With only one stop en route to pick up some maggots, I arrived at Hunters Lake at around 9.30am to find it completely devoid of anglers... I decided to settle on the on the 'point' swim and cast the feeder to main the tree island, with the 2nd rod being fished to the small island on my left with a medusa rig of 15 or so red and white maggots.

Amazingly, the small island rod ripped off after 10 minutes! The result was a fighting fit mirror carp of around 15lb which game an amazing account of itself on light gear.

The action was slow and steady throughout the day, with definite feeding spells where the feeder rod would produce a run of fish. I worked my way through a couple of common carp, a crucian carp (my first in over a decade!) and a decent size bream which baring in mind the time of year, wasn't a bad haul.

The day finished with a prime common carp which was in immaculate condition - not bad, not bad at all!

I'm already looking forward to my next session at Hunters Lake, I've a feeling that once we move into spring proper the fishing will really pick up and there maybe some monsters lurking... Watch this space!

This time I went armed with a plan: the advice I'd been given was to bait heavily and fish a rod tight to the reeds and a 2nd a rod length off the reeds on the far margin with a 3rd rod fishing as 'chuck it and see'. I was also going 'large', using 20mm custom boilies from Innate Baits and size 6 hooks (which still seem massive to me!).

And the plan paid off!

Massive thanks to Innate Baits, the custom 'signature' boilies really did the business.

As it turned out, I had four in the 1st ten minutes of casting out! The action was slow and steady for the rest of the day and I had a grand time despite the conditions.

If you've not fished it, give it a go!

As it turns out, it was 3rd time lucky and I managed to get a couple of decent fish in a short day session - all came good in the end.