Right, a fresh approach was required after such a slack June. Those fish have been laughing at me.

A new tactic at my favourite Dobson's swim. Rather than the float one rod length out, I put on a cage fighter, I mean feeder, and clipped up my line, despite my concern that anything decent could swim away to destruction. I stuffed the feeder with corn and a plug of groundbait and aimed it into the distance where I'd seen feeding bubbles in recent weeks. Here, in line with various You Tube videos I'd watched, I recast every five minutes for an hour to build up a bed of bait, reducing to every ten minutes after an hour had elapsed.

In the third hour I started to get bite after bite. Really subtle ones which made me wonder how many I might have missed in the winds that have blown at me so often of late. I missed lots, but ended up with two bream to 1lb 3 and 5 roach. One of the roach was a real old warrior and I weighed it gleefully hoping it might just tip the scales at a pound, but it refused to go any more than 14 ounces. The bites slowed down, but not until I'd had a bonus 6lb 12 Common. 

OK, a total of 9lb wasn't going to win me Fishomania, but I felt I'd earned every bite and I'll be trying again there soon.