Bridges Lake revisited

Bridges Lake, Monk Lakes Fishery

A few days ago Bill G sent me a PM saying that him and Peter were popping over to Monk lakes to day for a session on Bridges Lake and asked if I'd like to join them. Unfortunately the night before Bill had to drop out as his wife wasn't well so it turned in to a head to head between me and Mugger. I'd had a great day there last week so was looking forward to it, What a difference a week makes.

I arrived about 7.45am and had a look around to see if I could find a couple of pegs close together. It was fairly busy already and there weren't many free but I saw that the 2 pegs on the end of the same island that I fished the other day were free. I made my way around the lake and not long after parking the car Peter arrived. We went and had a look at the pegs and being the nice guy that I am I chose to fish the same one I had a few days ago. That left Peter the peg right on the end of the island.

One thing I forgot to mention was the wind was blowing a fairly strong northerly, right in to Peters face.

I'd only brought along the pole today so found the rig I'd used previously and set up one top kit with a Maver 12/20 elastic, attaching a Drennan Carbo .75gm shotted with an olivette and 2 small droppers to a size 16 B911. On my 2nd top kit with Black hydro I put a 1.5gm Maver float (sorry don't know the name) again shotted with an olivette and droppers but this time with a 14 B911.

This was my swim.

By now Peter had started moaning as he had found he only had about 2 feet of water at 8 metres whilst I had at least twice that at 6 metres. He kept saying something about being tucked up, I just kept quietly grinning to myself. Having set himself up Peter decided to have a look in the swim to my right just to see of it was any deeper so off he trot, pole in hand to plumb the depth. Having reached the swim and dropped his plummet in he was met with a volley of abuse from a 'Carper' fishing on the right hand bank who seemed to think he could fish anywhere he liked including in the swim Peter was plumbing. Peter not being shy sent a volley back before deciding to stay in his original swim. For the rest of the day I heard the 'Carper' telling everyone and anyone about the pillock (word changed to protect the innocent) fishing on the end of the island. It sounded something like being an employee of somewhere you deposit your money.

Anyway back to the fishing, things for me started slowly with nothing for the first 10 minutes until finally I hooked into a bream of around 1lb 8ozs. Peter by now had caught 3 or 4 having decided to fish the waggler because of the wind. To say it was awkward would be an understatement, the water was towing heavilly to my left and even with the heavy rig on I was having trouble holding the rig still. I even fed a line even shorter but that was the same. In the end I had to under shot the float to stop it disappearing in the waves.

I persevered and managed to catch a few every now and then but spotting bites was difficult. A mixture of Bream to 3lbs 8ozs, Tench, Golden Tench and Chub made up my eventual catch of 29 fish. I guess they probably weighed around 40lbs +. Of course it wouldn't be right if I didn't hook a lump so I did just that, however it was gone in a hurry after stetching the Maver 12/20 to alarming lengths. Peter was having more success with the waggler and was catching some lovely Bream the best I saw him have was around 6lbs and ready for spawning. I had to go around 3pm so left Peter to it, I gather he finished with 57 fish so all in all not a bad return on a difficult day because of the wind. I'll definately be back, hopefully when it's lovely and hot and with no wind.

On a different note I spoke to the bailiff about matches on the lake and he said they could only be held in the winter. In that case maybe I'll organise a match on Bridges later in the year, maybe somewhere around Christmas. With the margins in some swims being fairly shallow it will be probably be a waggler or feeder event for most, but that will make a change from the pole.