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. 

Hartleylands Farm Fishery. The Reservoir. October 16th, 2004.

Today I had an opportunity to see an Angler suffering from Poleitus.

A good friend of mine, Andy (The Hat) Spreadbury has been a confirmed specimen Carp angler nearly all his life, but last season drifted towards the Dark Side with the purchase of an Zyrium Margin Pole.

This tool of the Evil Empire exerted its full force on this unsuspecting innocent, tempting him away from the comforts of The Bivvy and the matched Harrison Ballista’s, even to the extent of entering 2 matches!!!!!!!!! and purchasing a Seatbox !!!!!!!!! complete with his name on the back.

Now there appears to be no going back, as today he was to be found at the reservoir at Hartleylands playing Light Sabres with his latest piece of kit……13 mtrs of Maver Encounter.

Actually I had promised Andy that if he ever brought a pole I’d spend a day with him, showing him the ropes so to speak, and during the week he had messaged me to ask if I could make it on Saturday.  Now Andy has spent the last 35 years as a serious member of the Bivvy and Boilie brigade, notching up some notable fish including “SHE” from the School Pool at Faversham at 34lbs 12ozs way back in 1977.

Andy with “SHE”.

On arrival I was pleasantly surprised to find that the weather had relented, and although overcast the incessant rain of the last couple of days had stopped. Andy was already setting up in peg 1 and I dropped into peg 2 next door.

Rather than going for the full monty straight away, I persuaded Andy to start at about 10mtrs, so that he could get a feel for the pole. He has had a Zyrium margin pole for a year but this was his 1st time using a full sized one. Some time was spent going through the basics of the set up, ensuring he was comfortable with shipping in and out and mastering feeding with both catapult and pole cup.
After about half an hour Andy lifted into his 1st Carp on the long pole. His face was a mixture of excitement, anxiety and relief as it slid over the net.

NO1 in the net.

The day as a whole was great fun, with Andy picking my brains throughout, as he attempted to refine his approach. Thankfully the fish co-operated with a number of Carp for both of us in the course of the day………

All in all a fun day, and interesting to watch an angler from a completely different discipline, trying to get to grips with my type of approach.

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To give you all a bit more insight on the day, this was the report Andy posted on the Maggotdrowning.com forum about our session……….

A day with ‘Polemeister Peter’  


Peter Morton (Peter) had very kindly offered to spend the day with me giving me some pointers on the use of the long pole. As I think I have said on the Forum before, you just cannot beat the hands-on experience of spending time with someone who knows what they are about and today proved to be no exception. It was a day full of hints, tips, and little tricks in setting up and using the long pole and I must thank Peter for giving up his time to come down to Hartleylands for the day.

We had originally agreed to go on Finches Pond; mistakenly, I had thought there would be a match on the Reservoir but it turned out that other lakes were being used for this purpose. I was first on the lake and chose Peg 1 – The Willow tree. This is the peg Peter won the Southern Area MD Knockout Final so I assumed it would be a good place to start. This however proved to be a bad choice as choosing a peg with a margin feature was hardly the best place to try out the long pole! I hadn’t long been set up before Peter arrived and he dropped in beside me at the next peg. I managed to get the pole sections sorted out and used my carryall with a towel over it as a makeshift ‘Pole Roller’ (a tip Dave the Fish had shown me). Peter soon pointed out however that this arrangement was not nearly high enough to support the pole and he came up with the idea of this:

a rod-tube supported on two bank sticks and rod-rests, positioned an appropriate distance to the rear at a point to support the rear end of the pole at the point at which it just starts to feel overbalanced when feeding the pole back. I thought it was a cracking idea and will serve admirably until I can get myself a proper pole roller. I was also interested in Peter’s front pole support system (PUPSS) – a front bar with a roller on it which enables the pole to be fed forward with a full pole cup – but which also enables support of the pole when feeding with a catapult etc. I’m going to need one of these too!

This is not merely copying what other anglers do (being a ‘copycat’) – but a matter of recognising the virtue of the principle embodied in what the kit achieves.

My ‘Pole Roost’, although a little unconventional (and drawing smiles from Peter), did the job of keeping the spare top kits conveniently to hand; it also gets them off the ground where someone as congenitally clumsy as myself is sure to tread on them.

