What a week, where do l start! The fishing’s been excellent however what’s going on with the weather?

All week I’ve been expecting heavy rain but l think after such a prolonged dry period the words ‘heavy-rain’ has been reinvented to mean the odd patch of drizzle. Luckily it’s been mild all week that’s at least given us a fighting start on the rivers that are now in need of a good flush through.

Tuesday we headed down south to a small day ticket lake in Hampshire. The weather was expected to come in bad so my father and l set up with the wind behind us. Casting maggot feeders to the back of the wind we soon started catching roach, dad small ones and myself quality. That’s how it goes sometimes and soon l had around twelve roach over the pound to a best of 1lb 11oz. Things went quiet and l latched into one of the lakes carp, all 21lb 10oz of it. Not bad for a size 16 hook and a 3-75lb bottom. I decided to set up the long rod and sit on the far bank with the wind in my face, just to see if the roach were here and just seconds after lowering a single maggot hooked something quite special. After a thirty-minute fight on a tiny size 18 and 2-64 bottom managed to bundle a 24lb 2oz common into it. A couple of quality roach fell as well before we decided to call it a day at 4pm. All the fish came to red maggots with a sprinkling of Sonubaits hemp added to the feeder.