Monk Lakes. Match Lake 2. January 17th, 2009.

1st trip of 2009.

It was off down to Monk Lakes today for a session with a friend of mine from the Maggotdrowning.com website, Andy (The Hat) Spreadbury. Andy had treated himself to a new float rod for Christmas and was eager to try it out, and I’d resurrected an old Bob Church Boron spliced tip match rod that hadn’t seen the light of day for at least 10 years. We had planned to go between Christmas and the New Year, but postponed it due to the cold snap, but with a bit of milder weather during the week decided to go for it today.

Loading up the car it was raining, but the forecast was for it to brighten up later in the day. A crash in Catford held me up briefly so that it was around 8·45am when I finally pulled into the fishery car park to meet Andy. Greeting done with, it was into the shop for some bait (maggots), a quick chat with Ron at the counter (he was kind enough to let us use our keepnets) and pay for the day ticket followed by a coffee from the snack wagon before driving up to the match lakes.

Climbing out of the car the first thing to hit you was the wind (no surprise at Monks I’m afraid) and it had a real chilling bite to it today. Lake 2 looked the best bet and with 4 anglers already on the prime corner (pegs 45-49) the spit looked favourite as we would have the wind of our backs. We soon had our gear sorted and over to our pegs, settling for pegs 58 & 59.

 I soon had the old Bob Church rod set up, matching it with an old Stradic reel freshly loaded with 3lb Maxima. I rigged up a 4AAA peacock insert waggler finished of with a size 18 Drennan Match Carp hook at the business end. Andy had soon rigged up his new rod, a Shakespeare Mach 3, 13′ Float Lite, a lovely pencil slim blank and had it set up with a similar rig to mine.

So around 10am we got down to the fishing just as the sky seemed to get a shade darker and the wind stronger. The old rod was a tad heavier than some of the latest stuff but was quite at home punching the waggler out and I was soon into a rhythm catapulting a regular pinch of maggots out and twitching the float to try and induce a bite. Working my way through the depths I finally got a bite with the bait hard on the deck. soon the spliced tip was hooped over and the rod handled the fish effortlessly as a nice little Mirror of around 2½lbs slid over the net to get me off the mark…………

Andy was off the mark soon after with a nice F1 to christen his new rod……

………and seemed more than happy with the performance of it. Shortly after we were treated to a short rain squall just to remind us that it was winter (though I must confess to looking round to see whether Bill G had put in an appearance) That soon blew over however to leave us with blue sky and sunshine.

A couple of F1′s were added to my net but Andy appeared to be struggling, so I strolled over to see if I could help.

After a little adjustment to Andy’s shotting I stood back to watch him fish. A couple of alterations to little things like rod-rest positioning etc then we turned our attention to Andy’s feeding. Now Andy is probably fine with a catapult firing out boilies when he’s carping, but maggots on a windy day leads to what you might call a scattergun approach. He also has no concept of quantity!!! Trying to get him to just fire out 6-8 maggots regularly round his float somehow turns into 30-40 as and when in a general direction (well they all land somewhere in the lake). It did bring instant rewards though in the shape of a couple of tiny skimmers.

I returned to my peg but was distracted by a couple of the resident swans that seemed to be preoccupied with practising their take-off and landing techniques, but after 5-10 minutes of that the Cob decided to practise a bit of posing……

I had to get back to some kind of feeding rhythm and I soon had another Mirror and a couple of F1′s as I started to get regular bites once more. Andy came up to ask me what the fish was that he had in his landing net as he wasn’t sure, It was a decent Ide, which pleased Andy as it was the 1st he’d ever caught ………

I managed an unseasonal Tench and a decent skimmer that pretended to be a Trout, leaping clear 3 or 4 times before Andy was back again with more fish ID questions. A Golden Orfe this time and another 1st for Andy and an opportunity for another photo call  ………

A nice Perch of around a pound put in an appearance for me just to add a bit of variety, but the noticeable thing was that although I kept altering depths during the course of the session the only time I could get a bite was when the bait was nailed to the deck, and that a number of the fish had what appeared to be small creamy coloured leeches on them, which I took to indicate that they may had been laying up semi dormant during the icy spell the previous week and were only just starting to feed, though I might be wrong on that one, who knows for sure.

We fished on until just after 3pm, when with the light starting to fade and the wind feeling a touch colder we decided to call it a day. As Andy had his Avon’s with him we had a quick weigh-in to see how it had gone on the day. Andy was first to weigh and his fish came to 29½lbs……

While my fish tipped the scales at 34½lbs ………

Gear back in the cars, there was just time for a cup of coffee and a cheeseburger from the snack wagon as we mulled over our thoughts on the day. All in all a decent day in good company and a couple of nice nets of fish given the conditions. Andy seemed more than happy to have christened his new rod and had hopefully picked up a few tips along the way and we’d had a few laughs and a bit of banter, which is what it’s all about really, we’ll have to do it again soon.


