Life is getting in the way of fishing at the moment. Don't get me wrong, it's all good stuff, but it's leaving me just a short ate afternoon/early evening session on Tuesdays at the mo.

Last week, given a spell of warmer weather, I risked Willows, checking to see if the shallow water had warmed to bring the carp out. Not really. It was a fun evening, I really enjoyed stargazing at Orion, but with carp of 4lb 3 and 6lb 12 plus a beaten-up bream of 3lb 2 it wasn't a huge success.

This evening, with the river season closing in I plumped for the syndicate water in Marsh Benham. No rain in weeks has brought the levels back low, and though I was after chub, in 45 minutes I'd banked 5 Brownies around the 3 - 3.5lb mark, lost a few more and even I was getting bored of them. Went to the end of the stretch to find the water flowing off the weir was running to hard for my heaviest lead to cope with, so returned to the carrier to fish swims i'd not tried before in the hope that the trout hadn't found them either. Do you know what - they hadn't! Had two stonking chub of 4lb and 3lb 12 from exactly the same spot. The last hour in darkness brought no more fish, but constant jingly knocks making me think the crays might have woken up.