Golden Paws

We get "done" far more often then we think. I've watched barbel in shallow clear water take every grain of sweetcorn - except for one! I've also watched them blow it out with extreme force, the corn ends up further up the river than the 3 foot trace I was using. I was sight fishing so the long trace was purely to keep the end tackle as far away as possible. All you can do is play the percentage game. Ensure your hook is sharp, the rig is good, the line is out of the way and you don't spook them. A friend told me a story of how he watched 2 carp come into a swim and clocked the 22 boilies, 20 freebies and 2 with hooks. One fish went to take the baited hook twice and the other carp "rammed" it sideways on. They left 5 minutes later with the 2 baits left and my mate went home straight away as he couldn't comprehend what he'd just witnessed.

They say it's not a fool who makes a mistake but one who repeats it and so I must be right up there! I bought some X-line several years ago as I was told it was the best one out there. It sinks well (double the density of water) and is near invisible in water (unless you have it coming straight off the bottom and in bright conditions it looks like Darth Vader's light sabre!) I got fed up with the constant coiling of the stuff and it casts like a bag of spanners. I got rid of it and went back to mono (Gardner GT-HD like you which I really rate.) A few years back I bought some Fox Trans Kharki Illusion to use as a leader (about 30 foot) and although it was pretty good, I didn't like the knot on the cast or going through the rings whilst playing a fish. During the lock down and with too much time on my hands I revisited Fluorocarbon and was seduced by Berkley Connect CF600. It appeared fairly limp and claimed to iron out some of the inherent problems of Fluoro (stiffness and coiling issues.) I should have known better. I spooled it up and immediately the stuff started leaping off the spool. I managed to get it in a line clip and hoped that it would behave better on the bank. Wrong! The stuff was unruly and several times I had massive bird nest on a cast mid flight and I was only casting 40 yards. My advice, Fluorocarbon - give it a wide berth. If you are worried about the line behind the trace rising up, I've borrowed a tip from Martin Bowler and put on some matchmans olivettes on the line and they can be slid up and down at will and will easily pop off if a fish goes through weed.

A "Hampstead Heath Moment" seems to be the buzz word for any celeb that has been caught with his trousers down! Unfortunately on Hampstead Heath, it's not likely to be a lady being troubled! I would definitely keep this as a "days only" water.

Unfortunately most Committees are run by old farts who like to impose their will on us, despite the fact most of them haven't picked up a rod in years! Several years ago I went along to a Committee meeting of my local club with the idea that I wanted to give something back and get involved. I left shaking my head in disbelief. It was all so well scripted the Communist Party would have approved and any suggestions from the floor were rubbished and the 'old boys brigade' on the fringes were quick to establish a return to the status quo. Have a look at some Club's rule books and you'll see how they like to have every base covered and it just goes on and on and gets more ridiculous the further down the page they go. Some rules are purely to generate revenue such as only boilies or pellets bought on site. I can appreciate that you have to have some rules, for example not fishing next to electricity pylons or starting fires but others are more dubious.

Sounds like line bites, which are common when you have a pile of attraction in a small area. Slacken the line right off after casting and look at back leads or add some drops of rig putty to the line behind your rig. Blunt hooks are another common cause of bites not developing. Carp have leathery mouths and can pick up baits and not get hooked. Check how sharp the hook is by (gently) checking it against your thumb or running it along your thumb nail and seeing if it "digs" in. Hook sharpening is a bit of an art and there are companies that sell filing and polishing stones that can make even "sharp out of the packet" hooks that little bit better and restore hooks that have dulled a touch.

Yorkshire’s stolen fortnight Before some clever Yorkshireman emails in, the old rivers boards that were formed in the early 20th century were allowed to vary the close season provided it comprised a set number of days – 93 to be precise. Therefore, for a period 'Yorkshires stolen fortnight' allowed them to start coarse fishing on 01 June, though to be fair the whole of March was lost to fishing. These were their original proposals put forward in 1878 and somehow they crept back in, I think as part of the 1923 review of the Act. (Source: https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/enjoy-the-waterways/fishing/angling-histories/angling-history/history-of-the-coarse-fish-close-season) Many years ago you could fish in Yorkshire on the 1st of June, the so called stolen fortnight. Even though being further North and colder then most Southern area's and common sense would say their season should have finished and started later. I had a mate who is a very experienced river angler and went on the last day of the season which that year was on a Friday night. He commented to someone that he couldn't believe the car park was empty when he got there late afternoon. His mate looked a bit stunned and then told him the season finished on the Wednesday which was the 14th, not the 16th on Friday and the Penney dropped!

