Before I left for China I managed a couple of outings, the first sees me return to the same peg at Rowde fishing the 5m whip from 9:45 to 11:45. Plenty of action with 17 roach, 28 skimmers,2 rudd, 2 gudgeon and a perch making up a net of 5-02. Double maggot accounted for speedy bites but small pieces of worm provided better samples but longer between bites.

My second visit was to high Penn fishing 10-11:45 on the first peg on the East bank. Tackle was the 15 ft (4.5m) waggler with a 4AAA insert waggler with a no 6 and two no8 droppers in the 10feet+ of water. Hook-length was 0.10mm Shogun line to an 18 hook and double maggot. I fed two balls of groundbait to start and 1 further top up after an hour with loose fed maggots every 4-5 minutes. This approach resulted in 19 roach, 21 rudd and 15 perch for a 5-04 total the rudd were small being 2 or to the ounce.

Wednesday 29th (morning) sees me catch the bus to Chippenham to get a coach to Heathrow, from there a flight to Wuhan transferring to a further flight on to Shenzhen. Then a prearranged taxi ride to Zhongshan to be met at my son’s apartment at 10pm Thursday. A lift up to the 11th floor of the 34 storey block to drop my luggage off, a quick change of clothes and we are off for a quick hour session on the local river!

Fishing from a wall about 10 feet off the water with a 4m whip and a BGT float with an isotope set at about a foot deep baiting with worm I soon had 3 tilapia coming to hand plus a Nile tilapia. I also managed a new species both for me and Gareth – what the Chinese call a big mouth carp.As we packed up we shone a light into the base of the wall to see a large carp- unfortunately or perhaps fortunately it ignored the bait!

Friday morning comes and I don’t yet feel the effects of the journey which was just as well as we were heading off to Zhuhai to fish a tilapia commercial. Now when I say it was different from ours it really was- firstly you pay the equivalent of £30 for 4 hours but you get a refund for each fish you catch, needing I think 8 fish to break even. You “draw” via a random number generator two pegs and you choose which one you fish. Given that situation Gareth had spent some time creating two sets of tackle as we could be at opposite ends of the lake, as luck would have it we ending up drawing numbers that let us fish next to each other. The rules were strict in the sense of maximum whip size was 4.5m, no braid or elastic and two hook system with paste the only bait allowed, but you could feed pellet. I was fishing a new 3m medium heavy whip with a 8lb main line to a two hook 4lb hook-length that was attached via a rubber O ring to a swivel on the main line. Gareth had prepared two types of paste in preparation, the darker one was allegedly for tilapia, the other was made from ground down pellets, both had additives .

You start straight away as you are timed from the point you pay. Now the fish were to be kept in a 1m square net anchored to the side of your platform which had it’s own umbrella. It was a real experience watching the Chinese anglers fish but one thing that was universal was that if someone lost a fish the banter would start – “why don’t you go home, you won’t catch”, “Oh what a shame” you get the idea! The guy on my right managed to land two but lost about four, the one on Gareth’s left landed one and lost six! But they are tilapia I here you say they are small- oh no … average size is 6lb they don’t stock anything less than 4lb!

So how did we do? Well Gareth landed two and lost two I had 1 and lost one when the swivel opened up after which I dispensed with the O ring. The one I did land only just managed to get it in the net- an 8lber on 3m whip- yes it was exciting! Photos are difficult to take as my fish only just fitted in the net and they have spines and sharp gill covers and teeth! I just wanted to get mine safely into the “keepnet”.

At the end of the session they come around and lift the net to see how many fish and record it on their app. Payment is all done via phone apps and by the time we got to the lane out Gareth had been refunded for the fish caught. It had fished poorly compared to normal as the weather was cold for the time of year although it was mid 20s! The results of sessions are posted on Wechat and the best on the day was 14 fish, a couple of days earlier the best was 64 for an estimated 650lb!!!! Apparently the same individuals are usually in the top 3 for the day- it is their way of making money as apart from being refund for the number of fish they also pay the top three in each session a prize! The following day our fish would have put us in the top 10!

Part 2 will follow a grass carp lake!