Tench Raking

After you've raked a swim, how quickly can you expect to find tench (assuming there's a reasonable enough population) in that area investigating what's been kicked up or fed in??

Are we talking immediately, hours, a day, days.....what??

I've seen tench activity in a certain swim but it's almost unfishable but some kindly fellow tenchers made me some rakes but I'm not sure whether to rake a known patrol area and then bang a bait in right away or rake and pre-bait, rake and pre-bait for a few days and then fish the chosen area.

How long do you wait?....or, how bold are tench? Will they move into an area fairly sharpish or completely bugger off until they believe the coast is clear?

i'd rake the swim at the start of the session then put some groundbait in and fish as normal mate.... i've done it and had fish 10 mins after raking...... also if you find that you're pulling alot of weed onto the bank it's often worth sifting through it and picking out the bright red worms (usually about 3/4 of an inch long) that you find (ignore the darker brown ones) and fishing 2 or 3 of those on a small hook, they make a cracking roach bait and the tench love 'em too!!!

do it right away mate,like rob says.

yep no need to wait, rake, bait, fish. there was a piece in the anglers mail a few weeks ago on a local river were this guy did the same thing, and had his first tench 30 mins after finishing raking. good luck andy

As a lad I fished a farm pond (eeh, them were the days, Intrepid reel, Olympus glass rod blah blah ) & there was a section of harrow that was used to rake out. I have raked & caught later in the same session. Some good Tench in that little pond.

This is great stuff. I actually punted this question around 6-7 forums and so far, all the views are pretty much in agreement, which in itself has to be some kind of record. That must be the best part of 25-30 anglers so far who all agree.

I'm going for a lie down....

....Andy....