Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Ton Up at Monks

With the Maver Pairs match at Monks lake on Saturday I thought I would have the day off work and fish the Wednesday Open and get a bit of practice. Today it was going to be held on lake 1 which is the fairest lake on the complex so was confident of a decent weight wherever I drew. These mid week matches are never easy to win as it attracts some good anglers.

At the draw I pulled out peg 39 which is in the middle of the far side, I was quite pleased cos I had the wind blowing from behind making it more comfortable when the forecast rain starts!

Bait wise I had with me my usual Monks lake menu, lots of 6mm Skretting pellets, 2 pints of 6mm and 4mm expanders, and some paste made from ground pellets. I had some corn too but I probably won’t use it! I also knocked up a bit of fishmeal groundbait to feed at the start.

The rigs again were much the same that I always use at Monks, two shallow with Drennan carp 4 dibbers, with a size 14 Drennan carp hook attached to 0.14 hook length. One on the deck rig with a Carpa Chimp float set up hook in the loop style, also a BGT Short for fishing on a top 4 at about 3 meters out.

The intention today was to fish a main line out at 7-9 meters shallow, and a top 4 when I wanted to rest the this line, I had 7 balls of groundbait laced with 6mm pellet to feed at the start, 5 in front to draw in a good number of fish then lose feed over the top to bring the fish shallow, and a couple either side of me for fishing a top 4.

At the whistle the groundbait went in and I started off on the top 4 rig with 6mm pellet as bait, flicking a few pellets out over the float, I was soon catching a few small tench. While catching these I was feeding out at around 8 meters over the groundbait. After about half an hour into the match it was about time I went out on the shallow rig, about the same time it started raining.

I shipped out this rig and flicked in a few pellets and was straight into a small F1 carp! I caught a few in the next hour trying to suss out the best way to feed, today wrapping the pellet in soft paste got me a bite quicker, feeding about 10 pellets then dropping the paste on top, also throwing is a small ball of soft groundbait and dropping the rig down the “same hole” caught me a few. Every now and again having a look with the on the deck rig when it went quiet shallow also picked up a few fish. I recon by the end of the third hour I had about 50-60lb in the net, with two hours to go I needed to catch quicker to have a chance of framing.

I stepped up the feed to about a dozen pellets every 15 seconds to try to up the catch rate, this started to work well, shipping out then throwing out a dozen pellets followed by the rig started to produce one a bung. I also fed a small ball of soft groundbait every few minutes to keep a cloud hanging in the water. I had a good last 90 minutes catching well up to the whistle which strangely coincided with the rain stopping.

I guessed I had between 80-100lb in the net, and when the scales arrived 99 was winning so far. I had 112lb of mostly F1s and took the lead, following the scales round the rest of the lake one other ton catch was recorded, lucky for me it was 106lb, so that gave me yet another win at Monks, that is 3 so far out of 4 matches this year at the venue.

I will report back soon with how I do in the Maver pairs, hopefully avoid a draw on lake 3!

No comments: