After a few challenging sessions at Offord on the river I decided to have a change and went to a favourite little lake at Earith. I hadn't fished there in the autumn before, it usually being a spring venue before the river season opens. There were only two other anglers who were fishing nearer the car park so when I walked around to the back of the lake I was on my own and nobody else arrived. My target species was tench and I had come prepared to leger in view of the forecast for strong winds. In fact it was relatively calm in my little corner when I arrived but the wind freshened during the day.

I groundbaited with crumbed bread mixed with a small quantity of proprietary groundbait, throwing in a few small golf ball sized offerings close to a bed of lily pads directly in front of me. As the groundbait was bread based I started off with flake on the hook. I was using a bobbin indicator and got one good indication on the bread but I didn't connect. After that it went quiet so I changed to sweetcorn. This proved to be a good move as it delivered my first fish, which was a tench, the target species. It wasn't big but was very satisfying as I had caught what I was targeting.

Some bites were missed, a feature of the session, and after a while I tried luncheon meat hoping it would attract a better tench. And it did, my second fish being a somewhat larger tench. Things were going well although I was missing quite a few bites.

Changing back to sweetcorn I finally hooked one of the less positive bites that turned out to be a bream. I was surprised that I hadn't had any bream earlier as there is a good head in the lake but in the end that was the only one I caught.

Changing again to luncheon meat I hooked into a fish that felt more powerful than a tench, although it could have been a big one. After quite a battle a beautiful looking fully scaled common was in the net, its golden scales looking amazing in the sun. So, it was now three species and surprisingly I had not been bothered by roach or rudd, although they could have accounted for some of the missed bites.

I stuck with luncheon meat still hoping for another tench but the next fish I hooked was no tench. It felt immensely heavy and while it didn't make a powerful carp-like run, it did try for the snags as it fought doggedly in front of me. After quite a while another fully scaled common just fitted in the landing net. A long and quite slender fish it weighed 11lbs 5oz although I thought it might have been bigger while I was playing it.

Wary of the fact that there were big carp rooting around I changed back to sweetcorn. But carp like sweetcorn of course and the next fish I hooked ploughed into the reed bed to the left of where I was fishing and everything went solid. Hand lining didn't detect any movement so I guessed that my hook had been transferred to a weed stem, a clever trick that carp seem very expert at performing. A break off was necessary.

I retackled but hadn't resumed fishing for long when the rain arrived. I hadn't brought a fishing brolly because of the forecast of strong winds so this was the cue to pack up, about 45 minutes earlier than I had intended. But it had been a good session and I left feeling very happy with how things went.