September arrives and with it comes a period of high pressure, however winters in the air as the nightime temperature drops and the wind swings to the north.

Id heard that the Thames had been fishing extremely hard with even the bream being noticeable in their absence. I had a feature to complete on bream on the Thames and headed straight for a known hot spot at Pangbourne that had never previously let me down. In the past I’d always fished for the carp here but scaled down piled the groundbait in and awaited the onslaught. Unfortunately come 11pm the rods were still sitting quietly on the rests despite continuous casting with new pellets and PVA bags. Just as l was beginning to think a blank was on the cards the indicator started vibrating and the first of five bream came to the net. A very quiet night for this swim, however if the lost carp had fallen in the net things would have been so different.

Back on Cemex waters l received no action on Thursday night fishing Papercourt for eels and on the Friday landed a 22lb 10oz common from Frimley on bream gear which at least gets a carp on the Cemex Competition board and something to work on in the future.

The north wind has certainly slowed things down but at soon as this swings back to a southwest it will be time to drop everything as bream and carp will go on a feeding binge. The carp at Frimley came to a tiny PVA bag filled with Sonubaits Stick Mix with boosted Robin Red as well as a 14mm boilie that’s being field-tested. Knowing that the Frimley carp are extremely clued up I’d placed the PVA bag on the hair between the hook and bait. Looking how this reacted in the margins gave me bags of confidence as the exploding bag not only protected the hook, stayed on when cast and covered the bait and hook as well as some of the hooklink making it very inconspicuous. Take a look at Sonubaits ‘Tip of the Month’ to see how to create this little trap.