Monk Lakes - Lake 1

Having only fished Lake 1 once before, I resorted to appealing for advice on the Total Fishing.com website where a succession of helpful people told me to fish :-

1. Long Pole up in the water with Pellet
2. Three sections of pole on the bottom with maggot
3. In the edge with maggot
4. Pellet and paste at 5 metres.

Guess which advice I took ?????????????

Match day arrived and Graham MacIntosh or Mac as he is known, a long time Leatherhead DAS member and former world swearing champion picked me up for the journey to Monks.
After an hour of reminiscing about club coach trips and matches which we fished over 30 years ago we arrived at Monks and after a bite of brekky, we discovered that we weren’t on Pegs 1-22 as first thought but 23- 44, having only fished the lake once before, it meant little to me although I did know that you still really wanted to draw an end peg and particularly Peg 23 next to the aerator. So, half way through the draw and with 23 still in the hat, in I went and out came Peg twenty.......................Four ! So , at least I was likely to see a few fish. Northern Bloke (Howard Corner) then drew Peg 23 and then offered to have a £5 side bet with me !
Arriving at my Peg, I was a little disappointed to find that whilst everyone else seemed to have a spare peg one side of them (and some had a spare peg both sides), I had Howard one side and Mac the other. My plan of action was to fish paste at 5 metres, whilst “Plopping” small hard balls of GB with pellets in to attract and feed the fish and hopefully keep the fish on the bottom. I also set up a rig to fish in the edge with maggot and or paste. I didn’t think I’d need any fancy pastes this week so just took a bag of Sensas IM5 Green GB with me as this mixes extremely well and reeks of fish meal.
On the whistle I fed both lines and before I had time to ship out with a baited hook Howard and Mac were both netting carp ! I was going to begin in the edge and catch a few pound of silvers before the carp settled but after such a good start either side, I needed to catch carp as well. Looking round the lake, everyone was catching and this continued for the next hour or so as everyone was catching Barbel and carp either up in the water or on the deck. I was happy how things were going as we neared halfway as although I wasn’t catching as many fish as Phil “The Tapper “ Starkey and Dave Boyd opposite, a lot of their fish were barbel and most of mine were carp which were probably at least if not more than twice the size. Mac had caught a few decent carp as well including one of 9-12-0 but then things began to slow for everyone.
This was now not a “Fishing race” and now more a question of settling down, finding how the fish wanted the bait and to keep trying to build a decent weight. The fish seemed to drift out of the peg after you caught a few and I think the key was to keep the feed going in to try and entice them back. The rest of the match wasn’t exactly one a chuck for me but with some people struggling for a bite, including Mac at the next peg, the fish I was catching were taking me away from some and catching up with others. I’d not noticed Hathers opposite catching much during the match but in the last couple of hours he went down the edge with maggot and and started to bag up with barbel, ide and the odd carp. My last cast produced a decent carp of about 6lb and when the whistle went to end the match I thought it was likely to be between Howard, Phil “The Tapper” and Hathers for the first three places.
Howard was first to weigh and with his 3 nets going 109-4-0 I thought he could well win it. Phil had weighed his fish on the opposite bank and they went 80lb, then it was my turn. I’d started to put fish in my second net at the halfway stage and despite it being tough for most in the afternoon I was pleasantly surprised to find that the afternoon net went 52lb. With the morning net containing more but smaller fish the needle swung round to nearly 60lb so we took a few fish out. That net went 53lb and with three fish to weigh, I needed 4-10-0 to beat Howard. We placed the fish in the net and Comp Sec Pete Turnbull called the weight..............................4-9-0. Pete didn’t know at the time what the weights were but when we added the three together me and Howard had actually tied ! Hathers was the only danger man still to weigh and finally recorded a mostly barbell net of 102-0-0 for third place.
All in all I’d had a nice days fishing, it wasn’t one a chuck as Monks sometimes is but I prefer it when you have to think a bit about trying to catch and the mini barbel, mostly about a pound in there fight like tigers.

Final Result

Dave P Peg 24 109-4-0
Howard Corner Peg 23 109-4-0
Hathers Peg 36 102-0-
Tony Plumbridge Peg 34 96-0-0

Next week we have a club match on Mill Lake at Stub Pond which I am really looking forward to but first I have Wednesdays open match at Willinghurst to fish. Come back here on Thursday to see how I get on.