Unusual Fish Behaviour

[barbelboi]

What’s the most unusual fish behaviour you have witnessed?

I originally placed this as a tail end to a reply on Ron’s tench thread. I then thought maybe it could be an interesting lead to a thread in it's own right.

About 8 or 9 years ago I was fishing a lake with my son ‘up in the water’ for carp. Early afternoon the water that we were fishing, some 20m out, turned very brown. Our first thought was that it was some sort of algae. Not so, it was a very large shoal of tench possibly brought to a feeding frenzy by the stream of pellets hitting the water. For half an hour it was a tinca a chuck – then they disappeared as quickly as they came. Although I have caught many tench, also some bream, up in the water I have never seen anything like this before or since.

[Ron The Hat Clay]

I am mindful of an experience I had whilst fishing the fens near the town of March.

I was after tench and by 9-00 am all I had caught was an average bream for this particular drain.

Then I had a bite and something took off at an unbelievable speed, far faster than any of the tench I had caught from this water in the past. It continued to strip line making me have to get up and follow it. Holding the landing net under my left arm I followed the fish as best I could. I now believed the fish to be a common carp, yet still I had not seen it.

About 25 minutes later the fish was still making long fast runs.

It suddenly gave up and began to flap on the surface, a bream of 6lbs 10 oz! I have never had a bream of any size fight like this one from the Old Course of the Nene. I don't think I ever will.