After Tuesday afternoon/evening where the only bite came just before 9pm for a 5lb 4 mirror, I've changed my daytime fishing routine from the lakes to predominantly rivers and canals.

My trip to the Marsh Benham syndicate on Friday turned out to be great trotting fun after an annoying morning. Fishing by a weir pool, the first bite came after about an hour, a decent fish which bored upstream as I speculated whether it would be a chub or maybe a perch. Turned out it was a 3lb 5 bream, and so much livelier than its still water compatriots. The next cast brought a silver trophy of a 14-ounce roach. The subsequent four bites all seemed good, if not potentially better fish, but they all dropped off some way into the fight. So, so annoying. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong: I kept a tight line on the centrepin without dragging them in,, so I swapped from microbarbed 16 to a barbed 16, but the bites ceased before I had a chance to test it out.

I moved to the furthest 2 pegs that my syndicate compatriots seem to find the most fruitful, but these still contained too much submerged weed to make trotting enjoyable apart from one destructive 3lb 6 brownie, so I made my way back to try the straight narrow feeder swims. I caught fish straight away, and plenty of them, ending up with another 31 roach (between 4 and 12 oz), 6 perch, 16 dace, 4 chublets and 3 bleak. I lost the two decent fish I hooked to snapped 4lb line. Grr. But I couldn't let that spoil a fun session. Inevitably the roachy action aroused the attention of 2 pike attacks, both ending with them letting go after a rod-bending few minutes tug-of-war.

I can't wait for my next trip.