Apparently, tench were illegally brought into Quebec, with the intent of eventually farming them commercially. After lack of interest in the species, the ponds were drained and tench got into the Richelieu river system in the mid 1990's or so.
Close to 15 years ago, I remember seeing the first pictures of tench caught in the Montreal region. Back then, it was quite rare, with very few catches, mainly caught using live worms on the Eastern part of the island of Montreal, as well as the Richelieu river.
Since then, the tench population has exploded in southern Quebec. I've increasingly been running into them, either sighting them swimming/spawning in the waterways around Montreal, or seeing other people catch them.
Up until this point, I had never hooked into any tench. That all changed this morning. After having pre-baited one of my carp spots, I decided to fish it for a few hours this morning, along with my son Zev. I was hoping to put him on to a nice carp, using a mix of home made boilies and popups.
A couple hours into the outing, one of my lines barely moved a bit closer to us. I didn't think much of it, but over the next few minutes, it happened twice. Figuring it was probably a redhorse sucker, I set the hook and passed the rod over to Zev. Not much of a fight on gear suited to handle monster carp, but a very nice surprise, with a new species in the net.
About 10 minutes later, the other line started doing the same thing. Slight movement, stop, start, etc. Rinse, repeat, I set and passed the rod to Zev, who reeled in another tench, this one slightly bigger at 4 lbs.
Not exactly what I had planned for our short morning outing, but having caught the vast majority of available freshwater species in the area over the years, I'm always thrilled to add another species to my list.
5 comments:
I never heard of Tench before - something like Carp? How bad/invasive are they?
Similar to our carp, its a European fish. Europeans eat it and its prized there, here not so much
See them get caught regularly now on facebook pages. They are European, similar to Carp. Not sure how much damage they do, I am guessing as much as common carp do. Europeans love to eat Tench, but I've never tried.
Similar to carp, much smaller, no power, dark green. They have invaded pretty quickly, but I don't believe they have are forbidden to release.
I bet their could be a world record tench around Montreal somewhere. I've only caught a handful of them and one was 5 lbs. World record is 10 lb 3 oz.
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