I think that you'll find most camping gas canisters are a mixture of propane (C3H8) and butane (C4H10). In an ideal world, it would completely combust in air with the Oxygen present and form Carbon Dioxide and Water. Unfortunately things are never perfect and you'll always get a percentage of Carbon Monoxide. The older and more blocked the nozzles are, the greater the chance of CO formation. You might get away with it for a while as CO is a silent killer (doesn't have a smell and the effects creep up on you). It's like loading a revolver with one bullet and playing Russian Roulette 6 times!

I disagree but agree with you! The worst thing you can possibly do is go to sleep with one on as you could possibly never wake up. I remember a while back Pete Reagan wrote in Carpology that he went to sleep with one burning during a cold spell and awoke a few hours later and was violently sick and had the mother of all headaches. He survives to tell the tale but hasn't used one since. Even if you use one just to warm up the bivvy, Carbon Monoxide poisoning causes drowsiness which is likely to make you sleepy. Don't do it!

There was a discussion on them a while back. My advice, don't!

MOT Check Try this Site. Enter the reg of the vehicle and it will give you the mileage and any failures or notifications on any car going back several years. Came in useful when my daughter was looking at a car and the amount of advisories and the severity of some of them made me advise her to give it a wide berth.

A long one at 1 hour 40 minutes but the calibre of some of the fish are truly stunning.

Simple answer is anything you have confidence in. Most bait companies still trading have been in the business for quite a while and to survive in a competitive world, you have to be good. The days of using sweepings from the floor are probably gone. If you half, crush or grind a boilie, it will leak off attraction quicker and it always pays to get some into the swim to get the fish grubbing about and get a taste for you hook bait.

Bought a 12.5kg of B&M sack of bird seed for silly cheap money and blended it with some hemp (which is very expensive now) and added a bag of frozen sweetcorn after cooking and use that as my spod mix. I get most of my seeds from Jollyes pet store as they have 20kg sacks or you can buy loose from the tubs which is far cheaper then buying from fishing shops. Pigeon conditioner is another good one although I do tend to add some foreign finch mix so there are a blend of larger and smaller seeds.

I'm not claiming to be experienced on such a daunting task but I remember watching a Terry Hearn video on the rarely caught 30 where for weeks he went to the lake but didn't even take the rods, just a bit of bait, a notebook and binoculars. First light is always a good time and I remember taking the dog on a walk around my local lake at 4:30 am one summer morning and was amazed at the amount of activity (note to oneself, do it more often!) If it's local, definitely try to catch it at a time of optimum shows or else you could be camping for months. Other than that, a baiting campaign might be worth trying. Good Luck.

As that great 20th Century philosopher Dolly Parton once said, If you wanna see a rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain!

Second part of the installment.

Passion for Angling episode on the search for "Harry the Monster Carp".

http://www.carp-lakes.co.uk/bowyers/4531783008 http://www.leevalleypark.org.uk/en/Default.aspx?n1=3&n2=18&n3=198 Found these 2 articles which should give you a starting point.

After the love and peace nonsense in the 60's and flowers in your hair, this must have a been a shock to everyone's system! Ozzy and the boys in concert in 1970 putting the heavy into metal. I reckon Bill Ward had to replace his drum kit after every gig as well!

I wasn't expecting to see Carp on the Dorset Stour and it was only a few seconds before I realised my error. If it was a mirror it would be evident straight away but being fully scaled, it did look a bit like a chub. I bet many fishing "stories" of large chub could be pale carp.

We all like to read stories about fish of monstrous sizes. It seems every lake contains a whopper that a few people have seen but has never been caught. Some stories are told by respected anglers which gives them some credence, others by younger and more inexperienced anglers and the size gets higher by every pint downed! Twice in my angling experience I have "witnessed" fish that would make the record books but on both occasions I realised that all was not what it seemed. The first was whilst fishing a water in the Cotswold Water Park fishing on Hills Pit. At the time it was crystal clear and I would stalk tench by watching them pick up my sweetcorn baits fished on a float and well over depth for a bit of casting weigh. One day whilst fishing I caught sight of a fish coming along the marginal shelf. My jaw dropped, it looked absolutely huge, far bigger than anything I had caught previously. I watched it for a good 10 seconds and couldn't believe how big it looked. As it got closer, something didn't look quite right and then I realised it was actually two tench swimming in perfect unison but about a foot apart and they had overlapped giving the impression of one big fish. They literally swam under my rod and continued on their journey, oblivious to the near heart attack they had given me. The second was on the Throop Fishery on the Dorset Stour. Again the river was crystal clear and I saw so many big chub that day that 5lb'ers seemed to be the norm. I fished an area called the Highbank later in the day and it gave me a superb view of the swim, I could see every bit of gravel on the bottom. I put out a couple of droppers of hemp and corn and the chub downstream seemed to notice straight away. I cast out another dropper and a chub of record breaking size appeared from the streamer and made a beeline for it and ate the hemp out of the dropper before the current could take it away. My knees knocked and my mouth went dry at what I had just witnessed. Then as I looked closer, I realised that is was a silvery common carp probably just into double figures and I managed to calm down. There must be countless tales of similar events or unexplained mysteries that turned out to something more explainable, anyone else got any?

