stocked nor over

The other lake had actually been mentioned in Jack Hilton’s famous book “Quest for Carp”, though even as late as 1985 it had been fished but lightly and at the time I was there I was more often than not fishing alone. Two beautiful lakes, neither over-stocked nor over-fished, and with reputations for being reasonably difficult; perfect places to re-establish contact with a species I had abandoned for their adiposed cousins a decade previously. This then is the story of some of the times I spent on those waters, glorious days which, though bigger fish have come since, I must consider as some of the best carp seasons I ever had. These are not tales of monster fish by today’s standards. Rather of an angler coming to terms with his waters and of what can happen when HNV baits begin to work. Also of good companionship, and enduring friendships made on the bank, something as important, and as enjoyable as the fishing itself. Fate, at times, lends a strange hand, and it was as a result of a particularly turbulent and unsettled period of my life that I found myself once again on the banks of the Island Lake after an absence of over ten years. The water had matured considerably in that time, and in its four and a half acres the thirty or so carp had grown well. So too had the trees, which now guarded the lake from curious eyes while its inhabitants swam secretly through the large and recently grown beds of water lilies. And as they grew in this small tree-cloistered water to the size that may interest a carp angler, so outside was the sport of carp angling growing, and many developments were afoot which would soon see some of these fish finding their way into a landing net rather more regularly than they had in the past. I started somewhat half-heartedly – I was considerably out of touch with modern carp fishing. Indeed, the impression still lingering in my mind, despite catching a few fish during the sixties and the occasional fish on odd forays in more recent times was that carp were almost impossible to catch, and that life was really too short to even fish for them. I had Sheringham’s guide to carp fishing firmly imprinted on my brain. You know the one where you have to erect a screen on the bank, piece by piece until the carp get used to it. You then poke a branch from it, extending the length each day until the fish would accept it, and would therefore suspect nothing when a fishing rod appeared. Preparations would continue in this manner for some weeks, or months, with the gradual introduction of tackle and bait, until at length the great carp was hooked, then lost, and everything had to begin again. That seemed to sum up many of my early efforts. I had long since lost touch with my coarse fishing friends and for years had read very little on angling that had not been concerned with the pursuit of trout, salmon or sea-trout. Then, one late summer’s day, at a low ebb in my life, I returned to the Island lake armed only with a split cane float rod, centrepin reel and float tackle, my intended quarry the tench. After the turmoil of recent weeks, it was pleasant to sit and concentrate one’s attention on that tiny tip of brightly painted peacock quill, occasionally to see it quiver or lift, then disappear silently beneath the surface. I caught tench, bream and roach, enjoyed myself thoroughly and hardly gave the carp in the lake a thought. I must be honest and say that the antics of the few carp anglers visiting the place with their buzzers and brolly camps quite amused me, as did the fact that despite all their ultra-modern equipment, they never seemed to catch anything. I did have to alter some of the opinions I had formed of matt blackened and matching rodded carp anglers when later I made friends with most of them and found them to be especially nice people. I was though, or so I thought, quite content to while away the hours watching my rod bend to tench and bream until such time as I might once again find the means to travel north and angle for salmon and sea-trout. Initially I was able to fish the lake almost every day for about two weeks, and during that time the inevitable happened. One day the float disappeared in much the same fashion as it had scores of times before. The strike brought forth a tremendous resistance. The old Sealy Octofloat, which I had bought for £4 when I was at school, bent beyond its top two joints for the first time in its long life (excepting the time I was using the bottom half of that rod fitted with an improvised fibre-glass top to fish for mackerel, and hooked a lobster pot while our boat was drifting with the tide – that time the ferrule snapped!). Attempts to stop the carp with finger pressure on the rim of the Allcocks aerial resulted in a burnt finger. That one came off leaving me shattered, and the old rod’s spirit somewhat weakened. The next day the same thing happened again, but this time, and after a desperate battle, I landed a pretty mirror carp of just over 11lbs. It finished the rod off, but from its ashes rose once again the carp angling desire, which I thought I had managed to shake off years before. Tench, roach and bream paled into insignificance, and at home later that night the old cane mark IV’s, long ago entrusted to some cool and darkened corner, were recovered and dusted down. There wasn’t much of the autumn left, and at that time of my life winters were mostly spent rough shooting, or fishing for pike or chub. I did fish the lake a few more times that year, and managed what would have been a new personal best mirror of 19lbs had I not managed to catch an even bigger fish of 25lbs 12oz from a large gravel pit some weeks earlier. The 19 pounder was however quite significant in that it was the first fish I ever caught on a boiled bait, a very basic concoction of flour, water and eggs with shop bought butterscotch flavouring. So within a month or so of the carp bug once again biting I had captured two big fish, proving to myself that they could indeed be caught. I wasn’t at all sure at the time that this was a good thing, trying as I had been to resist the carp bug! But now it had me again, fair and square. Throughout my fairly long and self-imposed exile from carp angling and even while knee-deep in fur, feathers and tinsels as I sought to make the irresistible fly on which to