A week of  warm weather had transformed fish activity at my local Jeanes’s Pond at Braybrooke Recreation Ground late in the afternoon this week, with the surface alive with topping fish. Having fished only ten days before and found the fishing hard, but rewarding with some decent roach on a size 18 hook and 4 mm bread punch, I was hoping for some early tench and crucian action, plus maybe a bonus carp, or two.

Setting up a 4 x 16 antenna float rig to a size 16 hook, I plumbed the depth to find the 3 ft shelf dropping away to 4 ft with the pole at 3 metres. Mixing up about 4 oz of heavy liquidised bread with a liberal sprinkling of halibut micropellets, I damped the lot down and plopped in four balls between three and four metres out, watching them fall through quickly to the bottom. Starting with a 6 mm pellet of bread at three metres there was a bite first cast with a sail away from a small rudd.

A few more like this and smaller, saw me bulking the shot 15 inches from the hook, with the float deepened for the bait to rest on the bottom in an attempt to get away from the small stuff. It didn’t work, there was a layer of small rudd that intercepted the bread as it sped to the bottom. The float would bob up, I would lift then make contact half way up, these small fish gorging the hook in seconds.

I decided to scrape together my remaining feed and put it in, while throwing in a couple of decoy balls of lighter straight liquidised bread out further to take away many of the smaller fish. This seemed to work, as although I was now waiting longer for a bite to develope, they were generally better rudd.

Roach had moved in on the feed on the 4 metre line, the bites when they came being more positive.

By now it was obvious to me and the other three anglers, that we were still too early for tench and carp. At least I was getting bites and the occasional net roach. I continued, they packed up.

In under three hours I had knocked out about 50 silvers, roach and rudd, the bread punch bringing a steady flow of bites.