When I left work on Thursday I was convinced Mickey Minnow was going to meet up with the Chip of the Old Block and I at Beeches Brook on the Tuesday (it being an Inset day at the Chip’s school). How this changed over the Easter weekend to the lake at Mannington I’m not sure, but change it did. Mindful of the cereal groundbait ban here, I decided to stick with the in-line maggot feeder approach that I favour at this time of year and also put out a banded halibut pellet into the margins on the carp rod. Suffice to say there was not any interest shown in the pellet, so perhaps it was too early for this approach. However, using pinkies in the feeder and reds or whites on the hook the Chip and I took a steady succession of small roach, rudd and bream on the feeder and he pulled back from a 0-3 deficit to ‘win’ 15 to 11. Oh the competitiveness of the young and we’ll overlook the fish he caught on my rod whilst I was attending to his! The Chip declared himself more of a fan off float fishing than ledgering, which is a good sign (and as it is gradually warming up the switch to the lift method can only be weeks away now). However, the method I selected, whilst less than subtle, kept us fairly active with some bite a chuck spells mixed in with some slower periods and the best rudd came when following the webmaster’s tip and using a worm as a change bait. Mickey Minnow stayed on after us and after some finicky bites scaled down and had bream to 10ozs using small pieces of meat on a size 16.