A phone call to Tony on Tueday resulted in us arranging a trip to Monk lakes. Tony has not fished it before so it was an opportunity to try somewhere new. Having had a couple of sessions there earlier in the year I knew that the match lakes would give us the chance of plenty of bites no matter what the weather.
The day didn’t start well as my plan was to get there before Tony and have a breakfast from the burger van. Problem one the van wasn’t open. Damn. Problem two Tony then rang to say he had loads of warning lights showing on his car and he had returned home to borrow the wife’s car and would be late.
Well after hanging around for an hour we finally got organised and drove to match lake 2 and as there was noone else there Tony took peg 45 a well known flier and I went on 46. The lakes have a large stock of fish mainly tench, barbel and carp all of which are in excellent condition.
I decided to start on a top two with VDE elite expander pellet feeding with sloppy pellet and a bit of hemp. My rig was fairly light with a 4x12 chianti and a 16 B611 hook coupled with black hydro elastic ( well those barbel take off like mini submarines.) Due to the various problems we didn’t start til gone 11.30 and as the gates close at 4.30 it was going to be a short 4 hour or so session.
First chuck resulted in a carp of 1lb followed by two more one of 4 lb. Bites came frequently but surprisingly no barbell. Tony had a slower start and his fish were mainly barbell and smaller than my carp.
After an hour or so I decided to see if the paste was still working as its normally a good bait for the barbell so put a small piece on my pellet rig rather than get the paste floats out. Well the flat cocked and just kept on going and a 2lb tench tore off. A few more tench and carp followed before my first barbel of around 12 oz. I cant wait for a year or two when they grow up a bit.
I then hooked a lump which I estimated at a near double but unfortunately the hook pulled after a few minutes. But I soon managed the best fish of the day of around 7lb.
Final result for me was 70 fish for 67lb while Tony kept going until he had 50lb from 62 fish the difference being the bonus carp I had. The weather was extremely good especially for November a bit windy at first but getting lass as the day wore on.
Monk lakes are a very good fishery with extensive stocks of all species, but then I suppose it should be as the owner Simon is the man who first bred F1 and F2 carp and also owns the biggest fish farm in Europe http://www.riverfield.co.uk/thefarm.htm
See the fishery here http://www.monklakes.co.uk/
Pity the fishery isn't a bit closer to us up in the Midlands 
