Today was full of promise. Very mild for late October and no troublesome wind. However, nobody told the fish!

I arrived a bit later than usual so may have missed an early bonus fish or two. I had decided to go for roach with the hope that a tench or carp may turn up.

Sweetcorn was the chosen bait, with luncheon meat in reserve. I may have tried maggot but the shop was closed when I arrived. I was feeding small pellets.

I tried artificial corn to start with but had only one missed bite in the first 45 minutes, so I started using the real thing. Not that this helped much, although finally, at 10.55, after a few missed bites, a 2lb fully scaled carp took the bait. I wasn’t sure what it was at first, since it’s quite unusual to catch carp this small at Fields End.

After this more missed bites, presumably small roach, and a change to luncheon meat didn’t help. At 12.10 I managed to hit a bite and this turned out to be an Ide of about half a pound on sweetcorn.

The remainder of the day was extremely pedestrian. A couple of small roach was all I had to show for my efforts along with quite a few missed bites on corn. I also missed some on luncheon meat but I think these were just greedy roach, probably of no size, trying to take the bait.

I half hoped that some carp may come in close later in the day but by 17.00 I was getting cold and suffering from a distinct lack of action, so I decided to call it a day. To be fair I didn’t see many fish caught around the lake. Apparently a chap by the tree on the west bank caught a 16lb fish close in, which is at least encouraging for those of us who prefer not to fish at a distance.