I’ve been looking forward to fishing monks pit though the winter months & talking to other members on last year said that it fished very well but sadly with the up & down weather the fishing has been a bit hard & slow, but I’m sure once we get some consistent weather all should settled down & the carp might slowly get back on the feed.
Over the Christmas holidays the weather was very cold day & night with sub zero temperatures of -3 and quiet a few lakes froze over but luckily monks stay ice free so I managed a couple of nights fishing & a couple of day sessions in this time to which I be writing about.
As I don’t finish work till late on a Thursday all is dark by the time I arrive to the lake and this is where the hard work of fishing as many pegs I could since joining, doing all the mapping out and writing down notes of good fishing spots and any other information, makes life a bit easier clipping up the rods using the distance sticks in the dark in any of the pegs I chose.
I had 2 nights fishing planned and I was hoping the 2 pegs called double point & the Wobbies  were free as the carp had been holding up In this middle section of the lake.
So with everything on the barrow, except the rods waiting for the peg to become free, good friend & fellow cc Moore angler mark Woolley had popped over to meet tony the Bailiff to pay his money’s for next years ticket. I’m looking forward to fishing with mark again, & will do my best showing & helping him with anything I’ve learn over my time on here and I’m sure the friendly syndicate members will make him feel welcomed as I haved this year.
Once mark had left & the peg was free it was time to get everything sorted for the night ahead starting with the rods & spod rod clipped up the going spot was at 22 wraps its a very know spot that everyone baits & fishes and the carp know where to come if fancy a mouthful of bait.
I placed 2 maggot rigs using cc Moore northern specials 12mm pop up with the evolution plastic maggot clusters on top, side by side a rod length apart both cracking down with a thud.

With the carp metabolism system slowing down the only bait that was catching was maggots
So armed with a gallon of maggots mixed with cc Moore live system boillie crumb, & some 10mm live system boillies I set about putting out around 10-12 spombs over the top but I’ve also been doing something different I’ve been drizzling the live system bait dip over the bait to make the maggots & bait stick together so it all the nice sweet smelling cloud of bait to draw the carp in goes down to the bottom quicker stopping the waters tow taking the maggots out of the peg.
All was quiet until around 12 o’clock when the liners started & within half hour one of the up & down bobbins pulled tight & stayed there, on picking up the rod with lots of head shaking I know it was only a small carp which turned out to be a 16lb common but a good start & not a blank.
Rod was redone with 4 more maggot mix spombed over the top, the liners still kept coming and a hour later the same rod was away again this felt a bit better than the 1st one & once netted with head touch on I could see it was a very scaley mirror 24lb. It was now freezing so did some quick Pictures got rod back out & 4 more maggot mix spombed out , the liners had stopped I woke up at 4am with everything white outside but made effort to get up a spomb more bait out which paid off at 7am with a screaming take resulting in a 26lb mirror on a very cold -3 white morning. I was well happy with how the last night went the move paid off.
A couple of days later I was back for a day session the weather was still cold with -3 on the vans temperature gauge.
The plan was to go light on gear & to be more Moblie fishing the avid zig form that has been soaking in the very sweet cc Moore talin at different depths moving around the lake hopefully to locate any shoaled up carp. I managed to lose the 1st carp I hooked half way in to a hook pull which was a bit gutting especially this time of year with the weather being so cold day & night plus not many fish have been out.
But after getting over the lost & redoing the rod to the same area all was forgotten a hour or so when the same bobbin started dropping back, on setting the hook & the fish slowly powering off I could tell it was a better fish than the lost one even with the lead dropped off it stayed deep all the way in with the odd heavy head thump trying to shed the hook but all held well to the net.
I was so happy to see a cracking scaley mirror laying in the folds of the net. Once on the mat I shouldn’t of worried about the hook hold as it was proper nailed in the corner of it mouth.
I was hoping it would be a winter 30 plus to finish off the year but came up short at 28lb still a result for this time of year & certainly that sweet smell & taste of the zig foam in the talin was too much for the carp to refuse.

Stay tuned for more from Ian on Monks