The weather looked threatening when I arrived but other than a couple of very short light showers it remained dry. The tree corner was sheltered from the NW wind so I had almost calm conditions within my casting distance throughout the day.

I decided to stick to sweetcorn and bait lightly but regularly. I did try worm for a few casts but other than missed bites and a couple of small perch, they didn’t produce anything memorable.

For the first couple of hours I had a bite every cast on corn but missed them all. These were real ‘sinkers’ but I just couldn’t connect. I believe that they were roach, probably on the small side, but how they robbed my sweetcorn and avoided the hook was nothing short of remarkable.

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Finally, at 10.55, I hit a small roach, probably proving my conjecture. A couple of slightly better roach followed; I would say around 6-8 ozs. This kicked off a fairly productive period during which I caught around half a dozen small roach.

At 14.20 I struck into something better and after a short battle netted a tench of just over 3lb. After a few more small roach, at 15.50 another tench of 2¾lb came to the net. More small roach followed, then at 16.15, my designated packing up time, I hit what felt like an immovable object. The object then started to move slowly and powerfully around the swim. At first I thought it may have been a large lethargic tench but after a careful bit of playing with my 2½lb line I eventually netted a lovely 8lb common carp. I must admit that I didn’t realise it was so big until I lifted the landing net out of the water.

In summer such a fish would have played havoc with such light tackle but it never really caused me concern, although I obviously had to take my time over things. A great end to what was a satisfying day. I had caught a reasonable number of roach, my intended quarry, and bagged three larger fish in the process. However, a pound plus roach would have been nice; maybe next time.

I was the only one on the lake!