bait. I couldn’t believe it

Small fish were showing, but the hot weather nailed me to the bedchair, and I let them be. It was getting to be hard work, this getting up at 3.30am to be fishing before dawn. I decided to fish through the night on the following week-end and arrived at 5pm on the Friday evening suitably (or perhaps unsuitably) equipped with an ancient garden bed-chair and a thirty year old sleeping bag (I think it was one I used when I was in the cubs!). I’ll confess to hoping that there would be someone else fishing the night, as, on occasions the Island lake could become very spooky. Often there were evenings which would seem outwardly much like any other, but which carried with them a foreboding sense which increased rapidly as dark came. More than once I had packed up in a hurry and rushed back to my car, where I had locked the doors immediately. The island itself had a gate which you could lock behind you. One might therefore feel safer there, but, as my friend John, who had also on occasion felt these unsettling presence’s had said, “Once it’s on the island!”. Fear of the dark must be a thing many carp anglers have to conquer at some time if they are to fish effectively, especially if, like me, they mostly fish alone. When you think about it though, if your night is going to be ruined by you starting at every noise in the bushes, you might be better off staying at home. If you are going to seriously night fish, then there really is no point in being frightened. I hadn’t night fished for carp since the late sixties, and this represented a significant step on my part. It meant I had decided to do something I had professed not to enjoy doing! Worrying about whether or not I should be enjoying myself was something that was going to give me quite a few problems in later years – but I’ll let that subject be for now. The weather was still very hot, with hardly any wind. By the time I reached the swim I was dripping with sweat and had to try to cool off somewhat before I dared touch the baits – human sweat is not an additive I have great confidence in! As I sat quietly, welcoming the very infrequent puffs from a reluctant westerly breeze that felt as tired as I did, I noticed some good fish cruising near the surface. I set up a rod with a weighted cork controller, and baited with a side-hooked chum mixer. Throwing out a few free offerings, I cast the hook-bait among them, a few yards from the bank. After half an hour, one of the bigger fish cruised into the margins, took a couple of the free baits, then took the hook-bait. I couldn’t believe it – it all seemed so simple! I set the hook as the fish turned, and after a short, but violent struggle, a fine mirror was in the net. It weighed 22lbs exactly. Not bad for a half hours fishing! My friend John who had been down for the last two days, and carp-free, came round to see. He coped with it admirably – it’s not easy to spend two fishless days on a lake, then look pleased when some other bugger turns up and knocks out a twenty in half an hour – I know – it’s happened to me too! The fish turned out to be an old friend, one I had caught two years previously at 19lbs. Many photos were taken before he was carefully returned. Carp continued to move on the surface until just after 7 p.m. but no longer came into the margins. I tried a single floating bait, a grilled boilie, out where they were swimming, but only attracted the attentions of a coot. These birds are incredibly persistent, aren’t they! I amused myself by winding the bait below the surface each time the coot got near to it, then letting it rise back up as he turned away. That really confused him – jerking backwards and forwards he nearly stretched his head off his neck! By 8 p.m. all surface activity had ceased (apart from the coot). I’d been fishing one rod on the particle since I’d landed the big mirror. Now I changed the “floater” rod over to an HNV bottom bait and cast it along the left hand margins, followed by four handfuls of free offerings. Almost immediately carp began swirling on the surface close in! I fired out a few mixers and the carp began taking them. Dick Walker once said, “laziness never caught anyone any fish” (or something like that – though I’m not so sure it’s true nowadays!). It’s something I always repeat to myself whenever I get that “can’t be bothered” feeling, though I confess, it is a feeling I have more than once fallen victim to. It’s daft really, when you wait all week for your day’s fishing, then blow your chances by not bothering to do something you know you should be doing. You always regret it afterwards, when with hindsight, it didn’t seem so much of an effort after all. So in came the bait that I had just cast out, and on went the floater rig, baited with a chum mixer. The carp disappeared After an hour with no signs of the fish, I again changed back to the HNV bait, this time suspended six inches from the bottom. At 10 p.m. I had a slow run on the particle, which by way of experiment I was now fishing singly, buoyed up with a small piece of polystyrene. I failed to connect with anything, and on reeling in found both bait and polystyrene gone. Half an hour later, the same thing happened on the other rod. I doubted that it was carp. I re-baited and re-cast. I wasn’t disturbed again until 5.30 the following morning when the bobbin on the HNV rod rose to the top of the stick, then stopped. I still wasn’t using buzzers, so I must either have been awake, or been awakened by the scraping of the silver paper bobbin as it ascended the rusty needle (couldn’t afford stainless then!).I reeled in and checking the bait, found it intact. Back out it went. By 6 a.m. fish had started to show on the surface and there was also a considerable amount of bubbling and fizzing going on over the particle bed. This went on for an hour, without even a twitch or line bite on that rod and by 9 a.m. fish were once again cruising into the margins. I spent