Spring League round 3 Monks lake 2

The new bait limits enforced at Monk Lakes last year gave me something to think about because the fishing isn’t always about bagging up down there. Sometimes you can do well against the end peg flyers using a lot of pellets (if the fish are having it) but if the fishing is not so good then you really need a back-up plan of smaller baits to catch anything that swims. I understand the desire for bait limits but if you are not allowed to take more than the limit to your peg then you have to either take a gamble as to what to take or find a bait combination that can frame in good conditions or still do ok in poor conditions.

I was talking to Nick Gilbert last year about how poorly the venues were fishing and the new bait limits. We bounced different ideas around and as spring 2010 approached I was convinced that a new approach was worth a shot and with the weather warming this league match was my chance to give it a go.…………… but I’m not going to say what this approach was just yet!

So moving on to the match in hand, the day was overcast with rain forecast and quite cool with a strong wind………..not the best of conditions then. I was also on peg 51 half way down the first bank which is most definitely NOT a noted peg but I am always optimistic if there is a chance of getting them up in the water and the new approach I was going to take should get them up and competing.

I plumbed up in the margins and all the way out to 16m. I chose a depth for a deck rig that would be laying on an inch or two at 8m and tripping bottom at 16m. I also set up an on-the-drop rig with an NG Finesse 0.3g float shotted shirt-button style with a 16 hook to 0.13 line. The preferred shallow rig was an NG Dibber 0.3g set 2’ deep with the same hook and trace. I also set up a margin rig with an NG XT Margin set over depth with a bulk just off bottom and a size 12 Drennan Carp Match for fishing big baits.

On warmer days I would ball in 6 jaffas on the shallow line (around 7m-8m) but today I chose just 3 jaffas to be safe. The distance would be determined by how far I could feed by hand and so with the wind off my back I threw out some bait at the start and plopped the 3 jaffas on top at about 7m. This meant that if the wind changed I could probably still feed by hand.

First drop in with the Finesse rig resulted in a nice 1lb skimmer in the net followed by several of it’s smaller mates. I was feeding about every 20 seconds and kept lifting and dropping the rig. After about 20 minutes I started picking up the odd carp between 1lb and 2lb and an occasional Ide. One of the reasons I started on the deck was that there could well have been Barbel around this area but as it turns out I didn’t have one all day long.

After an hour I had around 15lb in the net and decided that I needed to step up a gear to compete as I had Jonny Watt to my left doing ok and the flyer pegs doing better. I increased the feed amount and frequency to try harder to get them up in the water but was still fishing the Finesse rig to look for indications shallow but not miss out on any fish on the deck.

At the 90 minute mark Jonny admitted to 20lb to my 17lb but I was now getting some indications that the fish were coming shallow and felt that things would start getting better. I then foul hooked a Carp and had a violent take from a 2lb Chub……..so out came the Dibber rig.

My feed rate increased to 15 seconds, with the odd break while I was netting and unhooking fish but basically the takes were rippers in the top 2 feet and I would feed on top of the hooked fish while coaxing it out of the swim and once again after I had broken down. The sport was not consistent nor particularly busy apart from one spell of half an hour when I must have had 10 fish in quick succession. I did feel that my approach was working well though as many anglers were slowing down whereas I was picking up.

At one point I dropped in another jaffa because I wanted to give the swim a rest while I fed another 3 lines in preparation for the shallow line to die off. I fed a jaffa at 14.5m and pellets down each margin and then flicked more bait out on the shallow line before deciding to drop the rig back in. The fish were still there though and I felt that continuing on the shallow line was the best decision.

The sport continued until the all-out when I still had a fish on and my clicker said 73lb. I count pounds at Monks and not fish because of the strict net rules. The scales came round and I weighed in just over 80lb and with the better pegs weighing in between 60lb and 100lb odd, I felt that I had done well beating everyone along my bank apart from Hathers on 47. I think I finished 6th overall for 15 valuable points and perhaps some priceless experience at a potentially good method for bagging and competing with those flyer pegs.

Hathers is running a match on this lake in June so that will be my chance to try this new approach again. Let’s see what happens.