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South West Memories.
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KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#1 13 Oct 2016 at 11.40am

It has taken some time but at last here is a recovered version of South West Memories. As you may have noticed I like to illustrate the text as fully as possible with photographs so when the host site I used (TinyPic) closed down, all the photos uploaded to that site were lost. Hopefully this fate will not befall the site that now hosts all my pix!

I have had one or two PMs from members asking me to re-post some of my articles about fishing in the south west and abroad during what were the formative years of what is now modern carp fishing. It was a time of great excitement as each trip was a journey into the unknown, a journey of discovery, if you like. New venues, new tackle, new idea, new tactics, these all came to the fore when I was cutting my teeth on carping in general. I have been a keen angler since I was a kid so as well as my carpy reminiscences I will also take a look at the rest of my formative years as a coarse, fly and sea angler.

PLEASE NOTE: (c) 2021 Ken Townley. All rights reserved.

Material published by Ken Townley on these web pages is copyright of Ken Townley and may not be reproduced without permission. Copyright exists in all other original material published on the internet by Ken Townley and belongs to the author depending on the circumstances of publication.

EDIT: 19th April 2020:: Just noticed that this thread has been read over 24, 000 times! I should have had it published as a book. If it had sold that many copies I'd have been able to retire a lot sooner!)

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#488 13 Jul 2021 at 1.14pm

In reply to Post #478
It was love at first sight. The first time I saw (that fish on the bank) I fell in madly in love�(and a bag of ten year old shelfies to the first reader to PM me with the name of the book I paraphrase in that sentence).

Seems that bag of ancient Tuttis will remain here ready for a future trip, maybe back to Maleon?

I am amazed that the knowledgeable membership of this forum cannot tell me the answer! It is, of course, the opening line of Joseph Heller's masterpiece, Catch-22. I quote:

It was love at first sight.

The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.

Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice. The doctors were puzzled that it wasn't quite jaundice. If it became jaundice, they could treat it. If it didn't become jaundice and went away, they could discharge him. But this just being short of jaundice all the time confused them.

I know reading is a lost art these days, but read Catch-22 and you'll be hooked for life. I read it first in 1963 when I was 16 and studying at Bromley Tech. Now I re-read it at least once every year. It is no understatement to say that it is a masterpiece. It is hilariously funny, desperately sad, hugely poignant, a novel that deserves to be set at O-Level or even at A-Level (assuming these antiquated badges of learning still exist!) I urge you to get to your local library and reserve a copy. You will not be disappointed.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#487 21 Jun 2021 at 4.42pm

In reply to Post #486
So that's what I did, and slowly but surely I felt the fish come free. Very free, in fact as it exploded from the water like a breaching submarine, shaking weed from the line in an explosion of spray. And my heart went into my boots for now the fish was clear of weed I could plainly see that it was my so desperately sought-after prize. There was no mistaking that huge scale on the right hand shoulder, the massive tail, the powerful shoulders. I started to shake; yes, literally I stood there shaking. The fight that followed under the tip was amazing, powerful surges of raw strength that wrenched the rod tip down. This was fish of my dreams. At the very least a big PB, probably my first fifty.

Words cannot describe my feelings when at last it was in the net. I stood looking down at it as it lay in the water entrapped by the confines of the net. God, it was massive! �Prepare to celebrate, Kenny boy,� I told myself. Onto the mat she went, then up onto the scales which were suspended from a solid tree branch. If words cannot describe my feelings when I landed her, they were even more inadequate now. The scales read 41lb 8oz! What? I couldn�t believe my eyes. I was certain it was the same fish but how could she be so down in weight.

I sacked her and went to get Tim. He had photos of the fish from its capture just a few weeks earlier and this would enable us to identify the fish with certainty. Sure enough, it was the fifty, but way down in weight.

I didn�t know whether to laugh or cry. After all, I had set out to catch this one particular fish and had succeeded. So in that respect I should be delighted. On the other hand the weight was such a disappointment.

I was gutted. I swung from low to high and back to low again during the course of the morning. My feelings were in a turmoil. Should I be over the moon or gutted.

Paul brought me down to earth: �Stop whinging,� he told me. �I�ve never had a forty and you�ve had three in one trip as well as God knows how many thirties. You�ve caught the fish you have been after all this time and broken just about every Maleon record going so be happy or you�ll really get on my tits.�

So, put yourself in my place. What would you be? Gutted or not? In heaven or in hell? Me? I still can�t decide even two decades later.

(As some of your old timers may have recognised by now, this is a rewrite of an old article I wrote for Carpworld called 'Gutted!' Following publication I was taken to task in no small manner by Jenks who in a letter to the Letters Page of Carpworld he more or less said the same as Paul: be grateful for what you've got and stop whinging!)

A strange coincidence took place at Maleon. On one of my first coaching trips to Maleon I had met a couple of guys who were mates and had come not so much for the coaching side of things but more as a chance to fish Maleon. Little did I know that some seven years later I would come across this pair again at their own lake, Angel Lake at Saint Yrieix la Perche, and it would be here, at long last that my dream of catching a fifty came true�But that's for another time so I'll stop now with this pic of Tony and Dennis, plus Tony's missus Amanda and me in the lodge at Angel in 2005.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#486 21 Jun 2021 at 4.38pm

In reply to Post #485
The next three fish were all twenties but then came a series of slightly better fish - three thirties on the trot. This was getting silly! That night I landed five twenties, two thirties and another forty, my second of the trip. It was a big old grey beastie that fought like a hero for what seemed like hours in the deep dark night. A magnificent fish, but still not my prize, but surely it was only a matter of time before�Shhh! Don't tempt fate!.

By now another angler had joined us and he went into Paul's now-empty swim, as he had decided to move in next to me. A friend of Tim's a French guy, moved in opposite me in the Gate. The lake was getting busy. Now whether these extra lines in the water had an effect or not, I don�t know but while he was opposite me I never had a sniff. But as soon as he left the fish came back to me. A few twenties and yet another upper thirty came to the Trigga.

My confidence was peaking and I just knew I would get the big beauty I had been after ever since I�d seen her in Jay�s arms.

The weather had remained more or les settled throughout but as the evening went by a few mare's tails began to dot the big blue sky, heralding a likely change to wind and rain.

Sure enough the wind picked up and a scattering of brief but heavy showers beat a steady beat on the bivvy throughout the night. In contrast to the previous night this one was fishless but I had a feeling that something good was going to happen at any minute. The rain gave way to passing heavy showers. A rainbow touched down in at the other end of the lake, hitting the water in the small bay to the right of the Corner. Was there gold at the end of that rainbow? Should I move across to the other side?

I resisted the temptation and it's just as well I did for at 9.30 am that morning she came to me!

The bait on the right hand rod, fishing at about 60m out in front of the main weed on the dinner plate was picked up and I hit a very fast take. The fish just powered left, left, left heading forcefully in the direction of the fallen tree to my left. I simply couldn�t stop it and soon all went solid. But was it solid in weed or in the snag? The line didn�t look as if it was going into the snag. Had the fish blundered into the thickest of the weed just in front of the snag? I felt sure it had.

When a fish weeds me up I generally try to extricate it immediately, before it can burrow still deeper into the sanctuary of the weed. I have a tried and tested method of bringing a weeded carp to the net Here's how to do it. It�ll make you cringe but it works. Wind down tight and then clamp down on the spool. Crook the forefinger of the hand holding the rod around the line just in front of the reel. Now walk backwards a short step at a time. On your fingertip you will feel the tension increase on the line and with experience you will be able to tell exactly when the line is close to its breaking point. Do not pass this point! If the fish is going to come out of the weed, it will do so now. Maybe only slowly, maybe all at a rush, but you should feel the tension across your forefinger decrease slightly as the weed pulls out of the lake bed and the fish moves towards you. As it does so, wind down and lift the rod. If the fish is on the move you should be able to resume playing it now albeit maybe encased in a big clump of weed.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#485 21 Jun 2021 at 4.35pm

In reply to Post #484
The rain fell with increasing severity and being a wimp I decided to give the swim a rest and get a good night�s kip, rather than get a bloody good soaking landing slippery, smelly fish! Anyway, I thought to myself, it will give them a chance to get a free meal and build up their confidence. At least, that�s my story!

The rain stopped sometime during the night and at six the next morning, well rested after a good kip, I recast. By midday I�d had seven out, and by six the following morning had had fourteen including a very satisfying mirror of 43lb 12oz. This was fishing beyond my wildest dreams. I was in hauling mode! so I heaped the bait in and the fishing just got better and better.

And then suddenly, as quickly as it had started, the action stopped dead. For 24 hours the buzzers mocked me. Like you do when this happens you suddenly loose all confidence in everything that had, up �til then, come up trumps for you. Change this, change that, generally bugger about with everything. I could understand a certain degree of slow down after all that action, but a total stop? Were they still out there but just not feeding? Were they there but had got the 'ump? Or had they simply pissed off altogether? I couldn�t help feeling that they were still out there but were doing a moody.

Meanwhile both Paul and Tim had fish so they were still feeding; just not in my swim for the moment. Here Tim weighs a fish for Paul.

Here it is�

And here Tim demonstrates the not-so-generally accepted method of returning a Maleon carp.

For something to do more than for any other reason dictated by logic, I changed two rods over to pop-up set ups. I was not the world�s greatest fan of pop-ups and Maleon carp were known to prefer bottom baits, however, it was worth a try. I had not used it before but Frank's Short Silt Rig was getting favourable mentions in the press so I bunged this on a couple of rods. Basically it is a helicopter set up with a very short hooklink being fished half way along a 1.5m length of lead core, the hooklink semi fixed in place on a section of shrink tube. Nowadays most of your will know this as the Chod Rig. Hookbait was a small highly flavoured yellow pop-up of the Pineapple and Butyric variety. I just hoped it would work as it was first time of using it and I had little or no confidence in the whole set up.

I need not have worried. Suddenly I was catching again the small yellow pop-ups catching more or less from the off. Funnily enough I now couldn't buy a take on a bottom bait�What's all that about? Pop-ups were what they wanted and pop-ups was what they would get. In the vernacular, Get In!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#484 21 Jun 2021 at 4.34pm

In reply to Post #483
In the light of Tim�s news I decided to give the swim two more days, continuing to bait up very lightly in the hope that the new source of attraction, the Trigga, would tempt them back for a feed.

Meanwhile Tim had caught a couple from the Bailiff's Beach and was looking pretty pleased with himself, the bugger.

Three nights in and still nothing. Time for a move, a rethink, maybe a pint? I like to get away from the water from time to time during a session. I feel certain that the absence of lines in the swim helps reassure any fish that might be cruising the area and it allows them to feed on the bait carpet in peace. It also gives me a chance to recharge my batteries.

I discovered that Paul is a man after my own heart who also likes to leave the water from time to time so we spent a very pleasant afternoon exploring the bars of the nearby town before returning to the lake for super. Though we were all a bit down about the fishing, I felt that it was only a matter of time before someone had a fish as the lake was probably now under less angling pressure than it had been all season.
Once again I kept the baiting fairly light that evening but by dusk the rods had been out for three hours with still nothing to show for it. As the light started to fade however, a few fish began to show in front of me over the big clear dinner plate area that was covered by the left hand rod. Suddenly my confidence was sky high.

I sat up under a brolly as night fell listening to the night creatures rustling in the undergrowth. Bloody rats again! The rain had stopped and the sky was brilliantly clear. It was a joy to be on the bank but by one in the morning all the carp activity that had buoyed me up had ceased and I felt resigned to a move next morning. I climbed into my sleeping bag feeling morose and useless!

I don�t know how long I�d been asleep when the buzzer under the left hand rod gave a couple of bleeps, but it seemed like only minutes. I stood over the rod the bent down to feel the line. It was bar taught against a fairly tight clutch setting so I picked up the rod and hit into a heavy weight. Whatever it was, it wasn�t in a hurry and for the next ten minutes this lump just plodded back and forth on a long line. I gained a bit of line with every pump but it was hard work but at last the fish it was under the tip. It looked huge in the torchlight and my heart leapt. Was it my much sought after beauty? No! In the net the fish shrank somewhat, it was no fifty but who could be unhappy with a 38lb mirror?

My mate Bill reckons that carp are like buses. You wait ages for one then three or four come along at once. At dawn another beautiful Maleon thirty joined the party, this one a 2-Tone mirror of 32lb 2oz mirror. This one had come on the right hand rod cast towards the middle of the lake into no man�s land with just a stringer to draw attention to the hookbait.

With a couple of fish on the bank I felt reasonably confident about increasing the amount of bait I was putting in. Trigga at that time was a revelation! A totally natural bait with a very potent in-built source of natural attraction that had a unique (at the time) active ingredient called Triggerol (hence the trade name). I had already used it on lots of waters and it seemed that the more you put in, the better the fishing got so I was happy to increase the amount. Sure enough, at five-thirty in the afternoon, as the rain began again after a nice sunny day my first Maleon common came my way.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#483 21 Jun 2021 at 4.32pm

In reply to Post #482
I was very tired after the long drive and ferry crossing so, on that first night I didn�t do much more than throw the three hookbaits out with some freebies. Not much of a sure fire way of catching super crafty carp and sure enough, I didn�t. I got busy the next morning however and went out with the boat and sounder for a scout around. As I had expected, though the lake appeared pretty choked with weed, there was room at the weed stems for a hookbait to fall reasonably unhindered to the lake bed.

The sounder showed that the weed had really taken a hold close to and under the snag trees but as luck would have it the Eagle showed a very distinct clear patch just in front of a large weed bed that extended right up to the surface from the lake bed fourteen feet below. So marked was this area I couldn�t help thinking that it was as clear as it appeared because carp had disturbed the weed roots by their feeding activity to such an extent that the weed simply wouldn�t grown there. If I was right then what I had found was one of my favourite fishing spots, a dinner plate that carp frequent regularly. This is such a cleared area on a shallower lake that shows the effect of prolonged, heavy feeding in one particular spot.

If this was, indeed, a dinner plate that the sounder had marked I might be in with a shout. The weed at the surface towards the back of the area marked the spot nicely for casting so there was no need for any other kind of visual marker. I baited the area with a light scattering of Trigga shelf life and frozen baits and Trigga crumb, along with a few hefty balls of Liquid Trigga-laced SuperRed.

Venturing farther from the treeline towards the middle, the sounder revealed that the weed was a lot thicker than last year. To try and find any distinct clear spot was near on impossible. However, I felt confident that if I kept the hooklinks short and kept the hook point masked on the cast, I�d be able to present the hookbait in the clear regardless of where I was to cast. Sure, the lead and hook could come back festooned in weed, but this was only picked up on the retrieve. I felt sure that a light scattering of boilies around each hookbait would bring a take and was not at all worried if the free offerings landed in weed or on the bottom. The carp would find them wherever they landed.

So now all was set. All I needed to do now was catch a fish! The weather had turned during the day and by dinner time it was pretty miserable, cold with plenty of rain and a strong northwesterly wind. Not nice for the angler but pretty good for fishing. . . normally! By the evening of my second night I was feeling a lot more confident with my preparation. The bait was spot on, the exploratory work had shown that I could cast with confidence to my chosen areas and the weather looked good.

Hey ho! The best laid plans, and all that. Next morning revealed a wind swept, sodden lake with the trees shaking in the strong breeze. Rain fell steadily from a leaden sky and all in all it was pretty miserable, made more so by the fact that I�d not had so much as a bleep during the night. Bugger!

I couldn�t believe I�d got it all wrong, but my confidence had taken a knock. I was only slightly reassured when Tim came up to see me later that morning. He told me that the previous week a couple of clients had fished the swim and had filled it in with bait. As a result they�d caught nothing.

Tim tells all his clients not to overdo the bait to start with, but few ever listen. The problem with over- baiting is that it�s easy to put a lot of bait in, but impossible to take it out again if the heavy baiting doesn�t work. Maleon carp are notoriously shy of big beds of bait and have been know to boycott an over-baited area for days, even weeks, until the baits have broken down to a mush or the bream have cleared them up.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#482 21 Jun 2021 at 4.26pm

In reply to Post #481
Another good way of masking the point is with soluble packaging foam.
The standard way of using this foam is to thread it onto the hook and pass the hook back through the foam. However, I have found that if you are using heavy leads of three or four ounces, nine times out of ten the foam comes off as soon as the lead hits the surface. I have found that if you lick and fold as shown here, the foam stays on for much longer allowing the hookbait to fall down close to the lead.

Trapping the hair against the hook shank prior to casting out goes a long way towards eliminating tangles too.
Choice of bait was not hard! I was one of the lucky few who were given Trigga to test back in the summer of 2000 and had done so well on the bait there was no way I was going to use anything else! I would use standard bottom baits on the hair - in common parlance 'matching the hatch' (urgh!) and as alternative hookbaits I would use my go-to bait Techni Spice ready mades.

As for the free offerings well I have done well using a mix of ready made Trigga and frozen Trigga in about equal proportions. I don�t know why this blend should work so well as the two baits are definitely not the same in terms of attraction and composition. However, some field testers actually prefer the ready mades to the freezer baits so I guess I was hedging my bets by mixing the two like this.

Finally I couldn�t go to the lake without a bag of my favourite groundbait SuperRed from Haith�s. I generally stiffen with a very a strong solution of a food liquid (back then it was Liquid Trigga), forming the resulting paste into groundbait balls which I catapulted into the swim along with the freebies or threw in by hand when stalking or casting along the Godawful Sodding Railway Bank.

Tim was doing the cooking this trip. I had been warned that he fancied himself with a tin of beans so wasn't expecting much. Strangely enough he served up a really good nosebag and we sat outside as the sun went down with the odd 1664 or three, watching the occasional carp show on the surface.

It was soft and mild and everything looked really good. I grabbed a bag of bait from the freezer and set off to my swim, Mirror Corner. I took the long route along the south, east and west banks and saw quite a few carp in the small bay in front of The Corner, where Paul was getting set for the evening. Walking along the east bank up past the Bird Hide I came to the Gate Swim. Thee weed growth was just starting to die back but it was still profuse enough to cause problems if a fish wanted to weed you up. Starting in the margins I began to throw bait along the length of the GSRL and once I got to the snag tree I piled a whole bagful into the margins and under its branches.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#481 21 Jun 2021 at 4.25pm

In reply to Post #480
First let me set the scene�Whether we realise it or not, we all start problem-solving the minute we decide on the venue we are going to fish. If we have been there before we see a mind�s eye picture of the water, visualising which swim we aim to fish, how far out and with which type of hookbait, bait carpet and rig. While we are on the way to the venue we rehearse over and over again the strategies we will use and we talk endlessly to travelling companions about how we expect to get on. Then reality steps in as every careful plan usually gets dumped before we even wet a line.

There were just three of us on the lake, Tim, Paul and myself. Paul had arrived the same morning as me and had not yet set up. Being a bit lumbered by the fact that he had an artificial leg, I thought it was only fair that I offer him first choice of swim. That�s when I found out he didn�t like being patronised! Backing down swiftly we tossed a coin for choice of swim: Paul won, I came second with Tim bringing up the rear. Not a problem in reality as there was plenty of room for everyone. I knew exactly where I wanted to fish so imagine my relief when Paul picked The Corner. I looked at Tim; I knew what he was thinking as I felt sure he was after the same swim as me.

�I�ll go in Mirror Corner, � I said and his face fell.

On previous visits to Maleon I had always liked how that swim had a habit of doing the bigger fish; maybe not as many but certainly the bigger old girls. Not surprisingly was very popular and for 40 weeks of every year you�d find one of the paying clients in there. This would be my first chance to fish it for any length of time. It is rather a secluded, private sort of swim, closed off from the rest of the lake by a fallen tree to the right and the line of the north bank to my left with that lovely little stalking swim in the corner. A couple of large trees had gone over in a winter storm and these formed a very distinct holding area of snags. I don�t like fishing to snags at all but I felt sure the fish would not stay in them all day and would drift out overnight to feed.

Looking towards the far bank three distinct gaps in the far treeline made obvious casting targets and by the weed in front of the middle and right hand rods started more towards the far bank than my own. I had caught fish from the opposite side of the lake by casting some twenty yards or so off the snags and that is what I planned to do again only this time from Mirror Corner. I would cover this area with my left hand rod. The middle rod and the right hand rod were going out towards the middle of the lake and some clear holes in the weed.

I decided to start on bottom baits for no other reason than I much prefer them to pop-ups and in any case Tim had told me that the fish were all falling for standard presentations and not looking at pop-ups. I had done very well on a trip to the river a week or two earlier using freezer baits wrapped in paste.

I have talked about using paste before both as a stocking-wrapped hookbait and also as an outer wrap around the hookbait. I picked this trick up from Max Cottis when he featured it a fishing video and it is a trick I use virtually every time I cast out a hookbait these days. The paste breaks down pretty quickly allowing all the natural attraction of the Trigga (or whatever you fancy using) to flood out. I think this method works so well because it attracts smaller fish to the hookbait. These in turn draw inquisitive carp to it as well and even the craftiest carp are often undone by this little wrinkle.

This presentation is very effective when you are confronted by very weedy lakes (and Maleon is pretty weedy itself) as you can actually bury the hook point in the paste. Now you can cast into weed without hanging the hook up on weed fronds. This pic shows what I am talking about here.

Actually the weed in Maleon is pretty daunting at first sight and if you do marker float work for any length of time you will become convinced that the whole of the bottom is covered in weed. However, much of the weed is the kind that grows in tall single bushy strands that spread out at the surface, giving the impression that the weed is impenetrable. In fact, if you mask the hook point/hookbait and don�t move the lead after it has settled you stand every chance of the hookbait ending up clear of weed on a nice lake bed of sweet, deep, rich silt, or the interspersed patches of hard gravel.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#480 21 Jun 2021 at 4.20pm

In reply to Post #479
Nige, Rich and Jay, the bailiffs, were fishing on the area of the west bank known as Bailiff's Bank and they too were having to be patient. Then the weather changed dramatically. A fairly intense low pressure area swept across the region, pushing away the doldrums-like anti-cyclone that had dominated the weather pattern for ages. It started to rain and blow hard from the south west and like someone had thrown a switch the fish came on hard and strong. In one night we all caught fish and of them all Jay�s was by far the biggest, and the most significant as far as my story goes. This is Bailiff's Bank�

�and here's Rich and Nigel with nice mid-thirties from the Bailiff's Beach.. Rich (top) and Nige.

I was lying in my sleeping bag gazing at the water. The rain had stopped but it was chilly and the strong wind made life rather unpleasant. Jay popped his head around the door. �What�s the biggest fish you�ve ever seen on the bank?� He asked me. I told him 46lb. �I�ve got one bigger than that!� he exclaimed. �It�s fifty-three!" He mentioned that it was a fish he�d been after for three years, ever since he first started working as a bailiff at Maleon. In that time it had graced the bank only twice, proof if it were needed that the fish was a bit cute. It came out on average once a year, and between captures it was hardly ever seen in the water.

I was happy for Jay who was a lovely fella, a brilliant bailiff who worked hard for the lake and its clients and equally hard for his fish. When I went round to do the pix I was awe-struck by the full magnificence of the massive creature. I simply had to catch her myself and I immediately promised myself that I would not rest until I did so. I haven�t been so driven since I first started serious carp fishing back in the 60s. Simply magnificent.

The months passed; I fished the lake again in late July with moderate success but of the biggie there was no sign. Undaunted I returned home only to hear from Tim Kay that the creature had come out two weeks later at 50lb 4oz. I was happy and sad at the same time; happy to know that she�d survived the winter and the floods that always affect the pit in this part of France, sad to know that the fish had probably made its only mistake of the year and was down in weight to boot. This is that rare visit to the bank to an angler fishing The Corner.

It was late October 2001 and I was back at the lake for another post-season trip with the image of that beautiful fish resting irrevocably at the forefront of my memory. Maybe this time? All the way there during the near 600 mile journey from my home in Cornwall I pictured the lake in my mind�s eye. I knew exactly where I wanted to fish, how I would start the session and what I would change if it didn�t all pay off. I went over all my aims and strategies in my head, knowing full well what a foolish course of action this is. In all probability the swim would be taken or the fish would be doing a moody.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#479 21 Jun 2021 at 4.17pm

In reply to Post #478
And this is a general view along the railway bank looking towards the Gate Swim. The prominent snag tree acted like a magnet to the carp when the sun came out and they were a sight for sore eyes for anyone peering down on them from up the bank by the fence.

These two swims were always the first to go when the draw was made and as I was there to do tuitions rather than fish, I had Hobson's Choice and had not so far managed to fish them. On previous visits I had caught from the Bird Hide swim on the east bank where I managed to land a few. This is my bivvy in the Bird Hide swim.

This poor quality pic shows the Gate Swim from the Lodge Bank.

This is a nice mid-thirty from the Bird Hide swim.

Draw a line across the lake from the Bird Hide to The Corner and you will see that it creates a nice little bay that remains largely undisturbed during the day. The weed grows thick and luxuriant in this bay with nice little holes into which a carefully cast bait could trip up an unwary carp as she drifted between the weed fronds.

There is a shed that sits in The Corner, which is supposed to be a bivvy for your week. At first sight you'd probably think this was nice and cosy but in actual fact it was anything but. The noise when it rained was unbearable, everything flapping about, rain hammering on the roof, seeping in through the door and soaking everything. And the rats! God, the rats were all over the place. This was before I caught Weils in 2005 but it was a blooming miracle I didn't catch it sooner.

I did two trips in The Corner and caught OK but I vowed, never again! The vermin were everywhere, running across your feet, up and down the wood planks that formed the floor of the bivvy and scurrying back and forth in the maze of rat runs beneath the shed.

This is a mid-twenty mirror from The Corner:

One year I went over late in the season staying on after the last party of paying guests had left for the UK. The lake had been moody while the customers had been there but with only myself and the two bailiffs left on the lake, we felt confident that things would pick up. I went in The Corner (last time!), which gives access to the small bay tacked onto the side of the southern bank. The weed in the bay was very thick but it seemed to be stiff with carp but for a while they just wouldn�t look at a bait.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#478 21 Jun 2021 at 4.13pm

In reply to Post #477
I was back at Maleon the following year and this session was a bit of a nightmare. Normally Tim booked a maximum of ten anglers on the coach and frankly this is s about five too many. Still, not my problem and Tim had a team of excellent bailiffs who kept order resolutely. What Tim had omitted to mention to me was that for my first week at the lake he had booked twenty, many of whom were first timers to France and clearly first timers to carp fishing too�No gear and no idea, sums up most of them! They were a bloody nightmare, there only to get pissed and stoned and so on�But enough of that, Ken, just get on with the story.

The site was not exactly salubrious, with a couple of old caravans and a dodgy array of cars in various states of decay. The Lodge, however, was clean and tidy and the warm smell of dinner wafted from the kitchen.

Here's a little background. Go back and take another look at the magnificent mirror that started this story.

It was love at first sight. The first time I saw (that fish on the bank) I fell in madly in love�(and a bag of ten year old shelfies to the first reader to PM me with the name of the book I paraphrase in that sentence).

Don't be silly, I here you cry, how can you fall in love with a fish? Well they say love is blind and I was certainly blinded by that one! At the time she was the largest fish I�d ever seen on the bank and was certainly the most beautiful. In the three subsequent years that fish came out only twice. So my hopes were high that this time I might at last get to lay my hands on her.

Since that first tuition trip in 1997 in the years that followed I did six further trips to Maleon, each time getting to know the lake just a bit more. Combining fishing with the tuition aspect of the trip was a bit limiting but I gradually built up a picture in my mind's eye of the lake. It was clear that the railway bank was favoured by the carp thanks to the overhanging trees that gave cover and a large snag tree in the water where they liked to bask and doze.

However, the access to the railway bank was severely limited with just a narrow path between the two corner swims. There was a stalking swim right in the corner which was a stalker's paradise but was very tight and you could only use one rod in there due to the snags. Next to it was a more open swim with better access to open water so if you wanted to bivvy up and fish three rods that was the swim to be in. It was called Mirror Corner. The Godawful Sodding Railway Line ran a matter of yards from the water's edge, but that didn't seem to faze the carp at all. On the other hand to human ears the almost constant train noise was at times horrendous, but the fact of the matter was that you put up with the noise if you wanted to fish either of these hot swims. The nearby railway station in Epernay was a major hub for goods traffic and there was activity 24/7 in the goods yard and sidings. In addition the main line from Paris to the east saw at least twenty high speed trains a day pass by the two swims. To say it was noisy is putting it very mildly.

This is the stalking swim in the corner. It was very good to me but I knew that few if any anglers took the opportunity to fish single rod down the edge tactics in there as it was thought to be too noisy because of the trains�It wasn't!�more of which in a minute. The trick to fishing that swim was to put the bait in the night before while bivvied up in the next door swim about five yards away. If or when they moved in on the bait you'd hear them swirling on the top as they fed, sometimes crashing out to clear their gills. You could see the lake bed some eight feet down and when you saw that the bait had all gone put a single hookbait in there and then just keep whisper quiet.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#477 21 Jun 2021 at 4.00pm

In reply to Post #1
MALEON 1997-2001

Is this not the most gorgeous trophy shot? It shows Jay, one of Maleon's bailiffs, with the very first fifty pound carp I had ever seen in the flesh. Up until then I had not realised just how huge a fifty is and if it is as pretty as this one, well, that makes it all the more special. This particular fish figures large in this narrative, so I'll say no more at this point and just leave this here for your viewing pleasure.

The lake once known to us Brits as Maleon, lies not far from the town of Epernay in the Marne Departement of eastern France. An old gravel working, it is one of many that litter the course of the River Marne, and is characterised by it's lurid green water typical of most of the pits in the region. Its richness is also typical of these pits and weed grows profusely in the summer months. The lake is roughly square being about 250m at its widest point and 280 at it's longest. It is full of natural food, mussels, crayfish, daphnia and all the usual invertebrates one would expect to find in a calcium-rich lake and consequently the carp and other coarse fish in the lake do well, thriving on nature's richness. The margins are steep and quickly shelve down to 16-18 feet with some deeper spots along the north bank, aka the Godawful Sodding Railway Bank where twenty to twenty-five feet of water could be found.

In the late 90s the lake was leased by Tim Kay, a Brit ex-pat who had previously owned L'Hermitage fishery on the river Seine. Tim was a bit of a rogue but a loveable one for all that. He had run trips to L'Hermitage and did so again on Maleon. As part of his plan to open up the lake he asked me to come out and do a couple of tuition weeks, so one sunny day in August 1997 I found myself pulling up at the fishing lodge after a tiring and somewhat fraught drive right across France from Roscoff in the west to Epernay the capital of the Champagne region in the east. This pic shows the layout of the lake and the relevant swims that are mentioned throughout this tale.

Over dinner that evening I met up with the gang, six anglers and the Dick the bailiff and a very nice bunch they proved to be. I was not there to fish so much as to help out where needed and sow words of wisdom to all an sundry as required. To be honest this group were pretty well versed on all things carpy but I did my bit, walking around the lake stopping at each occupied swim and chatting to the occupants about fishing, life, the universe and everything. Frankly they were nothing like as inexperienced as Tim had made them out to be; all were perfectly capable anglers. Still, I hoped my tips and advice was not too boring - if it was they were all to polite to say so - and we spent a very pleasant week on the lake. All in all the first week was judged a success (the less said about the second week the better!), and Tim invited me back the following year to repeat the process.

They were a very likeable bunch and all caught carp at some point during the week. Sorry if you are reading this guys but I've forgotten your names�it's an age thing.

This guy I remember well; he and his mate came over from SW Ireland, country Kerry. As it happens in the early 70s Bill and I had spent some very happy weeks in Fenit, Co Kerry, and they knew Jack Godley's bar very well (see earlier posts). That broke the ice nicely and we got on ever so well. They both had very distinct soft Irish accents, typical of the west of Eire and I could hardly understand a word they said. Still, they were good anglers despite having no local carp fishing at home, and they had come loaded for bear. Tins and tins of Guinness, lager and a bottle of Eire's finest, Bushmills Black Bush Single Malt! They spent most of the first couple of days catching carp and the rest of the week enjoying themselves. I enjoyed myself greatly in their company!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#476 6 Jun 2021 at 2.55pm

In reply to Post #475
PM for you...

keagem

Posts: 2

#475 6 Jun 2021 at 1.57pm

In reply to Post #1
Hi Ken,, Sorry for delay in replying, other major distractions. Can't find your messages about the Geoff Kemp rods , so , if you are still interested, please email me . keagem.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#474 15 May 2021 at 12.17pm

In reply to Post #473
Many thanks (albeit belated ones) for this, Jon.

johnnyfubar

Posts: 1627

#473 10 Apr 2021 at 3.25am

In reply to Post #469
Hi Justin

"What do you think your contribution to carp fishing has been Ken?"

Ha! Pretty sure "legend" covers that

Was reading my 1998 beekay offering only yesterday

Long may you post big fella

Best

Jon

snapper1

Posts: 3101

#472 3 Apr 2021 at 12.41pm

In reply to Post #1
Wow ive got some looking and reading here, I may be some time, thanks K.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#471 30 Mar 2021 at 2.48pm

In reply to Post #469
To quote Cat in Red Dwarf!, "I have brought joy to the world becaus I have abeautiful ass!"

Tinhead

Posts: 16285

#470 29 Mar 2021 at 1.07pm

In reply to Post #468
Simply Lovleh

Justin_Time

Posts: 352

#469 29 Mar 2021 at 12.57pm

In reply to Post #1
What do you think your contribution to carp fishing has been Ken?

Chuffy

Posts: 6582

#468 25 Feb 2021 at 6.31pm

In reply to Post #467
Plenty in the tank Sir

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#467 25 Feb 2021 at 4.51pm

In reply to Post #1
119, 553 views now. I'm pretty chuffed about that. Still got one or two memories left in the bank so watch this space.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#466 27 Jan 2021 at 12.57pm

In reply to Post #465
But, Dave. I have got a Proper Job, and some Proper Black too!

frothey

Posts: 3390

#465 26 Jan 2021 at 6.23pm

In reply to Post #464
Disappointed you didn�t have a �proper job� Cornish accent........

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#464 26 Jan 2021 at 4.26pm

In reply to Post #463
I wouldn't know anything about that, Mr BL!

Mr-Bean-Laden

Posts: 2196

#463 22 Jan 2021 at 8.29pm

In reply to Post #462
Loved it Ken. Pioneering times even if it looks like a 70s German porn video

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#462 15 Jan 2021 at 12.22pm

In reply to Post #461
Just found a youtube vid of the Rainbow tripo in 1994.

Ultimate Carping - Rainbow Lake,

chopper

Posts: 4736

#461 3 May 2020 at 0.23am

In reply to Post #460

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#460 2 May 2020 at 1.05pm

In reply to Post #459
The sunsets and sunrises were always spectacular�

�and I shall never forget catching fish for the camera. This is the director of what was Romania's top angling TV program with Philippe, myself and a nice thirty pound common caught to order.

And of course how could I forget Olivia!

My little mascot George, enjoyed the place too!

But my most abiding memory is of sharing five fantastic weeks with one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet, the mad guy that is Philippe Lagabbe without whom all this would never have happened. Merci bien, M. le Bison!

Thanks for the memories.

Funnily enough this lock down, which has kept us cooped up for over five weeks now means that Tat has found chores galore to do that might not have got done had the virus not struck. I'll get back to this thread soon, I hope. In the meantime keep safe, keep well and most of all, keep SANE.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#459 2 May 2020 at 1.04pm

In reply to Post #458
Time to put this thread to bed. Here are a few Raduta scenic shots that I hope may give you some idea of the incredible adventures I enjoyed on this amazing lake. The isolation can be mind-numbing, but there is beauty all around, you just need to see past the hopes and dreams of giants and be happy for whatever comes along. There are so many carp in the lake, probably 100,000 or more so if the gods decide to award you a lump then that is because you had the winning ticket in that moment's raffle. The luck of the draw in other words.

That said, when the top anglers get on there they do seem to catch more than their share of biggies: Paisley, Briggs, Lagabbe, Hoogendjik, Danau�they all seem to draw the winning ticket on an annoyingly regular occasion.

Me? I guess I didn't enter the draw often enough! In my two sessions on the lake I had 100 carp over twenty pounds, the majority of which were over thirty. Yet in all those hours I managed only five forties. If your name's on it you will catch it�maybe! Philippe certainly had the Indian sign on the place.

There are many reminders of the lake's history before the valley was flooded. Sadly most of the buildings have fallen into disrepair, but one or two still remain .

Not all though�

The reservoir is enormous and to a newbie like me it was mind blowing. Luckily I had Raduta specialists Laggabe and Hoogendijk to see me right.

One memory I will take away from the place is not the fish or the fishing, it is the sound of bells ringing as a local farmer moves his flock of sheep and goats to new pastures, always accompanied by one or several of the semi-wild dogs that roam the hills.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#458 30 Apr 2020 at 11.20am

In reply to Post #457
Hi Dave...or should I say, Gurt? Great to hear from you. Hope you are well and still as enthusiastic about life, love and the pursuit of happiness as ever! Glad you are enjoying SWS. I've got to get back to it sometime soon but strangely this lock down business has seen me far too busy to be sat in front of a desktop all day. As you can see in post #7 I was then and remain heavily influenced by that great book you gave me. I still read it on a regular basis to keep my feet well and truly on the ground!

Dave_Step

Posts: 26

#457 28 Apr 2020 at 3.37pm

In reply to Post #23
Goodness me young Kenneth!!
That brings back some warm memories of beautiful places, some really nice people and some incredible carp of which few had names.
I'm going all nostalgic.
Good to see you are well and are surviving this awful virus.
Stay safe young man and thank you for the read.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#456 19 Apr 2020 at 3.32pm

In reply to Post #455
Got a few more pix from the Raduta trips to put up but first I need to scan them. Seeing as I have not got that much on my plate at the moment - thanks CV-19! - I shall try to get them up soon. Then, I think, for a while I'll go back to SW Memories rather than French ones.

