Sunday 17th sees me back at peg 10 with no real hopes of catching given everywhere seemed to have turned off due to lack of rain and the subsequent lowering of oxygen levels in the water. To cut a long story short I fished 9-11 in tap water for a second consecutive blank on the main lake although it was warm so did not need to wear my coat.

Two days later I decide to go to the Pondtail as we still had no rain and the temperature had dropped from 10C down to 0C. Set up the 4.5m Chinese whip and rig and loose fed just 4-5 grains of wheat every other cast starting at 9:15 after 10 minutes I had my first roach and the snow started! I lasted until10:15 when it was snowing heavily and I returned the 9 roach and went home to get warm.

We then had a ten day block of snow, heavy rain and floods plus my knee was playing up so it was not until Friday 29th that I got out again to peg 10. Now to give this some context Thursday at 8am it was -3C, Friday it was 10C and today it is 14C, no wonder that all wildlife are confused. Peg 10 was coloured, windy and bright sunshine, although the wind was cold. Setting up as normal the pike rod was out at 9:15 and the pole followed at 9:25 after depositing two small balls of groundbait into the coloured water, followed by light loose feeding throughout the session. The time swings around to five past ten and I get the impression of a bite- the float sat literally a mm or two lower, a lift and a one ounce hybrid prevents the three blanks in a row on the main lake! A further half hour passes and I introduce some finely chopped worms (10 to be exact) and try a worm head, this produces another tentative bite after a quarter of an hour, a very slow “runner” to the left which could have been mistaken for tow, a lift finds a small bream of 1-09 coming to the net. That was my lot on the pole – two “bites” two fish.

During the session I had spotted pike come to the surface and take in air, possibly to try and clear any sediment from the coloured water off their gills. Two of these had been to my left about two rods out, one at 12m and the fourth to my right also about two rods out. I had put the pike rod over the left to no avail, but decided to put it over the right hand area while I started packing up the pole. This produced a bob and the float disappearing, a strike was met with heavy resistance and a run before after 5 secs the pike let go! I needed to give it more time before striking! That was my lot and I was home by 12:15.

December arrives on Sunday so I will try again on the main lake!