After waiting in for the washing machine man last Friday it was back to the club lake this week and in a session of less than three hours the weather was by turns windy, calm, rainy and ended with bright sunshine. Tactics were much as last time; a quiver rod with a cage feeder loaded with hemp and liguidised bread and a size 12 baited with flake or crust and a float rig layed on with maggots about two rod lengths out. This time in addition to my usual half-pint of reds, I also took along half a pint of whites that I had flavoured with turmeric. Turmeric is flavouring I’ve been using in ground bait for about six years and I added it to the maggots as the angling press is for ever extolling the benefit of spiced up maggots for winter fishing. Curry and chilli powder are common suggestions, but turmeric adds a nice yellow colour to the maggots and is less likely to aggravate you skin. (Without being basic it occurs to me that handling chilli powder and then going for a natural break behind a tree could be calamitous!) Once again the quiver gave no firm indication during the session, whereas after a quiet first hour the float line produced a succession of small fish (mainly rudd but a few roach) including a quite frenetic period of a drop bite a chuck. At that stage double reds were working as well as double turmericed whites, so I’ve little scientific to add to the flavouring debate! I tried flake to see if I could pick out anything bigger, but no such luck. Then the swim died, either I’d overfed it, or as the light faded the rudd disappeared. It would have been good to have been able to stay on to see if the roach moved in at dusk, but I had places to be as always. No sign of the kingfisher but I did see a family of bullfinches!

Happy Christmas and good angling in 2006 to anyone who reads this.

GG