Keep safe and sane, peeps

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#455 19 Apr 2020 at 8.40am

In reply to Post #454
Later I showed the photo (below) to Simon Crow and Steve Briggs both of whom had caught some very big fish from the lake. They both recognised it and told me that it was a known fish, not often caught, that had come out earlier in the year from a swim in Water Tower Bay to a French guy. On that occasion it weighed 25.5kg. Yes, it was the same fish that Xavier had caught on our session with Philippe, Leon and their his group of French anglers in May. It too had made the same six mile journey as I had just done up to the far end of the lake. These fish sure do like to travel.

Now here it was again caught by Philippe. A rough conversion put its weight at 54lb�What a sight for sore eyes it was!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#454 18 Apr 2020 at 3.24pm

In reply to Post #453
I set up in a deep channel running between the bank and a large island not far from the village of Magureni. Apparently the island was the site of a cemetery that was flooded when the valley and surrounding villages and churches were flooded after the river was damned at Pesana. Since then human bones washed up on the shore on a fairly frequent basis. Small wonder the population hated the now-executed dictator Ceausescu who had given the locals no option but to leave, and quickly, as the flood waters swamped their homes and livelihoods.

I took the boat out with the echo sounder pinging away and found fifteen feet of water only a dew yards out. Looking at the bank behind me it was clear that the steep slope there continued below the water and this slope continued down for a good 150-200 yards before flattening off. Then the level started to climb again towards for far bank, the slope here being a lot more gradual.

I laced the far margin with a couple of kilos of Trigga placing the majority of the bait along the fifteen foot contour, this being the successful depth in the other swim in Water Tower Bay. I also dropped a kilo of chops along the near margin, again concentrating on the fifteen foot contour line.

The wind had started to pick up as I set up the tent, which made this task a bit fraught. Luckily Philippe saw my struggles and came up to help me. He and his mate were set up about half a mile down the bank from me. Sport has been slow while he (and I!) had enjoyed the delights of Tuborg Gold but the change in the weather looked as if it might gee things up a bit! Sure enough, I had a take while we were still putting up the tent. That was quick. The fish was a comparative tiddler at a mere twenty-five pounds! Strange how you standards seem to change on an almost daily basis. Give anybody a 25lb common in the UK and they'd be doing cartwheels; the same fish at Raduta is shrugged off as a tiddler! Odd!

The weather was changing quickly now and as the light went the temperature dropped like a stone. The Romanian autumn had arrived at last. Bye-bye summer heat, shorts and a T-shirt. Hello chill winds, woolly jumpers and water proofs! Here waves march down the channel as a stiff north westerly wind blows down the length of the channel.

It started to rain hard, to bucket down, in fact, and with the cold wind and the heavy rain came a bit of a shock to the system after the very hot late summer weather we'd enjoyed in the first two weeks of the trip.

I sat in the tent looking down the channel towards the distant swim where the two Frenchies were fishing. My close in margin rod bucked and heaved in the breeze then suddenly the buzzer screamed out. Clearly this feisty weather was much to the carps' liking. In the fierce breeze the fish felt very heavy but I though that could well be the weight of the wind of the line and the rod. Indeed at times the rod was almost blown out of my grip, however, I got the fish into the margin and saw it was no size at all, probably only a low double. I unhooked it in the mat then rebaited and recast. (That white dot just past the headland down the bank is Philippe out in the boat playing his biggie.)

I put the kettle of for a brew and while I was boiling I noticed Pierre, Philippe's fishing partner, running up the bank towards me. He's in a bit of a hurry for a cuppa, I thought to myself! He arrived in my swim puffed out but full of beans, telling me that Philippe had caught one of the biggies.

Now I have probably mentioned this before but he never weighs his fish�ever! It's enough for Philippe that they are gorgeous and they have lent their beauty to him for a few brief moments. What a lovely attitude. I set off down the bank with Pierre, arriving in the swim to find Philippe playing another fish. Greedy sod!

It looked to me to be a low forty pound common, fat as a barrel but gorgeous for all that. We cracked a beer on the strength of it, and why not? It was worth a bit of a celebration, especially when Philippe told me that he had an even bigger common in the sack!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#453 17 Apr 2020 at 12.49pm

In reply to Post #452
Fishing in total isolation on the huge lake in Water Tower Bay was awesomely lonely and after spending time at the hotel with Philippe, and then returning to the solitude of the tent reinforced my feelings of sadness and loneliness. Another solitary sunset drove home the sense of isolation and frankly this was driving me mad. I determined to move the next day.

I decided to move right up the lake to the general area we had fished in May at Sandulita. Philippe and his mate were also up that way and it would be nice to have a bit of company for the last few days of the session. I packed down slowly and managed to manhandle the huge canvas bivvy into the boat, the best of the gear being piled on top. There was just about room for me to sit and row but it would be a long old haul.

As the crow flies the distance between the two swims was a mere two miles but bearing in mind the twists and turns taken by the course of the lake it was nearer a six mile row. I wasn't looking forward to that!

Luckily as I rowed through the Hotel Bay I noticed that Philippe's boat with the petrol outboard was still at the hotel slipway. I swung over to the jetty and went into the cool lobby of the hotel. I could hear Philippe's dulcet tones emanating from the bar so I hastened to join him. One again we got sidetracked into spending more time that we should have in the bar but eventually we wandered out into the setting sun and I hitched my well-loaded boat to Phil's petrol-engine'd one, and breathing a hearty sigh of relief that I did not have to row the rest of the way we set off towards the north west corner of the lake.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#452 17 Mar 2020 at 3.41pm

In reply to Post #451
Luckily for me none of the other three rods went off while I was out there dealing with the snag, which meant they were still handily placed and baited. All I needed to do was check over the end gear on the rod that had been snagged and get it back out there.

The weather was hardly conducive to great carp fishing as you can see from the pix; little or no wind and roasting hot. It was October yet the temperature remained in the mid-30s for day after day and the carp were not being exactly playful. More for something to do than anything else I walked across the fields to the hotel some three km away. In hindsight this was not such a great idea as the sun was blistering and I arrived in a pool of sweat. I was surprised to see Philippe's boat on the jetty so I went in search. I found him in the bar (what a surprise) and so we shared a quick larger then I went for a long, cool refreshing shower. This is the front aspect of the hotel from the jetty.

Philippe had moved to a swim in the Hotel Bay as he had arranged to meet with some friends from Bucharest who had come from a long weekend stay in the hotel. In this photo you can see his bivvy set up behind the trees that would provide much needed shade come the afternoon. In the near distance is the white mooring and landing jetty in front of the hotel, the red tiled roof of which can be seen above the trees. In the distance the huge expanse of World Cup Bay stretches away to wards the horizon while in the foreground Phil sets off in the boat to put a bit of bait into his swim.

It was great to meet up with Phil for a beer and a chat and the ice cold larger (Tubourg Gold) slipped down a treat in the cool of the bar, while outside the sun at last started it's slow dip to the far bank. One beer lead to another and for some reason or other I slept the afternoon dozing away under the cool shade of the weeping willows on the lawn in front of the hotel.

I awoke to a glorious sunset�

� but sod that: I was starving hungry and had a raging thirst. Somehow or other we got a bit distracted and after a good nose bag and a bottle or three of Romanian red (drink with caution) I booked a room for the night, as did Philippe.

Talking of sunsets, whenever the sun rose or set in a dramatic sky you could guarantee Philippe would be there with his camera.

At the time photography was no more than a passionate hobby for Philippe, albeit one that supported his work as an angling consultant for many French and UK companies. I was constantly amazed while fishing with the guy at the amount of time and effort he put into his photography - and this was before digital cameras - if you wanted to have your work accepted at the highest level you shot colour transparency film; not cheap and the amount Philippe used it must have cost him a fortune.

Philippe has not picked up a rod for many years now, as I think he became disillusioned with the circus that is modern carping. The "tiger cubs", as Big Bill calls them, are a bit too much for anglers of a certain age and while Philippe was largely responsible for the evolution of modern carping in France, the young social media chieftains, Bloggers and videoists are a far cry from how carping used to be. He is not the only one who finds this today's carp scene confusing, shrill and far to modern. I am firmly in his camp!

Philippe now devotes his considerable skills to being a hugely gifted photographer. If you are interested in photography that is art as well as documentary take a look at his website�in fact take a look even if at the moment you are not interested! I think you will be impressed.

Philippe's website.

The following morning I walked back to my lonely bivvy. Fishing on my own on such a huge, remote lake was a chastening experience. Loneliness can be a cruel mistress and despite the fact that it was calm, hot and sunny and the fishing continued on and off, with several beautiful commons ending up in my net, my disposition took a bit of a downturn. A week on your own with no company whatsoever can be pretty daunting and as I write this now during the 2020 CV-19 pandemic, I can truly sympathise with all those who live on their own and cannot get out for any meaningful social contact. It must be awful.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#451 17 Mar 2020 at 3.37pm

In reply to Post #450
Hi again. Suddenly I find myself with more time on my hands than I ever could have wished for. I should have been fishing in France at this very moment but due to the virus crisis that is now on hold. So I now have time to tell you a bit more about my Raduta trip in October 2003�

I mentioned the snags earlier and after a couple of nervous touch-and-go encounters with fish out on the plateau I finally had a serious take from a very powerful fish that snagged me up good and proper. As before I went out in the boat with the rod to see what could be done to retrieve the situation and on arriving over the top of the fish (was it still on?) I found everything was locked down solid.

I should mention at this point that on my first trip the previous May I had been shown how to set up the end gear to deal with the snags. This consisted on beefing up the last 30m or so with, first 20m of 85lb Ton Up, and then with an additional 10m length of 55lb heavy duty sea fishing nylon.

The braid and the nylon were joined using a Mahin knot that was sealed with a hefty dollop of Superglue.

This is the nylon I had been advised to use by Simon Crow, who had already enjoyed a few trips to the lake so his advice was well tried and tested. Penn nylon is renowned throughout the sea fishing world as one of the strongest, toughest and most abrasion resistant monos available. When it calls itself 'Super Tough' it ain't kidding.

Initially I used the new (at the time) Fox Submerge Braid on the reels but after a few outings I found it to be very hit and miss as far as sinking was concerned and on a couple of occasions the line seemed to be forced to the surface as weed and algae started to build up on the line. This meant I had to dump many meters of line when it simply became unusable.

Again on the recommendation of Crowy, I removed the troublesome Fox Submerge in favour of 50lb PowerPro. Though this is in effect a neutral buoyancy braid, when fished in deeper water with a heavy lead and bar taught line this was not a problem; certainly not like the "buoyant" Submerge had been. (To be fair to Fox, they quickly changed the specs of the original Submerge and released a second version, a denser braid that sank a brick.) This is the Power Pro with a length of Kryston 85lb b.s. Ton Up braid as an abrasion resistant leader.

So anyway, back to the story�Where the line seemed irretrievably snagged and I could not feel if the fish was still on or not. The line went straight down from the rod tip to the snag, the depth under the boat being about 25 feet. I now knew what had cost me those fish earlier in the trip, as I felt fairly sure this was the culprit for those lost fish. With the heavy duty end gear now within reach I was able to grab hold of it and wrapping it around my sleeve-padded arm I tried to heave it free of the snag. Not a chance! It was set solid in the bottom. I took a couple of half hitches around one of the thwarts and pulled hard on the oars to try to move the snag with the boat... and believe it or not the bottom started to move!

Little by little whatever it was began to rise up from the bottom. I could feel nothing on the line but a heavy weight and cursed the fact that the snag had cost me what had felt like a good fish. Meanwhile I still had the snag to deal with. Bit by bit I started to gain line and leaning over the side of the boat I saw what looked like half a tree looming under the boat. I could see the end gear (sadly a carp-free zone) and with the snag now within reach I manhandled it towards the boat though try as I might I could not get it aboard and the last thing I wanted was to drop it back onto my hot spot. I got it alongside the boat and got a length of mooring rope around it, and then slowly began to row back to the shore. It seemed to take me forever but at last I got into shallow water where I could step out of the boat onto solid ground. Now I could get the damn thing ashore. It was as long as the twelve foot boat and equally as deep and it weighed half a ton (maybe!). Here it is. In the cold light of day it doesn't look much but this photo doesn't do it justice.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#450 25 Feb 2020 at 3.41pm

In reply to Post #449
It was a very pleasant interlude in very interesting company and I went back to my swim hoping to see Olivier and his model again some time before I left. A few days went by. I caught quite a few more carp and passed the time of day with a spinning rod and a plastic lure catching zander and the odd perch. Great fun.

Then one day a boat pulled ashore about 50 yards down from me and out stepped Olivier. In the boat with him was a gorgeous young girl who he introduced as Olivia. This could get confusing! We sat and had a beer and Olivier then casually told me that he�d like me to catch him a big common carp, at lest thirty pounds in weight, so he could do some photos with Olivia as the sun was setting. Just like that, eh? Don�t want much do �e? From the cloudless sky it would clearly be a beautiful sunset but catching a 30lb common to order is not a task I relished, and I told him so in no uncertain fashion. �I trust you Ken,� he said. �I know you won�t let me down. We�ll be back in a couple of hours!� So saying they sailed off into the distance.

I thought I should make a bit of an effort, seeing as how he had asked so nicely, so I put fresh bait out over the existing hookbaits and hoped that would do the trick.

An hour or so later I saw Olivier�s boat heading back towards me. Bugger! I haven�t got a carp for him, let alone a thirty, I thought to myself, whereupon the rod in the near gully was away. After a lively scrap I landed, yes, you�ve guessed it, a big common, well over the requested size. I acted all nonchalant, as if I catch big commons to order every day, and to be honest, I felt a bit smug. Meanwhile Olivia was in my tent getting changed�Oh to have been a fly on that wall!

Finally we were ready and I lifted the carp up and placed it gently in her arms. Even though she had never handled a carp that big before she was a model professional and she posed while Olivier fired off hundreds of shots on his pro-model DSLR Fuji. One of those shots appeared in the Zebco calendar the following year. I think you�ll agree it�s a cracker�so�s the carp.

Satisfied with his work Olivier then asked me to pose in the water with the fish. It�s not every day that you get a professional photographer to take your trophy shots but when (if) it happens you grab the opportunity with both hands.

And that is the tale � two tales actually � of a couple of memorable episodes that took place during a that session on the amazing Lake Raduta in October 2003. What a year, what a session. What a lucky bugger!

I'll come back to round off the trip next time.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#449 25 Feb 2020 at 3.37pm

In reply to Post #448
Now for a look at the sacked fish. I brought one of the sacks ashore and did the ritual pix. Another beautiful fish.

Finally a third common posed for the cameras.

So that is the story of how I once had four on at once and landed all of them. I guess you wouldn�t think life could get any better than that, but you�d be wrong! Later that day I had another five takes, lost one to the snags but landed the others, one of which was a lovely 42lb + common.

Another thirty pound common�This was getting boring�NOT!

It was a long trip, three weeks all but a day, and a man needs some R&R at some period during such a grueller, so half way through I wound in and walked across the fields back to the hotel for a shower and a beer or six. I was relaxing outside in the sunshine when Robert came out to join me, a couple of cold beers in hand and accompanied by a big stocky fella. This chap was from Kiev and he had told Robert that he and his friends had heard than Philippe and myself were on the lake and they wanted us to join them for a beer, if that was alright.

Alright! I should say so!

Philippe was still way up the lake and I had not heard how he was getting on, so I suggested to the Ukrainian guy that we could drive up to fetch him. Yep, this met with general approval so off we set in his 4WD. The big guy seemed confident in where he was going but after about half an hour driving this way and that, and never getting anywhere near Philippe's swim we were well and truly lost. Driving up and own the roads in the back of beyond showed me just how primitive the country was if you wandered away from civilization.

Eventually we abandoned any hope of reaching Philippe's swim and more by good luck than good judgment we eventually ended up at the Ukrainians' swim in World Cup Bay, where a good time was clearly being had by the big guy's three remaining countrymen. Soon I was deep in my cups on prime Ukraine Vodka.

We were drinking out of shot glasses with a rounded bottom so impossible to put down anywhere. It seemed the done thing was to down the lethal oil-like liquid in one as soon as your glass was filled. When one by one they started falling by the wayside I made my excuses and left, as the NotW would put it! I walked back to the hotel and cadged a bed for the night off Robert who was quite amused to hear my story. Apparently these guys were renowned for getting visitors to the lake well and truly spannered!

Nest morning at breakfast, nursing a sore head and gulping down gallons of coffee and guy came to my table and asked if he could join me. Of course, I said, and we got talking. He told me that he knew Philippe both as an angler and as a superb photographer and he introduced himself as Olivier Portrat and handed me a business card. On it he described himself as an �Angling and Outdoor Writer, Photographer and Tackle Consultant� and kind of threw in the comment that he was in Romania to do some photos for the 2004 Zebco calendar.

Now anyone who likes to mix glamour and angling will know that they don�t come any better than the Zebco calendar, and as I was just such a chap this told me all I needed to know about Olivier. And once he had shown me a few examples of his work, I had no reason to doubt the fact that here was one talented fella. We chatted for a while about this and that, and he told me that he was at the lake mainly to get some good shots of zander in the hands or on the rods of one of several Romanian models that had accompanied him to the lake. I told him where I was fishing and said he was welcome top drop in for a tea or stronger if he was passing, especially if he was going to be in the company of a pretty girl! It turns out that Olivier was no stranger to the latter!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#448 25 Feb 2020 at 3.35pm

In reply to Post #447
As I was fishing on my own the easy option would have been to cast all four rods to the deep channel at 30m, but the call of distant waters was hard to resist and though it posed quite a challenge the plateau was clearly the place to be fishing. Yes, I would put one rod in the channel but the others were all going out at range with a scattering of bait, around each rod!

It was blowing hard and there was quite a chop on. In fact, getting afloat was a bit problematical, the boat shipping water over the gunwales, the waves threatening to swamp it at one stage. Still, I managed to get out far enough to stop and bail out, and anyway, I welcomed the wind, as I knew full well that they liked a bit of a blow on Raduta.

I used the boat and the sounder to find what I hoped were suitable spots, then scattered the bait far and wide about the plateau. I then dropped each baited hook from the boat and then piled a scattering of kilos of tigers over the top of the hookbaits before rowing back to the bank. So there we are, all set up for the coming night and maybe a bit of action, three rods on the plateau, the fourth being cast into the deep channel off to my right. I poured myself a beer and then sat back to watch the sunset going down leaving a purple sheen over the lake.

Nothing happened that first night in the new swim, but at first light the next morning I watched a jaw dropping display of fish showing all over the plateau. They were clearly having a very hearty breakfast!

I was full of expectation but the sun rose and the activity seemed to die out almost completely. Had they wiped me out? Should I refresh the swim and put on new hookbaits?

I was pondering the answer to those questions when the middle rod of the three on the plateau was away. I picked up and straight away the rod was wrenched down by an almighty tug. I was using 35lb braid mainline and drop-off leads so by leaning back on the rod I was able to bring the fish up off the bottom. Some 250m out a huge tail slapped the water to foam as the fish set off across the top of the plateau running from right to left in front of me. Pump and grind, pump and grind, eventually the fish was close to the bank, and after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing it lollopped into the net. Looked a good fish too.

I had it on the mat and had just reached for the scales when the rod in the channel was away. Hastily I bundled the fish on the mat into a sack, picked up the rod and struck. Immediately I knew that this was nothing special, for it felt every inch a grassie. The lack of fight told me all I needed to know. Now this may sound strange but at that time grass carp didn�t really �count� at Raduta, as there were thousands of them in the lake and to be honest I think most folk would rather avoid them than catch them�I am no different!

Not bothered if the grassie got off, I put the rod back on the rest with the clutch set lightly and made sure the one in the sack was staked out securely, then returned to the rods to winch in the grassie. Beeeeep! Suddenly the two remaining rods out long went off almost simultaneously. This was the left and right hand rods and the hookbaits must have been at least 100m apart. What size was the shoal of fish out there?

Leaving the grassie to its own devices I hit the left hand rod and started to play it in. Almost immediately it snagged me up, so I put that rod back on the rests and turned to the right hand rod. This one came in grudgingly and it was clear it was no grassie. After about 25 minutes of pump and grind I had the fish in the net; a common and a good one too. I sacked that one up as well.

So the situation is this: I�ve landed and sacked a two nice commons and I've got another fish snagged up on me out on the plateau and, almost forgot, a grassie doing absolutely nothing apart from sulking somewhere not too far out. Let�s get that one out of the way! Grassies only fight properly when they see the net and then only briefly, so I simply winched this one in to the net, allowed it to go bonkers for a while and then lifted it out onto the mat. I put it straight back.

Now all that was left was the snagged fish way out yonder! I got in the boat with the rod and a net and gradually reeled myself out to the snag. The right hand edge of the plateau was the shallowest and when I arrived over the top of the snag I could actually see clouds of silt coming up off the bottom. The fish was still on!

Luckily I was using a 10m length of 45lb Quicksilver and a 2m length of 50lb nylon to deal with the abrasive nature of the lakebed, and these two were doing their job admirably! I wound down and heaved and low and behold the whole snag lifted off the bottom in a great cloud of silt. I could clearly see my line and amazingly it was wound only lightly around a large vine branch. It was a matter of seconds to ping the line off the snag, which dropped away quickly and then the fish was off like a train towing me and the boat around the lake. Thankfully it headed towards the bank but after about ten minutes it seemed to weaken and after a really brilliant fight I got the fish into the net and then into the boat. It was another scale- perfect common.

Back on the bank she went 37lb 12oz! Wow, what a result! A few pics and back she went.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#447 25 Feb 2020 at 3.34pm

In reply to Post #446
After a protracted and tiresome battle I finally managed to break down the tent, pack it into the boat and transport it across the lake to the opposite shore. The map below shows the path I took with the boat and the new swim, which was more or less in the same spot as Xav had fished in May.

This photo taken in May shows the Cove Swim with out two big tents and across the other side you can just about make out another bivvy. This is Xav's biv and is more or less in the spot I had decided to fish after moving out of the Cove.

Crossing the lake with the sounder switched on revealed a couple of interesting features towards the far side, which could be fished quite easily from the new swim. However, by the time I managed to get the tent up to my liking and the bedchair and the rest of the paraphernalia sorted out it was closing in on dark and I still hadn't eaten a thing all day. I set up the rods and did a pub chuck into the lake, casting only fifty or sixty yards or so. Better a bait in the water than a bait in the bait box! Thus tidied away I cooked a bit of dinner and turned in.

You will not be surprised to know that given the pub casts the night was a blank one but at least I'd got a good night's sleep had been the result. I made a cuppa and sat in the door of the test, watching the sun come up across the village away to me left. Now, given a chance to look about I took in my new circumstances. The swim was nice and dry, flat with a bit of mud at the water's edge. The lake surface was white calm, dimpled here and there by small fry and the odd splash and scatter as the zander had their breakfast. It was a lovely sight and it heralded a warm day.

It's amazing what a bright new dawn can do to liven up one's day but it was made still better when a battered old Land River pulled up behind the swim. In it were the two ghillies who had looked after Philippe and myself in May and with them was Philippe himself. Philippe said I had made a good move situated as I was some a quarter of a mile or so down from Becker�s Point on the north bank of the huge bay.

In the past Philippe had caught well from the swim and he helped me enormously by pointing out the hot areas that had been good for him, a deep channel running across the swim some 30 yards from the bank, and a huge plateau between 150-200 yards out. I wondered if this was simply the same plateau we had fish from the Cove but Philippe said, no, it was not as wide but was much longer than the one in from of the cove.

Well breakfasted and raring to go I went out in the boat to look for the features. It was good to have Philippe's input and it gave me added confidence in the move. The echo sounder confirmed what Philippe had told me. The screen revealed a more or less lozenge shaped feature narrowing at both ends and opening out in the middle. It was I guessed some 200m long and 80m wide at its widest point, rising up from about thirty feet at its foot to maybe twelve feet at its shallowest point. The whole area was carpeted in snags: old vines and rocks that were festooned in mussels that clung to every obstruction. It was probably the snaggiest swim I have ever fished, but the fish were there.

In close the gully was easy to find, a slender channel that almost seemed to be man made so straight and narrow did it run. It was an easy cast from the bank. This is a rough idea of the features. The red dot is the famous Becker's Point, my new swim is marked with a blue dot. The rough positions of channel and the plateau are marked in white.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#446 22 Feb 2020 at 3.47pm

In reply to Post #445
Three in the morning and I was fully awake. No point just lying here, Kenny boy, I told myself. Get out of your pit and put the rods out. From my previous trip to the lake I had the landmarks for the plateau more or less stored in the grey matter that I laughingly call my brain so the trip out in the dark was not as hit and miss as one might imagine. Soon the echo sounder indicated the steep rise of the leading edge of the plateau and the first rod went over the side. I dropped the second bait about twenty yards further on and I scattered a few tigers here and there about the general area.

The morning was fresh and cold but by the time I got all the rods out and the markers well positioned the sun was peeking from behind the clouds over to my right heralding a decent day, I hoped.

I got back in the bag with a cuppa and a packet of biscuits and soon I was well away, catching up on some much needed sleep, however less than an hour later I was roused from my slumber by a screaming sounder box. That was quick! I played the fish in from the bank and soon I had a rare (for me) mirror in the net. No great size, about mid twenties I would say.

Rod rebaited and rowed back out to the plateau, I once again turned in to try to get a bit of sleep.

I was rudely awakened by a loud angry voice. A gesticulating Dutchman had got the right hump with me for fishing "his" swim. He told me that he had been baiting the area for months! I told him that he was talking ball cocks as there had been no sign of him back in May! Perhaps that wasn't the most diplomatic thing to say, as his ire now seemed to go off the scale. Anything for a quiet life I told him I was quite happy to share the swim with him, whereupon it transpired that there were three of them. One I can handle, three, no way. Eventually we worked out what I thought was a reasonable compromise. I would stay put and he could fish the right hand section of the plateau from the next swim to my right below the water tower while I kept my rods on the left. The feature was plenty big enough for two, as Philippe and I had shown on the previous visit back in May.

The day passed without any more fishy action, but my new neighbours seemed hell bent on encroaching further and further onto the plateau until I found myself once again squeezed out to the left. I could not believe these guys; from the water tower to the plateau must have been at least 400 yards! It was a good long way for me at about two hundred yards but these guys were fishing twice that distance. What was galling was the fact that there are several very tasty marks in front of the water tower they could have fished. I made up my mind to move the next morning.

I could see that the swim where Xav had fished in May was free so at first light the next morning I started packing up. It was near enough a kilometre across the bay to the new swim but luckily I now had the boat in full working order but even so it would still take me at least a couple of trips to move to the new swim. I got much of the gear into the boat OK and did the first trip across without any problem. I was a bit gutted when I crossed the plateau to see quite a few fish marking the sounder but I was resigned to the fact that there was no way I could fish enjoyably in peace and quiet with my noisy neighbours. They were welcome to the fish that showed on the screen; I just hoped they were bream

Meantime I turned my attention to the huge canvas bivvy that had been set up in my swim in the cove. I had no idea how it came to bits and even less how it went up again but needs must�

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#445 22 Feb 2020 at 3.42pm

In reply to Post #444
So we pick up the story a few months later and again I was a guest of Robert Raduta and Philippe Lagabbe. Sadly this time I was to fish on my own as Philippe had agreed to fish with a young French guy on his first visit abroad. He was a smashing fella so I hoped that maybe we could all squeeze into a swim together as had been the case in May. However, Philippe had decided to fish a totally new area of the lake, leaving me to do my own thing, whatever that might be.

Philippe and his young companion started the two week session way up the lake towards the Sandulita Bay are we had started on the May session. According to Robert a lot of fish were coming out from that area so the pair were naturally keen to take his advice. I thought I would err on the side of caution and take the easy option to begin with so decided to fish the same swim where we had done so well last time in the small cove swim near the water tower in Preasna Bay. The read dot is me, the white dot is Philippe and his mate. That's about four miles between the two swims.

When I finally got a boat (yes, there is no way to access the cove swim by road s a boat is essential) yet more delay hit me. Unfortunately the engine I was due to use had been used and abused by the party before me on the lake and it was in need of a few running repairs. The problem was caused by floating braid, which had entangled the prop seizing the engine solid. Luckily I am used to sorting out this kind of mess but I had no tools with which to remove the prop boss in order to get at the cotter pin. When I eventually found a tool box and removed the boss, I found that the cotter pin had been replaced with a nail! If the original pin had been in place it would have sheared off making the removal of the braid a lot easier. As it was the nail didn't shear and the prop kept spinning until many yards of braid ended up in the prop. It took me about an hour to get at the pin, remove it, then remove the many yards of braid that was entangled in around the drive shaft. Nightmare!

Finally I got to the swim as night was drawing in. With no time to loose I went out in the boat to find the plateau we had fished in May. I had with me a plentiful supply of Dynamite's Frenzied hempseed and tigers, which were to be the main bait on this session.

I also had some Techni Spice shelfies with me, which I intended to use as an alternative bait on a couple of rods. The one kilo bag had been kicking around in my rucksack for a year or more as it is my go-to bait when the going is tough. That bag had done some miles! It had come with me every on every trip and in all the years I have used it, they have never failed me! I don't use them every time, only when I am scratching for a take but when the chips are down they don't 'alf work!

As before I used simple set ups, mainly tough nylon or braid knotless knotted to a size one or two hook. The pix are pretty self explanatory.

As well and the Dynamite and Nutrabaits stuff, Vlad had got hold of some very decent high oil pellets that had done well at Raduta Lake over the summer months. He'd given me a 25kg sack of them. He told me to pile it in, the more the merrier as the carp loved them!

Baiting up finished, I set about getting some rods ready. It was near enough dark by now, and I was dog tired from the trip over. First the drive up from Cornwall to Heathrow then the long wait + flight with British Airways to Otopeni Airport, and finally the journey to the lake from Bucharest. This would normally take less than an hour but for some unknown reason the driver that came to pick me up got lost! Then there was the problem with the bait and the engine�I turned in�The rods can wait!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#444 21 Feb 2020 at 8.55am

In reply to Post #443
What a night! In our final 24 hours Philippe continued to catch. It got so that in the end we were both playing fish at the same time. For those last four days we had a gale of wind blowing right in our faces for 90% of the time. It was virtually impossible to get out to the plateau most of the time but with just as many fish coming at 30-40 yards, it wasn�t a problem.

So that�s the story of my first trip to Sarulesti. I cannot in all honesty tell you how many fish I caught as I simply lost count after a while. Philippe reckons we caught around 125 fish between us and he says I must have caught at least seventy of them! I�ll take his word for it. All I know is I shall never forget that session on the wonderful lake.

Here the sun rises above the village of Preasna. The wind is just beginning to ruffle the surface, typical of east winds that come up with the sun. We knew that it would strengthen as the daylight strengthened heralding another day's superb carp fishing.

The lake had got right under my skin and Philippe told me they were planning a repeat visit in early autumn. He asked casually, "fancy coming along?" I nearly kissed him.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#443 21 Feb 2020 at 8.53am

In reply to Post #442
Once again the weather fate lent a hand. Suddenly a repeat of that fierce wind sprang up, blowing straight into our bank with waves three feet high crashing onto the shingle beach at out feet. It was impossible to use the boat as it would have been swamped within a couple of yards of the shore. This meant that it was also impossible to take baits out to the plateau so I had no option other than cast into the wind dropping the baits only twenty to thirty yards out. I fished two rods on the shelf and two at the foot of the drop in about 28 feet of water. The wind was really hacking into out faces and once again the huge area of coloured water spread out into the lake.

I felt sure the fish would respond as they did in the previous big blow and sure enough, they did. Over the next 48 hours Philippe and I caught with almost predictable regularity, a fish an hour each! All our carp came to rods cast from the bank to the marginal shelf at depths between 15-28 feet of water. It was easy fishing, brilliant fishing, exhausting fishing, and with the fish averaging low thirties we were having a whale of a time. They were like peas in a pod, those long sleek commons. We must have hit on the Mother Lode!

The margin hot spots continued to produce and we picked up carp regularly in the onshore gale of wind. Here you can see just how rough it had become as Philippe plays a big carp in a lively surf.

It felt odd to be fishing such a massive expanse of water yet to be baiting up with a catapult or a throwing stick but the fish were in close. There must have been hundreds of them and they were on the feed and wanted bait and we were there to give it to them!

The weather continued to confuse�one minute blowing a hoolie, the next white calm. Now, as quickly as it had sprung up the wind died completely allowing me to take all four rods out to the plateau to the spots I had fished over the weekend some two hundred yards out from the bank. What a difference a day makes. Look at the lovely placid surface of the lake and compare it to the pix of the swim during the blow.

Moving them back to the long range feature paid off big style. Out on the plateau the big girls had come out to play! I caught three forty pound commons in less than 24 hours. First was a nice fish of just over the forty pound mark, followed by a 42lb 12oz common, a glorious fish a yard long and as sleek as a bullet.

The third forty was my biggest of the trip so far, a big dumpy lump of a common. It was hardly the most beautiful fish in the world but at 45lb 8oz, I wasn't complaining.

Meanwhile the blow came back with a vengeance and yet more big girls went on a feeding spree, spurred no doubt by the big wind. Across from us Xavier landed a gorgeous 25kg common, and Philippe and I both had commons of over 40lb. This is Xav's.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#442 21 Feb 2020 at 8.47am

In reply to Post #441
Across the bay I could see Xav busily baiting up his swim. From when I was standing it looked as if he was fishing the same plateau as us, but from the other side�Perhaps I needed a shower!

Meanwhile Philippe put two rods out onto the plateau and two off to the right on the drop-off ledge. That left me a large bit of the plateau to go at, and as I was not having any action in close I decided to put all four rods out long again.

Tuesday morning arrived and with it came a Romania film crew. They wanted to shoot several 30-minute shows dealing with tackle, bait and tactics for the lake. Vlad was fronting the show for Romanian television and he conducted his first interview with me on the lawn of the hotel overlooking the lake. I don�t know why they were asking me about tactics as it was only my first visit to the lake, but I was flattered to be asked, however for this first interview Vlad wanted to quiz me about bait as my articles in the Romanian magazine has established me as some kind of bait buff. ('E don't know me too well, do 'e?).

Philippe and I had again caught well during the night and we had a couple of decent fish to show them for the filming. I must admit, it did feel strange but apparently the programs were very well received when they aired at prime time on Saturday mornings. In fact I�ve been asked to go back and do some more. Whatever is the carp world coming too? Here�s we are I in true pose mode!

Filming and interviewing took up most of the morning. The interviewer was my old mate Vlad Pavlovici who at the time worked for the British Council. His spoken English and French was immaculate so asking questions in either language was easy for him.

While we were being filmed a young French guy rowed across to chat to us. His arrival was well timed as one of my rods went off almost the minute he arrived. He'd blanked so far so I said he could have the honour�

By now I had caught over fifty fish and was getting exhausted! The majority of the fish were commons, many of them over thirty pounds. Sadly I had yet to catch one of the lakes really huge fish which ran to over seventy pounds, but I was more than happy with my lot and everyone agreed that given the numbers of fish I was catching it was only a matter of time before something a bit better came along. Philippe was catching plenty too but by contrast he was working less hard for his fish as 90% of his takes were coming from the margins. He kept on at me to leave at least one rod in close but I wasn�t confident about it. The fact was that even though Philippe was catching well from in close, whenever I put a rod close in on the left hand side of the swim it remained untouched. I wanted runs, the more the merrier, so it was the plateau or nothing for me.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#441 21 Feb 2020 at 8.43am

In reply to Post #440
It was hard graft getting the baits in position on the plateau on my own in the rough conditions so in the end gave up on the long range rods deciding instead to concentrate on the margins, where thanks to the continuing onshore wind the fish continued to feed at throwing stick distance.

It was a decision that paid off in style; I caught eight carp in the first 24 hours while I was on my jack in the swim, all bright silver or gold commons like peas in a pod. That's more like it!

Sunday morning and the wind began to die down and the fish drifted off into the deeper water, probably heading back out to the plateau. I rowed all four rods out to the plateau and baited up heavily with tigers and hemp plus several kilos of shelf life Trigga. I also added the last of my Big Fish Mix to the bait carpet for good measure. It felt odd to be out there in the boat throwing in kilo after kilo of bait but it was clear there were a lot of carp in front of me now so there was no good reason to be frugal with the bait.

Sure enough the fish kept me awake all night. No rest for the wicked; again I caught another eight commons of between twenty-five and thirty-five pounds including a long, lean, bright silver common of 35lb 8oz.. What a night!

After a brief lull in the proceedings while I caught up on some sleep the fish came back with a vengeance any by nightfall Sunday I had landed another five thirties including this thirty pound beauty.

I looked in the bait chest. The level was dropping alarmingly and It was frightening to see just how much bait those Sarulesti carp could devour. In fact I don't think I was putting in anything like enough but if I didn't want to run out of bait I would have to start rationing!

Xav and Philippe spent another night in the hotel so again I felt pretty confident it would all kick off during the coming Sunday night. And I wasn�t wrong! I had a further nine fish during darkness including all thirties, all over 15kg in weight, magnificent looking beasts, immensely long and totally virgin, never caught before. As the night was calm I took each bait back to the plateau after every fish landed. Hard work, but worth it.

