Pads Army Charity match, Monks Lake 1 and 2

A brief report this week as I don’t have much time.

I wasn’t going to fish a match till the next round of the Invicta but as the weather got warmer when I got back from Holiday I booked myself into this match at the last minute cos I just know it would be a good day for the pole shallow one of my favourite methods.

There was a few good local anglers at the draw so this was not going to be an easy match to win, I expected several ton plus weights to come out. I went in and pulled out peg 36 on Lake 1. Not really a noted draw up the wrong end of the lake, but I was quite pleased cos I have won off of it before.

Tactics for the day were going to be simple as always. I set up two shallow rigs a Drennan carp 4, 0.2g with a short line of about 12in to the pole tip to fish about 12 in deep. The other was a Drennan Carp 4, 0.4g with a longer line of 3-4ft to the pole tip for swinging out; being a clam day I expected the fish to shy off the pole tip. Both of these had a 14 Drennan Carp hook attached to a 0.14mm trace. I also set up a margin rig to drop in down the edge if I wanted to rest the shallow line for a while.

Bait wise I had with me 10 pints of 6mm pellet, a couple pints of 6mm expanders as change bait. A small amount of groundbait to feed at the start. I also knocked up a bit of paste too. I’m so confident these tactics will work today I never had a backup plan so this is all the bait I had with me.
It was a strange start to the match as Paddy the guy running it had a 15 minute baiting up period before the match started similar to the world champs! So the whistle went and I threw in 4 balls of groundbait laced with pellet at 7.5 meters, and the rest went in down the right margin. Now all I had to do was fed about 6 pellets every 30 seconds over the top until the whistle for the start sounded.

When the whistle went I noticed some fish moving down the margin so I dropped in the margin rig with 6mm soft pellet as bait. This produced a quick bit and a carp of about a pound, and a few minutes later it was joined by its mate of the same size. After them two quick fish it was out with the short line shallow rig set 1ft deep. By feeding every few seconds and constantly working or slapping the rig down I had a good start and when the first hour of the match was up there were 20 small f1 carp in the net and well on the way to a ton plus as you need about 80 carp on this lake.

The second hour was much the same but bites slowed a bit as the little bit of ripple I had on the water disappeared and I was faced with flat calm. The solution to this was switching to the long line rig and swinging away from the pole tip. So for the next couple of hours I changed between the two rigs using the long line one when there was no ripple on the water and the other when the wind got up a bit. The carp were very cagey giving only tiny dips in the float but I was connection with a fair few and catching pretty steady. I did have to add another section to the pole going out to around 9 meters as the fish seemed to be hanging on the far side of the feed. By the start of the final hour I had around 65 carp and a few small chub, a skimmer, barbell and tench! I wasn’t taking the place apart but catching quite well.

I couldn’t spot anybody emptying the place so was sure I was ahead on the lake.
For the last hour I again added another section of pole and was now fishing at 11 meters as the fish seemed to back off a bit further. This was a good move as I had a run of 20 more carp in the last hour finishing with 85 carp in the net at the end so it looked like I had over the 100lb mark.

The scales arrived and 75lb was winning the lake so far. I put 112lb on the scales easily taking the lead. Word was that there was a few ton plus weight off of lake 2 so I went to have a look. Matt Love on the wrong side of Lake 2 who has been quizzing me for months about fishing Monks shallow fished a good match putting together a weight of 114lb managing to beat me by 2lb fishing similar tactics. I guess that is what I get for saying he will never win off of that peg. That is what makes Monks such a good summer venue there are so many potentially winning pegs and you can never predict what one will win.