BCUK League Round 6, Monks Lake 2

I was off back down Monks today, on Lake 2 this time. It was the last round today and even after missing a match and a potential 4 points I was 4th in the league.

To be sure of getting a cash payout I needed to finish in the top 8 of the League so another section win was needed, can I do it?

At the draw I pulled out peg 85 right over the back of the lake in a poor area, so that was it for a potential match win today the best I could do was win the section. Added to this the weather forecast for the day was looking grim with rain. Looks like I am stuck on a crap peg today and am going to get wet!

I unloaded my gear out of the car and the sky was getting darker all the time, just as I got to the peg the rain started. Anyway enough about complaining about the weather on to the subject of bait for the day, I had my usual shedload of 6mm pellet, a couple of pints of 6mm and 4mm expanders, a bit of corn, and because of the rough forecast a pint of mixed maggots. I mixed up a small amount of groundbait to feed at the start, this would either kick start the pole line or kill it, Shit or bust tactics!

I had been told this area of the lake is quite shallow, so I guessed the waggler would be a good tactic today with every peg in the fish may be pushed out of pole range. I set up 2 rods one to fish shallow on the pellet with my home made float, the other to fish a bait on the drop set at full depth which was around 4ft at 25 meters, this rig had a small dumpy bodied waggler, both had 018 main line and a 0.14 trace. I also set up a few pole rigs one deep, 2 shallow, and a margin.

At the start I fed the groundbait and then went out with the full depth waggler at about 20-25 meters, bait was a 6mm banded pellet, feeding 6mm pellet with a catty over the top, I did not have a touch for half a hour, a switch to corn still produced nothing, 45 minutes in and I was fishless! Out of desperation I stuck on a 12mm pellet, cast out and had a bite as the rig settled, 30 second later I had a 2lb mirror in the net.

The big pellet didn’t produce any more fish so after an hour I decided it was time to have a look on the pole line while continuing to feed out on the waggler where hopefully the carp would eventually turn up in numbers. First put in on the pole and I had an instant bite on a lump of paste, this was a F1 of about a pound, I went back out then had one about two pound, then nothing, two hours in and I had 3 fish, things were looking grim.

A change of tactics were in order so I took off the deep waggler rigs trace and switched it to a size 16 Kamasan 611 attached to a 0.12 trace. Maggot was going to be the bait, the only problem was I didn’t have enough to feed the swim for the rest of the match so decided to feed pellet with the odd pouch full of maggot to make them last the duration of the match. Not ideal as I like to feed what I have on the hook but I was getting desperate by now.

This at last started to produce a few fish a mixture of, small carp, chub, ide and the odd barbel. I desperately needed some carp as I was being battered in the section so as I got into the 4th hour of the match I fed just maggot and this done the trick and I had a run of carp and as I get to the last hour of the match I recon I had about 25lb, unfortunately I was running out of maggots so had to switch to feeding pellet, hook bait wise pellet or corn produced no bites, so I had to stick with maggot hook bait and feeding pellet, I still caught a few more carp adding the biggest fish of the day in the last hour, one about 4lb.

It rained for most of the match so I was glad it was all over, amazingly when it ended the rain stopped. So the question is how well had I done in the section?

The scales came round and the first guy in my section put 16 lb on the scales so he must have struggled. Next weight went 44lb not so good as I don’t recon I had that much, 30lb odd was next, and eventually I weighed in 37lb for 2nd in the section. 98lb won the match. A quick mental calculation was worked out and I reckoned I was going to just going to snatch 8th place the last money spot in the league.

The result had been worked out and a few had dropped some points and I ended up in 6th place and picking up a few quid.

I will say well done to Paul Kell who was the eventual winner and an excellent angler particularly when fishing the pole shallow for carp.

Individually in the matches I did quite well 2 ton up match wins at Monks, 72lb for second at Framfield and a lake win with 63lb at Hartleylands. Only fishing poorly in the last one, tactically and bait wise getting things wrong.

Realistically 6th was the best I could have done, the winner had 22 points made up from 4 section wins and 2 section seconds fished over 6 matches and I was on 19 from 4 section wins and 1 section second from 5 matches. I was a little disappointed as I feel I could have won it if I didn’t miss a match, but there is always next time and I can’t complain really picking up a average of £80 a match!

The full results of the BCUK League can be found here, the website should be updated in a day or two.

RESULTS