Monday morning and I felt totally knackered! The swim looked like it had been shelled, gear scattered everywhere, the tent a mess and my sleeping bag damp and cold - too much getting in and out of it to land fish! In three the nights fishing that I had the swim to myself I had caught thirty-one carp, all commons, most over thirty pounds in weight. That's the stuff of dreams and no mistake. In fact I was having trouble convincing myself that this was actually happening�I was having an outstanding session.

Philippe got back Monday mid-morning and immediately took the boat out to rebait the plateau after I had told him of my astonishing run of big fish that had been caught from the area while he was away. There was no doubting the effectiveness of the baits we were using as some of the fish were excreting the Robin Red-boosted Big Fish Mix in the sack.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#440 21 Feb 2020 at 8.38am

In reply to Post #439
Saturday morning came and the wind blew even harder. It was an onshore wind and the waves marched in serried ranks towards us, the wind blowing the tops off the waves and sending spray flying. Waves were crashing onto the beach and as expected the fish seemed to like the lively weather. With the wind came two exceptional fish. First Philippe latched into a fish on one of his margin rods less than 30 yards from the bank at first light. Here Xav (with the bucket) and Leon, help Philippe get ready for the pix.

The fish picked up his hookbait on the fifteen foot shelf on the drop-off and at such close range it really tore off. It was an incredible fight from an incredible fish. According to Philippe it was one of the originals, a mirror we put at about 20kg or so we guesstimated.

That fish was to result in some of the most spectacular photos I have ever taken and they have been used many times in magazines over the years. The waves and the swell we not conducive to photos of a guy trying to put back a large carp, but I thank the fishing gods that Philippe decided it was worth a try. He found out the hard way that such a task in a rising sea is not easy!

Not to be outdone Xav latched into another amazing looking fish, again from the drop-off at very close range a near fully-scaled mirror, a big round fish with massive 'apple tart'-like scaling. (Incidentally, that is what the French call these big heavily scaled fish, "tarte au pomme" - apple tarts.) It was the most gorgeous fish you could imagine, and the photos don�t really do it justice. It weighed just over 35lb.

Two amazing fish in a brief early morning feeding spell from a spot really close to the bank. It seemed amazing that you could catch just a few rod lengths out in such an enormous expanse of water, but Xavier, Leon and Philippe have caught stacks of big Sarulesti fish well within casting range and you would be wrong to imagine that all the fishing is at extreme range, taking the baits out by boat. The conditions helped no end, of course.

In fact it was blowing so strongly that a huge zone of highly coloured water began to form as sand and silt was disturbed from the lake bed an swirled into suspension in the water in front of us. I'd say this disturbed, coloured water reached out some thirty yards into the lake and obviously a lot of natural food was getting swirled around at the same time, drawing in carp to feed in the coloured water.

Surprisingly Xav decided to move across the lake to a swim more or less opposite the cove where we were fishing. Philippe had fished this swim before in very similar conditions and had caught well, strange given that the wind would be behind the angler. I think Xav was feeling a bit cramped fishing as he was between Philippe and myself, but so far I had not had a sniff while he had caught! Odd! Anyway, he packed up and moved his rods which would mean I could now get some rods onto the distant plateau.

Xavier, Leon and Philippe had to pull off the lake for the Saturday evening to say goodbye to some of their French tour anglers who were going home after a week, and to greet others who were arriving for their week. This left the swim entirely to me and I was going to make the most of it! That afternoon I caught my first Romanian carp, a common of 28lb. Nice start and who cares if mid-twenties are considered 'small'.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#439 21 Feb 2020 at 8.36am

In reply to Post #438
Obviously we would need to use the boat to take the baited rods out to the plateau as it was too far for us to cast. We decided to fish two rods each on the top of the plateau and two each on the drop-off. Twelve rods on a feature may sound like too many but remember this was no small tiddly little plateau you might find in a home counties gravel pit, it was a massive one the size of a small field�

�well, that was the plan; what I had not allowed for was the highly competitive nature of my two French companions. Philippe and Xav had already established themselves, sharing a bivvy in the middle of the swim, Philippe's rods to the centre and right, Xav's to the centre and left. This left me precious little room to put my baits on the feature, huge though it was. My bivvy was on the left hand side of the swim, which meant my rods were squeezed out to the extreme left hand side. I was hard pushed to get a bait anywhere on the plateau. In the end I had to resign myself to dropping my baits way off to my left on open ground with no discernible features to be found. Here Philippe sets off in the boat to bait the plateau and drop a hookbait on it.

Bait for the trip was Trigga in both shelf life and fresh, as well as some home mades Big Fish Mix boilies that had been home-rolled prior to the trip. They were heavily loaded with additional Robin Red to compliment the RR already present in the original base mix. The finished baits were then air dried until they were rock-hard.

The boiled baits were backed up with preserved tiger nuts and hempseed from Dynamite Baits, the preserved version one can buy in the large jars. Dynamite had sent out a dozen 2.5kg jars of the nuts along with some of their preserved Frenzied hempseed.

At last we had some semblance of order in the swim, though I cannot say I was to delighted with my tail-end-Charlie position shoved out on the left of the swim. Still at least I had some rods in the water�at last!

The darkness brought a gale force wind from the east�I hate and wind with east in it, all they ever bring me are blanks! Little did I know that my dislike, on this occasion anyway, was ill informed! We sat in Philippe and Xav's tent sharing a brew, the door flap done up tight, the porch flapping in the fierce wind.

That first night, the Thursday and apparently 'big fish Thursday' according to the French guys, Xav caught a nice common of about 35lb and a grass carp, while Philippe caught two what I would call very decent commons of around 25lb or so. He didn't weight them but then he would not have done so even if they had been double that size. Philippe has never weighed a carp in his life claiming that it demeans them He likens it to you going out on the pull, scoring with a drop-dead gorgeous girl, taking her home, making her breakfast in bed, then as she is leaving you ask her to�"pop-up on these scales for us for a minute would you?"

Mid twenties are apparently considered small for the lake! They looked big enough to me; I would have given a king�s ransom for either of those fish at the time. Little did I know what was to come later!

The weather was totally unpredictable, one minute white calm, the next blowing a hoolie. Meanwhile it had become rather lively, to say the least with three foot waves crashing onto the shoreline at our feet, spray flying everywhere. It was like being on the beach at Brighton and I couldn't help thinking that the gale force onshore wind would push the carp in to our bank, even into casting range. That would be nice, as taking the baits out 200+ yards to the plateau was rather wearing, especially if you had to bail out the boat first!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#438 15 Feb 2020 at 4.16pm

In reply to Post #437
So long story short, the signs all seemed to suggest that the fish were grouped up in the bigger bays so after a quick scout around we all decided to head for Water Tower Bay where a few fish had been caught by the rest of the party. Now here we were in our third swim, a beach-like affair not far from the eponymous water tower in the massive bay. There were just three other anglers fishing the bay before Phil, Xav and me arrived so we doubled the number of anglers fishing there. Mind you, in 700 acres you could never call it crowded! That red dot indicates our swim.

After setting up camp in two substantial canvas tents we went out in the boat for a look-see. The bay was 700 acres and the swim itself was about four miles from the base camp at the hotel so we also needed to shop for food and other victuals. The whole lake is more than 1,200 acres in size so you can imagine how essential it was to have access by boat as the roads were non-existent!

With the outboard engine chugging along happily we used the echo sounder to scan the lake bed. The underwater topography looked perfect. From the margins in front of the tents the bottom dropped away quickly to about 25 feet, then shelved gently as we moved out further into the lake. Then about two hundred yards from the swim a large plateau began to show on the sounder, the bottom climbing steeply from thirty feet to about 15 feet in a matter of yards. Further exploration showed that the plateau itself was huge stretching out over an area the size of several tennis courts. It was roughly rectangular in shape and the depth to the top varied between 15-18 feet, the surrounding water being an average of thirty feet deep. The red line shows the distance and rough size of the plateau.

Using a donking rod (a six foot long sea fishing rod carrying a reel loaded with braid with a ten ounce lead on the end) we found that the lake bed on the top of the plateau was pretty solid and by dragging the lead over the lake bed we could feel the distinctive pluck-pluck of mussel beds,

In close, no more than 30-40 yards from the bank, the bottom plunged steeply down in an acute drop-off, falling quickly to about 25-30 feet and half way down the drop-off a narrow ledge some two yards wide seemed to run along its length. Depth to the ledge was also about 15 feet. This looked as if it would be an ideal spot to fish after dark or in big onshore winds when the fish would almost certainly patrol the drop-off. We baited the plateau and the margins with tiger nuts and boilies; lots of boilies; about 10 kg of boilies�!

How much! Well there was method in what may seem at first to be madness. All three of the guys had fished the lake before and they knew full well the size of the shoals that formed in some of the bays and just how much bait these fish could go through. Luckily we had a lot!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#437 15 Feb 2020 at 4.11pm

In reply to Post #436
Now while it was supposed to be a 2-week trip a strange set of bizarre circumstances conspired to limit me to just eight days proper fishing. Basically what happened was this. I was working for Fox International at the time and the gear I wanted to use was sent out for me by Fox, as was the Nutrabaits gear Phil and I were going to use. The whole shebang was flown out in three pallet loads by FedEx and was supposed to complete the journey to the hotel by road transport. Romania was adapting slowly to the idea that they would have to abide by the rules and regulations of the EU in less than four years time, Union having announced that together with Bulgaria the country would join in 2007, however, in 2003 corruption was rife in the customs and excise service. Surprise, surprise, my gear was impounded at customs until the relevant 'import duty' was paid, something in the region of $500! I didn't have that amount to hand and anyway, I was buggered if I was going to give in to bribery and corruption.

So I ended up with no rods, reels, end gear, leads, bedchair sleeping bag and worst of all, no bait. Luckily for Phil all his gear had arrived thanks to the company for whom he worked, the tyre company Michelin. They had sent his tackle and bulky items via their own contract with DHL and because they had a few irons in the fire in Romania no such 'duty' was necessary and his gear made it to the hotel without having to cough up the 'duty'.

As for me, well there was nothing for it but to wait until Monday and then go in to try to sort things out at Customs. Meanwhile I slept under a blanket of the floor of the tent while in the village a huge party went on through the Saturday night and into the Sunday. The noise was raucous and continued unabated more or less for the whole weekend. I stuck this out for the Saturday night but come Sunday I was tearing my hair out. Luckily Robert offered me a room in the hotel which meant I could get an early start in retrieving my gear. Phil meanwhile had cadged a bag of Leon's bait off him so at least he could fish. Here an old church dominates the far side of the bay, which dwarfs Phil's rods.

I slept like a log that Sunday night after enjoying a very nice dinner and a few ales as well as a bit of a party with some German hunters who were breaking their stay at the hotel while on a hunting party shooting wild bore. To be honest I think the wine, women and song was more important than the wild bore! If you've ever been to Robert's hotel you may know what I mean!

Monday I telephoned Vlad Pavlovici who worked for the British Council, though he was also a consultant to various tackle companies including Fox, Solar, Nash and Nutrabaits�He had some clout in other words, and this clout extended to him having a quiet word in the necessary ears, as a result of which my gear mysteriously was released with no 'duty' owning. Thanks, Vlad!

Phil fished the weekend to no avail and had decided to move so on Monday morning he arrived at the hotel with much of his gear. The bailiffs (they were more ghillies than bailiffs to be honest) were bringing the rest of his gear by boat. Leon and Xav had not started fishing yet but by Tuesday we were all set up in various swims in the Hotel Bay. My gear had by now arrived thanks in part to Vlad's intervention and perhaps also thanks to a quiet word from Robert, who had even more clout than Vlad. I set up on a point looking down the channel towards World Cup Bay. It was a tasty swim that looked very promising as it covered a huge area of the lake, which I had all to myself.

Thirty six hours into the trip and reports from the various pair of French anglers spread out around the lake began to trickle in. It seems that the two largest bays were providing the action, that is if you could call six fish between twenty anglers 'action'. It was nice and warm in the spring sunshine and the hotel was in easy walking distance�the bar beckoned and as Phil has the breaking strain of a Kit-Kat it didn't take much arm twisting to persuade him that a glass or two would be a great idea. Certainly we weren't missing much as nobody in the Hotel Bay had so much as a sniff. However, it was nice to watch the storks stalking!

�and then getting fed up and flying away!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#436 15 Feb 2020 at 4.08pm

In reply to Post #435
Anyway, back to the story (incidentally this is an expanded repeat of one of my blogs for Haith's).

In all honesty I never had the slightest intention of fishing the lake, not even when the press was being flooded with articles and pictures of huge fish caught in true adventure-style conditions, complete with marauding mice, plague dogs, humans bones and gypsy villages. That's being a bit unkind to the dogs, as they were usually loveable old rogues who only wanted a bit of love shown to them. Once you had befriended any one of the hundreds of dogs you had a friend for the entirety of your stay. This one adopted Philippe and me when we fished close to the village of Sandulita.

Come the early noughties and Sarulesti, to give it its proper name, was well entrenched on the �circuit� and not being one for following the crowds to such venues I steered clear. And that�s how things would have stayed had I not got caught up in the French carp protection group the UNCM run by Philippe Lagabbe and Eric Deboutrois, both of whom had been to the lake at least once and were raving about it. At the same time I had started writing for a Romanian publication submitting words and pix to the carp editor of the magazine Vlad Pavlovici.

Back in France, Phil had teamed up with a couple of well known carp anglers, Leon Hoogendijk and Xavier Paolozzi and the three of them had started doing trips to Sarulesti. Meanwhile Vlad was on about me going out there to fish the huge lake and maybe do some TV�Hang on a minute, this is me you�re talking about; me�Ken Townley. Are you sure?

I remained rather reluctant to go out there until finally Phil twisted my arm. He said that he, Xavier and Leon were taking a group of French guys to the lake for a fortnight's trip and did I want to come? I could fish for free and all he asked was that I make myself available and maybe give a few tips on carp fishing and generally make myself useful. Oh yes�and he�d pay my expenses too! Well a man can only put up so much resistance and so it was that I found myself in the heady company of a group of French carpists drinking cold beers in the lakeside hotel in the red-hot May of 2003. This Robert Raduta's hotel situated on the banks of the lake that is popularly known by his surname, Lake Raduta.

I believe Robert himself was quite well connected and he moved in pretty impressive and exclusive circles. In particular he was apparently an excellent tennis player and coached the Romanian team that included Ilie Nastase.

I flew into Bucharest airport and met up with a few French guys who had just arrived. A battered fleet of minibuses was on hand to take us out to the lake where I met up with the rest of the party, as well as Leon, Xav and Philippe. Here the trio is outlining the areas to be fished, briefing them as the group drew for swims.

Me and Phil ended up right at the top of the lake in a swim beside a rubbish dump - I kid you not - at the mouth of Sandulita Bay. Home for the trip was a huge canvas tent that had been erected for us by a couple of the lake's bailiffs�they could have chosen a bit more of a salubrious spot!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#435 14 Feb 2020 at 4.12pm

In reply to Post #434
Sarulesti 2003

OK, I know I was going to talk about my couple of years on the Emperor Lake Syndicate (ELS) but that can wait for a while, as instead I want to revisit the two trips I made to the famous Romanian lake at Sarulesti. This is a huge lake some 45 miles east of Bucharest, capital of Romania. The country was once part of the Iron Curtain countries, very much under the thumb of the Russian bear and ruled by the hated dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. This man was as feared and despised every bit as much as were Stalin and Hitler, ruling Romania from 1965 until his death in 1989. He became infamous for his lavish lifestyle, and started to build a palace for himself in the 1980s with miles of marble floors and thousands of crystal chandeliers with gold lavished upon the interior while his countrymen starved. He was overthrown in the popular revolution of December 1989 and together with his wife was summarily executed by firing squad on Christmas Day of that year.

Often called 'The Last Stalinist' Ceausescu was cruelty personified but strangely enough the lake at Sarulesti is a direct consequence of his plans for a vast self-sustaining infrastructure. Part of those plans called for the construction of dams along the course of a large tributary of the Danube and these created vast reservoirs that were used for irrigation, fish farming and other commercial fresh water activities. This is just a tiny part of the Sarulesti Lake (Raduta Lake) seen from the dam wall.

And this is a nice common caught in the small Dam Bay (if you call 100 acres small!)

The lake is 1,200 acres in size and was created when the valley was flooded to create one of the five huge lakes that lie along the river's course. The reservoir below Sarulesti is even bigger, being over six miles long and measuring 2,000 acres!

As an historical footnote, the water also flooded several villages on the river bank and the residents were offered no alternative accommodation nor given sufficient time to relocate their monuments, churches and graveyards. Consequently human remains could be seen washed up on the banks.

You can more or less split the lake into distinct, almost separate zones, the canals and the bays. Naturally enough the canals connect the bays, most of which are huge in themselves. They are all huge but one of the largest is Preasna Bay, which is 700 acres. It is named after the village that lies on the western side of the bay and overlooks it. Other bays are the so-called World Cup Bay, Sandulita Bay, the Hotel Bay and Magureni Bay. On my first visit we fished initially in Sandulita and our swim is marked with a red dot. We moved from there to Preasna Bay, again indicated by the red dot. The hotel is marked with a blue dot.

Fish are caught all over the lake and while each bay and channel seems to hold a resident population, they are also pretty nomadic and they wander from one end of the lake to the other is a surprisingly short time. For instance, the fish shown below was initially caught in Preasna Bay and was then recaptured the following day in Magureni Bay, a distance of some four miles. No wonder it was hungry!

Back in the early noughties Raduta was famous for its carp but nowadays there seems to be more emphasis put on the Beluga sturgeon that go to over 300lb. That's not to say that the carp fishing takes a back seat, far from it. The carp fishing has come on it leaps and bounds since the fish kill in 2004 and once again there are several fish in the 60-70 lb bracket.

In addition the predator fishing is as good as ever with some enormous perch, black bass, zander and pike being the prime species. The lake is absolutely crammed with bait fish so it is small wonder that the predator fishing is so good. The zander in particular are great fun.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#434 24 Jan 2020 at 2.10pm

In reply to Post #433
Alongside the joking and banter there was some serious work carried out by the Syndicate. When Tanners was first dug the designer thought it might be a good idea to create a feature on the lake bed between the islands so a circle of breeze blocks was laid and then filled in with gravel. We called it the Magic Roundabout. In theory this was a great idea but in practice it was a pain in the jacksie. We lost fish on the sharp edges of the blocks and the gravel sank without trance into the mud of the lake. It became such a hazard that we decided it must come out. It was tiring and very muddy work!

Tanners was a bleak and dire place in the depths of winter when all the vegetation had died back and the banks were a sea of mud. However, good company and the prospect of an evening beer kept the spirits up. Here me and Nige have a discussion about who drank my pint last night!

This is the lake in the bleak mid-winter.

It could be a real frost trap too.

Compare that with the good old summertime.

Koi snatching was something of a competitive sport when things were slow, cold and tough. An evening or two on a betalight float and sweetcorn would bring steady fun action with the kois, which averaged about 5lb. Pretty as a picture they were too.

Tat and I have some very happy memories of our Clawford days. With the change of ownership from private into corporate hands one wonders what the future will hold. Certainly there are still some big carp in the lakes and as long as the 'suits' understand what they have got then the potential for great carp fishing is there. If the offspring of the originals is anything to go by there will be some lovely carp in there to target.

So it's so long to Clawford and John & Wanda and all the crew. Have a happy retirement.

Here are a few parting shots. H goes in for one!

I'll get the Emperor lake pix scanned soon and we'll head to the South Hams for more reminiscences.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#433 24 Jan 2020 at 2.02pm

In reply to Post #432
Having described the social side of the Clawford years in (probably) more detail that is strictly necessary in a carp fishing blog you may well be asking yourself, do they ever go fishing? Well, yes, we did a bit here and there and enjoyed ourselves enormously. The 5Cs was a great group of people and there was literally zero competition, no big egos. We shared knowledge, and bait and rigs and beers. It was some of the best fishing of my life. Here are a few happy memories.

Terry Taylor plays a Tanners Lake fish while his daughter stands by with the net. Young Sam (in the cap), a fellow syndicate member watches proceedings.

Here's the result�

Talking of Sam, he was no slouch with a carp rod either.

My mate Nige Britton could catch carp from a raindrop and Clawford was just one of the lakes all over the UK an Europe where he showed his skills to great effect. Having retired and moved to a cottage overlooking the R. Lot in France, no doubt those cunning river carp are also now getting the Nige treatment. Here's the guy with a Clawford biggie.

Steve Churchill, along with Nige and a few other like-minded anglers in Roche AC such as Big Kev, Colin and yours truly were entirely responsible for turning the Club around, creating a brilliant carp-friendly club that attracted membership to such an extent that we had to close the books. A subsequent committee under the leadership of the legendary Gert Louster, and his fellow Cornish carpers, took things on a step further, cementing the Club's finances and setting it on a secure footing that made Roche the envy of the south west carp scene. Sadly the Club today is a far cry from those halcyon days�

�but enough of that. On a brighter note, Steve was another RAC stalwart that found the atmosphere and the carp at Clawford greatly to his liking.

Harry (H) was always a great laugh and when the going got tough he got going. He is another very good angler but of course, being the Fishery Manager at Clawford gave him a huge advantage (only joking, H!) but he too could catch carp from a puddle. In fact I became the Tanners Lake's official photographer as far as H's carp were concerned; I spent more time taking pix of his fish than he did of mine, that's for sure.

There were some right good carp in Tanners back in the day and this common was the first to go over the thirty pound mark. Others followed and for a while Tanners was the 'must have' ticket in the two counties. With so many of the syndicate on good baits - Prems, BFM, the Reservoir Special and Trigga in the main - it was small wonder that the fish put on the pounds.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#432 23 Jan 2020 at 5.05pm

In reply to Post #431
�including how to spot Hyakutake's Comet, which filled the night sky over SW France for a brief few hours during our visit. Bill was in his pit that evening and as I knew that the glorious cosmic visitor was due that night I was up and waiting for it to appear. It was fantastic, like a long zip fastener blasting though the Cosmos.

"Bill!" I shouted. "Come out and see this. It's amazing!."

What is�?" asked Bill. I told him about the comet's trail that filled the sky.

"Yeah, OK,," he said. "I'll catch it a bit later!"

I didn't have the heart to tell him that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see one of the greatest Cosmic spectacles of his or anyone else's life, that would not return for another 70,000 years! Oh well�!

Now if that had been Chilts it would have been a different story. He, like me, takes great pleasure in star-watching.

This is Bill's first French target fish, a fish that set him on his path to legendary glory�or so he says!

Bill, just in case you don't know, is a fanatical supporter of Sheffield Wednesday FC and he can bore for England on the subject. Nige is equally fanatical about Nottingham Forest. In consequence whenever the two meet on a football Saturday, money will change hands depending on the result. On this occasion, when Bill came down to do a slide show, Forest won and Bill handed over the tenner through gritted teeth!

As I mentioned just now, Pete Amey will always be close to the heart of Nutrabaits�

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#431 23 Jan 2020 at 5.02pm

In reply to Post #430
Marcus Watts is a very significant figure on the SW carp scene. Once a tackle dealer in Wadebridge, Marcus made a big name for himself by catching many of our region's finest carp, among them the then College record of 34lb.

So great a reputation did Marcus acquire that anglers flocked to his shop to buy his baits. One in particular, which was called the Reservoir Special was rightly feted as one of the best fishmeal baits in the country, and to be fair, it did catch everywhere. Small wonder that he was head-hunted by Dynamite Baits who tasked him with the development of their boiled bait range. Thus the Reservoir Special became The Source�Nuff said!

Marcus was also a regular at Carp Society events, often attending Conference and regional meetings on behalf of Dynamite, usually in the company of one of the big names of our sport such as Terry Hearne or Frank Warwick (seen here). Marcus is the very tall geezer at the back.

Also in picture are two of the nicest people in Cornish carping, Lee and Alison Critcher. They are behind Frank left and right of his bonce! I could write reams about these two. Lee a gentle giant of a man and his missus a lovely lass with a heart of gold. She was a Development Manager for a regional business expansion and development organisation back in the 90s and she worked at developing small businesses in the St Austell area. As such she helped me refurbish my office from the creaking old set up I had at the time to a brand new all- singing all- dancing office suite; new PC, new scanner, new printer, new just about everything, and all as a low cost interest-free grant. Bless you, lass! She was always smiling and was a capable and happy member of the Clawford Syndicate, as was Lee. They both knew how to catch a carp or two as well!

As did her old man�

I did a couple of shows myself but only as a support act, once to Frank and a second time to Bill Cottam. Bill was always great fun. His northern sense of humour kept us in stitches. Bill seems to have nurtured his talent for telling funny stories and he once contributed occasional pieces for Carpworld called 'Carping Allegedly' If you haven't seen them I suggest you look online. There are one or two archived pieces to be found, including one that details Bill's extraordinary talents for biscuit eating, in which he gives us a list of his all-time top ten Favourite Biscuits�only Bill Cottam�!

A truly gifted angler, Bill would not only make us laugh but also make us think. He has always used his own Uber Method, keeping things simple and using the best bait money could buy (Trigga). The Graviers Scar Fish and the Saussaie common are just two of his worthy trophies, however, I think I can claim the fame for sparking the big fella's flame for large continental carp. I took him to Boffins Pool in March 1996 as Bill had set his sights on catching the long forty pound common that Tat had caught the previous year. He accomplished this fairly rapidly, though sadly at a tad under the forty pound mark. Not to worry, said Bill. Mission accomplished. So it was that Bill caught his first French biggie. I taught him all I knew on that trip�

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#430 23 Jan 2020 at 4.59pm

In reply to Post #429
I don't think we could have found a better venue for the meetings. Clawford had everything including free carp fishing; yes, John even agreed to open the carp lakes to Carp Society members who attended the meetings and quite a few guys and gals took him up on the offer. In addition there was B&B accommodation and bivvy space on the lawn in front of the farm house for those who wanted to stay over and indulge! Add to that the comfort of the lounge and the splendid bar and restaurant and you could say that the venue had everything! This is the lawn in front of the farm house�bivvy space galore. We held some terrific meetings there and they only stopped because John fell gravely ill.

Some of the best speakers of the day were kind enough to come and do shows for us, donating raffle prizes, signing autographs and the like. All they asked was a bed for the night and to be well fed and watered�Well, John made sure of that! Here Nige gets the round in!

Tim and Mary loved the West Country and would always respond with a happy, "yes" when asked to come down to us to do a show. This is Tim with the guy he called 'The Devon Tench Angler' a title award to our great mate Pete Amey. For a few years Devon man Pete worked in Kent. He was a brickie by trade and he was a bloody hard worker. He'd go where the money was best and that wasn't Devon or Cornwall back in the day. While living and working up country Pete joined Halls (Leisure Sport) and was for a while a bailiff on Darenth. There he had a fearsome reputation as a guy who would stand no nonsense (he represented Britain in the 1960 Olympics as a wrestler so if he said jump you said how high!).

He was also a formidable catcher of specimen tench, though whether this was by accident or design was never made clear! On the right of the shot of Tim and his dad is Pete Amey Junior, an accomplished angler who takes after his Dad. By strange quirk of fate both Petes caught huge Devon carp from the same venue within a week of each other. Dad caught 'Smirk' the well known ELS mirror at 51lb while Junior caught another ELS monster at 44lb! He also had a trial for West Ham but he didn't quite make it! (Lucky escape there, Peter mate!)

Pete Amey was a lifelong Nutrabaits user and in fact he was cherished by the company, as he was the fist guy to buy a job lot of Hi Nu Val and all three Addits, the company's first commercial products. Bill never forgot that and always kept a kindly eye out for Pete over the thirty odd years that he used Nutrabaits. I've got a pic of Pete with a lovely mid thirty from Kent somewhere but at the moment I am buggered if I can find it. Tim did a couple of seasons on Darenth in the early 80s and got to know Pete very well. In fact, it was through Pete that Tim got to meet the Darenth crew that would later take on the testing of the fledgling HERNV (Hi Nu Val) and the amino acids and other powders (the Addit range) that would soon feature on the bait scene. Here's Tim and Pete at a Clawford show.

And this is Tim, trying to explain the complexities of his HERNV bait to a confused attendee at one of the shows. A bemused John Ray looks on.

Surrey all rounder Bill Rushmer and his wife Ginny were frequent visitors to Clawford and Bill came down a couple of times to do a show for us. He was a fascinating speaker and they were both terrific anglers. Ginny in particular could charm them out of Major John's while Bill himself practised quick fire match fishing on JR's Lake.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#429 20 Jan 2020 at 3.05pm

In reply to Post #428
It all started one weekend when Tat and I were supposedly fishing but got side tracked in the bar. We got talking to John about the Carp Society and reminiscing about our previous meetings under the old regime back in the good old days. I told him we were looking for a venue on the Devon/Cornwall border where we could hold meetings. "Why not have them here?" John asked. "We could do dinners, breakfasts, rooms for those that wanted and there's plenty of bivvy room outside."

In fact it had everything we could possibly wish for so I got cracking on doing a bit of advertising trying to drum up support. I no longer had my list of CS members but a troll around the tackle shops in the two counties son spread the word so once again we were back at it organising some of the best regional meeting anywhere in the country (he said modestly).

By now John had formed a carp syndicate on Clawford which covered the fishing on three lakes, JR's, Major John's and Tanners. The syndicate was called the Five Cs (Clawford's Crafty Carpers Carp Club), a slight dig, perhaps, at another nearby syndicate? Membership was restricted to Devon and Cornwall residents only and I soon managed to part fill it with my friends from Roche AC, Steve, Nige, Lee and Ali, to whom it became a home from home. I imagine the bar/restaurant had a fair part to play in their decision to join!

Many an evening was spent in jovial competition in the game of Spoof. This is lethal and can turn out pretty expensive and intoxicating! The rules, for those that don't know the game, are simple yet complex to the uninitiated.

Each player - there came be as many as want to play - holds in his closed fist up to three coins. One coin, two, three or even no coins at all. Players take it in turn to guess the total number of coins held hidden in the closed fists by the group. For instance, if ten are playing that means there could be a maximum of thirty coins so player 1 might call "twenty". Player 2 might call "seventeen". Player 3 "twenty-six" and so on. Gradually each player makes his choice. (It is best to be the last of the ten to call as that gives you some idea of who is holding what, also bearing in mind what you yourself are holding and who you think is bluffing.) When all ten have called the players open their fists to reveal what they are holding. The winner is the guy or girl that guesses the correct total who then drops out of the game and the next round commences. Now the nine remaining players start again, the first caller being the player to the left of the first round winner�are you following me�?

Here a late night group, some of whom should be fishing, is Spoofing for the last round (which it seldom was!). From left to right, Harry (H), John the boss, Wanda the real boss, Nigel and a mystery player whose fist is all we see of him. I suspect it is Steve. I have already won a call so I am out and thus am doing the pic.

After each round the winner drops out until only two players are left. These two play off against each other until there is a final winner. (This is the best round of all as the two can only be holding a maximum of six or a minimum of none.) The winner drops out leaving the group looser - the last one standing, if you like - to buy the next round!

Now as you can see, Spoof is very much a bluffer's paradise and many a happy Saturday night was spent fishing Spoofing in the bar at Clawford. Often holiday visitors would join in and if I remember rightly this group were from Wales. I think the lass on the right has the hump as she has had to buy the last round! As you can see the Cornios, Steve, Nige and me, are already out. We cheat!

Still, all's well that end well and even if you loose you send up smiling as you'll be as pissed as a pudding, especially if it's a large group of players.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#428 20 Jan 2020 at 2.06pm

In reply to Post #427
We had great fun at The Shrubbery and many members stayed overnight. The beer ran freely, as did the G &Ts, the humour, the carpy tales and the good natured joshing. Those meetings were always a good laugh, as I am sure anyone who attended one will agree.

The Carp Society was a wonderful vibrant, enthusiastic organisation at the time and this can-do attitude lead eventually to it purchasing outright Horseshoe Lake. Sadly the repercussion of the purchase put the Society in a somewhat vulnerable position and a committee purge meant that all the stalwarts that had formed and supported it from Day One were out on the street and a team of what I called 'city slickers' took over. In time it became clear that the 'new' Carp Society as constructed by the replacement committee was in it for one thing only: Money!

Gradually the regional organisation fell apart. Regions lost membership and the CS didn't seem to care any more. All they wanted to do was protect their nest eggs, the Sandown Show and Horseshoe Lake, while at the same time stripping the CS of any assets they could get their hands on. With the regional structure ripped up Tat and I could no longer be the Regional Organisers for the Devon & Cornwall region so we stepped down. We hated what the Society had become and felt totally adrift from the new structure. We handed over the region's Society funds, which were considerable as we always made a small profit on the meetings, little knowing that the funds would be swallowed up by 'jollies' and 'members' expense'!

It took legal action that went as far as the High Court to prise the sticky fingers of the 'city slickers' away from the Society but eventually they were ousted with the CS's remaining assets still intact. Once again Tim Paisley and his team of Society die-hards from the old days restructured the CS and kept its finances secure. With Tim once again at the helm of the Carp Society (it was, in effect, his baby) we again felt able to try to resurrect the region and by chance found a willing and able host in John and Wanda's Clawford Vineyard. This is how our Society meetings usually ended up!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#427 20 Jan 2020 at 12.53pm

In reply to Post #426
Some of my fondest SW memories are of the Carp Society meetings we held all over the area. When the Society was formed in 1981 I knew nothing about it. Then by chance I dropped into Tackle Up, a tackle shop in Ash Vale, and saw on the counter a small pile of Carp Fisher magazines, the first such mag published by the Carp Society. The magazine - the one with Mike Wilson with an amazing Savay mirror on the cover - drew me in an held me in awe. What a carp, what a photo! I got talking to the shop owner, Colin Chandler, who was taking new members on behalf of the Society. I signed up straight away. My number was 1066 (significant or otherwise? I have often asked myself that!).

So began a long association with the CS and at the first meeting Tim Paisley asked Tat and I to be the Regional Organisers for the Devon and Cornwall branch. I had started a tentative (pen) friendship with Tim when I wrote to him about bait. Tim's expansive letter drew me deep into the carp bait world, though to date I am still to figure out much of it! However, my connection with Tim, who was the Society's first Secretary, opened doors and getting hold of top flight speakers for our meetings was a piece of cake (I suspect Tim did a lot of arm twisting on our behalf!). You can read more about my naive forays into the bait world in my Haith's Baits Blogs:

Link 1...

Link 2...

So it was the we held our very first regional meeting at the Exeter Court Hotel on the A38 at the foot of Haldon Hill. Tim was once of the speakers, Ritchie the other. Rod was supposed to come down too but in the end he couldn't make it. Ritchie more than made up for Rod's absence. Anyone who has been fortunate to hear one of Ritchie's talks will know what I mean!

And that was just the first of many. In order to attract the very best speakers we decided to hold our meetings a little closer to what many might call civilisation so we moved venues to The Shrubbery Hotel, Ilminster (now a Best Western).

Being that bit closer to the Home Counties meant that we could attract the cream of the top anglers for the area and over the years our guest list read like a Who's Who of carp fishing. We had Tim, Ritchie, Andy Little, Bob Baker, Albert Romp, Chris Yates, Bob James, Clive and Malc, Rod (eventually!), Mike Wilson and many other famous names.

We always tried to do that little bit more for the guests and attendees. We offered good hotel rooms meals, a buffet or two, space to bivvy up if required (it often was!). Thus we always managed to get great attendances for our meeting and we treated our guests like royalty. Another thing: we noticed that many of the regions up country had loads more members than little old Devon and Cornwall and their meetings attracted many members and non-members alike, often well into the hundreds strong. Invariably the meetings held in these highly populated regions took place in the evenings, often in midweek. Me and Tat knew this would not work for us as both members and speakers would have a long trips each end of the meeting. We therefore decided to hold ours on a Saturday afternoon and evening, usually laying on a meal at half time, and a decent raffle at the whistle. This was Tat's brainwave and as a result we always had full houses and eventually the demand was such that we had to restrict numbers, the meetings being ticket-only affairs.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#426 17 Jan 2020 at 3.56pm

In reply to Post #425
What neither of us knew was that Bill had other plans for the pre-dig fishmeal for he and Lee Walton were putting together the early trial versions of Trigga. Trigga was eventually launched in the spring of 2001 and it soon became Nutrabaits' top seller. It followed the increasingly popular tendency towards totally natural ingredients and attractors and the base mix contained no artificial ingredients. Key to its success was in my opinion the same blend of hydrolysed marine meals that Bill had sent me to try out on the Big Fish Mix. In addition Trigga contained low fat organic marine proteins, milk and whey proteins and the key secret (yes, truly) ingredient Trigga Powder. The latter had been touted to Bill buy a guy who worked in the cat food industry. The powder was added to tinned feeds to make them more attractive and at the same time easier to digest Knowing a good thing when he saw one Bill bit the guy's hand off but not before gaining an assurance that the Powder would not be touted to any other bait firm. At the time of the launch nobody, and I mean NOBODY, knew what the Powder was or where it came from. This well guarded secret lasted about 18 months before the beans were spilled! In the meanwhile we had a field day.

There's a funny story behind the development of Trigga prior to its release. When I was first given the bait for field testing it came in ready rolled frozen form. I had no idea what the base mix consisted of or what liquid attractors were included. I was simply sent 20kg of 15mm baits and told to get on with it! Little did I know but all the other Nutrabaits field testers had been treated the same way but each one of them had a different version of the bait. As luck would have it I was sent a batch of bait that didn�t work too well. Thinking that all the testers were experiencing similar results I got in touch with Bill and told him I thought the bait was rubbish! A few weeks later Bill told me what he'd been doing. Each of the testers had received a batch of the bait, each one containing a different level of pre-dig and Trigga powder. When the results came in (both good and bad) Bill was able to refine the base mix with the optimum levels of each ingredient. The next batch he sent me took me to another dimension on Tanners!

