Two sessions spent in my favourite swim. With the temperature and air pressure having fallen, and the breeze and chance of rain up, I was hopeful the carp would be obliging. Largely they were. One popular consensus is that the carp shoal and swim round and round the island. This is borne out by the fish often coming in pulses of 15 minutes when the rod tip won't keep still, and more than taking the method feeder 'on the drop', before the rod goes back onto the rest. Then it quietens again and the bobbin hangs stubbornly still until the merry-go-round returns. I tried pinging a bed of pellets out to hold them in place when they did arrive, and maybe this worked to some degree, but maybe it didn't.

I met Commons of 5lb 12, 8lb 5, 7lb 9, 7lb 12, 7lb, 6lb 6 & 4lb 4, plus Mirrors of 5lb 1, 3lb 12, 5lb 15, 4lb 14, 8lb 2, 3lb 6 & 5lb 6.

One of the strongest bite on a 10-mil pellet/size 12 hook brought a half-pound Crucian (sorry, Chris!). Finickity biters? No that one.

We all lose fish of course, but three times I suffered my old nemesis of having commercially-tied hook lengths snap between loop and hook on a take (I've learned always to test them between fish, yet the violence of a take seems to beat the 12lb b.s. links more often than you'd expect).  I'd tie my own, but am fingers and thumbs tying hairs and loops. I also had a plastic connector separate mid-fight on top of the several fish that threw the hook, and the unmissable bites that I missed.