Big Fish Column: Anglers bait chub with cheesepaste at Monkey Island Lane

It was another mixed bag of results from around the local venues last week with most anglers still failing to find good results with any sort of consistency. That said, sport was improved compared to the previous week.

Flood Relief successes

The Thames Flood Relief Channel starts us off this week with reports of some good chub and pike fishing, albeit the venue can be a tricky one to master at times.

Monkey Island Lane in Bray appears to be the area to head for, on a Thames Valley Angling Association card, and anglers putting in time with cheesepaste baits in the mostly coloured water have been connecting with some very fine chub. My spies tell stories of specimens to over the magical 6lb mark but the best officially reported to me to date was a couple of ounces shy at 5lb 14oz – a terrific fish nonetheless.

The big chub was netted by Slough angler Tim Jenkins who adopted a roving approach, spending just 20 minutes or so in a swim before moving on – a great tactic to find feeding fish in a relatively featureless section of water – aided in Tim’s case with a bicycle to afford easy and speedy access! Tim fished a light leger set up with a short hook length of 6lb line finished with a size 8 hook and a large lump of paste.

The roving approach is also scoring for predator anglers on the Channel and Windsor’s Del Richardson fished a Toby-style lure to hit into a nice pike of 14lb. Del presented the artificial on 30lb braid through to 20lb wire.

New Farm results

New Farm Fishery bailiff Alan Wolstencroft has been in touch to let me know a few die-hard catfish anglers have continued fishing the venue throughout the winter for what is very much a warm water species. Understandably, winter catfishing is a tough business but Alan reports that there was an 18lb fish banked last week and a bigger one was lost. The fishery does tend to start producing big fish very early in the spring and the onset of some consistently warm weather could see some excellent early results.

The Match Lake on the venue has, however, fished very well throughout the colder months with 20lb to 30lb nets being caught regularly. With Maidenhead Angling Supplies now on-site to cater for all your tackle and bait requirements it sounds like it is well worth a visit.

A tough week ahead

Although there has been a little genuine warmth in the sunshine recently it is still a little too early to expect the start of the spring fishing and, with a return to sub-zero temperatures forecast for the week ahead, it looks like it is going to be a tough one for fisherman throughout the area. I personally wouldn’t break out my catfish tackle just yet – but good luck if you do!

Anglers wishing to report catches may contact me at ian@bigfishtrail.com