I have long had a passion for paste baits, always being aware that they are short term as small fry will readily attack and paste be it a freebie or a hookbait. If you can live with this and accept that you have to rebait frequently then there is no better bait than a nice amino-oozing fish meal paste. I used both the Stage 2 BFM and Trigga in paste form to great effect on Tanners, and while messing about with them one day I came up with an idea for mounting a double paste bait on the hair. This is it:

The stocking mesh-wrapped baits were mounted cross wise through a small bait band�I guess I had inadvertently invented the Bollox Rig some dozen years or so before it became more widely used at Rainbow Lake!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#425 17 Jan 2020 at 3.51pm

In reply to Post #424
I didn't take me long to fall in love with Tanners. It was my kind of carp water, small, intimate and very beautiful.

Not easy, though, as I quickly discovered. It was not some sit, bait and wait type of water and I needed to think about my fishing to get the best from the lake. I eventually achieved a modicum of success at the lake over the years but Tanners came under a fair amount of pressure once the word spread about the quality of the fishing and the carp definitely wised up. The Tanners carp were not stupid and they were not fooled for long by what soon became the standard tactics on such a small lake, namely mini baits, light line tiny hookbaits, etc. I had looked at the �standard� approach of most of the regulars on Tanners and found it wanting. True, it had worked for a while but it didn't seem to be doing the business. I felt a bit of a swerve from the tried & trusted was called for.

I was not much of a rig changer back in the day (same as these days in fact) but I had seen most of the rigs others were using at the time and they were invariably long, supple hooklinks and tiny hooks, the thinking being that if they couldn't see of feel the hooklink they (the carp) would trip up. That's all well and good but if the fish are feeding warily, as I was sure the carp in Tanners were, then these ultra long hooklinks also gave the fish plenty of opportunity to spit out the hook and hookbait. I thought if I went to the opposite end of the scale, big leads, stiff hooklink material and big hooks I might get a few on the bank. Thus I came up with this set up which comprises a 4oz lead and four inch 25lb Quicksilver hooklink to a size 2 hook. The hookbait itself was 20-25mm in diameter!

From the mid 90s onwards the trend on the lake had been for a really delicate approach using ultra light running leads, flying back leads, lead core behind the lead, etc. etc. Baits were invariably tiny 8-10mm boilies fished on long critically balanced confidence rigs over a small carpet of pellet or ground bait or simply a PVA bag of the same. Tactics were always to cast to the margins of the islands with a tiny hook bait put as tight to the island as possible. Six inches off was regarded as too far out! I followed this doctrine for a while but it soon became obvious to me that the carp were getting wise to the approach as loads of the anglers were reporting aborted runs, stuttery pick ups and fish bow waving off the bait carpet. Fishing open water seemed to me to be the ideal switch tactic, though I will admit I would always keep one rod tight to the margins.

All in all this switch in tactics worked well for me and continued to do so throughout my years on the complex.

Does anyone remember the heatwave summer of 2003? I went up a few times that summer but the heat was crippling. I remember fishing on the hottest day of the year, when the temperature reached 38.5 degrees. It was impossible to stay in the bivvy after 11.00h; it was like an oven. The sun was relentless that summer but nevertheless, I enjoyed it immensely, thanks in no small part to the bar and Wanda's grub. I used to bait the open water quite heavily with freebies and was pretty happy with the sessions as a whole given the conditions. In three 36-hour trips in August I landed eleven fish including seven twenties including a beautiful common. At the same time other guests were struggling. This was my swim on Tanners when the heatwave struck.

I don't want this thread to turn into some boring old 'how to do it' one but if I can give just one piece of advice to anglers who are struggling on their lake it would be to consider the size of their hookbaits and freebies. For instance, go into your local tackle shop or chat to the peeps visiting the conferences. Ask them what size (and shape) baits they are using. I am sure that the consensus would be in favour of medium sized freebies and hookbaits. Ask your tackle dealer which is the most popular size shelfie he sells. I'll take a bet he'll say 15mm! So first off try something different. If everyone�s using 15mm baits why don�t you try larger or smaller than the norm? For Tanners, while everybody was on crumb sized 'bits' I got busy in the kitchen with the bait gun and made up some giant baits of about 25mm. This totally flew in the face of the accepted wisdom at the lake but it worked a treat, and not just on Tanners. It has been a tactic that has worked for me on many waters.

Baitwise back then I was firmly in the Nutrabaits camp (as I had been since the mid-80s, so using their premier mixes was a given. I had been testing a version of Big Fish Mix that contained a pre-digested fishmeal which I called Stage Two Big Fish Mix. This was in the early days of hydrolysed (enzyme treated) feeds and liquids but it became clear to all Bill that there was something in them. I had passed on my theories and ideas to Bill who was also working along the same lines. The BFM Stage 2 was also in use by others in the Nutrabaits came such as Paul Selman, though neither of use knew that the other was working along similar lines!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#424 6 Jan 2020 at 4.55pm

In reply to Post #423
We jump ahead several years and as predicted Clawford became something of a hot spot for the west country's coarse anglers. The two carp lakes, Tanner's and Major John's, had been stocked with some decent carp from several reliable sources and these were now doing well. In addition our mate Harry ('H') had been appointed fishery manager and he told us that the lakes were producing some decent fish up to mid twenties. The complex had also been extended and now there were seven lakes on site. Of these two were designated as specimen carp lakes, the others being mixed species fun lakes. This shot was taken (I am guessing here) in about 2002.

I went up a few times for a few winter sessions and renewed my association with the Clawford bar and restaurant. John and Wanda's hospitality had, if anything, got even more expansive and it was a hard place to leave on a wet and windy winter's night in order to return to a damp, smelly bivvy. But you won't catch anything in the bar, or so the story goes! (Though that assertion was often a bit wide of the mark in 'certain' Home Counties venues...cough!) This is a typical winter scenic on Tanners, icy cold, indicators frozen on their mounts and the line frozen in the rod rings, reels frozen almost solid!

It took me a couple of visits to get to grips with Tanners, the lake I fished almost exclusively throughout the Clawford years. It has to be one of the most challenging and frustrating waters I have ever fished. Whenever I fished it I knew full well that I had fish in front of me but at times I couldn't buy a take. Fish showed over the bait on and off throughout the day and night but pick ups (for me at least) were few and far between. You could see them and hear them at night they were the most elusive of carp.

I really wish I could understand carp�Maybe then I�ll catch a bit better! Mind you, that first winter campaign I did up there was a bitter one, which made leaving the warmth and comfort of the bar and the hotel all the harder. Indeed, I will freely confess to staying a pint too long on the odd occasion and being offered a bed for the night thanks to Wanda's kindness. This is a view of Fletcher's from my bedroom window. Nice innit! (The stakes you can see on the hillside opposite are the supports for the vines after which the complex is named.)

Tanner's had the Indian sign on me and no mistake and my good nature was not improved by having to net several of the lake's biggies for H, who often fished the nights on Tanner's.

Way back in 1981 when the Carp Society was formed, Tat & I took on the job of Regional Organisers for the Devon & Cornwall area. We did two stints as ROs first when Tim was at the helm and again, later, when Tim managed to oust the disastrous committee that had come close to destroying the Society. We had some lively and exciting regional meetings at venues all around the south west, attracting some of the top speakers of the day, however, none were so much fun as those we held at Clawford. There are a couple of famous faces here (and one or two infamous ones too!).

By now quite a few of my mates from Cornwall had joined the Clawford Syndicate, which was rapidly gaining a decent reputation for itself. Nige and Steve (from Roche AC's committee) joined as did a fair few of the Devon Mafia and it soon became a lively and jovial syndicate with much emphasis being put upon time away from the lake, if you get my meaning. Having a pub so nearby can be very distracting.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#423 6 Jan 2020 at 4.51pm

In reply to Post #422
It was a lovely warm day when I arrived at Clawford. What a venue�78 acres of rolling hills with the River Claw running through the valley. At the time there were only three lakes on the complex, Fletcher's, a small two acre lake in front of the farmhouse, and down the valley JR's Lake and Tanner's. These had just been dug and were not ready to receive fish stocks at that time, however, the latter would become a favourite carp lake for myself and a few of my mates in the coming years. In this shot, taken later that year on a winter visit, Tanners is on the right as you look down the valley.

After John had filled me in on the lake I was going to fish, Fletcher's, and advised me of the best spot to fish I set up in a quite corner by the inlet stream. John had told me that Fletcher's Lake held mainly ghosties and some golden tench as well as plenty of newly stocked carp between two and ten kilos. This was somewhat disappointing as I had hoped for bigger fish, but lets not run before we can walk. This is Fletcher's Lake as it looked in 1995 (the photo in the previous post shows the lake after it had been extended in about 2010).

I won't linger too much on the fishing that first day: suffice it to say I did not cover myself in glory. Yes, I did catch but my biggest carp, a ghostie, went about 5lb.

A couple of other anglers lake had some slightly bigger carp, including this lively double for a young visitor.

�and this low double for another visiting angler.

John and his Polish wife Wanda were fantastic hosts. Nothing was too much trouble and John's barbeque performed sterling service. This is John and his missus in 1995.

And here Jerry and I enjoy one of Wanda's famous Full English breakfasts on a bench beside the lake.

I left the lake knowing that the future looked really good for Clawford and if John's ambitious plans truly came to fruition this would be a venue to cherish in a few years time and if the hosts continued to enjoy a party with their guests I could think of several mates who would happily make the trip up to North Devon to enjoy this hospitality. Those two really know how to party!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#422 6 Jan 2020 at 4.44pm

I doubt if I'll again experience a trip like that first one to the Chateau Lake in 1996, but never say never, eh? I made many trips to the Chat in the years that followed and I will return to some of the most significant as the memories resurface in what remains of my old, decaying brain matter. For the time being let's continue looking at the years in the mid-to late 1990s and past the dawn of the new millennium. This brought not the widely predicted chaos, but instead a widening of my horizons both home and abroad.

In fact my first experience at Clawford Vineyard came in 1995 when I got a phone call from John Ray, owner of the complex. I was writing the regional weekly fishing summary for Devon and Cornwall in Carp Talk at the time and John rang to invite me down to his newly-opened fishery in north Devon. John explained that he had big plans for the venue, with new lakes planned and extensions to the grounds and accommodation were well advanced. It sounded pretty exciting so we arranged that I would come up to Clawford a.s.a.p.

John and Wanda took strong precautions against infection, insisting that all visitor use their net and boot dip.

For anyone who has visited Clawford for a holiday or for a fishing trip in the past decade you may be shocked to see what the accommodation was like back in the mid-90s. Here owner John Ray stands by his beloved barbeque in front of the lovely old farm house that formed the sole B&B aspect of the complex.

Look at it a few years later�And this is just a small part of the overall development of the Vineyard.

In addition to extending the main house to add eight more bedrooms, Clawford also added three self-contained holiday houses on the site of the old car park.

In fact the extensive development now entails 17 fishing lakes, 24 self-catering units, eight B&B rooms, a six-bed farmhouse, as well as large bar and restaurant area. It is situated three miles south of Holsworthy, north-west Devon and the site is set in 78 acres of wonderful, peaceful countryside in the valley of the River Claw.

(2020 Update: Clawford site is now in new hands, John and Wanda having moved on into happy retirement. We wish them well, albeit somewhat wistfully as we and our mates enjoyed some epic times at Clawford, as you will see in later posts.)

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#421 4 Jan 2020 at 1.06pm

Big thanks to Cam the Mod for tidying this thread...

Moving on I want to stay in the south west at a couple of venues that linger fondly in the memory bank, namely Clawford Vineyard and Emperor Lake Syndicate (ELS) so all you Devon anglers keep an eye out for my next reminiscences.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#420 29 Dec 2019 at 4.57pm

In reply to Post #419
I think I have managed to recover all the photos that became unavailable after TinyPic shut down. The thread should now be more or less intact.

I have to be honest, I have not really felt up to the challenge of writing this thread since April 2019 when I last posted to it. But I have realised that there are a lot more happy (and not so happy) memories I could share with you, so I will get around to writing again in the new Year. In the meantime, Tat and I would like to wish you all a Happy and Successful New Year with plenty of these

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#411 8 Apr 2019 at 3.28pm

In reply to Post #410
The years went by and the big carp continued to thrive. Andrew Endean caught Daddy at 34lb plus and I know a couple more came out at high twenties but time and old age caught up with them. Carp are easy to spot in the lake and it's hard to see any these days. Then there is the threat from otters, which have decimated all the lakes along the valley. Once again Salamander is heavily silted and is infested with ducks, Canada geese and the resident swans. Rats run riot around the lake and any magic the lake once held has gone. So sad. This is the last known capture of Big Daddy when he came out at a few ounces over thirty-four pounds.

I used Salamander a great deal over the year as a testing ground for various rig and bait ideas. I know I was the first to use the hair and Robin Red on the lake and the advantages these gave me were immeasurable. And over the years I went on to experiment with various seed and particle baits. I also developed the use of boilie crumb there. It was amazing to see the carp ghosting out of the weed onto the baited patch, where they were clear to see for those who had the ability to actually look!

I also did a fair bit of rig experimentation on Salamander, developing and refining my Drop Down Rig (top) as well as an early version of what was later to become a popular modern rig (bottom).

However, it was when testing liquid attractor that I had the most fun. One little experiment involved squirting neat Minamino over groups of fish that were basking in the sunshine. I used a syringe to send a spray of liquid attraction on top of their heads and the reaction was astonishing. They seemed to almost go into a frenzy, clearly 'smelling' the attraction but finding nothing concrete to eat. It was this that lead me to start messing about with a baiting trick that I called at the time Boilie Soup.

The idea was to create a powerful source of attraction on the lake bed and up through the water column using neat fishmeal and Robin Red base mix with GLME, Betaine, Salmon oil, flavour and a tub of lumpfish eggs. The idea should be self explanatory.

The carp in Salamander couldn't get enough of the soup, charging around like mad creatures scouring the lake bed for every tantalising item of food. The only things big enough to be called tangible food were the tiny fish eggs but even after every single one of those had gone, the fish continued to mooch around looking for more!

So that was then, this is now. Salamander is no more, It rests in peace as do its original carp, fish that gave a few lucky anglers the experience of a lifetime.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#410 8 Apr 2019 at 3.23pm

In reply to Post #409
The years have passed and Salamander lives on. Without many of my favourite fish, the lake became a shadow of its former self. The improvements effected when the lake was emptied to allow the silt to be removed certainly changed the character of the lake but the drastic pruning of the covering willows and the creation of an island at the inlet end have done nothing to improve its looks. The silt that was removed in 1993 was back by 1994 and is as big a problem now as it was then. Why the council did not install a silt trap when they had the chance baffles me. They will certainly need to undertake further dredging and cleaning in future years, for already the lake is as badly silted now as it was before the dredger arrived. The spillway has certainly improved the look of the outlet end and the fluctuation in water level that occurred before, should now be a thing of the past.

But what of the fish?

Well, back in 1994 after the fish went back there was probably more pressure on the lake than ever before despite the fact than many of its best fish were gone. Naturally, Big Daddy was the target everyone was after and in November '94 he showed how much he enjoyed the comfort of the reduced pressure for the available food in the lake by coming out at 32lb l2oz for Steve and 33lb plus for me the following spring. At the same time the other carp were also growing well. The Phoenix of Salamander Lake was emerging from the ashes of the fish loss.

The sadness of the loss of so many lovely fish is, to a certain extent, balanced by the knowledge that reduced competition for food allowed the remaining carp in the lake to gain weight, when it seemed that most, if not all, had reached their ceiling weights but I still think wistfully of what the lake would have been like if all the original biggies were still there.

The lake continued to be an open target for anyone who wanted to help himself to a few fish. Why the council never made an effort to control the fishing on the lake is beyond me. Perhaps they don't care. Whatever...The fact remains that the lake was among the more famous in the south west corner of England. It was only a matter of time before the remaining biggies went missing yet again as the temptation to remove Daddy and his friends for a few quid in the back pocket proved too irresistible.

Well before the theft I had a long, rather drink sozzled chat on the banks of Salamander with the late Graham Orchard, a great carp fishing character here in the south west. "You ought to have these fish away you know, Ken", Graham told me.

"I can't do that, Graham, " I said. "It would simply go against everything I stand for in carp fishing."

"Look mate" said my friend, "I know how much these fish mean to you, how much you love the lake and the carp in it, but one day you're going to come down here and some little toerag will have nicked all the fish. Then how will you feel? If we don't move em and keep them local, somewhere private, then someone will come and have them away up country."

"I realise that, Graham, but simply cannot think of it, let alone do it or condone it," I said. Yet I knew in my heart of hearts that he had a point.

"The thing is, Graham, if I, or any of us stoop that low, we are no better than they are. It would be theft full stop. If we destroy this place by taking the fish and putting them into another lake what would we have achieved? Nothing! We'd simply have crossed off another worthwhile lake on the pitifully small list of those we have available to us to fish."

I look back now on that conversation and, even with the benefit of hindsight, I still say I was right and could sleep with a clear conscience is clear. The trouble is others were not so righteous and once again the wreckers moved in and dumped on the place from a great height.

Prior to the theft there were possibly as many as ten twenty pound plus fish at at least one thirty present in the lake in the summer of 1990. These lived their days in a blissful environment feeding on the bloodworm-rich silt augmented by anglers' baits and as much bread as they could eat. Happy days gone but not forgotten.

O.K., you may be saying to yourself. So the guy has had some fish nicked. Shame, but it happens. It's just some tuppence ha'penny lake in some God forsaken outpost of the carp fishing world...Small beer... What's all the fuss about? Well, I just hope and pray that a lake and its fish that you hold as dear to your heart as I held Salamander is not given a similar treatment. Perhaps then you'll know what small beer is and what it isn't.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#409 8 Apr 2019 at 3.15pm

In reply to Post #408
I was of the firm opinion that fish were missing from the lake and I made my feelings clear, and finally I was proved right: in the late winter of 1993 the local authority emptied the lake in to remove the silt, at the same time creating a breeding island for the swans, ducks and coots and rebuilding the spillway. A netting team from the NRA was called in to remove the carp to a holding pond while the work was done. The dam was then breached and as the levels fell seventeen carp were netted and removed from the lake; one was missed by the netting party and, sadly, it died. Eighteen fish in total. I have an album of photographs covering the last fifteen years of my carp fishing at Salamander. I have photographs thirty five different fish. If the theft never took place, where were the missing fish?
Here are a few pix of the lake when it was empty. This is the main bowl, the deepest part, albeit it only about three feet deep when full. You can see the troublesome swan's nesting island in the middle of the photo.

This is at the inlet end of the lake where the island was under construction. It was severely silted up at the time, as can clearly be seen in this photo. Despite this no effort was made to create a silt trap, which would have alleviated the need for any further work to de-silt the lake.

While the lake was empty the council decided it would be a good idea to do some landscaping. In affect this mean cutting down all the trees and bushes around the lake's perimeter. Take a look at these before and after photos and tell me that the 'landscaping' worked! This is the outlet end of the lake prior to the work.

And this is what it looked like after they had done their worst.

I was on good terms with the local branch of the NRA having been commissioned to write a ten thousand word report for the Agency which was published as 'A Comprehensive Coarse Fishing Fish Strategy for the South-West'. A right mouthful and no mistake! Parts of the report covered public access lakes and river and Salamander Lake featured prominently in this section.

So having first contacted the head of fisheries at Exeter to put him in the picture, I then rang my contact at the NRA in Bodmin to ascertain when or if the carp would be returned to the lake. I was told that they were planning on moving the carp back to the lake in late March or early April. So it was that just before the Easter 1993 I stood on the banks of Salamander waiting for the fish transporter to arrive. With me was a reporter from the Western Morning News, officials of the local park authority, the netsmen from the NRA and officials of the Water Authority.

The carp were returned in two batches, so as to prevent overcrowding on the short journey. Seventeen fish were returned, the same number that had been taken out. I got a fairly good look at each of them and took pictures of as many as I could. I was overjoyed to see that Big Daddy was one that went back. Of the other twenties, Carole's Pet and Jellybelly were the only ones that were returned, but happily the upper doubles, Goldie, Walnut, and Mystery were also among the returnees. These fish were not weighed but it they all seemed to do well after the cleaning of the lake bed. For instance, Carole's Pet had dropped a couple of pounds when she want back but later that same year she came out at over 25lb.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#408 8 Apr 2019 at 3.14pm

In reply to Post #407
Then, when Daddy was caught a few weeks later the story started going around that I had made up the story to blind anglers to the fact that there were such good fish in the tiny park lake. The knives were out for me in a big way but I was certain something was wrong with the pool. The news that Daddy was still in the lake, in all probability still accompanied by all his usual friends (said the sceptics), rekindled old passions in many carp fisherman's hearts, mine included and for a while, the hordes descended on the lake in search of the fabled carp of Salamander Lake. I got a lot of stick from people but there was no way I could prove that the netting had taken place and my uneasy fears for the place cut little ice with others. Meanwhile I managed to catch one of the remaining residents the fat old girl we called Gutbucket, an unlovely name for a lovely carp, and this capture was taken as a sign that I was talking through my arse!

However following Daddy's initial capture the only other big fish to make an appearance were Gutbucket and Carole's Pet, a rare capture for me as this honour is traditionally reserved for our lass, hence the carp's nickname.

All in all the fishing at Salamander was very poor at what had always been a traditionally productive time of the year and the longer the other well known carp in the lake remained uncaught, the more worrying their continued absence became. I fished the lake hard for the rest of the year and right through the winter when we were ashore for bad weather but failed miserably to land a single carp, but, Sod's Law was about to intervene and confuse the issue still further.

There was no doubt that all the fish in the lake were by now well known by local anglers, their rough weights known as well. Yet suddenly rumours began to circulate of big fish, twenties, coming out and these captures seemed to add weight to the tale that the whole thing was a blind. On the other hand the Salamander regulars thought that even if these rumours were true the reported weights were simply new weights for old fish.

So here was the dilemma: had there, in fact, actually been netting? If not, what had happened to the well-known fish, at least some of which should have come out in the ensuing months; and if there had been a netting, was it official, or was it illegal? Was the whole thing one gigantic wind-up?

But I knew my Salamander Lake and I was convinced that there were fish missing; perhaps not all the bigger fish, but certainly many of them. My association with the lake went back further than all bar that of Ian Johnson who had actually stopped fishing the lake in the mid-80's. In effect asking me about the history and the inhabitants like asking Mike Wilson about Savay, or Kevin Clifford about Redmire.

Among the diehards Dave the policeman continued to fish it as 'part of my investigation' as he explained it to his sergeant! Nice one, Dave! Sadly he had not been able to take the matter any further. The account of the youngster who had actually witnessed the theft was getting shakier with the passing of time and in the end he'd been told to wind down his enquiries. Still, at least he was probably the only copper in the country who, for a time, was actually paid to go carp fishing!

Of those still fishing the lake, and they were few and getting fewer, nobody knew as much about the place as me. I had even compiled a photo album of the carp in the lake, fish caught not only by myself but by many of the other guys that fished there.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#407 8 Apr 2019 at 3.12pm

In reply to Post #406
There are a few sad evil-minded individuals who will swear blind that I invented the story of the fish theft from Salamander Lake in the summer in order to put off the growing band of visiting anglers. That is the most arrant nonsense I have ever heard. Will you guys get a life! The fact is that the lake is frighteningly vulnerable to thieves with main roads all around it and a car park within feet of the bank; anyone who wanted to steal fish from the lake would find it laughingly easy. Sadly, someone decided to help themselves to the fish in Salamander and that is fact, not fiction.

I chased the Salamander carp half heartedly during the early part of 1990, but when Savay opened its call was too strong to resist. I spent most of the early part of the season either driving to the lake, fishing the lake, or returning from the lake and had little time to spend on other venues closer to home. I still had a job at sea and had to make a crust so Salamander was quietly forgotten.

I was on the Toads and even though we were first rota on that year work had kept me away from Savs so I missed the first three months. But I had some leave saved up so I managed to get up to the Valley in mid September, cursing that bloody boat with every mile that passed.

By all accounts the opening week had been brilliant and the fishing had been pretty goof the following two or three rota weeks. Bill had caught a few�in fact, everybody had caught a few, so I had missed out in a big way. Still absence makes the heart grow fonder and in Savay's case fonder doesn't even begin to describe it so I was chaffing at the bit when I drove into the car park to meet Bill. We could not set up until later that day so we adjourned to the Barge to catch up on events so far. Bill had enjoyed a blistering start to the season and he told me that the lake was still on form with fish showing towards the far end by the Gate swim down as far as the Sluices. On the Colne Bank he told me that he had seen fish in the Daisies and most of the other swims facing the Long Island.

While we were in the Barge I rang Carole to check all was well and to tell her I had arrived safely. (She worries about me driving on the M25 as both of us hate it with a passion. I reckon my heart rate trebles the minute I get onto that accursed road. What is it with drives in the south-east? Don't you know how to drives safely and slowly?).

So once the reassuring was done I asked her how things were going at home. "I've had a call from Dave the policeman who has heard a rumour that Salamander has been netted," she said, "There was only one witness, a young lad who isn't a fisherman," she continued. "Apparently they have taken some carp away". The story told of a blue van, men in bright orange overalls, a beach seine, holding tanks and everything needed to make a quick sweep of the lake and bugger off sharpish before people got too curious. The lad who had witnessed the netting challenged the men who fobbed him off with a story that they were legally removing the carp on behalf of the council, an unlikely story but the youngster wasn't about to challenge it.

According to the very young witness, the netsmen had apparently made one sweep of the outfall end of the lake and had netted what was variously described as, 'every fish in the lake', down to, 'one or two big carp'. The story was vague but somebody reported the strange goings on to the police, who took only passing interest; it was only a few smelly old fish for heaven's sake. The news played on my mind throughout my week on Savay and when I got home Carole filled me in on further developments.

The rumour mill had been in overdrive as the news spread throughout the county. There were wild allegations about who had done it, about the location of the stolen carp, but nobody really had any concrete evidence. By chance one of the guys who fished the lake was Dave the a copper and when he told his inspector that the netted fish were worth thousands of pounds the police were forced to take a greater interest. Nothing came of it and in the end it fell to Dave to do his best with limited time and opportunity at his disposal. The uncertainty and young age of the witness meant that there was always going to be a seed of doubt about the whole story; had the theft actually taken place?

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#406 23 Mar 2019 at 2.00pm

In reply to Post #405
I was on a roll at the lake and more to satisfy my enquiring mind I switched tactics completely. The groundbait idea had sparked off the old brain cells to experiment further and it was at Salamander that I first used and refined the idea of crumbing. I wrote about the method in an old Nutrabaits magazine and while I cannot claim to have invented the method, I am certain that I was the first to go into print with it. If you haven't tried crumb on your lake I suggest you give it a try. It really gets them steamed up! This one dates back to the dark ages when the use of crumb was almost unknown. It's a bit different now!

I spent much of the year spreading my wings, fishing new waters, including Savay, where I spent the remainder of the summer. We also took our first tentative trip abroad where we enjoyed the new sensation of catching a few French fish for a change. Though Carole and I had our share of French biggies Salamander remained our jewel in the crown.

When we first started on Salamander in 1979 the fish had been woefully easy to catch thanks to the hair and boiled bait approach but, by 1989, they were as crafty a bunch as you'd wish to meet. As described previously, I stopped fishing Salamander for no other reason than I was bored with the place. I had caught every fish in the lake (or so I thought) and with more and more anglers now coming down from up country in search of a close season twenty the place had lost its magic.

And so we come to the fish theft�

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#405 23 Mar 2019 at 1.58pm

In reply to Post #404
The swim I chose to fish was bordered by two overhanging trees and a fringe of rushes, but rather than fish it from its own bank, I decided to set up on a corner not far way and cast across to the bank, going round afterwards to tie on the baits and drop them in the edge, with a generous dollop of groundbait on top to disguise the hooklink and hookbait. Mind you, I was in something of a dilemma over hookbaits.

Let me explain...I'd already chosen the base mix and the smell that I wanted to use. The milk protein mix had no need to prove itself any further, nor did the essential oil that I had been using since the start of the summer. It was about now that pop-ups became all the rage after featuring in several magazine. I had not, up till then, been keen on pop-ups or critically balanced bottom baits, but I felt that perhaps now was the time to experiment. I have always had misgivings about ultra-critical balancing of both pop-ups and bottom baits. I firmly believe that they draw attention to their status as a hookbait as much, if not more so, than a standard bottom bait. It just isn't natural for a hookbait to waft around all over the place, simply because a carp swims by. For all that, there had been plenty of fish caught throughout the country to show that perhaps the method had something going for it.

Mind you, not all the carp that had fallen to the trick were as cautious as the Salamander fish but perhaps they too would fall for it. It was worth a try. It's all very well having misgivings, but the trouble is that you can't prove or disprove that they are well founded until you've seen proof, or otherwise. So it wasn't until I watched the Salamander carp spook off these ultra-critically balanced baits that I decided that the time and trouble I had been taking in getting a bait to sink ridiculously slowly might not be worth all the effort.

However, back to the groundbait...

The plan called for me to bait up with two buckets of groundbait into just the one swim for three nights, starting fishing on the fourth night and emptying the lake! While the prebaiting was carried out I made up some very buoyant Black Pepper EO and Cranberry hookbaits, using polyballs from a bean bag and these were balanced to the 'nth degree in the bath at home. By the fourth night I was ready to drag 'em!

Oh, the best laid plans...I sat up for most of the night as disillusion caused by silent buzzers and motionless indicators set in. By first light I was devastated; all that planning and hard work had come to naught. I peered into the swim and could not believe my eyes. all the groundbait was gone! All that remained were the two hookbaits, still wafting around in the light currents caused as a few small roach rooted among the last crumbs that remained after the carp had demolished the best part of eight or nine kilos of groundbait during the night.

I was annoyed with myself for succumbing to the temptation to try something in which I was not fully confident, so off came the critically balanced hookbaits and on went bottom baits, balanced with nothing more than a sliver of rig foam to counteract the weight of the hook.

The following night all was ready once more and as the light went, I slopped the groundbait into the margins, placed the two hookbaits in the swim and then retreated to the bivvy to await the coming night. The bottom baits worked like a charm and my confidence in buoyant hookbait disappeared overnight, not to return for perhaps twenty years when I started using bespoke hookbaits.

Among the captures was a hump backed mirror I had not caught before. It came as a bit of a surprise as I thought I knew and had caught every fish in the lake by now.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#404 23 Mar 2019 at 1.56pm

In reply to Post #403
Later that year I switched to my first love bait wise, namely paste baits. They cannot be used everywhere but if you can get away with the bait not being destroyed by small fish then paste have many advantages over boiled bait. The HNV base mix created fantastic pastes and by cramming as much powder into the eggs and the liquid attractors as possible, I found I could create a paste that could be cast out under the float and still remain on the hair. I used a small bead at the end of the hair and this formed the base around which to mould the paste. You can just about make out the early use of my Drop-Down Rig in this pic. The paste has been flattened by the fish flapping on the mat.

I had been using float fishing tactics for stalking the Salamander carp for the past three or four years and felt it was time for a change. Certainly I had seen what appeared to be carp testing above the bait from the presence of line coming down from the float Sounds a bit hard to take in, eh? Yes, that's what I thought, but takes were getting harder to come by. It was then that the newly introduced Kryston Multi-Strand appeared on the market and, for a while, it solved completely my presentation problems.

I used two end rig set ups. One for stalking in close where I could see the fish I was after and another for casting into the holes in the weed. The latter was straightforward enough, being simple tubing, a three ounce drilled bullet and six inch Multi-Strand hooklink. It was the margin stalking arrangement that was a bit different.

Basically, it is an extra long Combi link with four feet of Multi-Strand, attached directly to the reel line. The set-up was fished free line style and the bait was moulded around the hook (no hair).

(Don't laugh! The method was then and remains to this day a fabulous stalking tactic and I thank my lucky stars I had the foresight to order half a dozen spool from The Tackle Box before Kryston was taken over in 2018).

Immediately after switching to freelined paste I went on a lovely run of captures from the lake. I had seven fish in as many early morning visits, fishing paste on the hook. In most cases, I actually watched as the carp picked up the bait. Invariably, the fish moved away slowly with the bait well into its mouth, looking for a further bait sample. I have no doubt that they did not know they had a hookbait in their mouths. Some of you may think that there would be a problem with the Multi-Strand as it is prone to form a loop off the bottom, but the material is so soft that the fish are not spooked by it. Many times I saw fish brushing against the long section of Multi-Strand without appearing alarmed in the slightest. I can see how they might become more cautious after repeated captures, but this should not occur for some time. Obviously, the method has its limitations, but given similar conditions and style of fishing, I cannot see why it should not work anywhere.

Salamander had, by now, established itself as one of the most difficult lakes I had fished. In order to catch on a regular basis, it was vital to keep thinking, thinking, thinking all the time and about every aspect of one's approach. It was one such radical departure from the norm that kept me on fish through a long, hot summer when the pool lay stagnant and torpid and the fish seemed to be similarly affected. Recalling my early days at the lake when maples had proved so successful we reverted to the particle approach with some success.

My mate Bill and I had talked at Savay the previous summer about trying the continental approach to carp fishing, namely using groundbait. While it failed miserably in The Valley (the bream hammered us) I was not discouraged and felt that Salamander would be an ideal place to revive the idea.

I experimented with a few assorted recipes but as distance was not a factor in the fishing at the pool, there was no need for great big match style balls that splashed down like a depth charge. No, I wanted a sloppy mix that I could introduce up by hand, putting bait into likely margin swims at the dam end of the lake. Eventually, I settled on a mix comprising equal parts of groats, crushed and whole hemp, maize meal and salmon fry crumb. This gave the groundbait its unique carp appeal and I have no hesitation in suggesting it to anyone thinking of trying a similar approach. Without salmon fry crumb, the groundbait is a goodie but with the addition of the strong smelling crumb, it takes on a whole new lease of life and will draw carp into a swim very effectively.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#403 23 Mar 2019 at 1.54pm

In reply to Post #402
The lake was beginning to lose its originality and freshness for me and this coupled with the growing number of visiting anglers from all over the south, again led me to seek out pastures new for much of the summer of '88 but
Carole and I returned to the lake with a vengeance that autumn, taking six twenties in three visits. Carole set the ball rolling with, who else, but The Pet. This was followed by Big Daddy, Jellybelly, Gutbucket and finally Daddy yet again. More encouraging still were two 'new' carp we had not seen on the bank before, one a curious looking mirror with a very crooked back, which was christened Quasimodo.

The other new fish was also a mirror that Tat caught at a shade over eighteen pounds.

Tat ended a memorable spell with Goldie at 21lb 2oz, a gorgeous fish which I had first caught in the winter of '85 at 19lb. One of the most pleasing captures of the year was her a shade over twenty pounds. The fish had not been caught for seven years and was thought to be dead. Indeed, the circumstances of its "death" were well documented.

Apparently, a youngster had found the fish in the shallows apparently in some distress. Hoiking it out the kid took it home to show his Mum. She screamed in horror and told him to get rid of the now-dead carcass, so the youngster had returned the lifeless corpse to the lake where it promptly came back to life!

In the end we caught just about every fish in the lake on our HNV baits with essential oils, confirming that such baits are inherently attractive and can be fished as single hook baits, or with a light applications of free offerings. Others using pure attractor baits which contained high levels of commercial flavours did not fare so well.

By the start of the 1989 season, we were looking at perhaps seven or eight carp over twenty pounds in the lake; Daddy, Gutbucket, Jellybelly, Goldie, The Pet, Clover, and one other big fish that we had all spotted at various spots around the lake but had yet to put it on the bank. How a fish could do this had me beat, for some of the best carp anglers in the area were fishing the lake by now and most of the fish had been caught at one time or another.

It wasn't until Ken Jones arrived on the water, following successful seasons on Rashleigh and a local syndicate water, that the mystery of the uncaught fish was solved. He caught it within a couple of visits at 22lb 12oz a gorgeous fish that had definitely not been caught before and so acquired the nickname of The Mystery on the spot!

Most of the more successful anglers were on fairly high tech baits of one description or another but one of the most effective baits was dear old bread. You see the locals threw tons of the stuff at the resident swans and ducks and the carp could often be spotted underneath the feeding birds, picking up bits of bread that were missed by the squabbling wildlife.

The lake did not appeal to everyone. For a start it was a park lake with all that that entails. Night fishing could be a bit hairy as the lake was on the glide path from the pub to the council estate, and when you heard drunken laughter and riotous singing you kept your head down! My mate Nige hated the place as did a few other Rashleigh friends. In fact Nige's only fish from the lake was Daddy, caught on a free lined piece of bread flake underneath the ducks.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#402 23 Mar 2019 at 1.49pm

In reply to Post #401
Playing around with Geranium EO we quickly found the optimum level to be 2ml per kilo. Clove EO seemed to be much stronger and 1ml per kilo was found to be ideal. It wasn't until we tried a combo of the two that we found what we thought then was a winning combo. First it was Daddy that took a shine to the milk HNV, falling to the clove and geranium oils mix. A string of other big fish followed and by the end of October every fish in the lake was on the lookout for our bait. Most of the biggies eventually tripped up on it and yet again Tat banked her 'Pet' a fish that seemed unable to resist her charms�A bit like me, in fact!

