)With a choice of the Res or Pear Tree( at a reduced cost ) and being unsure of how many would finally come I chose Pear Tree as we could have the whole lake without breaking the bank. Well come the day we ended up with 13 of us and as the lake has 26 pegs it meant we could have every other peg at £10 a man including a small section pool.
The temperature over night dropped for the first time this year and on the way down the car showed it was 5 degrees at 7.30. This obviously had an affect on the fishing as the usual stockies feeding shallow just didn’t happen and regular bites were at a premium. I managed 8 fish on the feeder before trying the margins which didn’t produce anything a couple more on the feeder in the next hour left me struggling. With 2 hours to go I decided that the 2 pints of maggot I had brought as an insurance policy were not going home with me so started feeding them fairly heavy down the margin. This produced a run of small roach when another bite finally had the elastic stretching and a 1lb 8 perch in the net and this was followed by another just shy of a lb. It then became a game of trying to avoid the roach to nick the odd carp that decided to stop and have a munch on the maggot. I got 3 of them which were much bigger than the previous stockies the best being about 5 lb.
The highlight of the day was definitely the pies from the farm shop supplied by Jean and Als wife ( she had decided to visit us as it’s the only chance she gets to see Al these days) and the several cups of tea made on my camping stove I had taken along rather than make a flask.
All in all a very enjoyable day on a very warm October day just a shame the fish were not coming out to play.
.
.
. Back out and the tip wrapped again and Common number 2 was safely netted. The third cast produced exactly the same result, Happy Days 
, subsequent casts produced not even a tremble on the tip, going through various hookbaits had no effect at all and after an hour I decided to get the pole out. A quick look in my box found a suitable rig, a 4X12 KC Tricky on 0·14 power match with a size 18 Drennan Carp Match hook. Plumbing up at around 9mtrs I found a nice even patch at around 3½ft deep. It was noticeable that nobody had really been catching much, apart from Bill up on Peg11, so I decided to go for it and balled 6 balls of groundbait in to see if I could draw a few fish, Then went back out on the method to let things settle. Another 20 minutes on the method produced nothing however :(, so time for the pole. 20 minute on the pole was biteless as well so I fed 2 pots of pellets and took a stroll.
, despite there being fish moving in the reeds in his left hand margin.
. I wish I could say it got better as the day progressed, but it didn't, apart from Jean turning up with a freshly brewed mug of tea courtesy of Dave 
with Kevin being dragged off to the Bahamas 
on my right in 19 and the other side in 23 was resident crooner 
Al