Well since my return from China the fates have conspired against me! First I was laid low with a nasty cold (not man flu!), then I had a list of things to organise for a new shed that was coming in December, so electrician booked, storage booked, old shed sorted and rubbish taken to tip… You get the idea. Then when I may have had an opportunity to go fishing the weather decided I wasn’t unless I wanted to go out in horizontal rain and wind! To top it all off once the weather cleared the road that I would need to use to get to the canal had road works starting for 6 weeks! I spent 25 minutes traveling just a few hundred yards coming back from an errand, the alternatives were equally unappealing with circuitous routes that again gave a good chance of being stuck in traffic – so no canal!

Eventually I managed to get to Crookwood and set up on peg 61 which sounds as if it should be on the far bank but is in fact next to peg 1 on the near bank with a bank of lilies to the left and clear water in front.

I set up with a chianti style homemade float taking 5 x no 8 and 2x no 11 with a 0.16mm mainline to a 0.12mm hooklength and a 16 barbless. I settled on two areas , the first in the curve you can see at edge of the lilies at approx 8m and the second in clear water at 10m in front of me. A ball of groundbait went on both lines with about 20-30 4mm pellets. Being stubborn I wanted to see if I could get paste to work now the weather was getting autumnal but after a biteless 20 minutes on both lines I succumbed and put double maggot on, this produced a small roach from the lilies but nothing in the clear water. I went back on the paste and concentrated on the lilies while having the odd look at the clear water which I topped up every 20-30 minutes. Feeding the lilies with a few 4mm each put in via a toss pot I finally got a bite that turned out to be a skimmer about 1-08. Encouraged I carried on with the paste and had another two similar sized skimmers but towards the end the float lifted and a strike found a different prospect- a solid weight that slowly came away from the lilies before slowly moving towards the far side. My initial thought was it felt like the pike at Bowood but it came to the top about 20m out and it was a double figure carp, then five seconds later the hook pulled! At which point I had 2 more casts then packed up! The skimmers and roach weighed in at 4-01.

So that was my only trip this month after returning from China and today I have stayed in to receive my pole section, now repaired, from the courier. I have a match at Meadowlands on the 7th that I am running but will go up before that to settle on the pegging.

I have shown you some of the paste I use but I have brought back some new ones to try also, along with a different variant on the jellyfish powder!

The total cost of the above was less than a tenner!