Throughout the summer the weed posed a few problems but it was nothing we couldn't cope with. It also had the effect of putting off the county's itinerant trophy hunters who were somewhat daunted by the weed. As if the weed beds were not enough, the council had also seen fit to introduce a silly little wooden platform moored by chains at all four corners, in the hope that a pair of swans that had made the lake their home would nest on it. The swans viewed the flimsy affair with disdain and nested downstream, but in the meantime the raft remained. It soon became a holding area but the carp usually managed to escape by bolting around the chains.

By the following year the news was out on the local grapevine about Daddy and his back up twenties, to say nothing of the dozen or so upper-doubles. Not unnaturally, quite a few new faces arrived on the scene. As the pressure increased still further, the fish got cuter and our previous success became harder to achieve. So cute had the fish become that it was common to watch carp spook off a carpet of bait. Indeed, they would even spook off single hookbaits. A few of the lads turned to particles, but with little or no success.

The lake was by now badly silted up, the winter silt being deposited at the shallower end, completely covering the original bar which John and I had fished in 1980 and reducing the depth over the silted area to less than a foot. So bad was it that a quarter of the lake became unfishable. You can see how shallow it was by the photo below. The overall depth in the rest of the lake was reduced to an average of less than three feet and with problems arising with ducks and swans picking up hookbaits and free offerings, the lake was becoming increasingly hard to fish.

Prebaiting was out of the question due to the bird life. Even at night the swans were capable of spotting and picking up baits and for most of the anglers regularly fishing the lake, pure attractor baits became the order of the day.
However, I couldn't help feeling that Hi-Nu-Val and the Addits (no longer a prototype but now a proprietary base mix following the launch of Nutrabaits in 1987) was an attractor bait in its own right. Match this magic base with an essential oil and you'd have a bait that was radically different from anything else the other anglers were using. Keeping free offerings to a minimum kept the birds off the baits, yet still provided a feeding stimulus that the carp found much to their liking.

The base mix also made surprisingly good pop-ups as we discovered one day when Tat decided to fry a handful in a light coating of sesame seed oil. At the time she was aiming at creating a slightly different 'smell' profile but that idea went out of the window when she found out that the bait all floated. Pop-ups were just beginning to find favour with the carp world in Cornwall, though the rest of the country had been onto them for a year or more. Until ready made pop-ups appeared on the market we used fried Ni-Nu-Val to make all our pop-ups. Adding a few mils of essential oil or neat flavour to the cooking oil also added still more attraction.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#401 23 Mar 2019 at 1.45pm

In reply to Post #400
The bait that had done so well on College had not been used to any great extent on other venues so I began slipping a few kilos into the lake on a regular basis and in June '87 I finally got around to fishing there again. Carole and I spent hours making thousands of 8mm boiled baits using the smallest Gardner Rollaball. The bait was as follows:

7oz rennet casein
3oz egg albumin
2oz Lactalbumin
2oz Bengers
1oz Davina Body Build
2g Cajoler
0.5ml N-butyric acid
15ml Minamino
15ml Liquid Liver
6 size
2 eggs
scald for 15 seconds.

I suppose we must have made up about four dozen mixes with which to prebait the lake with the new HNV, which was introduced in just two areas; the Aquarium one of my favourite fish-watching spots, a swim beneath a drooping willow tree, close to the inlet at the opposite end of the lake. By the time I came to fish the lake at the end of June '87 it was clear that the fish were going ape over the baits. It seemed a strong possibility that the biggest fish in the lake would fall to my attack sooner rather than later, and so it proved one glorious summer's morning. This is the story�

I arrived at the lake around noon and I had the lake to myself. There was no one else fishing, but the weed looked to be almost insurmountable. In fact, only the two prebaited swims were still fishable and those only in the margins where you could see that the bait was in the clear. In the prebaited swims the fish had created dinner plates, patches of gravel, scoured clear of silt. These proved that the carp had cleaned up the baits I had been introducing and as I crept into the swim under the willows, I felt pretty confident.

A couple of handfuls of mini boilies went in and I sat back to watch events unfold. Eventually, a few fish came ghosting out of the thickest weed and quickly cleared up the free offerings. I hadn't cast in as yet, but now I got
the float gear ready and dropped it in the margins, the float right up against the bank, almost touching it. The hookbait, a string of mini-baits threaded on to sewing cotton and attached to the eye of the hook, was no more than four or five inches from the edge. There were no further introductions of freebies, all there was left in the swim was the hookbait. As I watched Daddy came into the swim, swam straight up to the hookbait and sucked it in. A hectic fight followed in which the fish snagged me twice. Twice I started to strip off to go in for it and twice the fish came free. Eventually, the fish slipped over the net cord and he was mine. He weighed 26lb l4oz and was at the time, my second heaviest fish.

The year continued to smile on us and a few samples of essential oils arrived from Tim and Bill Cottam, prior to the launch of Nutrabaits. These would produce a string of nice fish from Salamander before the end of the year. 8mm Hi-Nu-Val combined with the essential oils worked a treat and accounted for just about every carp in the lake that summer. Indeed, at one point we had them queuing up for more!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#400 23 Mar 2019 at 1.43pm

In reply to Post #399
In the three to four years that followed, I spent less time at Salamander than before. College had become my number one venue and Salamander was relegated to become simply a water where I might while away the odd hour or two in the evening. College was definitely a session water and I didn't think that Salamander would respond to session fishing. However, it would not be long before I was proved wrong in this assumption.

My occasional forays to Salamander Lake, fitted in between work and two or three day trips to College, were rewarding enough but with disappointing success compared to the early days. A few guys had begun session fishing the lake on a regular basis, among them was Tony Chipman, a committee member of Roche A.C. who very kindly showed me his spots on Rashleigh on my first visit. It was Tony who stirred my interest in the lake again when he caught Daddy at over 24lb during his winter-long campaign. Here's Tony in action.

I had never given too much thought to my presentation. I was convinced that simple, six inch Dacron rigs, using the tag of hooklink material passed through the eye to form the hair were all that was needed.

However, that summer I began a fishing one specific area of the lake where the weed was thickets. Here the best tactic was to fish a single hookbait over a carpet of hemp. The swims I fished were shallow and the water still clear so it was very easy to observe carp and their reactions to baiting situations and to rigs in general. I was shocked when I watched the Salamander carp suck in and then reject my simple Dacron rigs without so much as a bleep or a rattle of the rod tip, I knew I had to put my thinking cap on again.

After a great deal of frustration messing about with tubes and silicone and other rig gizmos I realised that there was no rig better suited to margin fishing than the simple float fishing tactic I had used to fish in the edge on most of my earliest trips to the lake. My reliance on the dominant high-tech aspect of modern carp fishing had blinded me to the fact that simplicity usually brings its own rewards.

In 1987, 1 started using the high protein bait I had been using on College. It was a highly experimental bait, based on the milk protein HNV approach and was, in fact, the prototype of the enzyme-based bait that Tim Paisley had worked on over the years. Carole and I were the only carp anglers in the south west to be on the bait, though other anglers throughout the country were field testing the radical idea in preparation for a commercial launch of the base and the enzymes, along with a range of the then only whispered about essential oils and other enhancers, stimulators and amino acid preparations.

The bait I was using would become Hi-Nu-Val, the enzymes and other enhancers would be named the Addits. The bait, the additives and the essential oils Tim and Bill Cottam were playing with were set to change the way carp anglers think about flavour compounds for ever. Nutrabaits was still several years away, but the bait was one that Carole and I used to catch over two hundred College fish in both 1985 and 1986.

The summer of '87 saw me putting in the hours at Salamander for the first time. I'd been on College for the past four years and to be honest I was getting a bit fed up with the place. I felt like a new challenge and Salamander would do nicely.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#399 19 Mar 2019 at 3.47pm

In reply to Post #398
However, there was a bait freak burgeoning inside me bursting to get out, so while we were on a roll, I changed the bait! (Yes, that makes a lot of sense, Ken!). I switched the Nectarblend for another Haith's product, P.T.X. and switched flavour from banana to cinnamon oil, which I bought from a local health food store. Apparently it was used as a calming vapour rub, or some such nonsense. I used it at 2ml per 500g and it reeked! The new bait worked equally as well and it didn't take a genius to figure out that it was the Robin Red and the lower flavour levels that were doing all the damage.

Throughout the year I divided my time between Rashleigh and Salamander, really piling in the Robin Red bait and reaping the rewards, In November, I caught Big Daddy again, this time at 201b 4oz, the first authentic capture of a twenty from the water. The big fish definitely had the taste for the Robin Red bait by now, for I caught him again a few months late, up in weight a fair bit. He obviously liked his boilies.

Most of the fish were growing steadily but were, at the same time, becoming more and more crafty. The next year was definitely The Year of the Floater. The duck problem was nothing like as bad as it is today, so I was able to get away with prebaiting and fishing with free offerings, in my book, virtually indispensable for successful floater fishing. The carp in Salamander quickly wised up to floaters and stopped taking them altogether after a couple of years but to start with they were just silly for them. The bait I favoured was Purina Dairy Dinner, a hoop shaped biscuit, coated in a lovely, sweet smelling, milky powder that the carp adored. Rig? Dead complicated; I threaded four on to the nylon hooklink greased with Mucilin, the stuff in the little round red tin. Here's Daddy (I think) snaffling down floaters, Chum Mixers in this case, a few years later.

At one stage, I thought I had caught every fish in the lake, but a subsequent comparison of photos with Ian showed that I had missed out on three that he had caught but I hadn't. However, as I'd had nineteen different fish we were able to revise upwards slightly our estimate of the number of fish in the pool. Two memorable sessions stand out in my mind. The first was the first day of a week off sick following an operation - the unkindest cut of all! - and with stitches still healing in a tender place, I spent a hectic evening at the pool, taking three fish in an hour off the top. One of the trio proved to be a right mug for floaters as I caught the fish four times during the year, each time on the same bait and presentation. Apologies for the Billingsgate shot.

The other capture that stands out in my memory involves the first ever capture of the fish that came to be known as Carole's Pet. I was building most of my own rods at the time on Sportex and North Western blanks. I had just finished the whippings on a new S.S.5 that I had been building and outside, the weather looked perfect for floater fishing, but I had no suitable light floater rods, having stripped down my entire collection for rebuilding. With the varnish still drying on the SS 5, I took it to Salamander and had The Pet on the bank within five minutes of arriving at the lake. Little did I know that I would not see that fish fall to my rod again for another seven years. In the meantime, Carole caught it over and over again, repeatedly stuffing the capture up my nose and earning the fish its well deserved nickname. My first encounter with the carp soon to become known as Carole's Pet.

More ancient history to come...

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#398 19 Mar 2019 at 3.43pm

In reply to Post #397
"I thought you said you were going to use toffee", said John, who had been putting a six egg mix in a day.
"Coffee, you prat!" I replied.

Coffee, Toffee, Schmoffee! They don't seem to care much either way, John joked as his bait was virtually taken on the drop! Soon one of my rods was away to a nice double. It was the first capture of Clover, the lovely near-pure leather with the clover leaf pattern on its flank. The fish weighed just over 18lb.

Unknown to us at the time, another carp man was fishing the lake, a guy called Ian Johnson. Ian lived close to the lake and every lunchtime he would stroll down to the lake and fish freelined bread flake to rest on the top of the weed. In fact, Ian had been fishing the lake since the fish first went in and had probably caught most of the lakes carp when they were mere babies. Now he was catching regularly on the most simple tactics.

We often bumped into each other and were able to compare catches and start building a more precise picture of the lake and its carp in our minds. Ian was keen to try the obviously successful rig and bait John and I had been using but, at the time, the rig was definitely still on the secret list and, much as I liked Ian, I wasn't about to give away my edge. I did give him the recipe for the bait however, and he caught a carp of just over nineteen pounds on a lump of freelined paste.

This fish was not Big Daddy but another fish that was destined for local fame and fortune, a fat, yet very pretty carp that we nicknamed Gutbucket. This meant that we now had two fish approaching twenty pounds in the pond and, judging from Ian's catches and those of John and myself, it looked as if there were perhaps eighteen to twenty sizeable fish in the lake.

With hindsight, it is obvious that our rather haphazard attitude to flavours and flavour levels would start to work against us in time, but we were way too inexperienced to realise this at the time. Sure enough, it wasn't long before the carp began to get rather wary of small red balls of food emitting a wide variety of unnatural pongs, and a return to a particle approach was only temporarily successful. It was time to find out more about bait and bait science in order to get more out of the obvious potential of boiled baits.

At the end of 1980, I pulled off Salamander in favour of a local club water, Wheal Rashleigh, belonging to Roche AC and it was on this water that I refined the basic bait and flavour. There was no doubt that Robin Red had considerable long-term pulling power and I enjoyed considerable success on the lake, still using a fairly simple recipe, but with a lower level of just two flavours, cinnamon and banana, both from Rod Hutchinson. The bait was a simple variation of the original with slightly elevated levels of Robin Red. It was 6oz Nectarblend, 2oz Robin Red, 2oz Gluten plus 3ml of the flavour blend and 5ml of Hermesetas. This bait was readily devoured in great quantity by the Rashleigh fish and it accounted for the largest mirror and the largest common in the lake on my first visit, both taken within half and hour of each other! This is the big mirror a fabled old warrior soon to be christened Busted Tail by the growing carp fishing fraternity in the Club.

Reading up about baits suggested that a dollop of a sophisticated milk protein would improve the bait no end, and one of the whispers suggested Casilan, a baby food. This was actually calcium caseinate, a refined variant of rennet casein. In for a penny�I bunged in four ounces of the stuff for good measure! Soon my little red balls became the going bait on both Rashleigh and Salamander.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#397 19 Mar 2019 at 3.42pm

In reply to Post #396
From then on, my love affair with the pool was sealed. The big fish cast its own unique spell on me, a spell that lasts to this day and one that will continue to last while the great carp remains in the pool. Sadly, and I hate to say so, given the sad state of carp fishing in the area at the present time, his days may be numbered and then the pool will be destroyed for ever as far as I am concerned.
(Remember, this was written in about 1995.)

The two fish on particles really stirred me up, so much so, that I even skipped work a few times, much to the anger of the skipper of the trawler I was working on. Then he too became captivated by the carp in the little pond and we both skived off from time to time. We were fishing commercially on the wrecks of the English Channel, off the Cornish coast, but when bad weather put paid to a salt water trip, it was the fresh, bubbling, stream-fed water of Salamander Lake that drew to its banks both me and John Affleck, my skipper and a tench and carp angler of some renown from the early days of Kent and Home Counties carping.

The first boiled bait I used was the brilliant Robin Red/Nectarblend/Wheat Gluten recipe that was being used by many of the more successful up-country anglers. It was flavoured with any of the original Hutchinson flavours such as Scopex, Enigma, Mystere and his original Cinnamon, which was brilliant. We all worked on ten-ounce mixes back then�not sure why! The exact recipe if I remember rightly was 7oz Nectarblend, 2oz Wheat Gluten and 1oz Robin Red. Four size 2 eggs plus 10ml flavour (how much!) and 5ml liquid Hermesetas. Boil for 2 minutes then dry for 24 hours.

It was 1980 and the hair rig was still a well-kept secret, especially in my part of the world. Luckily, I knew all about it, thanks to Speedy, and I was going to make the most of it! Being so new to the whole field of flavours and base mixes, I dived into the complex minefield with a will, and no flavour or combination of flavours was safe in my bait kitchen. Those poor old carp in Salamander didn't know what to expect next, as they were bombarded with a steady stream of red boiled baits flavoured with coffee, banana, toffee, chocolate, Green Zing, and permutations of some, or all, of the above. It says much for their initial naivet� that they gobbled them all up, regardless of the smell or taste.

In the early days, the lake was about eight feet deep at the dam end, and even where the stream entered the lake you could find five or six feet on either side of a prominent bar of silt and gravel, carried down by winter floods and deposited in the lake in a long finger-like feature that drew cam to it like bees to a honey pot. The water over the top of the bar was only some two or three feet deep and, on hot summer evenings, you could see fish clearly as they swirled and bow waved on the bar. It was here that John and I began to fish boilies for the first time.

It was late summer, another hot and still August evening when we set up one rod each at the inlet end of the lake. The Robin Red boiled bait had been going in for a week or so to get them used to the shape and smell of the bait but, as we found out later, John and I had been baiting up with different flavours, the exercise was probably futile.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#396 19 Mar 2019 at 3.41pm

In reply to Post #395
That summer, I visited my good friend the late, and deeply missed, Trevor Housby. Each summer, Trev and I would spend a week or more, lost among the streams and backwaters of the Test and the Avon, fishing for trout and grayling, or on one of the club lakes near Ringwood, fishing for pike. The river at Christchurch was our Mecca for barbel and chub and we would spend patient hours stalking the few really big fish that inhabited the lower end of the Parlour Pool or The Compound. This odd looking pike took a chunk of luncheon meant ledgered for barbel under the wires of the Parlour Pool's pump hose outlet.

Me and Bill also joined the river syndicate run by Tom Williams on the Longford Estate in Wiltshire (Remember My River in the Angling Times?). What a laugh we had on there. Mile and miles of the R Avon and it's streams and backwaters, two weirpools, a pump house and eel trap, several white water runs with deep pools between. It was bliss. We mainly fished for chub and barbel but the roach fishing was out of this world as was the perch fishing. I think this is a nice chub but it's also a lousy photo.

During one particular visit, I told Trevor about the lake I had discovered and of the carp that I suspected now to weigh close to twenty pounds. I had no proper carp gear of my own, having sold my entire range of tackle in 1973, so Trev gave me a pair of North Westerns - AC7's I think they were - and suggested I give them a try. Bill had shown me the rig; I'd picked up enough about using particles and the basics of boiled baits on our trips to the syndicate water; Trev had given me the rods; I already had a pair of Mitchell 300 reels. I was half way towards becoming a carp angler again, all I needed now was a few carp under my belt.

Our summer days at Ockenham Lake, the syndicate water that Bill and I fished, were very laid back affairs It was predominantly particle fishing there in those days, using flavoured black-eyed beans, free-lined on a size two hook right in the margins. Very exciting fishing and a method that cried out to be tried at Salamander. So armed with a bucket of blackies, one of Trev's North Westerns and a trusty 300 loaded with new eight pound line I arrived at Salamander.

The swans and ducks that would, one day, become a nightmare as the water silted up, had yet to put in an appearance, so I was able to bait up a couple of patches in the margins and, because of the clarity of the water and the bright colour of the bait, could watch the carp as they moved in to sample the scattering of little white beans. The first carp I caught out of Salamander was a pure leather of just over eight pounds. I watched it pick up the bait in just four feet of water, less than a foot off the bank. I thought my heart was going to burst out of my body, so hard was it thumping and racing, its hammer-beat pounding in my ears as the carp first mouthed, then sucked in the bait. The scrap was hectic and equally heart-stopping in the weedy water, but I won in the end.

That little fish grew to become one of a famous trio of leathers in the pool. At the time, I did not know it, but the little eight pounder had a bigger brother so inevitably in time they would become known as Little and Large. There was another leather in there that we later caught and named he Clover thanks to a clover leaf scale grouping on her right flank. Her back and left flank were quite nude so I guess you could say she was an almost-leather.

I returned to the lake three days later and, using identical tactics, caught the now famous Big Daddy at approximately eighteen pounds. I have to say approximately, as I didn't have scales with me nor did I have a sack so the fish was guesstimated.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#395 19 Mar 2019 at 3.39pm

In reply to Post #394
I also spent a lot of my free time on the rivers of Hampshire and Dorset trotting for the most part, for roach and chub, though I also did my fair share of grayling fishing too.

My friend, Bill, had been on at me to get back into the carp fishing game for some time, even going so far as to put me on a lovely little syndicate water in Devon to get my interest going again. In truth, though, I was still not committed to a return to carp fishing. Things had changed so much since I'd left it and I wasn't sure if I wanted to get involved in quite the way that now seemed necessary. In 1979, I fished for just anything that came along, bass, sea trout, reservoir trout, chub and barbel, mullet, pollack, eels, you name it. A return to full time carping? No thanks.

So just what it was that drew me to the banks of the little lake that August day, I'll never know. I was armed with a saggy old glass float rod, a creaky old folding garden chair (you know the sort), a couple of tins of sweetcorn and no particularly high hopes. I had seen rudd in the lake approaching maybe two pounds in weight and I think I told myself, at the time, these were my quarry.

I sat in the shade of the thickening willows, watching a red-tipped float sitting still and lifeless, poking through a slight scum line that was carried towards me on a warm, gentle breeze. The oppressive heat of a full-blown summer high pressure area sitting slap-bang over the south west made me sleepy and I dozed intermittently through the lazy afternoon. When I opened my eyes, after who knows how long, maybe only seconds, maybe minutes or even an hour, the left hand rod tip was just straightening, quivering and shaking from some unseen underwater attention. I started upright in the chair. Where was the float? Over there, under a tree, several yards from the baited swim. I grabbed the butt and struck at nothing. Everything came back, but the hook was bare. Sods Law had struck again and I had dozed off just when I got a bite!

Carp or rudd? Which had been the culprit? No way of telling, though I like to think that maybe, just maybe, it was a carp. I fished away the remains of the day without further excitement but then just as the light was going, a couple of gulls, flying low across the surface, spooked one, or maybe two, fish that had been cruising below the surface. As they turned in their panic, they sent huge swirls to the surface. That was my first experience of the carp of Salamander Lake; hard proof that the whispers were not merely rumour.

You'd have thought I'd have been right back there the next day, wouldn't you? But the carp fever had not yet had a chance to infected me again. The next free time I had for fishing took me down west, to The Lizard, fishing the coves and deep rocky gullies for anything that came along. I was after wrasse, but the bass were running hard that summer and the silver dreams held sway for the rest of the summer and most of the autumn months.

Winter was work, work, work and, by the following summer, I had almost forgotten about the carp in the little lake. True, I had enjoyed yet another hectic trip with Bill to our syndicate lake (where he had let me in on the secrets of the hair and of Robin Red and boiled baits), but carp still did not figure greatly in the overall scheme of things.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#394 19 Mar 2019 at 3.37pm

In reply to Post #393
Once upon a time there was a stream, an insignificant little affair, running off low hills, through farmlands and forests towards the distant sea. Where it met softer, flatter ground, the clear waters spread out across the surrounding plain. At its edges, the plain became a marsh, in its middle, a bog. Then came the homes; built to house the workers of local industry. The buildings were of solid stone and granite, warm in winter, cool in summer. In the shelter of the surrounding hills, the little hollow and its plain were a natural sun trap.

For the inhabitants of the little village that sprang up close to the marshy bog it was almost ideal: almost! You see, the only drawback to living in this idyllic little spot was the bog itself as due to the nature of the swampy surroundings, in summer the place was a fetid swamp of pungent, mosquito ridden water. The broken down silt and mud of millennia steamed and bubbled in the heat and the villagers often complained; in the summer about the boggy smell and insect life which played havoc with their everyday lives; or in the winter, when heavy rain ran off the hills and the stream became a torrent, about the flooding of the bog land and the surrounding plain, making roads and footpaths impassable. Something had to be done and, with the usual alacrity shown by councils the length and breadth of the country, it only took a hundred years or so to get around to dealing with the problem.

So it was that in the mid-70s heavy plant moved in, first to divert the stream, then to shore up the bank, dredge out the silt, plant a few willows, build a dam at the other end from the stream entrance, re-route the stream through the eight foot deep hollow left behind by their labours, and depart. As the hollow began to fill, the stream wove a magic spell over the once stagnant area. Where there had been bog, now there was a cool, dark lake, brimming over with natural life carried down from the hills on a bubbling tide of highly oxygenated water.

The lake settled down quickly, the stream carrying its life blood of silt and natural food, soon covered the gravel bottom with a layer of soft mud. Weeds found a hold and began to flourish in the perfect conditions for growth. All that was missing were fish of which there were none, other than a few bold or lost sea trout that had used the lower part of the stream for millennia.

They ventured upstream as far as the lake where they stayed a while before moving on further towards the foothills of the moors. Minnows appeared as if by magic and a few brown trout took up residence but there was no real life to the pond. What it needed was a few carp gliding lazily through the turbid water, grubbing in the bottom to send clouds of mud billowing up towards the surface.

In 1977, the council decided to stock the lake with coarse fish, including a hundred and fifty carp, thousands of rudd, a few tench and some perch. From being almost devoid of aquatic life, now it was full to bursting. The local kids had a field day. Maggots made an awful killing, literally, as hundreds of small fish were carried back to homes in the village to be paraded like trophies, before being fed to the cat.

Though I guess one had to feel for the unfortunate victims, their sacrifice was not in vain. In truth, the lake had been overstocked to the point of lunacy; now the fish that were left found they no longer needed to compete for food and soon, the thirty or so remaining carp began to thrive in the rich water, putting on weight and condition. Whispers of grey, ghostly monsters, glimpsed, or maybe only imagined, gliding through the murky water, began to be heard yet, at the time, I showed only a small spark of interest. My carp fishing life had only recently been renewed after a decade or so of fishing for other species. My return to the ranks was only just reawakening and there was a lot of new tackle and tactics with which I needed to come to terms.

I fished the Salamander for the time in late summer 1979. I had been carefully dipping a hesitant toe into the steamy quagmire that modern carp fishing seemed to have become in the years I had turned my back upon it. I had packed it all in several years earlier in favour of the savage, heart-stopping excitement of barbel fishing.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#393 19 Mar 2019 at 3.35pm

In reply to Post #392
THE STORY OF SALAMANDER LAKE 1979 - 1997

Over the past forty years I have written at some length on Salamander lake, not only in this thread, but also in the many articles I have had published in carp fishing mags throughout Europe. Like most if not all of you reading this, I hold a very special place in my heart for the lake that first triggered my interest in carp fishing. For some of you it will be a club lake or maybe a pit in the valley or elsewhere in the country. For me, Salamander will always be that place. So please forgive me for writing about it once again.

This is the lake in about 1978�

Salamander Lake has had a hold on me that is for over forty years. My first article about the lake appeared in 1981 when I wrote a piece for the magazine Coarse Angler called Hooked on Carp, which detailed my early days at the lake. Back when I first started fishing the lake it was clear to me that the lake would be very vulnerable to over-fishing and perish the thought, fish theft, so I thought it judicious to include a few blinds in the Coarse Angler piece to protect the lakes whereabouts and its true identity

There followed a further couple of stories, again for Coarse Angler and there were a blinds in those ones too! Since then, the lake has featured in many of my most memorable carp fishing experiences and stories.

Salamander Lake! What can I say? I adore the place! It was indirectly responsible - along with another lake in Devon - for bringing me back into the carp fishing fold after I'd packed in regular carp fishing in the early
seventies. These days, the lake is a pale shadow if itself with few if any carp left in it. You see, it is a free water, fishable by anyone with a rod license, completely uncontrolled by any club or organisation. The local council own the surrounding marsh and parkland and, from time to time, they pay lip service to the people who use the park as somewhere to walk the dogs and to take the kids but, for the most part, the lake has been left to get on with its life as best it can.

Sadly, the lake is at the mercy of the more unsavory *******s that haunt the fringes of carp fishing and life in general and many fish have been stolen to stock other waters, while others have died from abuse, neglect and downright bad angling. For all that, the lake was once the only water in this part of the country that could offer the carp angler a true challenge, as the carp that were in it were the craftiest I have ever fished for.

I first fished Salamander Lake in 1979 and caught my first carp of any size from the water a year later. In the years that followed, I got to know its inhabitants very well indeed - so much so that I even got around to nicknaming most of them myself. As the story unfolds, I think you will see how and why I have built up such an intimate feeling for the water and I hope you will also forgive me for omitting any hints of its whereabouts. That said most carp anglers who really want to locate the water will not find the process too hard.

Back then Salamander was just another lake on the big fish circuit, one poster boy anglers liked to visit, hammer it for as long as it took to catch the big one, and then depart. They have no soul, these people. They take all and give nothing. On the other hand, a few visiting anglers with a heart and a soul and a feel for the water, gave as well as they took. Their rewards were well deserved and their pleasure usually shared. It is a busy park lake with all that that entails, but on quiet summer morning while the world awakes there is magic to be found on its banks.

So this is its tale, a re-write of the three-part series I did for Carpworld published in 1996.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#392 2 Mar 2019 at 7.52am

In reply to Post #391
Postscript: As it turns out the fish that beat me up so badly thqat night was in all probability one of only two catfish in the Chat. One was an albino that was only ever seen once when the lake was drained for work to be done on the sluice. It was not weighed at the time but those who saw it reckoned it was close to two meters long! That would make it around 250lb.

The other cat was caught many years later by well-known home counties angler Stuart 'Lilo' Gillam, now living the high life in Thailand with Sean his son, both running the hugely successful Gillam's Fishing Resort in Karabi. Tat and I had met the pair in what was, I believe, their final carping trip in Europe when they visited the Chat before heading out east. We shared a great week with them and enjoyed more than a few beers together. Stuart caught the other catfish on a return visit to finalise details of the Resort and while 'home' he found time to fit in a visit to the Chat where he caught this huge fish (Stuart is on the left). He didn't weigh it, but as you can see, it's a beast, probably well over a hundred pounds. Was it this huge creature that had caused me so much grief in the wind and rain of a hideous night marooned on the island?

So ended the trip. It had been hugely successful from both a personal and a commercial point of view (remember, the whole point of the trip was to gather material to publicise the lake). One thing was for sure: I'd be returning to the Ch�teau Lake!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#391 2 Mar 2019 at 7.46am

In reply to Post #390
Shivering with cold and drenched to the bone I chucked the rod into the bushes and struggled into the bivvy and after a thorough towel down and a change of clothes plus two cups of brandy-laced coffee I began to feel human again.

Early morning and the wind died down and the rain stopped. Peeping out of the bivvy door I saw a sky ablaze with stars. What a transformation. Were the carp still around? Yes, they were�As the dawn broke I had another take from a carp that fought like crazy all the way to the net. It was one of the strongest carp I�ve ever played taking me over thirty minutes to overcome its powerful struggles. The scales presented me with yet another biggie, a humpty-backed mirror of just over thirty three pounds�Pinch me, someone!

Though it was still early this called for a beer! Another celebratory 1664 slipped down my throat; what a nice breakfast! And it wasn�t over yet by any means! Mid-morning I caught a small mirror and just as I was thinking about lunch another big carp took a bait off the big hump to the right of the east pontoon. It was yet another thirty and no sooner had I done the pix of that one that the other rod on the east pontoon went off...!

I was due to pack up fishing at midday but the temptation to stay for one more night was nagging at my brain. I was probably overstaying my welcome and pushing my luck to the limit but I just couldn�t bring myself to leave!

At six in the evening I was very glad I stayed! I was sitting on the pontoon as the sun went down, watching the world go by, when the tip of the one of the rods cast into the channel pulled slowly round. The buzzer gave a couple of bleeps, then broke into its full battle cry as a carp took off with the bait. Although the carp had picked up a bait cast well off to the right, all it wanted to do was go left, left, left all the time until it went around the back of the island. I had no choice but to strip off my trousers and T-shirt and go in after it.

What a performance. From snag to snag, tree branch to tree branch. Eventually I managed to get the snag leader onto the reel and I led the carp like a dog on a leash through the snags back to the pontoon. I climbed out onto the boards and eventually landed the fish after about thirty minutes of unarmed combat! Bugger me if it wasn't another thirty. Was I dreaming? I�d never seen such a magnificent fish and after such an amazing fight the memories of that carp will stay with me for a very long time indeed.

The night was quiet until the early hours of the morning. At just after five o� clock I had yet another run on one of the rods cast to my left into the channel. Another fabulous fight from a very strong fish and yes, you guessed it, another thirty.

Suddenly it was over. The dawn broke over the eastern end of the lake and as it the sun rose the wind once again switched direction back towards the south west. The carp moved with it almost immediately and soon I could see them jumping way off in the bay once again. It was time to go, time to bid farewell to this amazing lake. The sun beamed down on the lake and the tranquillity of the surroundings made me sad that I was leaving but I would be back!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#390 2 Mar 2019 at 7.41am

In reply to Post #389
I fell to with a vengeance that night, re-baiting the swims with three kilos of boilies, tying on new hook links and hooks and generally acting as if it was the start of the trip and not nearly the end of it. Not expecting anything to happen until at least one in the morning, I sat out on the pontoon as the night fell. A fresh wind blew straight into my face as I smoked a cigarette and drank a bottle of beer.

The wind was from the south east, warm and humid, a real carp angler�s wind. I knew I shouldn�t tempt providence, but once again I felt very confident of catching and this time my confidence was well placed. At just after eight o�clock in the evening the right hand rod burst into life, the first time I�d had a take off to the right hand side. After about ten minutes I had managed to get the fish in close. In the fading light I could see great swirls coming up from the bottom as the carp fought for its freedom and this was a prelude for a long struggle under the rod tip. After another ten minutes the fish at last sank into the waiting folds of my net, and I saw straight away that I had captured another good thirty.

I broke out another bottle of beer and tipped the whole lot down my throat to celebrate. The lake looked and felt so completely different that evening and into the dark hours. T-shirt weather towards the end of October in northern France? Unbelievable. With the unseasonably warm weather pushed towards me by a fresh south east wind it felt like carp weather and no mistake. And so it was�yet another thirty came to join me on the island. This was now on the point of stretching the bounds of reality!

The wind started to pick up by mid-afternoon and the fresh south easterly breeze blew straight into the swim, increasing in strength the longer it blew. The new wind brought carp towards me in numbers and they were crashing out all over the place. It just proved what I had been thinking all along, that the fish were following the wind. And the night was young. Plenty of time for more. The wind seemed to be strengthening all the time and it was now looking really carpy. I hope I don�t get any sleep I said greedily to myself.

It was awesomely warm but with 100% cloud cover, the breeze shoving them along at a ferocious rate. It looked like a storm was on it's way. In the gathering gloom I sat out in the freshening wind on the west pontoon drinking a few beers and listening to the carp crashing out in the darkness before heading for the shelter of the bivvy. I lay there listening to the wind as it increased in strength. If I don't get a few tonight, I thought to myself, I never will.

Sure enough and hour or so later, with rain now falling heavily, I had a brace of smaller fish, both commons that were returned un-weighed and un-photographed�I wanted to get out of the rain as I was getting drenched.

The weather conditions were perfect as the wind had really began to blow strongly and by midnight it was near gale force blowing straight into the western pontoon swim: it could only be a matter of time before I had another run.

It came as the light strengthened with the dawn, a screaming take from a very strong fish that ripped line off at amazing speed. I bent into it as best I could but nothing I could do seemed to have any effect. On and on it ploughed putting many yards between us. Whenever I tried to stop that incredible run the fish pointed me and continued to rip line from the reel. By now I was soaked right through and was loosing my sense of humour. This fish was beating me up and no mistake!

So there I stood, cold, wet and if truth be told pretty fed up. There was only a couple of reasons why I could make no headway against this fish; it was either foul hooked or it was the biggest carp I had ever hooked. I never discovered the answer and frankly I didn't care one way or the other. I was exhausted and about to freeze to death. Thankfully with the fish on a long line - probably by now 200m away - the weight of the wind on the line and the rod conspired to pull the hook free. Thank God for that, I said to myself.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#389 2 Mar 2019 at 7.39am

In reply to Post #388
Continued...

I baited up the gully area to my left with a further two kilos of bait. and fished two rods onto the same patch of bait that had produced a couple of fish earlier in the week, even while the wind was blowing a hoolie towards the far bay at the time. Hopefully not all the carp moved on the breeze. Maybe they'd learned a trick or two from the College carp that at time stubbornly refused to follow the wind, not matter how many 'experts' told them that was whet they were supposed to do!

The third and fourth rods were cast in the direction of the ch�teau bank from the western pontoon but with the wind in my face I was not able to get anywhere near the shallows in front of the boathouse. However, Pete had pointed out to me a quite prominent bar that lay only a dozen or so yards off the west-facing pontoon. It was steep and quite vicious, ripping the leads to pieces. It was easy to find to�You just pulled back until the rod tip started banging away like a good 'un. I put one rod on the top of this feature and chucked the other one as far as I could towards the boathouse and backed up the hookbaits with a kilo of bait on each rod.

So far all the takes had come during the hours of darkness. The buzzers had not uttered a single bleep in daylight, so it was a considerable surprise when, at just after nine thirty in the morning with the sun well up in the sky following another blank night, all hell suddenly broke loose. First of all I had a run on the left hand rod on the eastern pontoon and while I was playing that fish one of the two rods on the western pontoon went off! I didn�t know what to do, so I hung onto the first rod while the other one screamed its head off. There was no way I could play them both at once as the two were at opposite ends of the island about twenty metres apart!

Thankfully fate decided things for me as I pulled out of the first fish so chucked the rod down and then ran across to the other side of the island to hit the run that was still taking line. That fish I managed to land, a strange box-shaped creature. I guess we'd call it an Italian strain carp over here, but maybe it was simply a slightly odd-shaped Royale strain of fish.

So all of a sudden, out of nowhere, two runs had come at along within minutes of each other. The fish had come back to me at last and the weather forecast finally predicted an end, albeit only a temporary one, to the interminable south west wind. I felt sure that once the wind turned to another direction I�d have carp in my swim in big numbers.

The next morning, dawn arrived in the most spectacular fashion. I have never seen such a brilliant red sunrise. Quite the most amazing I natural phenomenon I have seen in all my (too) many years of carp fishing.

The new day brought with it new weather; not a cloud in the sky, the sun came out, it got warm then hot and by mid morning it was an absolutely glorious day. I had two fish by lunchtime, a mid twenty and a double figure common, the smallest carp so far on this trip. Both had fallen to bottom baits fished with just a small stringer to draw attention to the hookbait, no free offerings at all. It didn�t seem to matter whether I baited up with two or three kilos of free offerings or none at all if the fish were there they hung themselves! Both carp were caught on the close-in rods, cast into the gully about fifty meters or so into three metres of water.

