I didn’t have any trouble getting up for this trip. The boats weren’t available until 9am in Bewl, which gave us enough time. We arrived in time for the pep talk given by a water bailiff and looked over the lures on sale at the shop. Don’t ask me why, as we both have more gear than we can use in a lifetime.

It wasn’t a nice day. I looked at the water and knew it was going to be a slow motor across the main bowl. Sure enough, we had to keep our speed right down to avoid shipping water. I certainly would not contemplate fishing anywhere near the dam, the wind was strong and gave the waves plenty of action in that direction.

Instead, we went for the far leg near Rosemary Lane, but stopped for a quick spin in Dunster's bay on the right. Nothing doing there, we trolled slowly the rest of the way there. I used a giant Professor spoon and Walter used a rectangular bronze lure. Apart from the bottom, we caught nothing on the way. Once at the Rosemary Lane end, I could see how much higher the water was compared to last November. Then it was 3.05m (10ft) lower than usual, this time it was 1.74m (6ft) higher than usual. Tinker's Marsh was completely flooded and navigable, so we had an hour there, spinning.

Walter managed to tempt something up, but it turned away just below the surface. Naturally, the water is shallow here, but it is reasonably fishable. I tried a variety of lures from jelly crayfish, rapala lures, rubber powerbait fish and spoons, but did not get any takers. My casting was fine despite using 20lb line. I should have had the spool with 12lb line on, but didn’t notice until I got home that night. I used an Abu Impulse carp rod, which at 3.66m (12ft) gives enough power to throw out a big heavy spoon. . We did a lot better last year, possibly because there was less water and the pike were more concentrated.

The wind was picking up even more and we were dragging our anchor, which was fine. It meant we could cover more water. The sky turned to shades of dark grey and dusk, it was already raining hard, and bound to get heavier. Another boat had beached nearby and the occupants were bailing it out. Looking down, we discovered there was an inch of water above the boards in our boat too. We removed one of the boards and bailed out as much as we could. We had to do this four times during the day. I think much of it was actually due to the sheer volume of rain falling all day. Luckily I'd made a belt-buster of a chicken curry the night before, because we felt little inclination to eat much in the heavy rain. Soggy sandwiches are best left to the ducks.

After a while, we drifted close to the far shoreline and I could cast along either side of it. I switched to a medium Professor bronze spoon and after 45 minutes or so, we motored slowly back up Bewl Straight. Around 12.30pm, stopping before Goose Creek where I caught a couple of pike 2 years ago, I cast to a promontory and got a really savage take close to the boat on the retrieve. The drag was set a bit too tight and the fish nearly yanked the rod out of my hands, but I managed to hang on. The fish then bored deep and pulled some line off before I was able to slacken off the drag, but it was 20lb line and held easily. After a stubborn fight, I got the fish aboard. A nice 3.15kg (7lb) pike. Not big, but it straightened the treble hook which fell out as it was netted.

A fine 7lb pike.

After taking a photo during a brief lull in the rainstorm, I put the pike back in the net for the bailiffs to collect and carried on casting towards the promontory. We had to reverse out five minutes later as we were drifting too close to shore. Just after dropping the anchor, I noticed the net slipping beneath the water. I just caught it in time, but the pike had escaped. Fifteen minutes later, I hooked a lively trout around 1.5lb, which thrashed about on the surface before throwing the hook.

We moved closer to Goose Creek and I hooked another pike around 4.5lb. The bailiff’s boat was passing soon after and I handed it over for restocking in a pike water in Essex. Working our way back up the straight, we started to cross the main bowl again, when Walter let out a yell. A good trout around 1.8-2.25kg (4-5lbs) hurled itself 4ft out of the water, somersaulted twice and threw his hook. He hadn’t been having much luck all day and he was pretty distraught now. The trip across the bowl was another rough one and we took on plenty of water again. We were both annoyed to find our waterproof trousers let us down this trip. Anyone know of any effective winter insulated waterproofs available in the UK?

After drawing close to the fishing lodge, we trolled the shoreline in Hook Straight parallel to the fish cages. Walter got a satisfying tug on his line and a splendid fight, bringing in a very fat rainbow trout. It was in beautiful condition, but had to go back. After a spinning session in Seven Pound Creek, we trolled further up towards Three Creeks before turning back around 3.30pm. We trolled all the way back to the lodge, when Walter hooked another trout, which surfaced beside a passing boat. We were only 20 metres from the jetty and he had a sizeable audience to cheer him on as he played and landed the fish, before slipping it back in the water.

As if to mock us, the sun came out just as we reached the jetty and gave us a fine sunset.

Bewl sunset.