Today I tried a different swim, the one that I dropped into on my last visit and where I lost a carp. It offered more open water than the first swim I fished on this lake but unfortunately it was exposed to full sun and became uncomfortable in the afternoon.

I pre-baited with crumbed bread mixed with some proprietary groundbait that my daughter bought me many years ago. I rarely use 'shop' groundbait and brought it to bulk out the limited amount of crumbed bread that I had with me. It was bright red!

I was again fishing out by a central reed island and lily pads, the opposite side of the island to where I fished previously. I didn't have to wait long for my first bite on flake, the bobbin lifting positively as a carp took the bait. It wasn't that large but fought well. However, as I laid the net and fish on the unhooking mat it was obvious that it was bleeding quite profusely.

I couldn't see an injury and decided the only thing I could do was to return it quickly. It had been a clean fight with no snagging, the fish being in open water at all times, and the hook was in the lip so was not the cause. A mystery and a little upsetting.

My next fish was a tench taken on a bunch of maggots that fought like a demon. It took me into the lily pads and at one point looked like it might get off. But I managed to extract it with constant gradual pressure. It was a bit larger than the tench I had caught on the previous visit.

I then caught a bream, the mixed bag being similar to my last visit. A few more bream were taken later, along with a tiny tench that had played with the bread flake for ages before giving me an indication that I could hit.

Things then went quiet as the temperature increased and the sun reached its full strength. I was starting to get a bit uncomfortable and missed the shade of the tree where I had fished on previous visits. In future I'll probably return to that spot if sunny weather is forecast despite it being more snaggy.

I had been watching for surface feeding carp and one eventually took a piece of free crust that I had catapulted out to the central reed bed. I decided to replace the leger weight with a cork and cast a crust to the edge of the reeds. Unfortunately a female mallard duck that seemed to possess a sixth sense made a beeline for the crust from wherever she happened to be, near or far.

After a lot of 'duck' frustration, and many casts to try to get the crust close to the reeds, I finally succeeded and awaited a hungry carp. Bizarrely a couple of times carp actually went up to my cork float rather than the bread. But, after some tense moments, one took the bread and was hooked.

It wasn't a big fish being slim with the look of a wild carp. Unfortunately it had one eye missing, either from damage or disease, so once again I had landed an injured carp, which was a bit upsetting.

After this I legered for a while and took one more bream before packing up around 3.00pm with a mild dose of heat exhaustion.

The two injured carp took the shine off the day, which otherwise would have counted as a reasonably successful outing. At the end my spirits were a bit low as I hate to see fish in any distress and the heat had worn me down a bit.