Monk Lakes. Bridges Lake. November 13th, 2004.

A couple of weeks ago I had made arrangements with a friend of mine, Andy ”The Hat” Spreadbury to visit Monk Lakes. This is a new fishery in Kent and it is the one that was featured in Angling Times a while back as a new “Super Fishery.” We had arranged to meet in the lodge at 7·30am. My initial impression on arrival was “WHERE DO YOU START??????”

To say it’s a big site doesn’t begin to do it justice. The level of investment in the venue is obviously major. Not only is there a good variety of fishing, but the facilities are all there as well – more than ample car parking (closely situated to the lakes), security, quiet, burger bar, bait and tackle from the lodge, Ladies and Gentlemen’s toilets on site as well as toilets for the Disabled located in the car park. In the summer some temporary toilets will also be dotted around the site for convenience.
Oh! nearly forgot, something I had never seen at a fishery before – mains electric and water placed at around twenty points around the site!

The site itself covers over 120 acres, and the plans are that eventually it will be able to cater for 2000 anglers!  The fishery opened on 29th October and at the moment only the 1st part is open as work continues on the rest of the venue.

To give you all some idea of the present layout, I’ve taken the liberty of scanning the fishery pamphlet, which you can see below…………………

It has to be said that for a 1st visit to a new water the weather did us no favours at all, The 1st frost of the year down here and only 3°C on the car thermometer coupled with a biting northerly wind meant that the day was never going to be easy.

I have to be honest here and admit that the swims we selected on Bridges, were for no other reason than comfort, as we didn’t want to fish into the teeth of the wind. This lake is designed so every angler has a feature to fish to with a natural planting of submerged and marginal water plants. Reed and lily beds are just some of the features along with the 5 bridges that allow anglers to fish from the islands.

So after tackling up we got down to business, or rather Andy did!!!
Straight away he was into a Carp of around the 5lb mark followed by a few of the resident Chub.

ME? I couldn’t buy a bite. It was noticeable during the day that the frost had had an effect with the colour noticeably dropping out of the water.
Pellet or maggot, It didn’t matter, after 1½hrs of watching Andy’s grin I nicked a few of his reds as I only had whites and bingo, straight away a bite and a plump fin perfect Chub of around 8ozs to break my duck.

This was the cue for a stroll back to the car park for a ½pint of reds from the lodge, and a ½ lb cheeseburger from the catering wagon on site. Well one has to look after the inner man.

The red maggots made all the difference, and after a bit of playing around with the shoting of the rig so that it would pick up the tow a steady procession of small Chub followed for the rest of the session. By the end of our session I probably had 20lbs+ of them and as Andy said, I’m sure that these will prove to be an inspired bit of stocking as they should provide decent sport in even the coldest conditions, though whether the Carp anglers will share this view as they grow and develop a taste for boilies is another matter.

I’m going back for another visit next Saturday and it will be interesting to see how it fishes if the weather has settled down a bit.