BCUK League Round 5, Monks Lake 1

Today I was off too Monks the day after the fishery hosted the Fishomania qualifier, which I didn’t get a ticket for! I was worried how it was going to fish after 130 angler were at the lakes yesterday. 36 are fishing today so nearly every peg on the lake will be in.

I arrived at the draw and was chatting to the guys in the queue saying that all the times I have fished Monks I have never drawn one of the favoured end pegs, I stuck my hand in the bag and pulled out peg 24, with peg 23 not in today I had at last drawn an end peg! This is exactly where I wanted to be as I needed another section win to keep in contention; the down side is I will be fishing against peg 21 that was also on the end and a very good draw.

I got to the peg and there was a brisk crosswind blowing from right too left, anybody who fishes Monks will know that the wind always blows here as it is so exposed. Tactics today will be the pole as short as I can get away with because of the wind, I set up 2 shallow rigs, 0.3g & 0.4g Drennan carp 4 dibbers, a deep rig with a 4x14 Carpa Chimp to fish hook in the loop style, and a margin rig with a 0.3g BGT Short also hook in the loop style, all rigs had a 0.14 trace.

Bait for the day was simple I had with me 10 pints of 6mm Skrettings coarse pellets, 2.5 pints of 6mm expanders. I also had some 4mm expanders and corn with me but didn’t expect to use it. To kick start the swim I had 6 balls of BCUK groundbait, this was all going in at the start and I intended to lose feed over the top to bring the carp up shallow. This tactic has worked well here in the past.

The whistle went and in the groundbait was thrown in at about 7-8 meters, also a ball went in each margin, I dropped the margin rig in to start with, while the groundbait settled for a while, I fed 6-10, 6mm pellet over the top about every 15 seconds, after about 10 minutes and no bites in the margins it was out with the deep HITL rig where I was feeding. I had a bite after another10 minutes that resulted in a small carp. After a couple of missed bites I figured the fish were up shallow already so out with the shallow rig, I was picking up the odd fish on this rig and in the first hour I had 10 small carp in the net for about 10lb.

Steady feeding produced more carp shallow and by the second hour I had added another 20, some of these were a bit bigger and I guessed I was on about 40lb now, things were going well and I added another 10 in the next half an hour, then something strange happened. Bites virtually dried up catching just 1 carp in the next half an hour!

I was puzzled a bit as to why I was not catching, the only explanation is that I had over fed a little and the fish had gone deeper, this seemed to be the case and a switch to the deep rig produced a carp first put in, feeding 10, 6mm expanders then dropping the rig in over the top produced a run of carp and I was catching well again for about half a hour, again bites stopped and a switch to the shallow rig produced another few fish.

By changing between the deep and shallow rigs for the rest of the match I caught steady until the whistle at the end. Ending up with about 70 fish.

I was sure I has done quite well as I didn’t notice anybody really emptying it, and that seemed to be the case when the scales got round to my section, top weight was in the 60s and I was sure I had over 80lb? I was a bit worried when the 2nd guy to weigh in my section put 92lb on the scales and took the lead, it was my turn did I have enough? 3 weighs later and I had 101lb, getting the section win and taking first place in the match.

I was quite pleased today as I managed to get a good result on the pole which makes a change from having to fish the pellet waggler in the previous 3 matches.

Unbelievably I think I have moved up to 4th place in the league, which is some going as I missed one of the matches, with just one match to go I can’t win it but may jump up another place or two and get a decent payout at the end, on top of match payouts I have won already.