Monks – Bridges Lake July 6th
Ryan decided that he wanted to go to Monks, and try to catch some tench, so we headed to Bridges lake. We started off on the feeders to the island, and within a few casts, Ryan caught his first fish of the day. A nice mirror around 4lb
We were catching almost a fish per cast, and a variety of species, skimmers, carp and barbel, but still no signs of any tench.
We were both feeding pole lines, just out to the edge of the reeds about 12ft, with groundbait/micro pellets/chopped worm. As we were both being plauged on the feeder by small skimmers now, we both decided to fish the pole lines. Ryan started off with fishing 2 red maggots, and was catching some small skimmers, nice size rudd, and some good perch. He then changed to worm, and had a couple of nice perch around the 1lb mark.
I fished 6/8mm cubes of krilled luncheon meat, and was also catching skimmers and rudd, before it started to go a little quiet around 11:00, so we headed off for a bacon sandwich. Things changed when we got back to our pegs, and the sun started to come out.
The first tech made an appearance, a lovely condition fish weighing 1lb12oz. After a few more rudd around the 3oz mark, and more skimmers, the fishing continued steadily until Ryan hooked in to something of a reasonable size.
As the elastic stretched out, we were both quite sure it was a decent sized carp, until it started heading back in, and straight for the reeds.
Could it be what he had set out to catch ? After about 5 mins, it finally came to the surface and rolled, just confirming it was indeed a tench. Playing it very carefully for the next few minutes, as the hooklink was only 3lb, it was finally in the net, and the biggest smile came over Ryan’s face, he had caught his target, a personal best tench of 4lb 5oz.
After he had calmed down from the excitement, we headed back to the fishing. The odd 1-2lb tench was now showing, along the the skimmers, some of which seemed to think they were trout, and just seemed to jump in to the landing net. It had been a good day, but as we heard the thunder, and could see the dark clouds approaching, we could may be lucky if we didn’t get any rain before 16:00.
After a cup of coffee and a biscuit in the car sheltering from the rain, we decided to wait for the next break in the clouds, and pack up. It had been good day, and despite having my doubts that we would catch any tench, I was happily proved wrong.