I went into the village again that morning and visited the restaurant for another shower and a meal. These left me feeling really invigorated and refreshed. I felt so much better after a good meal, a drop of wine, and a decent shower that I was now ready for anything. Once again I decided to fish only with five bait stringers rather than over a large carpet of boilies and to be honest, I was very confident of my chances of catching now that the wind had stopped blowing away from me.

But I blanked yet again! My brash confidence of the previous night evaporated in a frustrated mist! The lake continued to baffle me. I had been awake for most of the night listening for fish but I never heard a thing. I couldn�t understand it at all. Where had they gone? A change in the weather often gets carp feeding and though the lake was now under the influence of a high pressure system, I felt sure that the new wind from the south east would have brought fish into my area. But that�s carp fishing. Sometimes they defy all reason and you just have to sit it out and hope! But I couldn�t complain. I was happy with what I had caught so far and there were still two more nights to go and now the wind had turned right round and was blowing straight towards the ch�teau bank and the island.

DavidGW

Posts: 758

#388 20 Feb 2019 at 10.19pm

In reply to Post #387
Excellent Ken, very interesting!!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#387 20 Feb 2019 at 12.55pm

In reply to Post #386
More to follow soon.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#386 20 Feb 2019 at 12.54pm

In reply to Post #385
By now I was beginning to grasp the magnitude of the task I had undertaken. I had never fished such a huge lake before and looking at it in the cold light of day it was obvious that there was a huge amount of water I could not cover. Hoping they would come sniffing around the island in search of food was expecting a lot, and there was no obvious activity coming from down the far end of the lake. Nor were they showing themselves in front of the western pontoon now the wind had dropped away. Using Google I have since measured the distance from the island to where I had seen fish showing. As I had thought at the time, its near enough half a mile. In this photo, which was taken from the peninsula (swim 26 for those of you who know the lake) looking back down the lake, the island is in the centre of the photo. How tiny it looks on such a huge expanse of water.

Still, at least I had the beginnings of an article building in my head should the Count finally commit to his plan to open up the lake to the great unwashed!

Four fish on the bank so far and more to come I felt sure. But sadly the next night was a blank one. I wondered if the fish that had drifted away from the far end of the lake might not have by-passed the island altogether and we now feeding on the remains of the bait Pete and Mik had put in at the weekend. Wouldn't do any harm to move a couple of rods over to the other pontoon, would it? I reeled in the two long range rods and moved them across to the other pontoon. I now had a pair of rods on each side of the island and I somehow felt much more confident.

Such confidence was misplaced as again I suffered a blank night but I felt it was only a matter of time before the carp came back to me, even though there was little or no activity to be seen way up the lake towards the far bay and there was no sign of any carpy action to my left or right. I figured the fish could well be shoaled up off the shallows in front of an old boathouse that stood prominently on the ch�teau bank. Little did I know what a huge part this little structure would play in my carp life over the years to come. Here you can see the island in the centre of the photo while the boathouse itself is visible on the far left of the picture between the old oak tree on the lawn and the fir tree that towers over the little building. It is about 350m between the island and the boathouse so there is plenty of room for the carp to loose themselves in the vastness of the lake.

Sunday was dull and overcast, a bit drizzly and the wind had freshened up quite a bit, more south-west weather that would surely take the fish out of range again�

In fact it was real carp weather and they should have been going mad. Maybe they were, but not where I was fishing! I was so emotionally exhausted by the long session with only myself for company that I decided to have a day off and went into town to do some shopping before stopping at a Les Routiers restaurant for a shower and a decent meal. By the time I got back to the island at about four in the afternoon I was refreshed and ready for the fray again.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#385 20 Feb 2019 at 12.52pm

In reply to Post #384
The forecast was good for the night with fresh winds and reasonably high temperatures. But I didn�t know what to expect after one night when we caught was followed by one when we all blanked. As the evening drew in a few carp began to show a long way off in the bay away to the east. It looked as if my fears had been realised, the wind had carried most of the carp with it towards the far bay. I was rather apprehensive that I might be in the wrong swim and decided to give it one more night on the island. If I blanked, I would follow the wind and move further up the lake.

Despite my misgivings I caught a couple of carp, one coming to the rod cast way off to the left in the deepest part of the channel between the island and the ch�teau bank, the other on the long range right hand rod cast about 100m in the direction of the far bay. The runs came at three and five o�clock in the morning and were the only takes of the night...not that I was complaining, they were both thirties! I sacked them up to wait for the morning when I could do the photos. (OK. I know the thought police of today will now be having a conniption fit, but back then everybody did it.)

The dawn when it arrived was very red heralding the arrival of strong winds and a few hours of rain. Luckily I managed to photograph the two carp before the rain arrived but then I had to retreat to the bivvy while the rain passed. The weather was not really in favour of the island situated as it was nearer the western end of the lake than the eastern one. With the prevailing westerly wind blowing hard all the time the carp seemed to have followed the wind up the lake, away from the island into the distant bay at the eastern end of the lake a good half a mile away from my baited patch!

The predictable rain, heralded by the morning's red sky had arrived and it pissed down for about 6 hours. I was marooned in a dark, dank sea of green and the rain hammered down onto the roof and the wind threatened to uproot the bivvy and blow it, and me, into the lake! It was bloody horrible and to be honest I was glad I didn't get a take.

Eventually the wind lost its anger and as it did so the rain lost its ferocity and soon the sun came out and the world took on a much rosier hue.

Sitting out in the late evening sunshine, beer in hand watching the world go by, I heard a huge splash that seemed to have come from pretty close by. I got up and looked for the ripples and couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that the fish had crashed out just a matter of yards from the right hand margin of the island, about ten years from were I was sitting. I needed no further invitation to reel in one rod and chuck a speculative hookbait and stringer into the rough area of the splash and before I had time to put the rod back on the pod the bait was taken and a big fish set off for deeper water. After a good bit of to and fro-ing the carp ended up in the net. Another really good fish well over thirty pounds in weight.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#384 20 Feb 2019 at 12.50pm

In reply to Post #383
Out in front of me, looking eastwards up the lake to a distant bay, the lakebed seemed pretty flat at about three meters deep while off to my right the bottom could not have been more different. Here it went up and down like an egg box. I was spoilt for choice. I decided to fish three rods out in front cast as far as possible with the fresh wind from astern to help me and one rod across towards the shallows. I planned to trickle bait into the egg box for a few days as a back up if there was no action. See what happens�

We got sorted out by dusk, then cooked the evening meal before sitting back to relax for the first time since leaving home. It was wonderful to sit and drink a cold beer watching the sunset and listening to a few carp crashing out away up the lake to the east. Soon my eyes were drooping with lack of sleep so I climbed into the blissful warmth and comfort of the bag and fell asleep almost immediately. I slept like a log, thus missing what was apparently the mother and father of all storms that hit the lake during the night. Thunder crashed and lightning flashed and yours truly slept right through it. Just as well I didn't have a take, though I should add, I have never ever slept through a take in my life.

It was still dark when I awoke. I looked at my watch; four in the morning. I peered out of the bivvy door to be greeted by a thick fog. The lake what I could see of it was while calm. Looking at the fog I thought to myself, �That�s the end of that,� for I have never done well in foggy conditions. However, just to prove me wrong suddenly, from the other side of the island, a buzzer screamed out! It was one of Mikhail�s rods! Pete was as wide awake as myself so we were soon with him on the pontoon as he took up the fight. Apparently the take had come on a bait cast into about three metres of water some twenty metres out. It was a terrific scrap from a beautiful carp, a big hump-backed grey Italian strain mirror of just over thirty pounds.

Everybody was delighted for Mikhail for it was a personal best. We had a cup of coffee to celebrate the first carp of the trip then went back to bed. I tried to read a bit of my book but I could feel my eyelids slapping shut and gave in to the fatigue. It didn�t seem as if I�d been asleep more than a few minutes when I too had a very fast run. I made my way along the pontoon, through the fog, then picked up the left hand rod. The LED was glowing brightly and the indicator was emitting a continuous shriek! As soon as I struck I knew I was attached to a very good fish. It had picked up a pop-up boilie cast off to the left some thirty metres out. And what a fabulous fish it was, a common not far off thirty-five pounds!

There was no more action that night, nor during the day that followed but we�d had two �thirties� after all. What a fabulous way to start to a session!

Obviously we were very excited by the prospect of the next night�s fishing but in fact it was a complete let-down after the two big carp of the previous night. We all blanked. It seemed almost unbelievable that they could switch off so quickly after switching on so instantly the day before. I think perhaps the weather conditions played their part for it was a completely different night, clear and cold with millions of stars shining in the sky, not a ripple on the lake and a touch of frost on the ground. We were all rather disappointed, especially for Pete who had to leave that morning. He had not had a touch all through the session, but Mikhail and I were obviously very happy with our big carp.

My two friends left at midday. I sat out on the rods in the freshening south westerly breeze. The conditions looked good again; blue skies and big white clouds all puffing along on a fresh south westerly breeze. There was some early drizzle in the wind but that soon cleared up and it was quite warm in the sun. I sat out on the western pontoon with the bins, scanning the water for a sign of carp. There were enough fish poking their heads out to make the heart pound harder!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#383 20 Feb 2019 at 12.48pm

In reply to Post #382
Eventually we reached the island and the two pontoons that had been built to accommodate anglers. They were very sturdy and comfortable but not big enough on which to put up a bivvy. However, there was plenty of room on the island itself. In fact it was mega comfortable and it even had its own WC� of sorts!

I had the big double bivvy with me for the long session and soon I was installed in the absolute luxury and blissful comfort of the excellent canvas pump-up.

It was all a bit hard to take in at first: here I was marooned on an island in the middle of a seventeenth century estate lake that was apparently stiff with carp. How good is that!

Pete and Mikhail had arranged some time off work to do a couple of nights with me. The pontoon looking down the lake towards the road end was slightly bigger and would accommodate two sets of rods so they took that side while I set up on the opposite side of the island. Here the swim faces more or less due east, a bit of a bugger as the wind was a fresh south westerly, blowing away from me. Not to worry! This is Pete and Mik as they are setting up on west-facing pontoon, the bigger of the two.

And this is the view of Pete and Mik's swim from afloat with the Chateau in the background. Nice, eh?!

Soon we were installed on the island. What a magnificent setting! Off to the left the imposing ch�teau dominated the view, surrounded by a thick pine forest the magnificent lawns swept down to the lake edge. There were even a few deer grazing quietly on its lush expanse.

A quick buzz around with the sounder and the Zodiac showed a distinct area of shallows in front of the lawn. It was only about a meter deep but the depth dropped off fairly steeply a couple of hundred yards of the chateau bank's margins. There was then a deep channel some three to four meters deep running between the island and the shallows and I felt this would be a good spot for at least one or maybe two rods.

I decided to bait up fairly heavily along the change-over line from deep water to shallow. In effect, this meant that I could fish into two or three metres of water about fifty metres off to my left, while the gradual slope meant a cast of about a hundred meters further put me in the deepest water of about four meters. I dropped a kilo of bait along the drop-off, concentrating mainly on the deeper water and the shelf leading up to the shallows.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#382 20 Feb 2019 at 12.47pm

In reply to Post #381
Excited by Pete�s news that I might be in with a chance of catching some previously uncaught carp, I made arrangements to go over for a visit in late October 1996. Unfortunately I had to undertake the trip alone, my usual fishing partners being committed to other adventures and Carole being hard at work earning a living so that I could go fishing. Bless her!

The thought of spending any length of time in my own company was rather daunting. I�ve never fished in such isolated circumstances, nor for such a long time without company or a break of some kind. I was a bit uneasy about the prospect ahead. To cap it all the shipping forecast gave SW 6-8 for the night of my crossing so my stomach was churning with butterflies as I left home.

The crossing from Plymouth to Roscoff was pretty rough and bumpy with a south westerly gale blowing. On board I met a group of English anglers who were on their way to Fishabil. I told them of my plans and where I was going (though I didn't name the lake) and they queried the wisdom of going to a completely unknown lake, when I would have to drive straight past the known quantity of Fishabil in order to get there. But if you don�t try out new things, you never, learn do you? Starship Enterprise - to boldly go and all that, splitting infinitives in the process. !

The rough weather meant that I didn�t sleep very well on the ferry and I drove to the lake with drooping eyelids. The weather was not very pleasant, heavy rain under lowering grey skies. Not the sort of start I would have wished for. I met Pete and his mate Mikhail at the lake and we agreed that we would fish together for the weekend before they had to pull off for work. Eric got a bottle out - I found out in later visits that sinking a swift glass or seven was the accepted procedure to follow at the start of a trip in France. Here's Pete on the left with Eric the Estate Manager.

Eric mentioned that there were already three English lads fishing the lake so we all went up to see how they were doing. They were not best pleased to see me and even less so when I told them of the purpose of my visit, but nothing was agreed just yet and until I had met the Count their little secret was safe.

By a huge coincidence I had met one of the group before; Roy Williams, an old College visitor from way back. It's a small world. Nige Cobham and Graham Mountain were on the trip too. Good anglers all three of them, so it was no surprise to hear that they'd had a few decent fish, though they were cagey about sizes. As they were leaving the next day I was all for going into their vacated swims, but after a bit of a discussion it was clear that Eric felt we were in with a better chance if we fished two newly created pontoons swims situated on an island in the middle of the 170 acre lake. (It turned out that these had been built especially for my visit so it would have been rude not to fish them.) In the photo the pontoon on the right is east-facing, while the one of the left faces west towards the main road and the sluice outlet.

Back at the car park Eric steered me in the direction of a rather dilapidated pontoon alongside which sagged a rather tired-looking semi water-logged punt about the size of the QE2. If it hadn't be tied to the jetty I reckon it would have sunk.

We bailed it out but water came in as fast as we emptied it. Oh well. We bit the bullet and got on with it! Pete had brought his big Zodiac with a powerful Evinrude petrol outboard so we loaded all the gear into the two boats and prepared to set off the half mile or so across the choppy surface to the island. Of course, the outboard wouldn't start so after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing a small electric motor was hitched to the transom of the punt and the battery was connected up. Even with the size of the punt there was only room for Pete's gear and mine so Mik's went in the Zodiac, and wheezing like a good 'un, the little electric struggled to get all three of us out to the island. This was my first view of it. I was mighty impressed, to say the least.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#381 20 Feb 2019 at 12.44pm

In reply to Post #380
It was the weather as much as any other factor that kept us off the bank of the big lake while we indulged in a spot of touristy stuff, you know, eating and drinking the best that France has to offer and occasionally doing a bit of sight seeing. It was while on our tour of the area that we came across a large French town with a big river running though it and for want of something better to do we tried our luck for the carp, even though we did not know for sure if there were any carp in there. (We have since found out that virtually every French river holds carp to a greater or lesser degree. Indeed, if we'd though to stop in the town we'd have found a big tackle shop, the walls of which were festooned with photos of good sized carp. Hey-ho! You live and learn.) This is a short section of the river in question.

As it turned out there we got pretty lucky and dropped onto a few fish straight away and we actually caught a few twenties. In fact there are much bigger carp in there as we subsequently discovered but on that visit we were happy with what he caught. This is Tat and myself with three nice twenties.

I mentioned that the big barrage was one of three lakes in the valley so naturally we had a look at the other two. The first was as big as the one we were fishing but was long and thin whereas the one by our gite was just big! The third lake was only twenty kilometers away from the gite so naturally enough we visited the lake. God, it looked carpy!

The lake was in the grounds of a fairy story chateau with wide sweeping lawns and thick forests: it looked as if it had come straight out of a novel or was some exotic film set. Further enquirers in the nearby town indicated that, indeed the lake was very private and was owned by a true aristocrat, a count no less! We were told that there was some talk that the lake might open for fishing on a limited scale the following year, so the following year we were back, this time staying in a nice little bar/restaurant cum guest house situated right on the banks of the river we had fished the previous year.

Again we managed a few decent fish from the river but once again we were disappointed to find that the private lake remained just that�Private.

Year followed year�we found new challenges and caught a few from here and there. Then in the early part of 1996 I got an excited phone call from my old friend, now living in France, Pete McDermott. He had managed to get permission to fish the Chateau Lake and together with Mikhail his mate he had fished a 24-hour session for seven fish, smallest just over twenty pounds, biggest a good thirty. This is Pete with a Chateau Lake mirror.

Pete and his mate were the very first carp anglers ever to cast a boilie into the lake and naturally they visited it throughout the summer, each time being rewarded with some very decent fish.

The lake was a completely unknown quantity as far as its potential was concerned and Pete was eager for me to fish there as he knew the lake may not remain open for long as the owner was in two minds whether to allow the great unwashed onto its banks. I don't think he needed the money so who could blame him. However, Pete arranged a meeting between me and the Count, the idea being that we could talk it over and I could maybe point out the financial benefits he might gain by opening the lake, which I would publicise in the UK.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#380 20 Feb 2019 at 12.43pm

In reply to Post #379
CHATEAU LAKE: OCTOBER �96

I thought you might like to read a bit about my experiences on a lake I became associated with back in the 90's and the 00's, L'etang de la Poiteviniere, aka the Ch�teau Lake or simple the Chat.

This was not the first French lake I fished. Nige, Steve and myself had ventured across the Channel first in 1989 and several times thereafter. However, while we had fished some pretty decent lakes such as Chatillon and Hutchy's 'Commons Lake' it wasn't until we tripped over Poiteviniere that our French forays really began to kick off.

Tat and I had also discovered the joys of French holiday cottages enjoyed some pretty decent gite/fishing holidays and it was on one of those trips that we first encountered the now-famous estate lake that has since become so well known. Little did I know at the time that the Chat was to figure so hugely in my angling over the next fifteen years.

Have you ever looked through a fence or over a wall into a dream-world? You see before you the private landscape of an ancient ch�teau; a lawn that looks as if it has been painted onto the surface of the earth, a Capability Brown garden blossoming with colour and splendour and, maybe, a lily-fringed lake where huge carp sport and parade with not a care in the world. A paradise. Wistfully you say to yourself, �I�d give anything to be able to fish there,� but you know that cannot be. For a start there's a bloody great sign baring your way that says "Private"

That is what happened to us a few years ago, in the late summer of 1991. We had rented a gite situated on the banks of a big lac de barrage in western France. It was one of three lakes that lay in the valley of a river, surrounded by thick forests and dotted with the occasional village, the lake was about 800 acres in size.

We had chosen the gite 'on spec' more because it was only a stone's throw from the water that any other reason. We took a chance that the lake would produce carp and while we did catch a few upper doubles and mid-20s we had hoped for better things. Here's Tat with a low twenty and myself with a typical carp from the huge lake.

You can get some idea of the size of the lake from the above pix and at the time it was certainly the largest lake we had fished so far in our carp fishing lives. College was the largest venue we'd tackled to date so to look out on this huge expanse of water - and these pix show only about a quarter of it - was pretty daunting. To be honest I think we did pretty well to catch anything at all! As you can see from the photo the weather took a dislike to us in no uncertain way!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#379 13 Feb 2019 at 12.32pm

In reply to Post #378
We always take alternate runs and this one was Tat's so she picked up the rod and reeled like mad to get in contact with the fish while I got the boat ready. Tat, however, said she didn't need the boat as it was, "just another bloody bream", and certainly, she did not seem to be having too much bother reeling it in. However, as the fish got closer to the swim it began to put up a bit more of a fight and the rod took on a more familiar curve. Was this a carp after all?

It sure was! Not one of the fabled monsters but at 23lb it was very welcome nevertheless. It behaved like a dog on a lead, a common trait when my lass plays a fish. They seldom give her grief and even from over 200 yards away she played this one in like a true pro. I assume it was one of the stockies that went in back in 1995, and that being the case I wonder how big it might be today?

So there it is, the story of my second, and probably final trip to Rainbow Lake. I told you it was nothing to get excited about but from looking at Kev's vids I think Steve's advice holds true today, so if one of you is lucky enough to get a booking in swim 14, maybe this meagre account will help.

I'll finish with a couple of scenics. They don't really do the lake justice, as you have to see it to understand the raw beauty of the lake.

More to come soon!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#378 13 Feb 2019 at 12.31pm

In reply to Post #377
While scouting about for an alternative area to fish we found quite a nice plateau just in front of the mini islands between swims 14 and 16. The rod is not pointing at the spot in this pic, in fact the plateau is off to the right a fair bit.

Well we had brought with us about twenty kilos of frozen, home-made Trigga boilies (barrels) and a couple of sacks of a 50/50 combo of groats and Red Band pigeon conditioner a bucket of which had been in soak since we left the UK. By now it was heaving nicely!

We were going to fish four rods between us and we'd been warned that really strong end gear was required due to all the snags. The only stuff I had in the box that I thought would do was 45lb Quicksilver so I borrowed a trick from history and made up a double length hooklink using this material. I added a fine hair and crimps to hold it all together. To my eyes it looked crude as hell but what did I know.

Hookbait was a pair of Trigga barrels on the hair. Nothing special.

To start with we dropped the hookbaits and a small scattering of boiled bait, some of which I crumbed around the areas Steve had suggested, including one up the channel. We'll tackle a take on that one when we come to it, we thought!

We had 25lb braid on the reels with a snag leader of 45lb Quicksilver topped with a header of leadcore. The lead was attached using a drop off clip and the milk bottle was allowed to run freely up the line to a stop placed about fifteen feet from the hooklink swivel. Was that strong enough? We would see.

There is no easy way to put the following 12 days. We saw neither hide not hair of a carp, though we did see on the bank several bream and tench and a solitary sturgeon. Our eyes were glued to the spots throughout daylight and we kept an ear open for the slightest splash during darkness: we saw nothing and heard nothing. Mind you, we were not alone. Alain in 12 blanked as did the guys in 16 to our left. Meanwhile Tim and John had arrived and moved into 19 where they picked away at slow but steady fishing until John caught an 82lb mirror. This was apparently a carp known as the Briggs fish and it would later go on to break the Rainbow record at 91lb plus for Martin Locke.

We kept the bait going in by dibs and dabs in the hope that there would be something there for the carp to eat when they eventually turned up, but in the meantime the tench and bream were eating everything we threw at them and the sturgeon didn't help either.

It was cold, wet and miserable and come the day of our wedding anniversary we were glad to get off the lake in favour of a trip into Bordeaux where we wallowed in the luxurious comfort of a posh hotel and even posher nosh, but even that short break did nothing to get the carp feeding on our spots. We decided to move the channel rod onto the plateau and moved the corner rod fishing in the margins of 13 up the bank to join the other rod fishing the vicinity of the stump. This was the area that was producing the majority of the non-carp takes, so at least we knew were doing something right, even if the carp had yet to play ball.

Day after dreary day, the trip wound it's way to a close. With one more night left to go we put the baits out one last time. As darkness fell at last we saw a splash over the stump baits. Come on you beauty.

It was fully dark when one of those rods gave a couple of bleeps then showed a huge drop back. Had a fish nudged the lead down into the deeper water or was it an actual take?

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#377 13 Feb 2019 at 12.29pm

In reply to Post #376
This is a brief rundown on the advice Steve gave us:

If the water level is not too high then look for an underwater tree stump lying a few yards off the margins of the long bank away to your left, he said. The carp patrol the whole length of that bank between swims 12 and the corner to the right, nominally swim 13. A bait placed close to the stump stands a good chance as does one down in the corner to the right. You can see our two right hand rods at the extreme right of this photo. The right hand rod of this pair we fished down to the corner where the bait was dropped in about five feet of water. The other was dropped just off the stump in around seven feet. You can just about see a bottle close to the red dot that marks the stump. The rods in the foreground started off being fished to the ends of the bars running all the way down from swim12, though one was alternated between the bars and the end of the tree. Swim 12 can be seen in the distance. Alain Danau was in residence when we were there.

Steve said to look out for the branch overhanging the water off the margin of the left hand island. You'll know it when you see it, he said, and told us to keep a hookbait in there dropped at the end of the branch.

There are good spots in the middle of the bay, said Steve. He told us to locate the bars that run down the length of the bay from swim 12 and then fish the end of the bars. As he said, they were easy to find using the sounder but keeping a marker on them was frustratingly difficult, as anyone who has fished that swim will tell you. The bars slope very steeply and we found that the markers just tumbled off the slope and out of sight very easily. Of course if we'd known about H-Block markers at the time life would have been a great deal easier. I have marked the very approximate position of the bars on this pic.

The end of the bars are about 80-90 yards off the bank so a lot further away that it looks in the photo. I would guess that they are underneath the ducks!

Steve also said that there was another very productive spot we should try. It involved a bit of skulduggery, though as it lay up one of the channels just off to our left. As you can see from this photo the series of small islands identify the start of several channels that run into the bay behind them. In order to fish them we needed to shove a bankstick into the bankside at our end of the channel, running the line around the bankstick up to the end gear so thirty yards up the channel. As you can see, it takes an experienced Rainbow Lake angler to fish this one, and being a totally inexperienced we were a bit tentative about sticking a rod up there. The red dot marks the start of our channel�

�and the line shows the course of the line from bank to hookbait, running around a bankstick placed on the corner of the small island.

We were concerned about how we would get a hooked fish out from the channel but Steve assured us than as long as the lead got dropped the fish didn't do much, just stooged around until you got over the top of it in the boat, whereupon you could bend into it and bring it to the boat. Blimey! Sounded very hairy to us, but remember, this was the first time we had been confronted by the challenge of fishing around corners. In hindsight we need not have worried and hundreds of carp are landed in total safety by Rainbow anglers using this trick.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#376 3 Feb 2019 at 2.16pm

In reply to Post #375
When we had fished the lake in 1995 we were as green as grass. Fishing round corners using rollers or over islands using V-rests was yet to be invented and if you couldn't play them into the bank then they snagged you up and you lost them! Now modern thinkers were coming up with new ideas every day. One of these was fishing bottles to keep the line off the bottom. Now that one I can claim some credit for as I had published a scaled down version of the rig in (I think) Carpworld in about 1998.

It was a set up I came up with to fish the Pavilion swim on the Chateau Lake, a swim with a notoriously snaggy and complex set of lake bed features. It bears quite a resemblance to how some guys still fish Rainbow and indeed it was one we had in mind for our first visit. I started saving our empty one pint milk bottles!

The two week period we had been offered in swim 14 covered both my birthday and our wedding anniversary and to push the boat out a bit to celebrate we sailed Portsmouth - Santander and booked one of the posh cabins with a balcony etc. Cost a fortune but it was well worth it as we were treated like royalty and felt like real posh gits. It was our first crossing on the recently launched cruise ferry Pont Aven.

If you ever feel like pushing the boat out and enjoy a 24-hour sea crossing, I can thoroughly recommend sailing down to Spain with Brittany Ferries. If nothing else, it cuts a shed load of mileage off the road journey and it's a great way to travel too.

Mind you, the Bay of Biscay can get a bit frisky at times!

I had been in contact with Steve prior to our departure. In 2005 he had enjoyed terrific trip to Rainbow, fishing swim 14, and he was mega helpful with advice, tips and so on. In fact he even drew me a map showing his productive spots, describing the features to fish to in great detail. These are (roughly) the spots he recommended.

In practice the spots he recommended were easy to find and I think they still hold good today. At the time, however, I didn't feel confident enough to fish the channel rod, which involved a right turn around a roller, preferring to fish the more easily accessible areas such as the plateau, the tree, the end of the bar and the submerged stump. Steve really went out of his way to help us. He is a proper gent! Sadly his advice, spot on though it was, did not help us too much as the lake had been limed just a few days previously, which I know from my experiences at Wheal Rashleigh can have a negative effect on a lake for a week or so.

We arrived at the lake on my birthday and we wanted to splash out a bit before starting to fish so Pascal rang a mate in the town and arranged a nice hotel for the night, where we enjoyed a lovely nosebag and a very comfy night's rest.

The lake looked much as I remembered it from eleven years previously, though perhaps the water level was up a fair bit compared to 1995. Certainly the features across the bay in front of the reception area were nothing like as prominent. Otherwise the lake looked fantastic.

Pascal greeted us with coffee and a sandwich before showing us around. We immediately made a chronic error: Swim 19 was free for our first week as Tim and John were not due to arrive until the following Saturday. Pascal said we could fish it if we wanted to�Like and idiot I said no! In my defence I had no idea that it was one of the 'going' swims on the lake: it was not for nothing that Tim had booked it some two years earlier! But I had Steve's advice firmly fixed in my mind and did not want to set up in one swim only to have to move to 14 a week later. What a mistake that turned out to be! But in my mind I still had visions of catching fish like those Steve had caught from 14 the previous year.

More to come soon.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#375 20 Jan 2019 at 1.39pm

In reply to Post #374
You will recall that in the autumn of 1994 Tat and I had returned to the public Category 2 lake at Brive-la-Gaillarde, intending to do a long session on the lake where Kevin Maddocks had made a film with Liam Dale that featured an obscene amount of carp. Just our bloody luck that when we got there the cupboard was bare. They'd gone and emptied the gaff and moved all the carp to Rainbow!

Now read on: The Horsebox trip started a trickle of interest that rapidly grew into a torrent. Bill and I were bombarded with questions about the lake, as I imagine were Paul in the shop (Bristol Angling Centre) and Mike at work (Essential Baits), while Liam took the phone off the hook and buggered off to Africa! Meanwhile we jump forward a few years to our second and last trip to the lake in 2006�and I warn you, don't expect too much, as our trip was small beer compared to the results many have enjoyed on the famous lake. OK, I know me and Tat are not alone in having a few (fourteen to be exact) bad days there, but if you look at the youtube stuff and Kev's (currently deleted) vids many peeps have some fantastic memories of Rainbow.

A bit of background: Since returning from the Horsebox trip in 1995 we had kept an ear open for news about Rainbow on the carp fishing grapevine and as we had forecast it was starting to throw up some impressive fish. Those little stockies were starting to come out at twenty and thirty pounds plus and the Brieve fish were steadily putting on the kilos.

In 2003 I went to Romania for the first time with Philippe and Leon, a trip I will describe later in this thread. I had a fantastic time there, rubbing shoulders with some of the best carp anglers in Europe at the time including the late Kurt Grabmeyer as well as Alain Danau and Philippe Lagabbe. One of the gents in this photo is a charlatan by the way! I'll leave you to make your minds up which one!

The A-List anglers that gathered in the hotel most lunchtimes made me ask myself what on earth I was doing there, but it was a cosmopolitan crowd that mingled well and we had a lot of laughs. Among the guys on the lake on that visit was Steve Briggs who had already carved out a much respected name for himself on the European carp circuit, and with good reason: the guy could catch carp from a puddle. Chatting away over a beer it transpired that we had a number of French waters in common having fished then one or more times�though not at the same time. One of the lakes was Rainbow where Steve was in the middle of a very successful campaign. Not only did we have lakes in common, we also had a fish or two as well, such as this one.

(Talking of Raduta, this gives me a gratuitous opportunity to show you a photo of one of my all time favourite carp, a thirty pound common caught to order, story to follow sometime.)

Moving forward three years and out of the blue an invitation to fish Rainbow again popped into my inbox. It was from Pascal asking if Bill and I fancied going back to the lake now that a good decade had passed since our last visit. He offered us swim 14 for the last week in March and the first in April. Bill had to decline as these dates fall right in the middle of the European carp expo season and he would be rushed off his feet dashing from one European capital to another. However, I said yes bloody please!

We finalised the dates and Pascal agreed that Tat could accompany me so the first few weeks of 2006 were spent in a flurry of excited anticipation as we prepared the tackle for what would be for us a totally new experience and a totally new way of fishing. At that time there was not much info on the lake though controversy surrounding the rather esoteric ways and means employed by the guys were fishing there was beginning to emerge.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#374 20 Jan 2019 at 1.30pm

In reply to Post #373
Now bug-free Dave had returned to the fray and had set up on a tiny island with just inches to spare on either side. He caught two nice twenties in quick succession. The fish were obviously on the move with the change in the weather, for both Paul and Dave were rewarded for their dogged persistence with a double figure carp apiece. Thruster took a leaf out of the West Country lads' book and moved again, back into the swim he'd started in. This, for two reasons: 1) he missed the social aspect that came with fishing with me and Bill, and 2) to be nearer to the car park when it came time to pull off. Good thinking, in my book!

In the gloom of the gathering drizzle, Bill, Mike and Thruster posed for a pic. It was coming towards the end of the trip and that certain sadness I always seem to experience during the last forty eight hours or so of a trip was creeping over us all. Would you buy a bag of boilies from this lot?!

On our final afternoon a lorry from a fish farm arrived. No less than 2,000 small carp, mostly commons, went into the lake. At the time we thought that in time and given proper lake management we expected these stockies to grow to huge sizes and make Rainbow one of the most sought after tickets in France, though we thought that was probably a year or two off yet. (2019 comment: am I Mystic Meg or what!). Here's a 1995 pic of Pascal as he empties a dustbin load of one kilo carp into his lake. Just think, one of these babies may well weigh over seventy pounds today!

By the Monday we' had enough. The change in the weather had not had the hoped-for beneficial effect on the Rainbow carp at least, not on the ones in front of me and Bill, and the trip seemed to be grinding to an unproductive halt with increasing inevitability. Bill and I pulled off a day early ahead of the long drive home.

Liam treated us to a very nice meal in the restaurant in Hostens that night. We had a few beers and the odd wine or two and discovered that Liam's next project was to be a trip to film Nile perch. Andy said that he'd heard that the jackals were pretty fierce where they were going and he didn't fancy it one bit, so he was planning on returning to the BBC to film Jackanory or some such nonsense. It was good to have his jocular presence with us during the trip. A very nice guy and a good cameraman to boot. Here I sit in the mouth of Bill's bivvy while Andy films the rods. Very artistic!

Sue waxed lyrical about this and that, including the fact that my voice-overs had turned out nice again. Liam mellowed out more and more as the night went on (cough), and with the film more or less finished, he could unwind and relax, which he did big style.

Back to the chalet we strolled in the clear night air. The weather was changing yet again. Outside the chalet, the tall angular shape of the discarded horse-box awaited its call to arms. The return journey was a few hours away. I could hear the Range Rover groaning at the prospect.

Bill and I were returning by a different route, crossing Roscoff - Plymouth so Tat could collect me more easily. Even though it rained almost all the way up to the port we did the journey, including meal breaks, in about eleven hours. It's a bloody long way to Roscoff from Rainbow and that's a fact! At least going back this way we wouldn't have to wonder about Liam and his ponderous cargo. No more, "Excuse me! Have you seen a horse-box?"

The ferry crossing from Roscoff was a doddle, thanks to a day cabin which allowed Bill to get a bit of kip before the drive back to Sheffield. I'd arranged for Tat to meet the boat at Plymouth and, in bright sunshine, we emptied my gear onto the pavement outside the ferry terminal. I still had a couple of beers left so I toasted Bill's health as he drove off. It had been a real pleasure to share such a challenging trip with the guy.

The fates had not been kind to us and to be honest we had no idea how to fish Rainbow properly; stuff like fishing around the points or over the bars using rod rests, playing fish from the boat, things that are taken for granted at the lake these days. I had thoroughly enjoyed my week at Rainbow Lake and would love to go back there.

(In fact Tat and I went back in March 2006. The trip encompassed the dates both of my birthday and our wedding anniversary and perhaps we didn't take it as seriously as expected. Hey-ho. Never mind, eh? I'll come back to that trip soon but don't hold your breath; it's nothing to get excited about!)

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#373 20 Jan 2019 at 1.17pm

In reply to Post #372
I slept like a log that night but not long after turning in Bill lost yet another fish pulling out of what had felt like a pretty impressive carp (aren't they all when you loose them?). Then, as if to mock us still further, at first light I lost yet another fish to a margin snag after something picked up one of my inside rods and made it to the unknown snag in the blink of an eye. No amount of pulling or tugging was going to get this fish out so I put the rod back onto the rests to go and get the boat to see if I could free the fish. I had not gone a yard when suddenly the line on the snagged rod fell slack. I picked up the rod again, only to reel in the discarded tackle as if it had never been touched; no sign of fish or snag. Curious!

I went out in the boat to top up my bait carpet, Liam tagging along for the ride and to do some filming. You can see the car park in the distance with swim 1 visible over Liam's left shoulder.

At last, to raise our spirits just a smidgen, Bill landed a carp. It weighed about 14lb, not what you go to the south of France for but very welcome nonetheless. At least it showed that Bill and I were still correct in our firm belief that we were doing things right. After all, we�d now had eleven takes, resulting in two carp and two sturgeon. All we needed was a lump each, and we�d be able to call the trip a qualified success. Here's Bill playing the scamp after the take on one of his two distance rods. Try doing that today�He must have bitten on the lucky biscuit that day! (Apologies for the poor photo.) You can see that Bill is looking to his left where spreading ripples indicate that that a fish had just jumped down towards the corner. Fish had been showing there all week but we couldn't buy a pick up there!"

Liam seemed pretty happy. The daily scripts and the filming was working out well, thanks in no small part to Mike, Dave and Paul�s carp and not forgetting the sturgeon. He almost had his film in the can by now but there were still one or two shots left to do, including some pretty funny nonsense concerning Thruster, Bill, a pair of scissors and a Kevin Maddocks� haircut. (Once again, you'll have to watch the film to get that!)

The weather changed on the seventh morning, cold and damp with a light drizzle which quickly turned to a heavy downpour. The Dutch lads left for home, a 1300 kilometer drive which I didn�t envy them. Some Dutch lads were due to arrive the following day so we were running out of chances for a result. Following Thruster�s departure for pastures new, Bill and I now had the bay entirely to ourselves but if we thought that this would make a difference, we were sadly mistaken, for our last night was a blank one. Mind you, the sunrise and sunset seen from our swims were often spectacularly beautiful.

