This particular pond that I fish is expertly and gently managed, the few members are allocated to fish either on an even number, or an odd number day. Yesterday, I was fishing out of sync, and although I was kindly granted permission by another member to fish on his day, I believe that the lake gods frowned upon me.

Today I will be fishing on-rota. Again, I had my Wallis Wizard with me along with a little Aerial reel. Today however, I raked the swim before I fished. I could only assume that yesterday some of the weed had drifted in and my bait simply was not on the lake bed. It was frustrating as anything as there were clouds of Tench bubbles very near to my float but it never went under. Today would be different I hoped.

Like yesterday, thunder storms rumbled away in the distance, would I be lucky again and avoid the rain?

I hauled the rake four or five times and created a little clear strip near to a bed of lillies, I baited it with corn and then retired to put my rod together. By the time I had returned to the swim it was evident that all the noise and commotion of dragging a rake had not put the fish off one little bit and there were immediate signs of feeding fish.

There was no-one else at the ponds today so I had them all to myself and was very content, firing up the old Kelly now and again for cups of tea.

I was correct. Not only were the gods angry yesterday, but this swim must have been a bit choked with weed. The first fish I caught was a lovely palm-sized Crucian, great to see. I managed to catch a couple of good crucians that I was sure were Tench when I first hooked them, great scrap. Crucians are not meant to fight like that. I then managed to find my quarry and it fought hard. I gave it everything the Wizard had and managed to land a lovely three-pounder.

Once again, I stayed until the bats arrived and was really lucky all day not to get wet from any of the surrounding thunder storms.