Just lately the weather forecasters have been getting it wrong, but the predicted heavy shower was bang on time at 2pm, when I arrived for an afternoon fishing at the Braybrooke Club’s Jeanes Pond this week. Others were already fishing, erected umbrellas evidence of a wet morning. Being an optimist,I didn’t even have a water proof jacket with me, but then the rain is always warm at this time of the year, isn’t it? There was a strong wind blowing from the west and the sun had come out by the time that I had set up in the shelter of peg 15.

Due to the rafts of surface fry, I use a heavy 2 gram antenna float at Jeanes to punch through to the bottom, where my firm balls of grounbait end up. The ground bait is liquidised bread based, with ground pellets, ground hemp and strawberry flavouring, which soon brought in some better sized roach.

With the shot bulked within a foot of the hook, the rig looks crude, but it works. The shot is set just off bottom and any fish picking up the bait, results in a positive lift of the float antenna and another roach in the net.

Regular mini balls of feed brought instant bites and with three metres of pole, fish were swung to hand from the margins. I had started using a 6 mm punch on a size 14 barbless hook, but a change up to a 7 mm pellet of bread meant fewer smaller fish attacking the bread, before the better fish on the bottom had a chance.

This better stamp of roach meant constant use of the landing net, the hooks coming out in the net easily removed, being barbless.

A fussy bite, with gentle lifts of the float, that moved away slowly, had me poised for something bigger, the float staying still and the elastic stretching out on the strike. This WAS bigger and I quickly added another two lengths of pole, as it steadily moved off toward the middle. The fish stepped up a gear, making runs to the left and the right, boiling the surface with each turn, but with the pole now at 5 metres, I was in control. A surface roll revealed the bronze scaled flank of a deep bodied carp and got the landing net ready, although several attempts to net it resulted in last minute bursts of speed in the opposite direction.

Finally, the 4 lb 8 oz carp was in the net.

Time for a well earned cup of tea and a KitKat after this one.

Despite the disturbance of landing the carp, the first cast in resulted in another good roach.

A couple more balls of feed saw the fry scatter when I put them in and the reason was soon revealed, when I hooked a perch, that had taken the bread on the drop.

It had been an afternoon of sunshine and showers, but the roach had never stopped feeding, the last one after three hours, being another clonker.

The humble bread punch had once again come up trumps for me.