8am Saturday morning and I was amazed to find the car park at Rawlings Retreat empty. Against the general populace , who tend to go Willows and fire against the island from the west bank I chose Alders feeling that less pressured fish might be hungry fish, and spent the day there on my own.

After a couple of hours of nothing I was starting to have another think, when my lift-method float zipped under, and a lovely 5lb 6 bream soon came to the surface and offered no resistance to being dragged back to the net. Hoping that I might have found a shoal there was no further action apart from stroppy geese, until the shoal passed through again and I had a second bite, this time on the method feeder, my bream's 5lb 12oz sibling giving a much better fight. OK, just the two bites in a session, but I counted it as a success. Would you?