The latest video from Tel on his exploits on the Thames. No one tells a story like Tel, I could listen to him read the shipping forecast and not get bored! Very interesting revaluation about Nick Huellers 50lb'er that was reputedly ottered, perhaps it wasn't after all (or at least when it was alive.)

I think that you already know the answer. A medium sized Carp or Catfish wouldn't even be able to turn around in a keepnet. If you want to take a photo, keep it in the landing net for the shortest time possible to set up the camera and then put it back. To keep several fish in a keepnet of that size for a grouped shot at the end of a session would be highly frowned upon in the UK. Sorry if that sounds a bit harsh but I think that we take our responsibilities of fish care very seriously and it ensures that our stock survives and is able to flourish, despite some fish getting caught several times a season. There are some knowledgeable and helpful anglers on this Site so feel free to tap into it and expand your understanding of the sport and the standards that we aspire to. Good luck.

A book I highly rate is "Rolling in the Deep" by Adam Penning. It's a right doorstop (will come in useful if we're in lock down for 6 months!) The fishing chapters are top quality and you get a grasp of what it takes to be top rod and the chapter on Wraysbury was almost painful to read, let alone endure it. But it's not all fishing. There are plenty of autobiographical bits that intertwine the stories and I felt they added to the book by relating how he managed to spend his spare time fishing and some of the sacrifices he made. Not cheap at £40 (with postage) but I read it 3 times last year and will probably do so again some time, a classic testament that it is worth the money. https://calmproductions.com/rolling-in-the-deep

With the outbreak of Corona Virus and most of us in social isolation or exclusion from fishing, we need something to cheer us up and keep the grey stuff ticking over. "Carpy" is a word often used but hasn't really been defined.......until now! Here is my list of things required to be considered "Carpy" Driving in a car with the registration C4 RPY. The ultimate! Have a beard, the bigger and bushier the better! Those long sessions don't leave time for showers or other types of "man grooming" than non anglers (or poofs as they are sometimes known) seem to think is necessary. Oh, and having an ear piercing so large you can push your finger through it. Drinking out of a cup that should carry a public health warning as it hasn't seen the washing up bowl since last Christmas. Etching words like "bacteria" and "salmonella" on the grime built up on the back of your tea spoon and photographing it and putting it on instagram. A photo of your kettle boiling on the stove in the pitch black on the same Site, it's almost compulsory. Speaking phrases that non anglers have no idea what you are talking about. "Lovely times", "buzzing", "happy days "and other toe curling terms are compulsory if writing in one of the Carp comics. Talk to your non-angling mates about your all consuming hobby in a way that totally bamboozles them. "Yea, I caught Mary at 25 wraps on a popped up tiger on a stiffy" will have most people scratching their heads. We have already established that some anglers regard personal hygiene as optional. Going into work the next day after rolling some bait with Monster Crab flavouring will have you in self isolation in the canteen even before the outbreak of Corona Virus. Drive a car that could be classified as a "shed". Used builder vans or estates that have used nets and slings as well as all that bait, "just in case they're 'aving it" are common in fishing vehicles that no members of the family will dare to venture in. Be in a Zombie like state at work the next day after an overnighter. You think that you're blagging it but the eyes like organ stops and dense utterings to even simple questions show that you should have waited until Friday night. You've (rightly) been banned from cooking hemp in the kitchen as it stinks the house out, so what do you do? Buy a Baby Burco and cook it in the garden and [censored] off the neighbours off as well. You went through the motions as school, doing just enough to scrape a few O levels together so at least you could get a job and pay for your fishing gear. Your knowledge of nutrition needed for fish growth, protein absorption rates and stimulation for cyprinid preoccupation levels show that a degree in Science wasn't beyond you. I must have missed a few, any more takers?