Chosing a day to fish without being deluged by showers, has become a matter of pot luck recently, despite whatever the weather forecasters say. Earlier in the week “a dry, sunny morning, with light winds” saw heavy showers swept in by gale force winds before lunchtime, dismissing my planned fishing session. I kept an eye on the local forecasts and saw that heavy showers for the rest of the week in my area, showed overnight rain clearing, before the next weather system blew in from the west. Well, in the morning, the overnight rain was still clearing, but a glimmer of sunshine at midday saw me taking a chance to fish, raiding the freezer for my bread, gathering up my pole and loading the trolley for the ten minute walk to my local pond.

By the time that I was set up at 1 pm, the sun had found a gap in the clouds and the chill wind had dropped. It reminded me of the saying “the calm before the storm”, a thought dismissed, when the float lifted and sank, with a small rudd being drawn back to my waiting hand. It was surprisingly cold to the touch.

A mix of liqidised bread and ground carp pellets had been formed into four balls and lobbed into an area seven to eight metres out, attracting instant bites from small rudd, but ten minutes in, solid resitance promised a crucian carp. Not so, it was a very nice rudd extending the elastic.

A steady stream of decent rudd had found the baited area, but a good crucian had nosed it’s way among them.

More rudd and even some big gudgeon were keeping the interest going. A cold wind had now begun blowing into my face from the west, making bite detection difficult, keeping an eye on the line for movement.

I put in some more balls of feed and watched the line zoom off, when a small common carp took on the drop.

An identical bite and the elastic was out following a fish toward the lily bed to my right. It slowed and turned as the elastic took the strain. It was not a big common and I began pulling the pole up and back to clear the wooded bank behind me, detaching the top two sections to play the fish to the net, this being when it woke up, proving that it was bigger than I first thought!

These small commons were now crowding round foraging for the bread, next year will be more interesting once they have put on a few more ounces.

Black clouds were now filling the sky and gusts of wind were bringing droplets of rain. I checked my watch, ten minutes to four. I would pack up soon. Another crucian kept me going. They tend to prefer half light.

My camera was already washing out the colours, this golden rudd looking quite pale.

Bites were still coming, but so was darkness, the sun long gone behind the railway embankment. The last small common looking very greyed out, when I called it a day at 4 pm.

It had been a busy three hours, varying the punches between 6 and 7 mm haing no effect on the size of fish taken. Apart from the occasional flurry, the rain had held off, but the temperature had dropped dramatically in the last hour, summer has gone and winter beckons. I made it home before the next storm system raced through into the night.

The final tally, roach, gudgeon, rudd, common and crucian carp, all from a public, stream fed pond.