Saturday sees a five minute car ride to a grass carp lake. Again we pay by time in this case the standard is 6 hours and rather than a refund per per there is an option to keep the fish or sell it back to the fishery at a rate per pound depending on the species. The lake was split into two by a causeway with a bridge over the connecting channel, the far part of the lake looks busy while the nearest half only has one fishing on it so we opted for the quiet lake and settled into a corner area. We had folding stool to sit on but the owner brought around seat boxes with whip rests for us to use. They really look after their customers as you will see later.

The owner even set up brollies for us when the sun came up! Now Gareth was using a 5m whip and I had a 6m whip, the water was about 10ft and we were using 1g floats with the standard double hook rig with grass carp banded pellets.

There was plenty of action on the other lake, particularly near the bridge area, after 2 hours I had a bite, the float bobbing and slipping away, a strike felt like I had hit a brick wall as the whip arched under the water and then came pinging back. The fish had snapped the 15lb braid hooklength! Gareth then told me that there were grass carp up to 25lb in the lake! At this point I swapped to a 10lb mono two hook rig and about an hour later the float slides under and I connect with the fish and after ten seconds the hook pulls – a size 6 !! A further hour passes Gareth misses two bites and I get another bite only for the 10lb hooklength to snap!!! With little more than an hour left Gareth sets up a 3m whip to fish paste in the corner margin with a dibber UK style in order to save a blank! That worked as he had four F1 type carp, a bitterling and a roach(?), he got me to have a go and a F1 type duly obliged so blank saved! The frustrating thing was that the fish were there and were bubbling all day although I did miss7 bites that may have been small fish.

Sunday morning arrives and we are off to the main river in Zhongshan, the Shiqi. So far all our travel has been done by taxi with impressive short waiting times for them to arrive. So we set up open end feeders on telescopic rods fishing segments of worm with a pink coloured groundbait in the feeder. We were positioned about 7ft above the water on a promenade with a flower box the water side of the railing.

Gareth was straight into fish and had nine silver bream and a small asp while I managed top miss five bites and blank much to the amusement of my daughter-in-law! That afternoon plans were changed as a major thunderstorm hit and moved along the coast and many venues closed as a result. We did manage at about 5:30pm to drive in their car to Nanlan to fish a salt water lake stocked with a variety of fish including bass. We started off with it being fine but about 8 heavy rain set in and although we continued for a fair bit the action slowed right down. Initially we were getting bites on shrimp- attached with a band and shrimp hook set up, with an electronic lighted bung float set as a slider at about 5 feet (the length of the telescopic rod I was using. For some reason my missing bites is increasing with ELEVEN bites on shrimp all missed, Gareth missed 2 while bass of 3-4lb were constantly seen moving around. We could have stayed until midnight but gave it until about 10 as it was so wet.

So Sunday was a blank day for me with 15 missed bites – must do better. As you ca imagine I took some flak for missing so many, LOL. Last two days to follow- will I catch?