Meanwhile, Thruster found himself in blissful isolation once more. No sooner had me moved in to the Black Beach than Mike and Paul moved out. They fancied the look of a large island overlooking the distant club house. It was to no avail and after a blank night they moved yet again, this time to a tiny island just behind the series of gullies which mark the boundary of the Caravan Bay.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#372 20 Jan 2019 at 11.56am

In reply to Post #371
The supermarket was selling fresh oysters. At the time I couldn't get enough oysters; quite simply, I adored them. Sadly in 2003 I developed a severe allergy to them and the resulting food poisoning was so bad it put me in hospital. The doc told me that my next oyster would be my last�it would kill me. No more oysters for me, then!

However, back to 1995 and Bill was curious about oysters as he had never tried them.

�What do they taste like, then?� he asked as we were driving back to the lake.

�Brilliant!� I assured him. �Try one.�

I opened one and offered it to Bill. I watched as he slid the juicy morsel into his mouth. I hadn�t told him that the best way to eat oysters is raw, still alive, straight from the shell! The big fella�s throat worked to keep his rising gorge down. I thought he was going to drive off the road and pile us into a tree.

�For crying out loud,� he shouted. �How can you eat that? It�s bloody awful.�

�All the more for me then� I said.

I ate the lot on the way back to Hostens and left the empty shells outside the chalet where Liam, Sue and Andy were staying. Apparently, I had missed one and as it began to fester in the heat, the smell permeated the house with nauseating effect. The film makers were not amused. What a waste of a good oyster!

We called in to see mick and the Dutch guys. They were suffering once again. After two blank nights following the carp�s departure from the area, they were back once more to hook pulls and lost fish. I have no idea what they were doing wrong but it must have been very frustrating. I can�t help thinking that they were getting sturgeon trouble, but they assured us it was carp that were causing the problems.

It was late afternoon and, having completed the day�s script and recording the voice-overs, we�d got the baits out early to our liking. More for something to do than a planned change of tactics, I�d decided to switch to a prototype Tutti flavoured Big Fish Mix boilie I�d brought along. These were fished over a bed of trout pellets, a complete change from what I�d been putting in to date. Now, a couple of hours later, in the cooling evening, sitting back in the low chair outside the bivvy some four or five yards away from the rods, I glanced down towards them. The middle indicator was bar taut, against the butt section of the rod. I�d had a take! Why hadn�t I heard the buzzer? Because the bloody things were turned off, that�s why, pillock!

(I always turn my buzzers off when I�m adjusting my line after casting out (or rowing the baits out in this case. I can�t stand all the bleeping and so on that accompanies most carp anglers when they are adjusting their lines, it�s so unnecessary. Of course once in a blue moon, you forget to turn them back on again!)

I picked up the rod and wound down, hoping to feel the responding thump of a good fish from the other end. Glancing at the reel it was clear that the fish had gone some distance, straight into the nearest snag. Cursing myself for a fool, I jumped into the boat and pulled myself across the 120 yards of intervening water to where the line disappeared straight down from my arched rod tip to the snag below. I could make no impression on either the fish or the snag. Luckily, the Quicksilver was now on the reel so I could exert a lot more pressure. I grabbed the line in my hands and heaved, cutting my fingers in the process. Suddenly, the line jerked clear and I took up the rod again, prepared to resume the fight, but the line led straight to another snag. Once again I got over the top of the snag and pulled. Whereupon the snag released my gear intact and certainly not encumbered by any carp!

Once again me and Bill enjoyed the warm evening with a beer or two before turning in.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#371 20 Jan 2019 at 11.12am

In reply to Post #370
Mike told us that he felt that the fish were not in his and Paul�s area in the sort of numbers they�d experienced earlier. They were seeing less action over the baits with fewer fish crashing out and little or no fizzing. Mike had kept his baiting to a minimum so as to increase the chances of the hook bait being picked up but it was clear that the change in the weather was pushing the fish out of their baited swims.

But there was still time for Paul to get in on the act. Just when he had thought he�d missed his chance, as it began to get light at five o�clock in the morning, he caught a long, lean mirror of just over 251b. Paul had switched one rod to a new spot in the margins where he�d watched fish rolling as they cleaned up small carpets of bait, which he�d been trickling into the swim for a couple of days. Naturally, Mike�s fish had all fallen to his own air-dried Essential Products baits but Paul kept the Nutrabaits� flag flying, catching his fish on the (then) new Tutti-Frutti shelfies.

Day four arrived and in swim 1 Thruster was feeling the wanderlust. The under water terrain in front of his swim seemed to be an inpenetrable jungle of snags, the only clear area being at very long range near to another bird hide. Thruster had found this area on his initial scouting foray with the boat and sounder and had marked it down as a likely looking area, using the boat to position all three rods near the shooting hide. Likely or not, so far he had not had so much as a single pick up.

Nor, for that matter, had Mischa one of the Dutch guys who had moved out of his starting position as he felt there were too many lines in the water. He was probably right. Sadly for him his new spots had so far been unproductive. I can only assume that the fish were coming into the bay from our left and we were perhaps cutting Thruster and Mischa off in some way. Seems hard to believe but I�m sure that was what was happening.

Thruster was also now being hampered by not having ready access to a boat. Liam had commandeered the only spare one to use for filming, leaving poor old Thruster out in the cold. Pissed off at not being able to fish his preferred area, in the end, he had grabbed Mr. Director�s boat while he wasn�t looking, loaded up his substantial pile of tackle, food, beer and wine and set off in the general direction of the Black Beach.

Liam spotted him when he was halfway across the bay and he was incensed at the prospect of losing his transport.
�What are you doing with that boat?� he yelled.

�Hang gliding!� said Thruster, continuing on his majestic, arse-back�rds way. Liam fumed and threw things, but there was no stopping Thruster as he thundered across the bay, hidden in his own welter of spray kicked up by his unorthodox rowing style. As he turned the corner and passed out of sight, another boat hove into view, cutting across the bay, heading for the car park. This one was also being rowed in a peculiar fashion, push me, pull-you, one side at a time. If you ever see the film you�ll see what I mean. It must have been Silly Rowing Day at Rainbow Lake.

We heard later that Thruster eventually finished up on Black Beach, just in time to join Mike and Paul in their search for a new area to fish. They�d had their first blank night and, for the first time, their baited patches had remained untouched throughout the night. In the three days remaining, Mike and Paul would move four times, a tribute to their dedication and perseverance.

Meanwhile, after getting settled, along with Thruster now set up on the Black Beach, Paul and Mike were getting hungry. Time for a visit to Hostens to lay in some grub. How do you ask for one of those long loaves of bread in French? Paul asked. You say, �un bonk s�il vous plait,", Mike told him, making an excuse and beating a hasty retreat, leaving Paul alone in the bread shop with just the voluptuous lass behind the counter for company.
Pointing innocently, Paul came out with the phrase in perfectly accented French but was confused when the gorgeous girl behind the counter smiled, drew the shutters, put up the closed sign on the door and advanced with a predatory smile on her face...in his dreams!

Purchases completed, Paul and Mike headed back for the lake, passing on the way, Bill and I heading for the bar. This was purely for professional reasons you understand, for Liam wanted to film the village and the bar, preferably with volunteers drinking a beer or two outside in the bright sunshine. Reluctantly, we allowed our arms to be twisted. The days were getting hotter again after a brief period of overcast and drizzle; now the temperatures were in the mid-seventies, just the weather for sitting outside under the caf�'s awning, drinking ice cool beer.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#370 20 Jan 2019 at 10.52am

In reply to Post #369
The strike was met by a solid resistance and almost immediately the long pointed snout of a sturgeon shot skywards as the grey, arrow-shaped creature cleared the water. The rest of the short-lived fight was equally spectacular, with frequent broaches interspersed with darting, short and savage runs. The fish had picked up a margin bait and it put fifty or sixty yards between itself and the bank on its first run. It was (briefly), one of the more memorable fights I have enjoyed in my time. I say briefly because whatever it was, the bloody thing fell off! I said a very rude word. Things were not going well for me this trip!

Then, as if to reinforce my ineptness, Bill actually went and caught one of the blighters! Not content with seeing me lose what would have been our first sturgeon, he then proceeded to latch into a strong, if unspectacular fish that came grudgingly to the net with few, if any, histrionics. The sturgeon fell to one of Bill�s long range rods, a fish weighing just under 261b. The fish�s tail was broken almost at a right angle, which probably accounted for the unspectacular fight.

I had been experiencing lift and bleeps all morning and we both suspected there were sturgeon about and sure enough mid-morning I had another. Again, the take came from the inside rod and once more I was treated to an aerobatic display which would put a lively sea trout to shame. The fish slugged it out on a relatively short line but, compared to Bill�s dour scrap, this one was all action. Bill and Thruster joined me and Bill dipped the net under the still protesting beast. Together we heaved the long, sinewy creature ashore, placing it gently down on the mat. Into the sling, up she goes�just under twenty pounds�Not bad!

This pic shows the position of the sturgeon's mouth and it is clearly obvious why we were getting so many bleeps and false takes.

Two sturgeon in four hours made a nice picture and I know both Bill and I were very pleased with our respective captures. I had taken to calling them �Prestons�, a pun on the name of Preston Sturgess, an American film director and screen writer. Preston Sturgess�Preston Sturgeon�Presonts. Geddit?!

Liam was particularly caustic at this, saying that he�d never heard of him. For a film maker himself, Liam is obviously very poorly informed about the history of the medium in which he has chosen to make his living. Born in 1898, Preston Sturgess won two Oscars, for The Great McGinty� and �Christmas in July�, as well as directing such classics as �Sullivan�s Travels� and the brilliant, �The Lady Eve�. By a strange coincidence, Sturgess retired to the Bordeaux area of France in 1950, where he died, nine years later, aged 61. That's Liam told, then!

Soon, the pulls and tugs we d experienced throughout the day ceased entirely and the fish could be seen moving out of the bay en masse. The last we saw of them they were off jumping and bow waving off to our left. It looked as if they were on their way round to see what Mike and Paul had to offer! Lucky them.

News from around the lake began to filter in as I sat in my bivvy ready to write the new day's script. The Dutch lads still hadn't put a fish on the bank, though not for the want of takes. All fours had had runs during the night but had either failed to connect (probably sturgeon) or lost fish to the snags. The paying party had rung to say they wren't oming after all, and off the Sensas Team there was no sign. However, Mike had cracked it again ( knew he would), this time with a big round fish of 31lb 8oz. It was his only take of the night and it came at ten o�clock the previous evening. Once again, the big carp had tripped up on the same spot where Mike had caught his previous fish; he might just as well have left his other two rods at home.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#369 18 Jan 2019 at 3.03pm

In reply to Post #368
Bill, Thruster and I spent the early part of the night setting the world to rights over a beer and a bottle of wine or two. Bill was still a bit despondent about losing a very strong carp earlier that evening but Thruster soon cheered us both up. Christ he was a big guy! In fact the pair of them would not have been out of place in a tag team in the wrestling ring!

Thruster the Forester was becoming a real boon to the trip. A hard nut with a heart of gold, he had us in stitches with tales of his exploits at home (judged, I have to regret, too outrageous for the sensitive stomachs of my gentle readers). How his missus puts up with him is astonishing. Kindred spirits seem drawn together and we spent several highly amusing, not to say, hysterical evenings talking the dark hours away.

I turned in about one in the morning but I couldn�t sleep. Out in the darkness, fish crashed out over our baited areas with monotonous regularity. Eventually, so convinced was I that I was going to get a run that I sat by my rods until the dawn, drinking gallons of coffee to keep me awake. Bill�s swim too seemed to be full of fish crashing out by his markers. I felt certain that one of us was going to get a take, yet nothing happened through the night and as the dawn light began to chase the mist off the water, I returned to my bed somewhat chastened and rather downhearted. What did we have to do to get a take? In the end I realised that it simply wasn�t to be and after a quick breakfast and a cup of tea I dragged my weary bones back to the warmth and comfort of the big bivvy.

I dozed on and off as the sun rose behind the pine forest that surrounds Rainbow Lake, scattered images of what might have been flitting across my mind�s eye. I had decided not to re-bait with first light, choosing instead to leave the overnight baits where they were, just in case any carp remained in the baited area though, admittedly, the crashing out had stopped. However, you couldn�t be sure they�d all cleared off. Perhaps now, with washed out baits and less groundbait in the swim the chances of a take were improved. Who knows? It was worth a try.

I�d just dropped off again when the buzzer screamed out, indicating a fantastically fast run. I struggled to the rods, trying to shake off the thrice cursed sleeping bag as I went and arrived at the still protesting buzzer in a tangled mess. The line was absolutely pouring off the spool of the reel on the middle rod. Picking it up I struck hard�at absolutely nothing! What the...?

I�d no sooner got over my astonishment than the left hand rod was away to a similar flyer, but the resulting strike was met by the same total lack of resistance. There could only be one answer; the sturgeon had arrived. For the remainder of that morning both Bill and I were plagued by a series of strange takes; little lifts, pulls and tugs, the odd bleep or series of bleeps, but neither of us actually managed to hook into one of the takes, if takes was what they were.

It was very frustrating to say nothing of hard work, what with the constant re-baiting and so on. It was clear that the lake�s shoal of sturgeon moved around mob handed and they had arrived in force in our bay, where they were eating us out of hearth and home. Back and forth we scurried in the boat, taking top up supplies of bait and particles across to our distant markers where the sturgeon were obviously making hay. By why weren�t we getting fish?

It wasn�t until we voiced our frustrations to Liam that it became a little clearer. Liam has had a few encounters with sturgeon in his time, in fact, he holds some kind of world record for Beluga sturgeon. He told us that sturgeon feed by extending their lips onto the bait, picking it up, crushing and biting into it at the same time. All their chewing is done at the front of the mouth, unlike a carp, which has to pass food items to the throat teeth before it can chew them up.

We now figured that the sturgeon we were encountering were picking up the boilie hook baits, holding them in their lips and moving off with the bait. The hook was still outside the mouth so that when we struck, we simply pulled the hair through the bait, leaving the sturgeon with a bite to eat and us with sweet Fanny Adams! Plan B was called for. What was Plan B? Simple. Very short hairs on an extended shank hook a bit like the so-called Looney Rig. This had the effect of presenting the bait below the bend of the hook. Did it work? In short, yes it did!

It was eight o�clock next morning when I had a flying run. The night had been fairly quiet but it was clear that the sturgeon were still around as they had been showing themselves on the surface from time to time throughout the night, though they were obviously not feeding. Probably full up, judging by the amount of bait we reckoned they�d cleared up. Then, as the light strengthened, they got their heads down again. The run came to one of the margin rods, placed on a narrow ledge in about eight or nine feet of water, surrounded by depths of twelve to fourteen feet. I think the run was all the more impressive simply because it came from so close in. The spool seemed to be emptying at an alarming rate and when I picked up the rod, the reel was buzzing like a kicked-over hornet�s nest.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#368 18 Jan 2019 at 2.52pm

In reply to Post #367
Some twenty yards in from the burnt tree and to its left, I�d found a very interesting feature on the sounder. It appeared to be a dead tree or similar snag, but groping round with a grapnel had produced nothing tangible. An echo sounder can lie by showing weed and tree branches as fish, but it doesn�t usually deceive by showing snags that aren�t there so what was it? I put the sounder onto zoom and finally found what appeared to be a soft underwater hillock with a coating of soft silt and a few straggles of weed on its top. The snag was about ten feet further out from this hillock and it was clear that this area would certainly be very attractive to carp if I could get them feeding in there. I decided to move two rods onto this feature, stop putting in particle and fish a light carpet of boilies only on this new mark.

And it had worked. Though small, at least it had been a carp, our first take at
extreme range and proof that we were at least getting something right. Then, as the evening drew on and Bill, Thruster and I were sharing a meal and a beer in my swim when Bill�s middle rod, fishing a gully in some eight feet of water some 130m from the bank, was away to an absolute flyer. Bill tiptoed down the path with all the grace of a delicate gazelle (oh, really?) and struck the bucking rod that was already threatening to jump off the rests. The tip was dragged down almost to the horizontal, as a very strong fish set off on a run that stripped sixty yards of line from the reel. It was an amazing run the fish staying deem and making savage line-stripping runs.

Gradually, the fish slowed and Bill began to work it back towards us. As he did so, the left hand rod, now fishing an area of shallower water in front of the point was also away, the tip section pulling right round, almost to its fighting curve on the rests, before a startled Thruster could respond to Bills shout to grab it! I don�t know if it was this extra complication that caused Bill to lose concentration just for a split second, or whether the fish he had one would have found the snag anyway, but that is what it did; one second, going hell for leather, the next second, solid.

(It has sine been discovered that the area in front of what was then swim 3 is snag city, which is the reason neither swims three or four are fished these days.)

Bill tried to pull the snagged fish clear for about thirty seconds, but it was to no avail, so we jumped into the boat and pulled our way across to the snag, hoping and praying that the fish was still on. But when we arrived directly over the snag, the hook pulled free with almost no effort at all and the fish was gone. Bill was devastated, for the fish had clearly been something very special. What was strange, was that we had passed over that snag with the sounder several times but nothing had shown up.

As if that disappointment was not enough, the second take that Bill had on his left hand rod had come adrift in yet another snag, leaving a shattered Thruster to reel in the intact end tackle, the bait still on. Two runs in as many minutes, both obviously from carp and both now lost to snags. It was becoming clear that, as with the Dutch lads, we too were fishing an area that was full of snags.

At times like this, when an angler has lost not one, but possibly two very big fish the needs to be left alone. No amount of commiseration can make up for the disappointment of losing fish. I pulled the cap from a bottle of beer, handed it over and left Bill to his inner cursing. Luck was certainly not going his way on this trip. Four takes and all four had found one of the innumerable snags in the bay in front of him.

Bill quickly sorted himself out, put fresh baits on new hook links and while I held the rods as Bill rowed his hookbaits and fresh bait carpets to his two markers, Thruster got busy with the corkscrew. Chores over, we sat in my swim as the light went, gazing in awe at a spectacular sunset, which kissed the tree tops to our left. It was warm and a gentle breeze had picked up from the south west, which was now blowing straight into our bay.

We�d been told that the fish didn�t move with the wind other than to move from one gully to another, one island to another. That said, we felt that maybe there were a few fish prepared to move on the freshening breeze and hope sprang eternal once again. Bill forgot his earlier disappointment as the three of us made a big hole in a case of beer and a bottle or five of red wine� I�d bought the booze just that morning and the idea was to take it easy over the five remaining days. Hey ho! The best laid plans!

Out in the darkness, fish were crashing out with almost monotonous regularity over the baits; it was just a matter of time before we got among the big 'uns. In the margins in front of my swim, a dart shaped projectile left the water, silhouetted in the full moon�s glaring light. It looked as if the sturgeon had moved in. Wouldn�t mind one of them, I thought to myself.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#367 18 Jan 2019 at 2.48pm

In reply to Post #366
By now it was gone midday and the sun had climbed to its zenith. There wasn�t a cloud in the sky and there was plenty of heat in the sun, even though it was still only mid-March; T shirt weather. Glass of beer weather!
Thus inspired, I sat in the bivvy and wrote the draft of the day�s script, covering bait and tackle. Did you know that many famous film directors wrote and rewrote scripts on set? Today, Rainbow Lake, tomorrow, Hollywood? I think not!

Day 2 arrived with news of another big fish for Mike at 401b 4oz. The bugger! I knew you he�d empty the lake.

Meanwhile, the Dutch lads were suffering woefully. The swim they�d chosen presented a lot of problems and they had been losing fish to the snags almost since the day they�d arrived. The main problem they�d encountered were the snag trees across the far margin to which they were fishing. Dropping short to avoid the snags meant no more takes! What do you do, fish the tree line and loose fish or drop short and get no bites? Very frustrating. (They were fishing what is known as swim 18 today and the snags in that swim are well known and avoided by the regulars. At the time there we no regulars to put them right.)

Luckily for the most part they were getting the end gear back as invariably the fish were lost when the hooks pulled out. One of the Dutch lads had lost a huge fish that shed the hook and left him to reel in half a tree. And what a tree it was! It looked like the Christmas tree from Trafalgar Square had been dumped in the lake. It was massive. How he got it in to the bank I'll never know. Now, to add to their woes, it was clear that all this activity - hauling in snags, loosing takes - had pushed the fish out of the area. What to do? No good sitting in the swim all day simply to loose fish. Move on, maybe? In the end, they decided to sit it out in the hope that the fish would move back into a swim, which was clearly much to the carps� liking. A change of rigs and hooks was probably called for but at least they were on fish, which is more that you can say for Bill, Thruster and me.

Over in the north east bay, Mike was busy with the film crew again. His big fish had taken at about 1.30 in the morning and followed a couple of hours of constant action, with fish crashing out over the baited areas. In fact, the 40 was Mike�s second fish of the night, as a small carp of about 81b had tripped up on his presentation as the light went. Once again, a popped up fruit flavoured boilie over a big bed of particles had done the damage.

Mike had been baiting a narrow channel in seven feet of water for two days and he�d seen the area cleared of bait during the first night, so it was a racing cert that he�d be on for a fish come the second. And that wasn�t all the action on the second night either, for Dave too had caught again, this time a big ex-Brieve mirror, which took the bait at about four in the morning and gave him fifteen minutes of hectic and nerve stretching excitement. Like all Dave�s fish, this one too fell to a popped up Cream Cajouser readymade. I think it is great what Dave says on the video that accompanies the shots of the fish going back. �I�m glad to say that even after forty years of fishing, after I got it in the net, I was shaking!�

Not content with his three carp so far, Dave now did what I consider to be a very magnanimous thing, for he pulled out of his swim to allow Bill to fish a long rod down towards the area where Dave had been getting most of his action. He was clearly still suffering from the effects of the flu, or whatever it was he�d caught, and he was going to have a night off. Meanwhile, Liam and Andy the cameraman filmed everything that moved (and loads of things that didn�t move, for that matter) and I sat in the big bivvy and wrote the scripts that are on the finished film.

For the three of us fishing the bay in front of the clubhouse the going had been slow verging on the non-existent. Just the one lost fish hooked in the margins. However, at last we were beginning to get a bit of action. On the morning of Day 2, another pick up for Bill, along the same margins had also found the same snag and that fish too had come off. Then, at about ten in the morning, when we�d thought that it was all over for the day, I caught a small carp of about eight pounds from a new area I�d found with the sounder.

Liam piled the video crew into one of the Rainbow Lake boats, which we nicknamed The African Queen due to its rather antique looking canopy, and then the Swamp Donkey powered the film makers across the lake, using a spluttering outboard engine that handily leaked fuel in a delicate trail across the three swims which Bill, Thruster and I were fishing. Any good that?

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#366 18 Jan 2019 at 2.34pm

In reply to Post #365
Baits out, burgers frying in the pan and a cold beer at the ready we awaited the fading light with a keen anticipation. The darkness fell like a shroud, in what seemed like seconds flat and the tiredness and excited exhaustion of the previous forty eight hours caught up on me. I climbed into my brand new, never-been-used-before sleeping bag at about ten o�clock and I�d like to tell you that I fell fast asleep. Not yet I didn�t. I should have tested the bag before leaving home, for it was clear that the zip was knackered and it resisted all attempts to get it to stay done up. I struggled and cursed and threw the stupid bag across the bivvy, but to no avail. In the end, I had to settle for spreading it out like a blanket. Luckily, I had brought my a one piece thermal suit in case of extreme cold or emergencies, very welcome it was too.

Eventually I dropped off into an uneasy sleep at about one in the morning, not before I�d checked on John and Bill. They appeared to be sleeping soundly, which made me all the angrier at the frustrating sleeping bag. I awoke, fishless, with the dawn and wandered down to Bill�s swim to see if he�d had anything during the night, but his dry landing net and the sounds of a deep and untroubled sleep coming from his bivvy told its own story.

I was standing there when I heard a distant screaming run from the corner where Dave was fishing. It went on and on for what seemed like an age. Come on, Dave! Eventually it stopped and, crouching down to peer through the undergrowth, I could just make out Dave striking a rod. Leaving Bill to his slumbers, I wandered up the bank to see if I could help. As it turned out, my assistance was very welcome for Dave looked to be in some considerable pain but he stuck to his task with what was clearly a good fish and, after a very dour and exhausting fight, I slipped the net under a lovely thick mirror, which looked to be about 251b, which had picked up Dave�s Cream Cajouser shelfie.

I sacked the fish, while Dave explained that he�d been suffering for the past twenty four hours with a crippling headache, sore throat and streaming eyes and had hardly got a wink of sleep all night. He reckoned he�d just nodded off when the buzzer had announced the run. He certainly looked bad enough, so I left him to catch up on his sleep and wandered back to my own swim. Bill was stirring. �Any good, mate?� I asked him, though I could guess what the answer would be.

�Nah�, he told me, �though I lost a good fish right here in the margins.�

Bill pointed to a spot just a couple of yards from the bank where he�d put his margin rod the night before.

�It went like a bat out of hell up the edge before it found a snag�, he said.

I commiserated and put a sympathetic kettle on to boil. Thruster came thundering through the undergrowth like a bulldozer. Christ, he is a big lad! Nothing! we chorused, before he could ask. �Same here�, he replied.

So it looked as if it was all down to Dave to save our bacon and, even as we sat drinking the first cup of tea of the day, the sound of Dave�s buzzer broke the still air once again. This time, Dave needed no help to land a very lively mirror of about 18 or 191b, which was put straight back without being weighed. The fish was captured on film by the video crew who�d arrived earlier and were busy shooting a general shot of the lake when Dave�s buzzer sounded. The resulting scramble to get down to his swim and start filming the fight was comical to watch, Liam charging ahead, empty-handed, while Andy the cameraman and Sue the sound engineer struggled across the broken terrain in his wake, carrying boxes and cameras, tripods and microphones and all the other paraphernalia that seems to be required when making a video.

And what of the others? Well, the Dutch lads had suffered all night with the dreaded sturgeon; one of the other guests had caught a small carp; a couple of visiting English journalists had blanked and the two paying guests had also failed. That just left Mike and Paul. Liam was getting worried. He needn�t have! Mike had caught, and what a catch, a lovely mirror of just over 371b, while Paul had missed out on a fish that had fallen off half way in. The pair had baited up several areas along gullies and on plateaux where they could see their bait carpet. Fishing like this it was easy to see which areas had been visited, for the lake bed had been polished clear of silt and the bait was gone on the two spots that had produced runs during the night.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#365 18 Jan 2019 at 2.15pm

In reply to Post #364
This a general view across to the channels in front of swims 2 and 3.

Splitting up the photo I can show you the rough areas we fished. The blue dots are the areas when I placed my three rods. They are between 120 and 130m out.

The red dots are where Bill placed the baits. His longest rod is about 150m from the bank while the nearest one was only about 50m and was placed in what appeared to be a rather snaggy area over which a lot of fish seemed to be present if the sounder was to be believed.

In addition Dave suggested we all fished at least one rod close in. It was between eight to twelve feet in front of us, sloping down rapidly to a wildly fluctuating lakebed. It would be easy to bait the margins rods with a steady flow of particle, putting it in little-and-often, along with a handful of boiled baits to add further to the bait carpet�s attraction qualities.

The particle we always use in France is a mixture of three different ingredients; flaked maize, groats and a micro seed blend. These are mixed in equal parts and about eight kilos of dry blend makes up a twelve kilo wet mix, enough to fill a ten kilo bait bucket once water has been added and the particles have swollen. The beauty of this mix is that it needs no boiling. Simply cover the seeds with water and add flavour or liquid food additives as required. Leave for 24 hours and it�s ready for use. The groats and the flaked maize in particular swell up and absorb water and the additives very effectively. In fact, the mixture almost trebles its weight after the day in soak.

Naturally enough, the boilies Bill and I were using were the new Nutrabaits shelfies. Bill had also brought bait along for Paul Dicks, Thruster and the Dutch guys. We chose to start off on the Cream Cajouser and the Pineapple and Banana, while Paul went on the Tuttis and Thruster on the Strawberry Cream and Bergamot Oil. We also intended to make up a ten kilo bucket of fresh particle each day. Luckily Bill's motor was large enough to allow us to cram about 200kg of mixed bait in among the rest of the gear!

Liam came round in the afternoon to do some recording once we�d set up and got the rods and the baiting up sorted out. This took the form of a sort of video diary, which he hoped would chart our progress (or lack of it) during the trip. Bottle of beer and wine glass in hand, Bill and I did our bit and, as Liam left for the comforts of the chalet down the road in Hostens, which would be the video crew�s home for the week, we prepared for the first night on a new French water. Thrilling stuff, eh?

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#364 17 Jan 2019 at 3.49pm

In reply to Post #363
To be honest we were winging it; neither of us had a clue where to start because there were so many features in front of both of us that it was hard to know where to start. It was clear that the small humps and tiny islands were connected by a series of bars that ran across us from right to left and they seemed to continue down into the far channel, which is where Dave was fishing.

Nowadays these bars and channels are characteristics of the majority of the swims on Rainbow. there are few flat areas of lakebed so the choices of where to fish in each swim is now generally acknowledged. However, at the time of our visits the swims 5-12 and 12-18 did not exist and there was certainly no road access to them even if you wanted to fish off piste as it were.

We were also intending to fish a pair of rods in the margins. Putting all our eggs in the distance basket was not a good plan and as Dave Watson had said we could use a couple of extra rods if we wanted to, we didn�t need any further encouragement. Bill�s margin looked very tasty, with overhanging trees and deep water right in close. Mine was somewhat less inspiring and it wasn�t until I�d had another little explore with the boat and the sounder that I found the host of interesting (and very confusing!) features in an around the channels.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#363 17 Jan 2019 at 3.24pm

In reply to Post #360
The channels leading into the bay from both the right and left hand ends could be covered from the main bank if necessary (from swim 5 on the left and swim 1 on the right these days), while two distinct and very fishy looking points leading out into the bay at its extremities were unfishable, due to the presence of a couple of shooting hides, though they could be fished by either Bill or myself if we fancied rowing the bait out a long, long way. All in all, it was a tasty area to fish.

But first it was time for a beer. After all, you cannot start a French trip without celebrating your arrival and toasting your (hoped for) success, so I drove into Hostens for a crate of Kronenbourg from the local shop. It was a glorious day, warm with a mild breeze; a perfect day for a beer outside a beckoning caf� and I was tempted, but I didn�t fall... Like hell! Honestly Ken, you�ve got the breaking strain of a Kit-Kat.

I sat in the sun while the cafe awning flapped in the fresh puff of wind. The beer was ice cold and the barman chatty enough. Too chatty, I wondered? He was very interested in the new project being run just down the road and wanted to hear all about the carp fishing and so on. I had a feeling I�d be seeing more of the bar as the trip went on.

I drove back to the lake to find Bill already set up so I quickly set up in my chosen swim along from Bill. I�d brought the big canvas pump up Bivvy, which is so comfy it is like home from home. Inside I set up my small table, typewriter and small chair. It was like a green-shrouded office. I'd had brought a ream of paper on which to write the scripts which I had been asked to produce on a daily basis, depending on the demands of the filming and what needed to be covered each day. It was quite cosy!

Bill and I had already drafted a rough guide to what needed to be covered, for we didn�t just want to make a fishing video of baits and rigs and leave it at that. No, we wanted to make it as instructional as possible, passing on the benefit of our own experiences in France over the years. I like to think we�ve succeeded, but only time will tell. With the bivvy now set up on a small mound overlooking the lake, I set up the rods to cover as much of the bay in front of me as possible, without impinging on Thruster, who was to my right and who also fancied fishing at range towards the entrance to the bay away to my right. We had a little chat about it and I agreed with everything he said - like you would � he�s built like a brick **** house!

Bill and I had another row around with the sounder and found an average of about twelve foot at range and also under our feet in the margins. The steepness of the shelves was amazing. Tight under the burnt tree, I found about two feet of water yet less than a few yards away it was twelve feet deep. and just a bit further again it was down to a depth of eighteen, nineteen even twenty feet. So within no more than three yards of the bank the margins dropped from a couple of feet to twenty feet! No way freebies were going to stay in the margins over there! This is a wide angle view of the whole bay with the modern day swim 5 on the extreme middle left of the pic.

The over hanging tree in the middle right in this pic was a spot I fancied for one rod, but again the slope was steep in the extreme. Using the sounder I traced the path of the bar that ran from the left hand side of the island and here I found more reasonable depths between three to six feet along the top of the connecting bar that ran from island to island. Bill and I chose to concentrate on and beyond this bar that ran right across the bay between our two swims. We would put a rod each on the top of the bar in about five feet of water and one each behind it in anything from six to sixteen feet in depth. Bill decided to fish tight to and in front of the far island and also to an area of snags to the left. He baited all three rods with particle and a kilo of boilies over the top.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#362 17 Jan 2019 at 2.59pm

In reply to Post #361
PM for you Rumple!

The_Umpire

Posts: 35

#361 17 Jan 2019 at 5.30am

Cracking thread Ken - slowly working my way through it.

Regarding the SW scene. I have a few mates living down that neck of the woods and i have ventured around the Exeter Canal and also Upper and Lower Tamar (beautiful lakes and the canal having massive potential for all species)

Did you spend much time on these waters, I know Pete Gregory had a 40+ out of the Exeter Canal way back and also the Upper Tamar held a few gooduns...no doubt some of this may well be contained in this thread and i'll come to it along the way.

So much untapped potential in the SW waters (think it was called Peninsula Fisheries).....shame that the lakes are adjoined or near to Tarka and his mates...

Be lucky..

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#360 13 Jan 2019 at 3.01pm

In reply to Post #359
Before we started fishing we had a look in the club house where Pascal the owner of the lake showed us around. I found the bar particularly interesting especially when he opened a bottle of champagne. The showers and toilets were pristine and in the bar there were several table comfy chars in which to relax while sipping a beer or two. It looked like bliss as far as I was concerned!

From outside in the car park came a wheezing and a hissing as Liam's Range Rover, now relieved of its horsebox pulled up. I think the journey down had taken it out of the vehicle, which was steaming gently in the April sunshine. Water dribbled from the front of the car and there was a distinct smell of hot metal and boiling water. It would be glad of a rest!

Andy and Liam set to with a vengeance, gear of all kinds started to spill from the back of the car; tripods, cameras, battery packs. Blimey! Liam wasn't doing things by half. Pascal looked on in puzzled amusement!

Liam wanted to do some scene-setting shots of the lake so I was called into action as a model. My early bald spot put in its first appearance. It wasn't until Liam was doing the editing that he pointed it out to me. How kind of him. Until then I had no idea it was there. In my late forties, I had to accept that age was creeping up on me!

Mike and Paul's plan for their swim was to fish at varying depths, baiting several areas of clear gravel in between weed beds that could be inspected at regular intervals to see if the bait had been eaten. Bill and I were somewhat restricted in our choice of swims, due to the constraints that filming and writing scripts would impose upon us. We both fancied the long bay down from where Mike and Paul were to fish, where a nice wide sandy area looked big enough to house us both. This would have been, I guess, what is now swim 12. However, the filming and recording the sound track demands easy access to the participants and Liam wanted at least a couple of us to be within easy access of the Range Rover.

The bay in front of the clubhouse looked tasty and Dave had been fishing the area with some success. He was in a corner swim - swim 4 is not fished these days - and he offered to move out of his swim to let Bill in. However, I think he rather fancied a swim mid way along the bank between the corner and swim 1. I think this would be swim 3 today but if that is the case then it is now usually left vacant so as not to interfere with anglers in swims 2 or 5. Besides, Dave was clearly on carp and we needed fish for the film. So what with one thing and another Bill ended up in 3 while I went into swim2. Thruster pitched up in swim 1. This shows the bay and the position of the four swims we were going to fish.

They like you to pair up at Rainbow or at least fish adjacent closely neighbouring swims as they reckon most of the playing of fish is done from a boat so someone needs to stay in the swim in case another rod goes off. The ones we would fish were ideally suited. The Dutch lads were in what are now 18 & 19 with Mike and Paul in 11, a swim they called the Black Beach after the dark almost black sand therein. Before Bill and I went off to at last set up and start fishing I did a group shot of the assorted players. Here l-r are: Dave, Pascal, Liam doing his 'I'm the director' bit, yours truly, Andy the cameraman and Bill.

While Bill went off for a walk round, I dug out the sounder, jumped into the boats and had a quick row around the bay in front of the area in front of our swims. It was so full of features I had no idea where to start. The area in front of our swims appeared to be tailor-made for the sort of long-range fishing I enjoy most. About 130 yards away, a small island poked its head above the surface. It was decorated by a solitary tree, a pine, its trunk burnt and twisted, leaning out over the water at a steep and crazy angle. You know what it�s like when you see something like that, don�t you? Regardless of what the underwater terrain is like, you automatically think to yourself, that looks tasty. Silly really, but I bet more than a few of you have felt the same at times. It�s like a sign saying, �fish here�! Incidentally, one of the shooting hides can just about be seen in the extreme middle left of this photo. This is now swim 5 and is one of the most productive swims on modern Rainbow lake.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#359 12 Jan 2019 at 12.14pm

In reply to Post #358
This is a fairly typical landscape at Rainbow. It's mind boggling the first time you see it! I am not sure where the guys are standing. I think they are on a small island behind the channels that lie behind swims 1, 2 and 5. They are certainly not on the swim that is now called The Island Swim.

