A mixed bag of venues!Wednesday 22 sees me visit High Penn for a couple of hours before it got too hot. I set up in what I term North 8 (the fourth peg on the north bank, I start with the furthest peg on the west bank as peg 1!), very straightforward waggler approach but with bulk of 6 no 8 shot set about 15 inches from a size 16 hook with just a further no 8 about 9 inches below that. No groundbait just loose fed maggots, about 10 every couple of minutes on the equivalent of 3 rod lengths. Despite a prolonged attempt with corn, not a bite on it all the bites came to double maggot, ending up with approx 1-13 according to my ounce count, comprising of 3 roach and 16 perch.

Fast forward to Friday and I arrive at Crookwood and despite myself I set up again on peg 56, partly because it was in shade and partly I wanted to see if I could make the Chinese paste work. Set up was as previous visit and fished at 10m. I started by putting in two balls of crushed expander laced with micros and a few 4mm, thereafter I fed 4 -5 4mm pellets with the paste each put in. First two put ins I opted to fish corn, to test the state of play and had a roach and a skimmer , then moved on to the paste. I ended up with the roach, two skimmers, 2 carp of 0-08 and 1-00, 2 tench of 0-12 and 2-00, 4 crucians and 5 bream- best 3lb. I clicked 20lb in total.

Time to scratch that itch- last time I fished Viaduct we had thunder and lightning coupled with monsoon style rain and I caught little, I wanted to try and redeem myself so entered the Tuesday open which surprisingly attracted 20 anglers compared to 8 the last time. Anyway money paid and my fingers pull out 115, the good news being I was on the shaded side of Campbell lake. I had made the decision that I was going to fish exclusively with Chinese paste and as such set up 3 rigs; the first was a basic homemade Chianti style taking 0.6g on 0.20mm line, the second was my Chinese set up fished bottom only with olivette and one dropper to a 14, the final rig was for the margin- just in case! I did relent and also set up a bomb for banded pellet as a back up. Depth was identical at 5m and 10m, starting at 5m was slow with a couple of skimmers and I soon went out to 10m where I spent most of my time ending with 3 carp for 20-02 and a bream net that I clicked 40lb but weighed a lot less at 28-12 for a 48-14 total. I only lost one carp at the net with a hook pull but suffered with numerous liners/ghost bites! The guy on 116 tipped back complaining that he had kept foul hooking the fish and loosing them, the guy on my left had a late run of carp but only had a handful of skimmers. Generally I was happy with that but surprised at the bream as when I have weighed them before on Cary (next door lake) they weighed heavy, hence my clicking!

Moving on to the end of the month I decided to do something I had not done in ages and also visit a venue I last fished about 16 years ago in a snow storm- Flaxlands just outside Royal Wootton Bassett. I had decided to do a bit of pellet feeder work with my 8ft Tricast Power Carp Wand. I rolled up and was fishing by about 8:30 through to almost 1pm. I set up on a very awkward peg on the small lake, peg 14, but it did give total shade up until I left!

Despite me getting my initial pellet all wrong I persevered and the tip was hardly still but few positive bites, 5 small carp were netted best only about 2lb. About 11:45 I decided to put up a float rod- an old Silstar Ian Heaps 11ft canal and using corn had 6 roach on the waggler plus missed several bites in the margins. Total weight about 5lb.