With the caravan site and the holiday cabins closed the Lake was very quiet. A bit like when I first started fishing there in 2006. There were only three people there when I arrived and nobody on the far (east) bank. I guess that was because it's further to walk and it meant fishing into the breeze.

As usual I started with a free line approach although with the breeze it was difficult to watch the line for pulls. None the less I soon had a take on bread flake and a 6lb leather was on the bank. Twenty minutes later I had another of 8lb, the heaviest of the day. This one was hooked quite deeply so I decided to add a slider float to improve indication. A third carp was taken just after 10.00, this time a fully scaled fish of 7lb 10oz.

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Things then went quiet so I decided to swap to my match rod and float fish the margin. Still on bread flake I immediately got bites but only rarely connected to smallish roach. I changed to luncheon meat which improved my contact rate enormously and I was soon landing a roach every cast. Most were around I guess 4-6oz. One better fish (picture) had the appearance of a rudd. As when I visited the lake last year, I didn't connect with any crucian carp or tench. As I said last time, a tench or two used to be almost a sure bet at this lake but they seem to have disappeared. As for the crucians, I think that the roach just beat them to the bait.

At 14.15 a 7lb 5oz mirror carp took the luncheon meat and gave me an interesting time on my match rod. This was the cue to move back to my Compact Float rod. I took two more carp on luncheon meat; a mirror of 7lb 10oz and a leather of 6lb.

I packed up at 16.00 by which time it had become very warm, in excess of 25 ℃. I think the evening would have been great with the carp patrolling the margins but these days I can't do 12-hour stints any more. Too exhausting!