I confess to being a bit worried about hooking a large carp on the long pole; Peter had warned me that it was a completely different experience to hooking them on the margin outfit and so it seemed. There is control of the pole itself for one thing, they are a lot longer (obviously) and heavier than margin ‘wands’ and extremely unwieldy in the hands of the inexperienced and I felt it was as much as I could do to manage the thing on its own. without having a large carp thrashing around on the end of it as well!

Peter was first away with a fish so I had a good opportunity to watch exactly how he played it at first hand;

some thought needs to be given to how to handle large fish – you can’t bully them like you can with the short outfit and it is a matter of following them with the pole tip and letting the elastic do the work for you. I also asked Peter about shipping back when playing a fish – at what point do you start to ship back and try to get the fish nearer the net. This is a matter largely of instinct and a feel for when the fish is ready, there are also considerations of the angle of the pole in relation to where the fish is and the fact that on no account must you ever point the pole at the fish or you could see your top kit flying through the air!

Peter’s rig was also very interesting and elegant in its simplicity. A Fox Match series Carp hook with just a single No.4 shot a few inches from the hook, this was fished dead depth although I immediately thought ‘Lift Method’ when I saw it. This could be something else to try on the pole rig front – Lift Method style with a shot three inches from the hook, the float set so only a scrap of bristle is showing, the ‘strike’ (although obviously you don’t strike when using a pole) when the float rises in the water and lays flat. Hmmmmmmm…….

All day it was food for thought and little hints and tips.

Don’t bother using bristle grease – use a Chap Stick instead (Chap sticks are the things ladies use for putting on their lips in the cold weather to prevent them getting ‘chapped’); I suppose the more effeminate amongst us might find a use – but it hardly goes with the macho, hairy-arsed image of the hardened angler does it?!

Pellets – keep them in empty plastic milk bottles rather than in their packets; they are easier to pour out and either cup out or put through the pellet pump if that’s your thing.

Be comfortable. Holding a pole all day can be arduous, not helped by poor posture on the seatbox which can cause the upper body to adopt unnatural positions causing muscle strain. Your posture holding the pole must be as near effortless as possible, with all twisting and turning (which is also bad from an ergonomic point of view) kept to a minimum. This sort of thing is studied in the workplace to reduce effort and increase efficiency and there is no reason why the same principles cannot be used for pole fishing which involves very long and unwieldy kit. Not only does it increase efficiency, it can prevent back strain and put more fish on the bank and in the net. As Peter says “If it’s not in the net, you can’t weigh it in”.

There is no doubt in my mind that if you want to learn how to use a pole, go along to a match and watch how it’s done; better still, arrange to have a session with someone like Peter who knows what they are about and can identify what you are doing wrong or what could be done better.

My grateful thanks to Peter for giving up his time to spend the day with me. The weather was kinder than it had been all week and we even managed to catch a few fish.

Thanks mate!
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Old Bury Hill Fishery. Milton Lake. August 22nd, 2004.

Hawthorne AC club match.

 Sunday found me making my way down to Dorking for a Hawthorne AC club match on Milton Lake at Old Bury Hill. One of the most popular venues in this part of the country, and the usual suspects turned up along with along with a couple of guests, Omega Mike from TotalFishing.Com and Peter9000uk, both eager to guest and have the chance of getting amongst the Crucians and Tench that the venue is so well known for.

Everything looked lovely at the draw and I found myself with peg 19. (The same as I had drawn in our last club match there)

Peg 19

Shortly after the all in at 9am however, it soon became clear that all was not well, as the fish seemed to have almost entirely switched off. I have never seen this lake fish so badly, whether it was the rainwater that had gone in the previous week, or the couple of cold nights leading up to the match I don’t know, but the half time weigh-in took all of 5 mins as only a couple of anglers had enough to trouble the scalesmen.
Omega Mike decided that the comforts of home were more attractive and left half way through and I can’t say I blamed him. Stiffy, another TotalFishing poster turned up for a short chat as he was fishing the Estate Lake and had a similar tale of woe as all but a couple of pegs on there were struggling too.

I finally managed to extract 4 Crucians and a similar number of Rudd for a grand total of 4lbs 9ozs and 7th place. The winner managing 33lbs 1oz off of peg 4 which is an out and out flyer, but with 3 dry nets and a similar number only weighing in ounces, it was overall a very disappointing day.

Just to add insult to injury walking back to the car park I passed Bonds Lake only to see 7 anglers all playing carp at the same time. How can 2 lakes just 10 yards apart fish so differently on the same day??????

Hartleylands Farm Fishery, Woodside Pond . August 21st, 2004.

