It's not only gold that glitters.

I've spent a large part of my life dreaming. I spent the majority of my school days dreaming of what I would do when I was not at school much to the chagrin of my teachers. I've spent a million hours lost in my head dreaming of fishing whilst working at some repetitive task at work and I often fall asleep thinking about what I would like to catch next in the hope I will dream of it. Most of the winter I've dreamt of lovely golden crucian carp or perfectly green red-eyed tench on summer nights, but just recently big silver roach have swum through my mind. I think it's because I made a mental note to have a go for them at Napton whilst it was still chilly enough to single them out, but warm enough to actually fish on the openness of this reservoir.

It turned out that the day I earmarked to fish up at Napton for these lovely roach was one of those times when I should have stopped at home for at least eighty percent of the session. Four hours I spent huddled under my umbrella about as far as a man of my stature can and the whole time the rain flip flopped from drizzle to piddle, teasing me that it might stop and the day might become the session I hoped for. The whole time I hunkered deep under that umbrella I waged war on the pint of maggots, which coaxed on by their new found climbing ability, were hell bent on escaping into the damp grass. Somewhere though, towards the end of the day a lighter shade of grey covered the horizon and soon turned to a pale blue, followed by a burning red as the sun finally broke through to dry me off.

All afternoon the total action added up to three slow slides of the float that I suspected were small perch but was suspicious were crayfish, even so though I had religiously fed maggot every so often over the light sprinkling of ground-bait I'd laid down at the start of the session. The last hour made all the waiting in the damp worthwhile. It was like a switch had been flicked and the entire lake population had sprung into life to feed with gay abandon. The perch were first in the queue and at between six ounces and a pound plus they very welcome.

Somewhere in a slew of sliding perch bites my float did a different dance. I'd been using what I call the micro lift rig which I have done so well with at this venue in the past. As I've said before the key to this rig a combination of the Drennan antenna float and the single number nine shot positioned close to the bottom which cocks the float down so as only the red tip shows. The advantage of using this rig is you see bites two ways, both up and down. The float first rose a little before stuttering under the waters film and my strike was met by a dogged fight very different from the perch I had been catching. My target had turned up by way of a very young looking roach well over a pound.

If all the fishing I did was like the last hour of this session I would soon grow ungrateful of such wonderful sport quickly. Bite after bite came constantly. I even gave up casting and sinking the line as the float was never still long enough to be pulled out of position by the floating line. It was only a numbers game before another roach came along, the only worry was would it come along before the light went and my float disappeared permanently. It got to the stage when you can't even see the black shape of the float against the reflection of the sky on the water and your eyes play tricks on you because even blinking makes you lose sight of your float in the dark. How I registered that final bite I'll probably never know, but I did and again the nodding fight of a roach excited me enough to take more care playing it. Unable to definitively identify the fish I waited till I could make it out laying calmly on the surface before gently scooping it up in the net. The blinding white light of my head lamp illuminated a second perfect bar of silver was the final fish that I had been hanging on right till the death for.

The window on targeting these lovely fish has passed quickly with the long overdue temperature rise and now the time for spring and summer species is on the horizon. Likely though I few accidental captures will come over the summer along with their ginger cousins the rudd, which will be more than welcome gifts in the future.