For those of you that are interested, to give you a different viewpoint, the following is Andy’s thoughts on our day………


Winter for me, used to be a grim time in the fishing year. Sitting behind a pair of carp rods, week after week, freezing cold, bored, frustrated at the lack of action, and thoroughly fed up with the whole thing wondering what the hell I was doing there. Then I discovered Maggotdrowning.com. With the discovery of this band of lunatics came new friends and a window on a world of Angling I had hitherto had scant knowledge.

First the pole, then the waggler on the many commercial fisheries in the South-East became my winter interest and I am happy to say that through Maggotdrowning I have had some not only really enjoyable sessions in terrific company, but I have learnt an enormous amount – mostly from the Master of the Poles himself – our very own Sir Peter of Morton. It was with Sir Peter I was fishing one of my favourite places today – Match Lake 2 on the Monk Lakes complex near Staplehurst, known to all Kent anglers. It’s always a Grand Day Out with Peter and today was to be no different……..

The Session

I left home in a downpour and things looked decidedly grim – Monks is very exposed and the combination of high wind and rain can make a session on there arduous to say the least! We decided to go for pegs with the wind at our backs and this proved a wise decision as the wind really got up on occasions during the day.
Straight out of the rod-bag it’s my brand new Shakespeare 13 foot Match Lite (£85 from Devon Angling and price matched by the excellent Invicta Angling of Ashford). This was its first outing and I was really keen to see how it would perform; this was teamed with an old Shakespeare ‘Powerplay’ rear drag jobby filled with 3 lbs. Line, the rig terminating in 0.1 Preston Powerline and a size 18 Tubertini.

First up and it’s a little Chublet for me, closely followed by Peter with a hard-fighting carp of three pounds or so. This was going to be a very good day, marred only by a family of mental retards fishing the far bank, shouting to one another in what can only be described as ‘ape language’. The dad seemed to be permanently turned to maximum volume and appeared to have the intelligence of a Geranium. Peter asked me if I had a gun as he wished to put the poor man out of his (and our) misery!
As usual, Peter’s catch-rate began to exceed my own and I sat there scratching my head wondering what it was he was doing that I wasn’t. I thought I’d got a grasp of the basic principles (acquired during previous sessions with Peter) of Feeding being the key to success, the Little and Often principle applying to pole and waggler fishing in general. I was obviously not doing it right and it was not long before Peter had spotted this too and stopped fishing to come to my aid….
“Lets have a look at your rig Spreaders”.

I willingly offered up my end-tackle, thinking “he won’t find much wrong with that” a bulk around the base of the float and a single number eight, nine inches from the hook acting as a tell-tale. Peter grasped the line, screwed up his face in disgust and pointed to a single shot I’d got a foot below the float,“What’s that doing there?!”“Erm; it’s a shot to take the float down a bit – I had too much sticking out of the water”
Peter had an ‘Oh my God’ look about him as he made lots of adjustments to my shotting.

“You need to stabilise the rig in this wind as there’s a bit of tow on today; there’s four shots tapering down to the number eight, up from the hook and the locking shot are closely tucked up at the base of the float”.

This was an altogether better rig which on casting felt a lot better, it didn’t drift so much on the tow, away from my feed. Ah feed. Now that was another disaster.

“Cast out and fire out six maggots around the float”

I grabbed what I thought was a small pinch and fired them off in the general direction of the float, the strong wind unfortunately taking them several yards away from the float, (well that was my excuse anyway!)

“Andy, the general idea is to actually feed where the hookbait is – not five yards from it. All that will happen is the fish in the area will go and eat the feed there rather than where your hookbait is! And I did say half a dozen not half a bloody handful!”

On paper, Little and Often sounds as easy as anything, but how many is Little, and how long (in time) is Often? Here was the answer – six maggots every minute and a half and they have to be spot on around the float otherwise you’ll just end up drawing the fish away from your rig rather than to it.

After this I spent the rest of the session trying to get these few basic principles right – and how difficult it proved to be. Granted, the wind didn’t help although on the day it was a useful training aid in practicing skills with the catapult, but for a relative numpty, I found it remarkably difficult to get right, my maggots flying hither and yon, scattered to the four winds on occasions. Peter had the answer to this too – fish a lot shorter. Better to bait accurately at short range, than inaccurately at longer range.
From then on, with just a few maggots landing around the float every few minutes or so my catch-rate began to pick up and I managed to put together quite a respectable net of fish – F1s, some Ide

(a first for me as I’d never caught one before – a fish like a huge Roach and very hard fighting), a Golden Orfe (again another first), skimmers, and a lone Tench. At the end of the session we had a weigh-in (we had special dispensation from Ron at Reception), and I was very pleased to record twenty-nine and half pounds – the most I think I’ve ever weighed-in at Monks. Peter was of course ahead of me with thirty-four and a half pounds which would have been much, much more had he not stopped fishing to sort me out and give me instruction.
Once again it was a Grand Day Out in smashing company. My thanks to Peter for persevering with me throughout the session – what a frustrating pupil I was! Here’s to the next time we go fishing.