It all started with a phone call a couple of weeks ago. “I need to take Fraser fishing, where and when can we go?” 
It was Maria’s brother Chris asking the questions, so Saturday was chosen with the venue being Hartleylands Farm.
Now Chris being Chris, didn’t arrive at my place till just after 9am, so we didn’t arrive at the fishery till just after 10am.

I knew that I could guarantee that they would catch a few fish and with only The Reservoir booked we had our pick of the ponds and lakes. We settled on Woodside Pond which is the smallest of the original ponds on the site with only 5 pegs, it’s tucked away at the back of the fishery and doesn’t get much pressure, but if it didn’t produce the goods it’s only a short hop over to the newer Peartree match lake.

Woodside Pond

Chris and Fraser settled in to peg 5 while I set up on peg 4. Chris set up a small feeder for himself and a light waggler for Fraser, with bait being maggot and corn, while I set up my pole and went with expander pellet as bait.

Father & Son

With a couple of feet in the margins and maybe five feet down the middle it’s nice simple fishing and Chris was soon off the mark with a small Carp. Fraser and I were soon following, me with a Carp and Fraser with his 1st ever Tench.

Chris

Fraser

All day long sport continued with a succession of small Carp and Tench keeping things interesting for both Father and Son. I sneaked over to Peartree for a final couple of hours and found that the bottom must have been carpeted with small Tench, nothing big, with a pounder being a bonus but a fish virtually every put-in.

All to soon, it was time to pack away the gear, and seeing them off from the car park the final site was Fraser’s grinning face looking back and waving. I don’t think it will be to long before they’re back.

Old Bury Hill Fishery. The Estate Lake. August 15th, 2004.

NKHC in the punts at Old Bury Hill.

A most enjoyable day.

Today there's a group of lads from Maggotdrowning.com meeting up at Old Bury Hill fishery just outside Dorking for a social days fishing in the punts on the Old Estate Lake that had been organised by Beebs.

 I was drafted into HMS Pension Book to bring down the average age of the crew, and by the time we set sail it looked more like a naval review moored up in The Jungle so we settled for mooring just off of a reed bed (somewhere around peg 75 where the Island bank meets the edge of The Jungle, for those of you that are familiar with OBH.)

The weather was warm and there was plenty of cloud cover, but recent rain had added a fair bit of cold water to the lake, which didn’t bode well.
Anchored on our port side was HMS Taffy, and Geoff's 1st Perch soon elicited the familiar refrain of “It’s a fish, I haven’t blanked”.

Dave the Fish managed to winkle out a few Skimmers on his jelly pellets, Colin despite ringing the changes bait wise was getting nowhere fast and I resorted to fishing out into open water to snare a couple of better examples of the resident Bream.
The Highlight of the morning however had to be the sight of Jason aboard HMS Bag-up doing battle “Stand up & Fight” fashion with a cracking Carp, A super fish of 26lbs 8ozs at any time, but from a punt, it has to be something special.

With nothing really having it where we were, we upped sticks (in fact the mud weights) and moved across to the island, Dave and Colin fishing towards it and me fishing out into open water again. Colin hit into what was obviously a Carp, and despite doing the hard bit and keeping it out of the undergrowth surrounding the island was unlucky to have the hook pull once the fish was into open water.
I’d managed another couple of Bream when the swim was wrecked by  HMS Bag-up ploughing through bearing a mooning Beebs !! (No photo’s, this is a family blog)

This so traumatised our crew, that at this point we were forced to return to the boathouse for burgers and tea.

Nerves calmed and refreshed we returned to the Island. Sport was slow for myself and Dave, but Colin found a few Perch and silvers while I very briefly connected with a Carp for all of a couple of seconds till the hook pulled.
Almost straight after this Colin connected with another Carp on his double maggot set up and this time despite it putting up a spirited fight, it was in the net. Not up to Jason's standard at 8lbs, but very welcome none the less.

All this commotion having trashed the swim, it was time for one last move round the island, and having settled into a new spot my 1st cast resulted in a positive bite. A brief scrap and a nice Tench which when weighed went 4lbs 4ozs proved to be the final fish for HMS Pension book.

On the row back we passed HMS Taffy who had returned Geoff to port suffering from a bit to much sun.
A final cup of tea and a session feeding the tame Carp under the boathouse (Mr Wilson’s swim?) ended the day. Not the most prolific session, but still a good day out in good company which is what it was really all about.