an exciting hour and a half trying to catch them on various floating baits. One took the cork controller (!), another took the hook bait, but rejected it immediately. Impatiently casting and recasting, I finally succeeded in putting them down. Changing the floater for a bottom bait, I cast out and retired to the bedchair. Immediately fish began showing on top again! It can be a very frustrating business this floater fishing! I was tempted to do nothing, but couldn’t get Dick Walker’s words about laziness out of my head. In came the HNV yet again, and out went the floater (Oh for another rod!) But though the occasional free offering was taken, I couldn’t get them going strongly enough for them to make a mistake with the hook-bait. The nearest I came was when another one tried to eat the cork controller! Silly buggers! After a couple of hours I got fed up with chasing the carp, so put a tethered floater out in the margins, where I had been fishing the bottom bait. One or two carp were still cruising about, and taking the occasional free bait, so there was hope. And hope there was indeed – just after 4 p.m. the floater was away. A big maniac of a fish had taken it and was now going full pelt down the lake. The old Allcocks aerial centrepin sang a fine tune as the fish put sixty or seventy yards of water between us. There’s nothing quite like hooking a big fish in the margins on a centrepin. I turned to John who had just arrived by my side and as the reel continued screeching I can clearly remember turning to him and saying simply “I love this!”. I put some pressure on the drum of the rapidly spinning reel, and gradually brought the fish to a halt. It then fought every inch of those seventy yards, all the way back to the net. It was a terrific mirror carp weighing 19lbs 10oz. Bent cane, screeching centrepin and swirling carp – what more could you ask? The fish had taken a grilled HNV bait, though I doubted that was significant. I left at 8.30 p.m. Poor John was still fishless. The next evening session was uneventful. I put out two bottom baits and tackled up a third rod with floater to avoid the farce of the last session, when I was forever changing end rigs around as the fish alternately appeared and disappeared. Of course this piece of preparation was appreciated by the carp – they didn’t show all evening despite conditions being perfect for a bit of sun-bathing and bait-clooping. The next trip was again for a few hours in the evening. I began fishing at around 5 p.m. Within the hour fish were showing on top, and I spent a couple of hours creeping around trying to catch them. It was oppressively hot, one of those heavy evenings when gravity seems to have doubled and every movement becomes an effort. I have a note in my diary that says, “even writing this diary entry is making me sweat!”. I die in hot weather! These tree lined pools can become like a cauldron on a hot July day. The carp showed no interest at all in my offerings and I began to wonder if they had other things on their mind. Most of the fish I had seen were in pairs and swimming around like playful seals – perhaps they were about to spawn. At 8 p.m. a very welcome south westerly breeze began to find its way through the trees at the top end of the lake, and the carp had gone down. I noticed some activity in a shallow area of the lake that was within casting distance of where I was fishing. The fish responsible were not on the surface, but were causing boils as they rooted about on the lake bed. I cast an HNV to them, suspended six inches from the bottom. The cast was so accurate it landed right on top of a carp! He didn’t think much of that, and the activity ceased. Some time later I had a run of sorts on the third rod I’d sneaked out from the side of the island. What it was I don’t know as I completely forgot I had affixed the rod to the rest with a rubber band, and by the time I’d sorted out the mess that resulted from the attempted strike, whatever it was had long gone. By 11 p.m. I was long gone, recording another blank. The following Saturday I had eleven runs between 9am and 6pm. Save for the last one, I failed to connect every time. Some I missed completely, some stopped when I picked the rod up. I tried various rigs, but to no avail. It’s difficult to solve problems when you aren’t sure what the problems are. I suspected tench and bream to be the cause of the activity, but didn’t want to alter my rigs to the extent that it might jeopardise my chances of a carp. On the eleventh run I finally made contact, and landed a tench of about 3lbs! I hadn’t even hooked it – it had a ten yard length of line attached to it where it had previously broken somebody, and my hook had become caught up in it! I didn’t learn much from that! Maybe he had been trailing line over my baits all day! In complete contrast, the next Saturday I never even had a line bite. Perhaps I’d filled all the bream and tench up for weeks! I was unable to get down during the week, so had to wait for the next week-end to fish again. There was no wind to influence my choice of swim, so I set up near a big patch of lilies, an area favoured by the carp, and in which I had caught them before. I was still using both the particle, and the HNV, the HNV in the form of a particle boilie, about the size of a small pea. This did cause activity from non-carp, but I didn’t really mind catching tench and bream, and hoped the activity might attract something larger. So long as you are landing fish from the takes you are getting, and therefore know what is happening out in the lake, it’s not so bad. It can become very frustrating when you are getting action on the indicators, but don’t know what is causing it (like last Saturday!). Sometimes it is too easy to dismiss the takes you can’t hit as being caused by fish other than carp. At 6.30 a.m. I struck a slow run on the particle. There was nothing there, and the bait had gone. By 11 a.m. I was getting restless. All