catch salmonoids, whispers had reached me of high protein carp baits. I can’t remember how they reached me, but I suppose it might have been from reading that excellent and now long defunct magazine ‘Angling’, to which I contributed some articles in the seventies and which used to cover coarse, game and sea fishing. I also remember reading some hilarious articles by Rod Hutchinson at about that time (in one of the coarse fishing magazines I think – you might remember the story about the boiled egg baiting campaign), so perhaps that was where I had picked up some of the information about bait. However, like many anglers, my first reaction to the claims made for high protein baits was scepticism. Unfortunate that – it probably cost me a season! I fished the following summer through using various concoctions, making the familiar mistake of discarding a bait if it went more than twenty-four hours without catching. Fishing times were dawn to dusk on a Saturday, with perhaps an after work session of a few hours, or a pre-work visit of similar duration, in mid-week. I fished through June and July in this haphazard fashion, and struggled to catch one carp, and to lose another, neither event teaching me anything as far as bait went. Then I discovered peanuts! What a difference a bait makes! In the early days this particle was devastating! Even though at that time I was ignorant of the harm they might cause, I should add that I always used nuts sold for human consumption, and certainly never put them in by the sackful. A half pound would normally be sufficient for a day’s fishing, and these were carefully soaked and boiled before use, sometimes with the addition of a sweetener at that stage, though I can’t say if that really made any difference. August, September and October were spectacularly successful for me in terms of what was normally caught from the lake. Anglers fishing the usual carp angler’s weekend (Friday to Sunday) throughout the season, plus occasional longer sessions during their holidays would reckon that they would be doing very well to catch twelve doubles. By the end of the summer, fishing my short sessions, and missing alternate Saturdays which I spent fishing a large gravel pit, I had landed ten doubles and lost several others, nearly all of them on peanuts. I was enjoying myself so much that I decided to carry on carp fishing through the winter, on the weekends I wasn’t shooting. That was how I found out that peanuts make lousy winter baits! There was not a single fish caught from the lake during the months of November, December, January and February, though this may also have had something to do with large amounts of rather sickly looking water being pumped in from an adjacent lake which was being drained. Gradually winter began to pass into spring, and I began to think about the next coarse fishing season. The reaction to peanuts had proved conclusively that if you had a bait the carp wanted, then you could catch them. It also proved, equally conclusively, that I had spent much time fishing baits they definitely didn’t want! However the peanut secret was out, and I suspected that they might only have a limited period of effective use the following season. It was time I found out more about the developments that had been taking place in carp baits. Mysterious substances such as casein, calcium caseinate and lactalbumin seemed to figure highly in this, and further investigation threw up a fairly basic milk protein recipe which I can’t remember exactly, but which certainly contained all three of the above, plus soya flour, wheat germ and wheat gluten. Some time later mono-sodium glutamate (MSG) was added as a taste enhancer. No flavours were used at all, but instead, after a chat with Chris Currie on the practicalities of using such natural ingredients as tubifex worms, 1 oz. of Phillips Cold Water Fish Flakes were included. Apart from the already mentioned addition of the MSG, and the later exclusion of wheat germ as the water temperature increased (I thought it might go off too quickly and spoil the bait, though I can’t now remember why I drew that conclusion), the bait remained the same all the following season. However, more of that later – there were still three days of this season left, and I was to spend two and a half of them fishing for carp. I wasn’t night fishing – I left when it got dark, then returned the following morning. I had made up a few mixes of the new bait, and took some down to try. Success was immediate – fishing a small margin swim I hooked two carp in two hours fishing. One I lost, the other I landed. He weighed 14lbs. and was in peak winter condition. The other was definitely a bigger fish, but after a longish period of to and fro tussling the hook opened up and he got away. Tackle was a Sharpes split cane rod matched with a vintage Allcocks aerial centrepin. I was overjoyed, and though the next two days were blank, it had given me great confidence in the bait, and I felt now that I would be able to stick with it instead of making the naive error of changing it after a biteless twenty-four hours! The close season passed slowly, as it surely will when you think you have discovered the magic bait that will empty the lake! But June ground reluctantly around and, as opening day approached, a few bait mixes were made ready. I do mean a few – it seems ridiculous now in the days of freezers full of boilies – at that time it used to take me nearly all evening to make up a couple of mixes! I remember once I had struggled for about three hours to make four or five hundred small baits from a particularly troublesome mix when the telephone rang. I left the room to answer it; five minutes later I returned to the kitchen to find the bowl which had contained the baits upside down on the floor. Next to it sniffed two very guilty looking springer spaniels – they’d eaten the lot and I had to start all over again!

Mitchell reels, one 300, the other a 410 were spooled up with new 10lb Maxima and the bale arm springs replaced (Oh those bale arms!). The old canvas brolly was given a new waterproof coat and the Sharpes cane mark IVs were taken from the cupboard and flexed many times in anticipation. It had been a long time since I had been so excited about the start of a new season. It was an excitement I was glad to have recaptured.