Gave Wick another crack again today. I didn't bother with the prawns, sweetcorn or groundbait this time, and instead loose fed halibut pellets, red maggot and hemp. I fed one spot about three rod lengths out and another right under the rod tip. It started slow again, with lots of fish lazing on the surface. Gradually a few bubblers appeared, a the odd one of them over my loose feed. This was promising, because Wick tench seem almost always to give themselves away. I've found it rare to catch when there aren't obvious signs of them feeding in the swim. I had a few line bites from the fish under the rod tip, but no bites on bunches of maggots or worm.

When I was a teenager, my whole fishing style was based upon match fishing. I fished a fair few club matches then, framed a bit, even won a few. I then gradually drifted out of it, Old habits die hard, though, and so I found myself looking for bites, scaling down from 6lb line and a size 8 to a 4lb doublestrength hooklength and a size 16 superspade. I've been smashed by tench on Wick before when I've decided they aren't playing and set up a match rod for perch and roach. I thought this was still *reasonably* heavy gear, and reckoned I'd be OK.

After a while with no bites on the lighter gear and no activity in the swim I decided to put in a good wodge of loose feed and then go for a walk round the lake while it settled. I've not walked round Wick for ages, and I was surprised by how many new pegs have been cleared. I was also surprised by how many people were fishing, unseen from my peg. I've never seen it so busy. To a man, they were fishing two rods and a pair of bite alarms. I must have been the only angler on the lake not fishing textbook modern carper style.

I stopped for a chat with a bloke who'd spoken to me at my peg earlier. He'd bagged a newly opened up swim in what used to be a secluded and secret bay. He was as disappointed as I was that this had been opened up. He was another carper, but he showed me some photographs on his digital camera of tench from Wick. These were big fish, 9s and 10s. My best tench, of a bit over six pounds, seemed suddenly inadequate. When did this happen? I remember when a six pound tench was a bloody good fish, and now here's a man showing me pictures of double figure tench he caught more or less by accident while carping. This is a small gravel pit fishable on a 45 quid open membership card. We're not talking an inland sea of reservoir or an exclusive syndicate water.

Walking back to the rods it was clear to me that I was being a prat scaling down my gear. It was just asking to hit something enormous and be gutted to lose it. One side of Wick is bordered by two match ponds, one a carp puddle and the other merely overstocked. It was odd to see the two cultures only yards apart, the bivvy boys camping out on a beautiful mature gravel pit but mostly lurking in their realtree caves, and the guys with poles fishing the barren and muddy carp puddle. I don't think I'll ever abandon the match-style of fishing entirely, but I seldom do it now and I'm nowhere near as good at it as I used to be. Nor can I see myself joining the camouflaged ranks with their matching rods and alarms. It looks too much like fishing by numbers to me. Anyway, I think a tench caught on float tackle scores double the weight of one caught by accident on a bolt rig.

When I got back to my swim there was clearly some fishy foraging going on over the baited patches. I swapped the hooklengths back and got in there. I just wasn't getting bites despite the obvious rooting and bubbling. Plenty of liners, no bites. I tried going shallower, up to a little off the bottom, all to no avail. In a "sod it" moment, I instead set the float well overdepth and chucked a couple of worms out to the three rod-length patch. It had barely settled when it glided away. I struck, something good kited to the left for three or four seconds, then the hook pulled out. Arse. Next cast went again and this time the hook held. The result was a small tench of about 2lb, but at least not a blank.

I later hit a good bite under the rod tip which turned into a hard fighting 5 1/2 lb'er which annoyingly turned out to be foulhooked under the chin. By then it was getting too dark to see the float, and I called it a day.

Interesting, though. The loose pellets and the hemp seem to be well accepted, but the worms and maggots are less popular. I may try fishing some larger pellets on the hook. I think I'm going to make a stab at beating my PB this season. There are certainly fish in there to do it.