s from all over the country were traveling there to get a ‘slice of the action’.

The fishing at Sywell Reservoir in those days was very prolific, with multiple catches of 8-10 fish in a day being the norm, with some anglers, on a good day catching over 100lb of quality specimen tench. These fish were all big, deep bodied tench of between 6lb-8lb, and the fishing was nearly always very good!