Invicta League round 2. Monks Lake 1

The weather running up to this match was getting mild so expectations were high for a good match, but the day before the temperatures took a turn for the worst with north winds and snow forecast!

I arrived just before the draw at 9am and the snow had already started and it was freezing cold. The good thing was we had the whole 44 pegs of the lake between all of us so I decided to split the sections with 5 fishing on each bank. All the usual faces were at the draw and I had this deal with Mike Jameson that I was going to draw his peg as I apparently had a golden arm! So in I went and out came 25 which he was quite happy with as it won the match last weekend. Mike did the honours for me and I ended up with 29. The peg everybody wanted stayed in the bag number 23, in fact it didn’t come out at all and Matt was left to pick it out at the end. Unfortunately for me it was also in my section so if he doesn’t bugger the peg up I was likely to be fishing for 2nd place.

I arrived at the peg and had Mark Hathaway and Dennis Price on the pegs next to me for company. The bait menu for the day was not my normal selection of pellets and more pellets. Because of the freezing conditions I have pinned all my faith in natural baits and had half a kilo of worm, a pint of casters and three pints of maggots with me costing about £20! A bit different to using a few quid’s worth of pellets, although I did have some pellet and corn in the bag but didn’t expect to use it.

Tactics were simple I was going to use two methods, one was the maggot and waggler out at around the 20 meter mark, the other was caster/worm/ground bait on the pole just past bottom of the shelf at about 7 meters. The waggler set up had a 3AAA Drennan insert peacock, four number 8 down the line and was set to fish just touching the bottom at about 4ft, trace was a 0.12mm fox and a 20 Kamasan Animal hook. The pole rig was set up with one of my home made floats, this had a diamond shaped body with a 1.2mm glass stem and hollow 2mm plastic tip. The heavy glass stem makes it very stable. This was set up double bulk style with two number 10s about 3in from the hook and a bulk of number 8s 6in above this. Trace line was again a 0.12mm attached to a size 16 Drennan carp hook. Set at dead depth this rig will result in a very positive bites as the float buries or lifts and you will miss very few bites. I also set up a margin and shallow rig but didn’t expect to use them.

I called the all in and at the off the pole line was fed with a large ball of ground bait full of caster and worm. This will be fed again in half an hour or so in a similar way until I fish it. I kicked off on the waggler and was lose feeding about 10-15 maggots every cast about every minute or so. Hook bait was 3 maggots. This may seem a lot in the sub zero conditions but you need to be positive at Monks with the number of fish present and it is no place for feeding tiny post of maggots if you want to end up in the frame at the end of the day. I was soon catching a run of small fish, a mixture of small tench, ide, chub and the odd carp, with a hour gone I recon I had about 10lb in the net so things were going well, bites slowed so it was time to rest the waggler line and just feed it. I had a look on the pole with a half worm on the hook. There were a few fish there and I had 10 in as many put ins, although most were small tench and ide with the odd small skimmer. I was catching well but was finding it difficult to hold the pole in the conditions as the snow was getting quite heavy by now! After about 10 minutes you couldn’t feel your hands!!

For the next couple of hours I switched between the two methods fishing the pole till my hands went numb then having a spell on the waggler. This worked quite well and I managed a steady stream of small tench, ide, chub, plus the odd barbel and carp. The pole line eventually died with a hour to go so I just fished the rest of the match out on the waggler feeding maggots little and often picking up the odd fish until the end, the biggest of the day come just as I was about to call the all out a F1 of about 2lb.

I guessed I had about 30-40lb and as it turned out I wasn’t far wrong putting 38lb on the scales taking the lead. It wasn’t to lead for long as Matt on 23 put 44lb on the scales to claim first place, but not for long as Mark Holland on un fancied peg 10 managed 49lb of mostly carp on the pole to win the match. This put me in 3rd spot overall winning a few quid but still only with a section 2nd.

The day turned into a feat of endurance rather than a fishing match because of the cold and three did give it in and go home, I would have been tempted to join them if I wasn’t running the match!

Full result below

Ist Mark Holland 49-0 Peg 10
2nd Matt Love 44-0 Peg 23
3rd Nick Gilbert 38-4 Peg 29
4th Kevin Pack 37-0 Peg 6
5th Dennis Price 31-0 Peg 31
6th Trevor Little 30-0 Peg 22

Section1

2 Jay Lay 28-8 3
4 Ian Carley 24-0 2
6 Kevin Pack 37-0 4
8 Jim McDowell 22-0 1
10 Mark Holland 49-0 5

Section 2

14 Chris Jones 12-9 2
16 Russ Evans dnw 0
18 Andy Silver 23-8 4
20 Tony Clark 16-7 3
22 Trevor Little 30-0 5

Section 3

23 Matt Love 44-0 5
25 Mike Jameson dnw 0
27 Mark Hathway 26-12 2
29 Nick Gilbert 38-4 4
31 Dennis Price 31-0 3

Section 4

35 Martin Charnock 19-9 4
37 John Haigh 12-4 2
39 Martin Twine 18-6 3
41 Mark Greenway dnw 0
43 Collin Wood 28-6 5


League Places

1 Andy Silver 102-8 9
2 Mark Holland 90-9 9
3 Kevin Pack 85-14 9
4 Nick Gilbert 100-12 8
5 Ian Carley 80-6 7
6 Mark Hathway 74-2 7
7 Collin Wood 51-12 7
8 Matt Love 53-1 6
9 Trevor Little 44-11 6
10 John Haigh 44-5 6
11 Martin Twine 33-8 6
12 Martin Charnock 27-8 6
13 Jay Lay 55-13 5
14 Dennis Price 45-7 5
15 Chris Jones 27-11 5
16 Mark Greenway 22-9 4
17 Mike Jameson 31-6 3
18 Russ Evans 27-9 3
19 Tony Clark 16-7 3
20 Jim McDowell 38-11 2