was quiet on the rods, and a cool north easterly was pushing into the opposite corner of the lake. I decided on a move, and was soon set up in that corner, with the wind coming in nicely. I cast the HNV rod some thirty yards along the adjacent margin. Right in the corner a small area of the surface was covered with floating scum. This extended a foot from the bank, covering water only three feet deep. I remembered how trout would often lie under such cover, and how I’d caught them by dragging a fly through the thick surface of the scum. Quite exciting it was when suddenly and without warning a big nose would emerge from the scum and grab the fly. Luckily I was the only angler on the lake that day – it wasn’t an area you could fish if there were other people about, as the path at that point was only inches from the lake and anyone walking along it would be sure to spook the fish. Knowing this, I had gone the long way round to reach the swim, thus avoiding passing close to where I thought the fish might be. I cast the particle tight to the edge of the scum patch. One always feels that such careful preparation should be rewarded with a fish. But as in life, so in angling too, sometimes there is no justice. Three hours passed with no signs of life on the indicators. I eventually reeled in and crept up to the shallows to see if I could see any fish. There were three or four small carp moving in this area, and they seemed to be feeding near the surface. I went back to my swim and picked up my fly-rod, brought for just such an occasion as this. I also took a few chum mixers, and one or two artificial flies. Returning to the shallows I carefully waded out from the bank to give myself room to cast, then stood, heron-like, waiting for a fish to show. It wasn’t long before a carp betrayed its presence by boiling just under the surface, making the water furl and crease. Immediately I dropped a chum mixer into the area. But though the fish continued to feed, it ignored my surface offerings, as did other fish in the vicinity. I was sure they were feeding, and assumed they were taking some sub-aqueous creature just below the surface. It struck me they were acting rather like giant trout. I couldn’t see anything, but from the violent nature of the boils the fish were making, I guessed they were chasing something moving fairly rapidly up through the water. From my experience of the lake I knew it had to be one of two things. Either corixa (the lesser water boatman) which swims rapidly to the surface, there to gather oxygen before diving back down again, or midge pupa. I had imitations of both with me, and as I couldn’t see any midges hatching, tied on a small weighted corixa. I cast this into the general area of the activity, and let it sink to the bottom. I then waited for a fish to show near to where I had cast the fly. Eventually one did, and I rapidly raised the rod, lifting the counterfeit corixa towards the surface. The carp was on it in a flash, coming at it with a great bow wave. The rod was all but pulled from my hand as the carp roared off the shallows, to the accompaniment of the shrieking ratchet on the Hardy fly-reel. Once the fish reached the deeper water, it slowed down. I thought it might be quite a good carp as I could make very little impression on it in its current position. After a few minutes of the fish doing basically what it pleased, I decided to force the issue. Firstly I had to bring him back onto the shallows. Bending the rod to its fullest extent had little effect on the carp, which was now sulking on the bottom. I employed a method I’d used with great success on stubborn salmon. Keeping the rod bent I walked backwards. This ploy rarely fails, though I did remember the last time I tried it was on the lovely Devonshire Torridge when I accidentally hooked a floating branch while fly-fishing for salmon. That time the rod broke! I also remembered that I was now using the same rod as I had been on that day, but now of course repaired! I edged slowly backward through the gripping silt and gradually pulled the fish up from the deep water, like some dead weight. Perhaps the greater intensity of light there panicked him again, for now he tore across the shallows to my left, ploughing into the reeds growing at the lake’s edge some twenty yards from where I stood. I could see his tail thrashing the surface as he attempted to push further into the reeds, rather like an ostrich burying its head I thought. Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I crept up on him, and netted him from behind. 17lbs 9oz he weighed – a lovely orange mirror carp. I carried him the short distance to where I had left my tackle, took some photos on the self-timer, then sat down for a while to let it all sink in. I’d really enjoyed catching that one. There was still no sign of any movement in the area in front of me, so I eventually decided to move all my tackle up to the shallows. This was soon accomplished, and I cast the particle rod into the shallow area, the HNV to the deeper water further out. That done I settled into my chair and put a saucepan of bangers and beans – my staple diet when carp fishing – on the stove for tea. They had just begun to warm up when I had a run on the particle rod. I whipped the saucepan off the stove with one hand, and struck the run with the other. At the same time my chair collapsed, and I had some difficulty struggling to my feet whilst trying to keep a tight line on the carp, and preserving my supper. I wasn’t sure which was more important! The fish fought well, as fish usually do in shallow water, and turned out to be a nice mirror of 12lbs 3oz. Two carp in a day was almost unheard of from this water at that time. I was feeling pretty pleased. I had now taken seven carp from the lake, two of them twenties, and one big nineteen. And it was still only the 20th of July. Things were looking good. I wondered if it could go on like this.

Alan Tomkins