Can it get any worse..?

We used to catch loads here, I tell Matty, as we plot up on a corner overlooking one of the deepest parts of the pit.

Today looked so perfect, it took several run-less hours to put a dent in my confidence. Mild and overcast, nice ripple - ideal conditions to start making up for lost time with a few fish .

We'd looked at two other waters - the water had risen far enough to make the most likely swims on one unfishable, while someone was already in the best swims on the other, leaving just a corner with a cross-wind tearing into it.

After a couple of hours watching motionless floats, I put a bait out as far as I could popped up off the lead link on my tangle-proof pop-up rig. After an hour or so of twitching it back and re-casting, the alarm goes. The line's slackening as it comes towards me.

When I pick up the rod, it stops. Any second now, it'll roar off with it, I tell myself. But it's long gone. When I reel it in, I find the trace has tangled around the lead link on my tangle-proof rig. This turns out to be the only offer of the day.

A guy who dropped into the corner I didn't like the look of appears. He's had four, but for some reason seems to want to move into our swim. We debate this, as the man in the corner heads off somewhere else. An  hour or so later, he rings Matty, to check if we've moved anywhere else.

I wonder if he knows something we don't. Maybe it's done a big fish. We sit there until dusk, when the geese lift off in great screaming skeins, but nothing happens.

I realise this is my 30th trip of the season, when I get home and tap out a quick update. Thirty trips - admittedly some of them short ones, not to mention several on a water which it now appears there aren't any pike. But 10 fish in 30 trips, not even a double let alone a twenty.

At least it can't get any worse. Or can it..?