Just a quick visit.
He’d actually brought his Wife and eldest daughter down to London as they had tickets to the Prince concert at the O2 arena, so we thought we would make the most of the opportunity to sneak a few hours fishing while he was down. Word had got out however and it seemed like there may be a few more members of Maggotdrowning making the trip down to Monk Lakes to meet up with him.
So Dave finally rocked up at my place at around 12·30 and by the time we arrived at Monks it was close to 2pm. We went up to match lake 4 to find Vince, Dave Collier and Bill Gibbins already ensconced. Welcomes over Dave and I settled in, with Dave opting for the pole while I had travelled relatively light with just my new Shakespeare Pellet Waggler rod, a chair and a box of bits chucked into my carryall.
The others had been there since around noon and had built their swims up so that they were all catching well, mostly small stockie Carp and Tench, though a few of the better Tench had shown up including a near 5lb’er for Vince who had managed a decent bag from the lake a few days previously.
While Bill contented himself with taking the stockies at the rate of 1 a chuck………
I however was soon caught out as having made a schoolboy error. Playing my first fish of the session, a small Carp things didn’t feel quite right and a quick look soon revealed that I had missed out one of the eyes on the rod when I threaded the line through them while setting up, not that the lads got any pleasure from taking the mickey out of my mistake.
Dave Collier was getting a few, but soon went into “Butler” mode popping down to the snack wagon and returning with the burgers and the teas so a halt was called as those were consumed.
Behind us on match lake 1 a match had recently finished and I could see a few fish moving in the margins where the departing anglers had disposed of their unused bait. As I was finding sport slow in my own swim I took the decision to move over onto the closest swim to see what I could manage from the margins.
Dave meanwhile was sticking at it, even though he took a bit of convincing that his normal ”Yorkie” frugal feeding regime needed stepping up now that he was down south where the fish are hungry and need a decent feed, not pigeons portions.
I’m sure he could be heard sobbing quietly to himself as he stepped up the feed from 1 pellet every 10 minutes to a hand full every couple of minutes, but it soon started to reap rewards as he found some better fish including a nice Tench……………
Meanwhile I had settled in and with the margins appearing to resemble fish soup I just needed to keep the pellet going in and using either a GOT Baits 6mm expander or corn on the hook resulted on a fish virtually every put in, a mixture of Carp, Tench and Barbel with even the occasional Skimmer thrown in for good measure.
Chatting to Bill earlier he had mentioned that he had only ever caught 1 Barbel and that had only weighed a couple of ounces, and with the Barbel in Monks now going around the 2lb mark I invited him over to see if he could get one as I had had a dozen already. Well Bill sat there for a good 30 minutes with me feeding the swim for him, but try as he may all he could manage was a succession of Carp and Tench with me performing the Ghillies duties. It did at least give him a chance to try my rod out with which he was suitably impressed, but of course you don’t need me to tell you that as soon as he passed the rod back to me the 2nd fish I caught was………….. A Barbel.
Just to rub Bill’s nose in it Vince wandered over and dropped into a peg next to me and promptly had a Barbel as well.
With home time fast approaching Dave came over to try his hand with my gear………
and was soon into a fish, not the hoped for Barbel but the first of a few Carp that came in a hectic few minutes, topped off with a nice chunky little Mirror Carp……
So that was it, session over, short and sweet but a real fun session in good company and more than a few fish thrown into the mix as well, It would be greedy to ask for anything more really.
