Patchy, but still had plenty of enjoyable fishing. The season started with floods, so I spent the first few weeks fishing stillwaters, with lots of tench, but hardly any crucians. All small to medium, but on light float gear it doesn't get much better.
Once the river settled down, there was some great barbel and chub fishing. You had to be there very early or late, though, to catch well, and this was the first year I bought repellants and even armoured clothing to keep the mozzies off. The river was up and down all summer, so float rods and leger rods got a workout. I've always been sorry that just as I came down here the chub seemed to leave, so I was chuffed to find one place where you can catch more good chub in a morning than I sometimes see in a season.
In between fishing on the big river, I went out late in the evening a few times to a tiny local one. There's not much in it - the chub are definitely self-isolating - but catching odd ones on floating crust was fun. There was a thread about which fish wise up quicker. You can sometimes catch carp after carp on floating baits from the same spot. I've yet to get a second bite from a swim after catching a chub on one.
The floods were back in October, and I had some great fishing with roach and perch from backwaters on the big river, with a few outings to new places, both with a connection to our Mansfield correspondent. One involved sitting on top of a small weir, trotting a tiny float down a shallow stream and catching roach, dace, perch, chub and even a tench. The other involved a beautiful barely fished woodland pond where fishing wasn't easy, but if you happened to fish the right way at the right time gave bags of such unlikely bedfellows as bream, chub, ide and barbel.
By the time we got close to Christmas, I'd more or less given up fishing to concentrate on the mysterious respiratory problem that kept me indoors and baffled medical science. It's fashionable now, but I think I can say I was ahead of the curve.
I'm hoping to get out fishing again soon, but it's a funny time for getting out doing anything.