Arrived early to find five cars already parked and the warming sight a whole family fishing from consecutive swims on the western bank.

For the second session running, I hooked a carp within thirty seconds of my first cast, a mirror of exactly 10lbs, hard fighting but another candidate for the ugly fish and ugly angler awards. Within a couple of hours, alternating between an orange wafter and a Robon Red pellet, I'd caught commons of 5lb 13, 10lb 8 and 7lb 13 as well as a greedy 8-ounce bream. Then Willows did its thing and shut up shop. With the sun breaking through at last, I pinged in enough dog biscuits to feed off the coots and moorhens (the Canadas relievedly absent) while the ducks were chased off by the carp breaking the surface. I flung biscuits for an hour and in all that time and carpy commotion, my biscuity hook bait was mouthed only twice and immediately rejected. Fed up with this energetic form of fishing for no return, I set up a float road and spent the last hour stealthily exploring the margin for crucian, but having to make do with two roach, one maybe 6 ounces, the other about a hundredth of this.