The gales of last week had passed and a brief spell of high pressure provided classic cold clear conditions with no wind. I was on my own on the lake until around midday, with just an incredibly brave little chaffinch hopping around my feet looking for some tit-bits. I think he was after maggots but I didn’t have any. It may have been cold but the conditions were otherwise idyllic.

I didn’t really expect carp, and I didn’t get any. It was, in fact, a difficult day. I did get bites throughout the day but couldn’t hit them. I suspected roach and although I’ve scaled down my tackle from the normal carp-beating gear it’s probably still too heavy for discerning roach.

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I was using flake and sweetcorn. I managed to hook a couple of small roach of about 3-4oz during the morning (08.15/11.30), which was scant reward for my efforts. After lunch I tried sweetcorn and a more positive bite produce a nice roach of 15oz. Unfortunately it was foul-hooked so I guess it was like all the previous missed bites, but in this case the hook caught it after it had ejected the bait.

I was going to pack up at 15.00, being thoroughly cold and convinced that I was not really going to crack it. However, at 15.05 the float sank and stayed down. I tightened into a fish that felt quite reasonable and when landed it proved to be a nice 1lb 2oz roach in fine condition; I had reverted to flake at this stage.

Encouraged I cast again and almost immediately had another purposeful bite. This time the fish felt even better. I knew it wasn’t a carp and for a while thought I may have a truly memorable roach, but when it broke the surface I saw it was a tench. Not at all expected on such a cold day. It weighed in at 3¼lb. A few more casts before I packed in at about 15.45 produced a couple of missed bites but no more fish.

The roach are a serious prospect and next time I think I shall scale down the tackle a bit more and perhaps get some maggots and casters, baits I very rarely use because of the small fish nuisance.