The Bristol pair had brought their own fibreglass dinghy with them, as well as an echo sounder and these were to prove invaluable as the week went by. Soon, the two West Countrymen were afloat, off into the jungle of features in the general direction of the north west corner, into which the wind was blowing steadily. It took them six or seven hours looking around the area before they eventually picked on a spot where they could intercept fish moving along the channels in front of them and into the bay that opened up beyond. It was mind numbingly beautiful.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#358 12 Jan 2019 at 12.13pm

In reply to Post #357
I think we were all taken aback at the complexity of the lake, its numerous islands, gullies and bays. In fact there are so many features on the lake that each swim it totally different to the one next to it and should be fished almost as if it were a different lake! In places there are depths approaching twenty feet and less that a boats length is shelves up to three feet. The proverbial egg-box only more so. There are also shallow bars, plateaux, tiny islands, and some of the bars are so steep they reach up fifteen to twenty feet in an almost sheer slope.

By mid morning it was decided. Mike was going to fish with Paul while I would fish with Bill. They like you to pair up at Rainbow as they reckon most of the playing of fish is done from a boat so someone needs to stay in the swim in case another rod goes off. John Moth said he would drop in next to wherever Bill and I ended up.

The Dutch lads were installed in a couple of swims that are now identified as 18 & 19, while Mike and Paul set up on the opposite side of the lake on an area of black sand which they called the Black Beach. This is now swim 11 I believe. Finally Bill and I set up in a couple of swims in the bay closest to the clubhouse swims 2 & 3 nowadays, though 3 no longer exists. John set up in the first swim no known believe it or not as swim 1, astonishingly enough!

Other fish had come out to Dave before we had got there, including a thirty and a big twenty, as well as a few sturgeon. The Dutch lads in particular had been plagued with these prehistoric looking fish, but they had failed to make contact with any of them. A sturgeon�s mouth is deeply under slung, rather like a shark�s and as it chews its food with the tooth plates on its lips, it does not pass the food back into its throat to bite on it, hence standard hair set ups are a bit hit and miss - mostly miss. Often, you get a screaming run, only to be met with nil resistance, for when you go to pull into the fish you pull the bait out of its mouth at the same time. Either that or it simply drops the bait!

A nice beach area, looking out to a long, steep sided island, held Mick Paine and his friends from a large Dutch tackle shop, Dion and Cass. They had arrived three days earlier but so far had been frustrated by losing sturgeon after sturgeon on their shelfies. It appeared that the sturgeon liked boilies, and no mistake. In typical Dutch fashion, a case of beer lay cooling in the water and Mick insisted that we partake�and why not? Mick seemed to think that the sturgeon had moved out, as their swim had been much quieter that night, though Cass had lost what had felt like a very big carp during the night.

Bill and I took a slow wander around the perimeter of the lake. Rainbow Lake is supposed to be 100 acres. It's a very big hundred acres in my opinion and the stroll took the best part of the morning. By the time we got back to the caravan, Paul and Mike had joined us, after looking closely at all the bays and many of the gullies. But if there were loads of features to look at from the bank, there were three times as many to investigate from the boat. As far as the eye could see, small islands and weed beds dotted the surface. I have never seen so many features in my life. Just look at these small islands that partially hide a small bay. They mark the start of a series of channels that run up into the bay. Carpy or what!

These are actually situated in from of swims 14 & 16 (there is no swim 15), and nowadays they are well known for producing some of Rainbow's monsters.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#357 11 Jan 2019 at 3.37pm

In reply to Post #356
Another, less bulky, shape loomed out of the night. �What�s all this row about?� It was Dave Watson, carp angler of the old school and now apparently the UK agent for the lake. We shook hands and explained the situation, but first we wanted to know if the lake was fishing.

�Any good?� we asked.

�Got a nice fish in the sack for the morning and I�ve just lost another into the snags. Now piss off to the chalet we've booked for you and let�s get back to sleep.�

Following Swampers we drove the six or seven kilometers into the nearby village where a nice comfy holiday chalet had been put at our disposal for the duration. I had scripts to write on a daily basis and there was room for a rough editing suite. It looked pretty good all in all. The kitchen supplied Bill his final coffee charge of the day before we slumped down on the beds and went out like a light...for about two hours

Deep in the land of nod and kicking up zeds galore we were rudely awakened when all hell broke loose as Liam and the horsebox arrived. It was pointless trying to sleep further so we leapt up with all the speed of a sloth on Valium, made coffee and breakfast and then headed back to the lake.

What greeted us was breathtaking. A mass of tree-covered islands, little humps and tussocks sticking out of the water, features everywhere. The sky gave a promise of good, settled weather. Dawn was breaking and the birds were giving out a full and glorious dawn chorus. It was magic.

Mike and Paul emerged from the bivvy and then Liam arrived with Thruster and the film crew. They started to film immediately. In a swim in the corner of the bay which I believe was once swim 4 but is now no longer used, Dave and Swampers were weighing and photographing Dave's overnight fish, a 27lb mirror that looked absolutely beautiful in the morning light.

Everything about Rainbow Lake looked good! Had we arrived at Heaven on Earth? Only time would tell but first impressions were very encouraging.

The first day at Rainbow was one of to-ing and fro-ing. We were introduced to the Dutch anglers who were also taking part in the filming. They had been there a few day already but had taken the time to try to get to know the swims better so had not really put too much effort into the fishing. Meanwhile Mike and Paul went for a stroll around the lake before choosing a swim.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#356 11 Jan 2019 at 3.36pm

In reply to Post #355
The journey down through northern France was tedious in the extreme and having been held up leaving Le Harvre Bill and I were convinced Liam, horsebox and all, were ahead of us on the road somewhere. At every stop Bill leant out of the window and asked, �Excuse me! Have you seen a horse box?� The bemused French passers-by would have been hard pushed to make sense of all that if it had been asked in French; the fact that Bill was speaking the broad Yorkshire dialect that passes for the English language up there had them completely stumped.

I will just mention this in passing for any motor racing fans reading this... Bill was driving; I was dozing in the passenger seat. We�d passed Le Mans and were heading south on the N 138 towards Tours. The road ran arrow straight through thickly wooded countryside. There was a brow of a hill about half way down this long straight; you could see it miles off. Strange I thought to myself, �what�s this Armco crash barrier doing here lining both sides of the road?�

Then it came to me. We were tootling down the famous Mulsane Straight, the fastest part of the Le Mans 24-hour race circuit. I remembered the film 'Le Mans' starring the late Steve McQueen, which featured real life racing cars from the mid 70�s. There are some spectacular sequences in the film of the Mulsane Straight, taken by on-car cameras mounted on some of the
quickest racing cars ever to race at Le Mans. I glanced across at the speedo. We were doing 50 mph: the Gulf-Ford GT4O�s and Porsche 917�s used to clock up over 250 mph down this very same stretch of road. Five times faster than we were traveling. As a lifelong motor racing fan, this brief, first hand experience put Le Mans into perspective for me a little bit. Those guys needs their heads examined!

We arrived at Rainbow Lake at about two in the morning, to be greeted by a locked gate. In the thin beam of the headlights we could see Mike and Paul in their Volvo estate down the lane beyond the gate. Clearly that had made better time than us and it looked like they were setting up a bivvy to kip in. We could just about catch a glimpse of the glistening lake through the pine trees. The gate was locked and it was the middle of the night. We didn�t want to cause a disturbance so we sat and waited like a pair of lemons until a huge hulking shape detached itself from the shadows and ambled slowly towards the gate.

A bearded apparition stood in the glare of the headlights, looking fierce. �Who�s that?� it demanded.

Now, not unnaturally, Bill and I were feeling a bit teasy after the long drive. �Laurel and Hardy. Who the **** do you think!� exclaimed Bill. �Now open the sodding gate.�

�Is that the Yeti (Mark Westenberg)?", I asked Bill. "More like some sort of Swamp Monster�, he replied as the hulk opened the padlock to let us in. Here's the S.M. in typical pose taken later during the session.

It seemed that Paul and Mike had arrived ten minutes ahead of us. Of the horsebox and Liam there was no sign. Bill and I were fit to drop; all we wanted was to get our heads down somewhere. A big mobile home parked beside the lake looked ideal.

�You can�t sleep in there�, said Swampers importantly. �That�s for Liam and the crew.�

�You won�t see them for a few hours yet�, we told him. �The guy�s got a horsebox to contend with!�

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#355 11 Jan 2019 at 3.33pm

In reply to Post #354
The sound of plates being laid out and cutlery distributed drew us to a small parlour: �You can�t come in here yet�, Ted told us. �Breakfast isn�t until six thirty. Go away!�

Bill growled. �I only want a cup of coffee�, he argued.

�Not until six thirty�, insisted Ted.

Bill was ready to kill. Eventually, we all managed to gather around the two tables set out for us in the tiny breakfast room. Bill and I were joined by a small, quiet guy and the big mooning bugger from the previous night. He introduced himself as John Moth and his nickname, so he told us, was Thruster Mothballs. You will hear more of thus guy later. Paul from Bristol was into Ted from the off.

�So you�re the kiddy on the high seas are you Ted?�

Ted jumped in with both feet. �Do you want to see one of my videos?� Needing no further prompting Ted slipped a video into the VCR. Liam, one of the most prolific makers of films on any subject you care to mention, groaned as the telly showed a shaky film of Ted going through his routine. He wasn�t the only one groaning.

�Very impressive, Ted�, we all told him. �Good stuff eh, Liam?� Liam kept his counsel.

Ted needed no encouragement to boast. Soon he was giving us chapter and verse about how to go wreck fishing out of Pompey. I hadn�t the heart to tell him that I�d been doing that and similar for many years. The video showed a small ling coming aboard. Now in my humble opinion ling taste absolutely awful even though some say it is better than cod. I expressed my opinion knowing it would cause a storm:

�You haven�t the faintest idea what you are talking about�, Ted exploded. �How many ling does a carp fisherman ever catch?�

Liam was clearly fed up with the despotic Ted. He wasn�t having any more of this so he explained, in no uncertain terms, how I used to make a living.

�Oh, you worked on the trawlers did you?� he said. �I had a trawler once, you know!�

�Of course you did, said Bill.

It was an interesting breakfast to say the least, especially when the little guy, (it turned out that this was Andy the cameraman), was confronted by Ted over the alleged theft of the sugar spoon! "Why the **** would I want to do that?" he asked. Ted was adamant. Andy was just confused!

�Give him his spoon back, Andy�, said Thruster joining in the wind up. Ted was obviously getting pretty worked up about this bloody spoon. How we got out of there without the police being called in I have no idea. I hope Ted�s found it by now. He was convinced one of us had stolen it. It was only a teaspoon, for Christ�s sake!

Incidentally, much as I�d like to allow readers to experience the delights of Ted�s Shangri La, out of kindness to Ted, his real name and that of his pleasure dome have been changed to protect their identities. (And to protect anyone from suffering as much as we did.)

Breakfast over, it was time to head for the ferry. We hitched up the horse box and the Range Rover let out a soft cry of distress as we set off through the already crowded, winding back streets of Portsmouth in search of the ferry port. Next stop, Bordeaux...with any luck.

Bill and I were pulled over at customs before we could board the ferry. A wide-eyed customs officer regarded the chaotic tangle of gear, bait and other assorted junk with a bemused gasp.

�What�s all this lot in aid off, then?� he demanded.

We explained that we were going to the south of France to make a video about carp fishing. I could tell the customs guy was placing us in the 'Bull*****rs' category. �Anyone else in the party?� he asked. I leant out of the window and pointed to the perspiring Range Rover and horsebox slowly crossing the car park towards the ferry.

�See the guy with the horse box? He�s the producer and director of the film. Don�t ask him about Shergar!�

We rolled through the huge stern doors onto the ferry. A last we were on our way. Now the trip can begin. (OK. I know this is not Portsmouth, nor is a P&O ship, but it's the best I can do to help break up post after post of dialogue with no pix.)

The crossing was smooth and as boring as they all are when you can�t have a beer because you�re driving on the other side. It was enlivened slightly by Liam doing his �I�m the Director� act, flying about the ship filming just about everything that moved. It was Andy�s first trip to France. Suddenly, he bolted from his seat to point at the cliffs of Le Havre looming up through the mist.

�There�s France!� he shouted excitedly.

�Get away!�

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#354 11 Jan 2019 at 3.31pm

In reply to Post #353
It was clear that Ted was one of those guys who just had to have been there, done it, seen it, tried it, written the book, become an expert at, anything you cared to mention.

�I�m going hang-gliding next week,� I mentioned as we trudged up yet another flight of stairs.

�Well, that�s pretty easy after you�ve been an airline pilot�, said Ted.

I swear I could hear Bill screaming silently with laughter inside.

The twin bedded room was clean and neat but it was, well, basic. I suppose that would be the right word to call it. There was a telly but no satellite and only the basic channels, no movies, no sport and the colour was diabolical and the hand control was knackered. It would have been at home on the Ark but as far as we were concerned it was a waste of space in the tiny room.

It was all academic anyway, as. No telly. No en suite, no kettle. Bugger all, in fact. We trudged downstairs to find Ted. He wanted to know all about us. Where were we going? Down near Bordeaux we told him.

�Oh, Bordeaux, eh? I go fishing, you know. I make films too, videos in fact. Actually I�m pretty famous around here. I�m one of the top sea anglers in this part of the world.�

�Of course you are!� said Bill, who had not taken to our Ted. He was not alone.

�Where can we eat locally?� we asked.

Ted pointed out a nice looking pub just down the road. At least he got that right. The beer was clear and the food was good. We sampled lots of both and while we were eating, Mike and Paul arrived. They too had not been too impressed by Ted�s place! I�d not met either of them before but, of course, knew Mike�s reputation as one of the best captors of big carp in this country. Yet he was quiet and unassuming with a lively sense of humour; altogether far too likable for one of the UK�s most successful carp anglers!

The ice was quickly broken and we shared several beers, talking the hours away in anticipation of what lay ahead in the forthcoming week at Rainbow.
We left at closing time and walked back to Ted�s place. From what Paul and Mike told us, it seemed that we were actually in one of the better rooms.

We turned in but a loud commotion outside drew us to the window. Outside in the street Liam�s Range Rover clicked and ticked as the engine cooled and the car steamed quietly in the cooling night air. The car had obviously been subjected to a fair amount of abuse while a dull and dirty horsebox lay on sagging springs behind the exhausted motor. A horsebox? Liam looked up at Bill and I hanging from the bedroom window laughing our heads off.

�It was all I could get at such short notice�, he complained.� Look what it�s doing to my car!�

Three others got out of the vehicle. One was (very) obviously Sue, the sound engineer and another was probably Andy, the cameraman, but who was the great lump with them? We would find out.

The horse box was man-handled into the narrow alley along with Paul�s estate car, our Transit and Liam�s Range Rover. Bill and I were still in our room as Ted showed them to their rooms. As they passed our door, Bill leaned out to welcome Liam and crew. The mysterious big guy mooned at him! Strange way to introduce yourself, we thought. We bid them a jovial welcome.

�Quiet!� said Ted. �There are other people in the rooms, trying to sleep.�

�You wish!� said someone.

The alarm clock woke us at five-thirty the next morning. I made it down the corridor to the shower in the freezing cold of a March dawn, to be greeted by a minuscule shower stall with a pathetic drip of tepid water from the leaky showerhead. It was better than nowt, but only just.

�You�ll be impressed with the shower�, I told Bill when I got back.

I could not imagine him even fitting into the shower stall, let alone actually getting a shower. Downstairs, Ted was preparing breakfast in the kitchen adjoining the dining room. It smelled good. We went in and sat down at a nicely laid table. Bill was after his coffee fix.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#353 11 Jan 2019 at 3.29pm

In reply to Post #348
I was a bit worried about leaving the van, loaded with thousands of pounds worth of tackle and bait, in an open hotel car park or worse, in the street overnight, but Liam had assured us there was a commodious car park attached to the luxury hotel.

�There�ll be plenty of room in the secure parking area�, he said.

Sound! We arrived in Portsmouth at about six in the evening. Liam�s map wasn�t as helpful as it could have been, so we drove around looking at some impressive examples of south coast luxury hotels scattered along the sea front. Sadly the Hotel Splendide was not one of them. Getting ever more lost by the minute, we turned up one wrong road after another and if it hadn�t been for a house fire somewhere in the wilds of Fratton I doubt we�d ever have found the elusive place. As it was, the police car attending the fire contained two rather bored policemen who gave us instructions.

The Hotel Splendide was not on the sea front nor was it in any way, shape or form as splendid as its name suggested. In fact it was a small commercial guest house tucked away up a dark and dingy side street. To call it a hotel would be pushing it. To call it Splendide would be lying through your teeth!

The receptionist (owner, chef, cleaner, parking instructor) was a guy called Ted. I could write a book about Ted, so completely did he fill our first twelve hours of the trip. Far from living up to its name, Ted�s place was clearly aimed at the lower end of the market and that�s putting it nicely! Putting it bluntly, it was a dump!

The place was clearly devoid of other guests (frankly, I�m not surprised) but you could see that Ted was looking forward to having a house full for the night. He impressed Bill straight away.

�You can park the van down there�, he said, pointing to a narrow alley at the side of the house. �It�ll be safe down there.�

I wondered how safe. Carefully, Bill backed up the van, Ted barking instructions like a mad sergeant-major. �Left hand down a bit...No! That�s too far... Straighten up... Go right... RIGHT! Oh forget it... I give up!�

Bill was slowly loosing his sense of humour as he was doing fine without all Ted�s histrionics. It was quickly becoming clear that patience was not Ted�s long suit. He stood to one side and watched as Bill managed, perfectly easily, to back the van up to the far wall.

It was then that I realised just why the van�s contents would be safe for the night. Bill was stuck inside the van, for the doors would only open an inch or two due to the walls of the alley that boxed the van in on either side. In the end, while the ever more bad tempered Ted stood and watched, Bill managed to climb out of the driver's side window, a task that was under his breath.
with some difficulty for Bill is a big guy. Ted sucked his teeth and shook his head, making his feelings pretty obvious. My mate was not impressed and Ted was now in imminent danger of feeling the painful end of Bill�s fist. It was not a good start and more was to come. We picked up our bags and headed for the front door. Ted was waiting by the phone.

�I�ve just had a phone call from someone called Liam�, he told us. �His trailer�s broken an axle. He�ll be late, as he�s got to pick up a replacement. Now, I�ll show you to your room.�

On the way upstairs he drew from me the fact that we were off to the south of France to make a film about carp fishing. He had been to France, he told us. Oh yeah?

�Carp fishing?� we asked.

�Of course not, Ted exclaimed grumpily. �For the dogs.�

�Don�t ask him about his dogs�, Bill muttered, �We�ll be here all bloody night.� Too late, the words had already left my lips.

�What kind of a dog have you got?�

�A Labrador.�

�Bill keeps Great Danes�, I told him.

�Shut UP!� whispered Bill in exasperation.

�I used to do that, of course�, said Ted. �Labradors are more of a challenge.�

�Naturally�, said Bill sarcastically. He is touchy about his dogs.

Chuffy

Posts: 6582

#352 11 Jan 2019 at 12.54pm

In reply to Post #347

Griggypiggy

Posts: 258

#351 11 Jan 2019 at 12.50pm

In reply to Post #349
looking forward to it ken always a good read

Griggypiggy

Posts: 258

#350 11 Jan 2019 at 12.50pm

In reply to Post #349
looking forward to it ken always a good read

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#349 10 Jan 2019 at 3.51pm

In reply to Post #348
Liam Dale had been contracted by John Stent and Dave Watson of the company Euro Carping to make a video about the new lake they had acquired for which they would be doing the bookings and the publicity. Bill and I had worked with Liam before when we made a bait video for Nutrabaits.

Hyperactive Films Ltd and its proprietor and film maker Liam was well known as a prolific producer of fishing vids, having previously done several about carp fishing that featured Kevin Maddocks, Alan Taylor and others. Sadly the Nutrabaits vid never saw the light of day but the one on Rainbow certainly did.

As you can tell by the hyperbole on the blurb for the sleeve, Liam had set himself some pretty high goals, which to a large extent I think he and the crew achieved.

If the anticipated fun and frolics that had accompanied me and Bill's hilarious attempts at making the Nutrabaits vid were anything to go by, this trip should be a laugh if nothing else.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#348 10 Jan 2019 at 3.44pm

In reply to Post #347
The cast list changed frequently in the weeks prior to departure. Kevin was coming; Kevin wasn�t coming, Kevin P. was coming, Kevin P wasn't coming, John Stent was coming�no he wasn't. You get the picture? Other assorted 'faces were supposed to be coming. Alan Taylor, The Yeti, Andy Little, they were all supposed to be coming along at one time or another but, in the end, the cast list worked out as follows: Bill and me, Mike Willmott accompanied by Paul Dicks from Bristol Angling Center, the Hyperactive crew of Liam Dale (Director), Sue (sound engineer), Andy (cameraman) and John Moth alias Thruster the Forester, who seemed to be simply along for the ride, but who might have been there to provide the muscle as he�s a big lad. Also on board was Dave Watson (yes, the Dave Watson Carp Society fame). Dave was part of the management of the company Euro Carping, which had arranged a tie-in with the owners to take parties and do the bookings.

Other assorted bodies would crop up from time to time including a party from Holland led by Mick Payne who would be making a parallel video for the Dutch market, killing two birds with one stone. Also from Holland would come the Dutch Sensas team, now with Cor de Man as its bait consultant, due later in the week on a brief recce trip. In addition, we were told there would be sundry other journalists and helpers popping in from time to time, as well as a quartet of paying guests from the UK who had booked the first two weeks of the season. It sounded interesting and if they all turned up it would be crowded to say the last!

The question of who was using what tackle and bait was eventually sorted out completely amicably. There were various commercial interests to be taken into consideration behind the scenes what with two bait firm moguls on board and a third (Kevin) part-financing the whole shebang, but once Liam discovered that he wasn�t dealing with mega egos and he didn�t need to massage anyone�s feelings in order to get maximum co-operation it all seemed to go well. We just needed Mick to behave himself on camera!

Departure day, 20th March - my birthday loomed. We were due to sail from Portsmouth to Le Havre on the 8.00 am. sailing. A bit of a struggle that. It meant having to leave Cornwall in the early hours of the morning to get to Portsmouth in time to catch the ferry. Bill too would need to be an early bird. We twisted Liam�s arm a touch and he eventually relented.

�I�ve booked you and Bill a nice en-suite room with all the trimmings at the Hotel Splendide, a very nice hotel near to the ferry port. That way you can get a decent night�s sleep and be up as fresh as a daisy in good time to catch the boat.�

Fresh as a daisy? He don�t know us too well, do 'e? I�m never at my best in the mornings, while Bill is positively comatose until he�s had at least a gallon of coffee. Add a previous night in the pub and we need an alarm clock the size of Big Ben to rouse us.

Liam continued. �The others are going to stay overnight as well, as will the film crew and myself, so we�ll be able to have a quiet little drink and get an early night.�

Carole drove me up to Ringwood on the 19th for I�d arranged to meet Bill about 3.00pm in the afternoon. It snowed as we travelled up the A35 and I wondered about the wisdom of visiting France so early in the year. Bill ran into the snow around Birmingham and eventually turned up at about four o�clock. We loaded my gear into the van then set off for the apparently super-posh, mighty-plush hotel. I was looking forward to a bucket of coffee, followed by a long hot bath, a change of clothes, a beer or two, then a decent meal and a G & T to round off the evening.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#347 10 Jan 2019 at 3.41pm

RAINBOW LAKE - or EXCUSE ME BUT HAVE YOU SEEN A HORSE BOX? � April 1995

Rainbow Lake! The very name sends shivers down the spines of carp anglers across the world and with good reason. In fact, it has been hard to keep the name of Rainbow Lake out of the news over the past few years, what with the great and the good of carp fishing beating a path to its door, photo after photo of the lake's fabled monsters appearing online and in the press, in articles and videos. Indeed the Kevin Ellis vids have revealed much of the wonder of the lake. There are probably more carp over sixty pounds in weight in Rainbow than in any other lake in the world. No wonder getting a booking on there is harder than getting **** from a rocking horse!

Some of you may well have been lucky enough to go there, while others will sit with fingers crossed in the hope that they will get a swim one day. My own history with this super-lake is nothing like as well blessed with monster carp as that of others, but in some small way I believe I was among those who were responsible for putting the lake on the map.

But first a little back tracking�Tat and I had been on a tour of south west France looking for likely lakes, rivers and gites and after stopping at several likely looking spots we eventually found ourselves on the terrace of a nice restaurant overlooking a large lake that lay in the valley below us.

A decent meal was on the cards and as we sat in the sunshine looking down on the lake, we noticed the odd splash or two disturbing the surface. I asked the guy behind the bar if there were carp in the lake and he told me that there were a few but they were not fished for as the lake was more widely known for its predator fishing. I filed the lake away as a 'maybe' and that was that!

We move forward to the early autumn of 1994. After a nightmare few days moving from venue to venue looking for the sun, we found ourselves once again at the restaurant overlooking the lake, this time not so much for a nosebag - that might come later - but more to fish the lake for a week or maybe two if all went well.

Ha! As if�

When we got there we found that the lake had been drained and there was no fishing. Apparently the local authorities were fed up with cleaning the lakeside of litter and excrement left behind by so-called anglers after the name of the lake became well known on the circuit. This was the lake where Liam Dale of Hyperactive Films had done a video called Half a Ton of carp, featuring Kevin Maddocks and friends and following the video's release the world and his wife had beaten a path to the lake's door. Their resulting mess was the reason for the lake's eventual closure. Apparently the carp had been sold to stock a private lake south of Bordeaux called Lac du Curton. The lake's name was changed to Rainbow Lake later that year when it became a commercial venue and the rest is history...

We skip forward now to the winter of 1995. The phone rang as I looked out on a dreary Cornish winter, wet and miserable, with summer carp fishing just a memory. �How do you fancy a trip to France in March then, youth?� said Big Bill.

�Nah! Sorry but I doubt if I could afford it.� I replied.

�It�s free!� came the voice on the other end of the telephone.

�I�m on!� I said.

�Right. The good news is that Liam has been asked to do a video of Rainbow Lake, but he wants to combine this with an hour or so of how-to-do-it filming, focusing on the nuts and bolts of fishing in France."

I�d met Liam before when he filmed a promo video for Nutrabaits, which never saw the light of day and found him to be a good laugh so if that was the good news what was the bad? I asked Bill. �Mike Willmott�s coming.� Ah! "The bugger will probably empty the place," I said to Bill.

�Yeah, I know. Don�t worry though, you won't have much time for fishing. You�re not only acting as Liam�s personal technical advisor during the making of the video - and don�t go thinking that means anything because it doesn�t - you�re also writing the script. As if that ain�t enough, you and me are acting as consultants to Liam and the crew.

�No wonder it�s free then," I said. "Will there be a chance of a beer or two?"

"I expect so," said Bill!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#346 2 Jan 2019 at 12.24pm

In reply to Post #345
Tat and I hope all your carpy dreams come true in 2019. I'll pick up on the thread soon but first we would like to share this with you:

We always have rib of beef on new year's eve. It's a tradition that goes back nearly fifty years and dates from a time when we had briefly flirted with going veggie. Bad mistake. Awful idea IMHO!

We both missed beef so much that after a couple of years on Nut Roast and Rooshti with Eggs, we decided to kick the veggie habit in style on NYE 1971 and did so with a fine cote de boeuf�And that set the trend for us. This year we bought a lovely rib of Dexter. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

While hunting through the cellar to find a suitable red to drink with the beef I discovered a bottle of 1995 Graves, which I thought had all gone after drinking what I believed was the last in the case the previous year. But on lifting a case of a decent but not superior Medoc, I discovered, tucked away almost out of sight a dust- and cobweb-covered bottle of this 1995 Pressac-Leognan. What a surprise and a lovely way to see out the old year.

We hope you net an equally satisfying surprise this year�

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#345 2 Jan 2019 at 12.02pm

In reply to Post #344
Thanks, Forest guy! And back at you. Great win for your team yesterday. You've got one of the best managers in football IMO. Keep up the good work...Nobody wants Leeds back in the premiership!

Dicky

Posts: 2346

#344 24 Dec 2018 at 1.27pm

In reply to Post #343
Merry Christmas to the both of you, and all the best for the new year

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#343 24 Dec 2018 at 10.21am

Tat and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

See you again soon...don't get too pithed!

Griggypiggy

Posts: 258

#342 6 Dec 2018 at 3.20pm

In reply to Post #341
fab read thanks Ken

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#341 4 Dec 2018 at 10.37am

In reply to Post #340

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#340 3 Dec 2018 at 3.33pm

In reply to Post #339
That just had to be it. We couldn�t believe the fishing that we�d experienced over the past 48-hours. Surely there were no fish left out there on the plateau�Wrong! In fact the day was far from done with. A common of just over twenty pounds came my way so once it was landed I tore out to the marker with another bucketful of bait. Before I got back one of our rods was away and with Tat sparko in the bivvy the French guys had a scrap to decide who would take the run. As it turned out, Giles emerged the winner and by the time I got back with the boat the fish was in the margins where it was netted by Jose, while J-L looked on.

As if the social side needed any boosting another group of French guys arrived. They were there more for the craic than the fishing, I suspected. As the night progressed, the noise level rose, but we couldn�t complain. We�d had our day and no mistake. If we never had another fish on this trip we�d be happy.

So we joined in the very rowdy party that lasted most of the night, interrupted, astonishingly enough, by a steady stream of carp both big and small for the assembled revelers/carp anglers. Carole now fully refreshed caught two smaller commons, while I had a common of about sixteen pounds. I was joined by Giles and Jean-Louis for the photos. It is a happy photo that always brings a smile to my face whenever I recall those great memories.

By the early hours of the morning we were both wilting under the strain and took ourselves off to the comfort of our sleeping bags. I was awoken by a screaming run at just after five in the morning and with only an hour's sleep under my belt it took me what seemed like forever to get myself sorted out. It was still dark but muggy and warm with a fresh but very hot breeze blowing down the lake. I was joined on the rods by a very inebriated Jean-Louis, bottle of wine in hand, who emptied much of it into my mouth and down my chin and neck as he tried to persuade me that playing a very angry carp in the darkness of a cloudy French dawn was best accompanied by at least a gallon of Bordeaux. After the first couple of glasses, I came to the conclusion that he was probably right!

Half an hour later it was Carole�s turn. We were getting almost blas� about low twenties; this was another. Two more followed, both commons, one each. Was this for real, or what? I consigned the last of our bait to the plateau and its surrounds and we sat back with a beer and a few bottles of wine in the company of our French friends to await the final 24-hours...which just had to be an anti-climax, didn�t they? Yes, indeed! We had just one more carp between us, a small mirror for Carole. To be honest were out on our feet. The party had taken its toll on both of us, though the French just carried on partying.

French carping? I love it!

So ended the return trip to Boffin's Pond. Since then we have both caught more carp and bigger carp but I don�t think we�ve ever had such enjoyable carp. We'd be back! Next up I would like to tell you about the trip when Bill C and I went to Rainbow to make a film with Liam Dale. Has anybody seen a horsebox?

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#339 3 Dec 2018 at 3.26pm

In reply to Post #338
It was Friday, the start of the sacrosanct French weekend and the anglers were gathering for the social. Jean-Louis, Carl, Jose and Francois I knew from the previous visit but Tat had not met them before. I warned her about Jean-Louise's charm offensive, which was deployed full bore when ever a member of the opposite sex was around.

The guys had been good company back when I was at Boffin's with Nige and Colin, and it looked as if they were going to be good company again. They set up a large picnic table just down the bank from us and once it was set, copious amounts of wine, beer and food appeared as J-L built a rudimentary barbecue out of rocks and bricks. Then Giles the lake owner drove up in his rattling old Citroen and began unloading yet more grub, a repeat performance of the hospitality we�d enjoyed earlier in the year.

And still the carp fed out there on the fabulous plateau and I added another small mirror to my list. This was too good to be true. We were eating our way through a mountain of chicken when Carole�s next run sped off. With an audience surrounding her, watching her every move (they don�t see many women carp anglers in France) the assembled company was prepared to be critical. It didn�t get the chance! Carole played to the gallery in fine style, in fact, I thought she was putting on too much of a show and told her, �Stop mucking about, and get the bugger in!�

�I can�t,� she exclaimed. �It�s a bloody good fish!�

And so it proved to be, a stonking great mirror, another linear. The gallery applauded, more wine was poured, the fish toasted in fine Bordeaux. If I didn�t have the pictures to prove it, I�d assume that �d been dreaming, but the action was by no means over. A run, this time from the left hand gully gave me my own personal best common, a fabulous fish of 35lb 2oz that fought like a demon from start to finish, first in the water, and then for a further fifteen rounds on the bank. I�d died and gone to Heaven, surely!

The guys gathered round and snapped loads of photos. Giles said that this same fish had been caught by Rod earlier in the year. If that was the case it had healed wonderfully well as its mouth looked like it had not seen a hook in all its days�and just look at the size of those pecs!

Not to be outdone J-L had a good common...

�while the barbie continued in full flow�

It all got a bit much for Tat who took to the tent for a brief siesta. I knew she would come back to the fray full of beans and ready to go again, so I let her have her beauty sleep.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#338 3 Dec 2018 at 3.17pm

In reply to Post #337
The afternoon remained hot and sunny. At the hypermarket I had bought a stack of barbecue grub and several bottles of bottles of wine but the carp seemed determined to keep us hungry, if not themselves! The rod on the shallows produced an eighteen pound common for me while I was cooking the steaks, then Carole had another small common of about eleven pounds from the right hand gully. When a further five doubles came our way we thought the kindergarten had arrived�Enough is enough; this was hard work so we pulled the rods in so we could eat in peace! I guess that will sound weird to some of you but the fish ain't everything!

Refreshed and ready for more, I topped up the bait carpet and the rods went out once more. Night fell and it seemed as if the fish had eaten their fill. A few hours went by before yet another pristine common came along for Tat.

Strangely, though conditions were identical to the previous night, after Tat's fish it went dead and we spent the majority of the dark hours in fishless anticipation. I�d just dropped off to a proper sleep when I had a run. Dawn was an hour or so away when one of the plateau rods had a take. Another furious fight, another fabulous fish, another thirty plus common for me. While I was weighing it the other rods on the plateau was away. I popped my common into a sack while Tat ran to hit the run. Here's the thirty photographed after the commotion that followed Tat's run was over and done with. (This fish was actually deemed worthy to be used as a cover shot for Carpworld.)

Now it was Tat's turn to shine big style. This one really gave her the run around, mostly on a long line in the deep water towards the middle of the lake. At last she got in to the edge and I sank the net under it. What a fish�a magnificent gurt big common. We looked at each other and burst out laughing. When it all comes right in France, it REALLY comes right.

�and just look at the girth on it!

Lunch! Time for a for a beer, a bottle of white wine for Tat and maybe a bottle of Champagne or something. We reeled in and walked up to the village to celebrate a new personal best for Our Lass. For some reason this took us longer than expected and by the time we got back to the swim we had company.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#337 3 Dec 2018 at 3.13pm

In reply to Post #336
Sure enough, I was still rebaiting the rod on which I had lost the fish when Tat had another run, this time on the right hand rod cast well off to the side of the gully. Putting a hookbait well off the main bat carpet is a tactic we often use as it can sometimes trip up loners that like their own company and do not appreciate being crowded out by hordes of smaller fish all battling over dinner.

The fish took off on a steaming run belting up the lake to her right, heading for the dam wall like the hounds of hell were after it before kiting in towards the margins about 120 yards away. Now it was my turn to run up the bank and this time I took one of the oars and thrashed the margins to a foam with its blade. This seemed to do the trick and the fish headed out into deeper water again. Slowly but surely Tat worked the fish in towards the net and I scooped it up first time of asking. It was another lovely great linear, three pounds lighter than her first. This was getting silly!

In fact, this was fishing beyond our wildest dreams. Here we were landing fish of a size and quality we could never have imagined back in deepest, darkest Cornwall when we had been catching doubles and low twenties at College and Rashleigh.

Out I went again, rowing like a madman to bait up the plateau and gullies leading to it. By now it was clear that there were loads of fish in the general area and we didn't want them to drift off for lack of free food. I unloaded half a bag of Frolic, a jumbo tin of sweetcorn and a couple of kilos of boiled baits onto the area around the plateau. We were going to run out of boiled bait at this rate so we spent a tedious hour cutting each bait into quarters to make it go further.

The sun continued to beam down on us with the temperature pushing thirty degrees. It was a perfect autumn afternoon; sun, beer, wine and carp, and what carp! Here's a lovely common from the plateau. Could life get any better?

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#336 3 Dec 2018 at 3.10pm

In reply to Post #335
At first light we re-baited the rods and I took to the boat to top up the bait on the plateau. The marker was miles away down the lake to our right, obviously moved by that first furious charge of my common. It was easy enough to find the feature again by the landmarks I had taken, so I popped the marker back in place and baited the area liberally with boiled baits. I�d no sooner got back to the shore when I had a blistering run from a rather tatty scattered/linear mirror that took a bait fished on the top of the plateau. They must have been feeding while I baited up over their heads.

We were going to need groundbait after all if this carried on. The daylight blossomed to a sun-kissed morning. It became hotter and hotter and soon the wind picked up again from the south. I wanted to anticipate their arrival today, so I rowed a bait up towards the shallows where the fish had shown the previous afternoon, before sitting down in the shade of the poplars to enjoy a breakfast of French bread, Camembert and garlic sausage. Very anti social!

As the morning passed by a couple of local carp anglers that we'd met in May called in to see us on their way to another lake not far away. They were happy to hear that we had caught but were a bit surprised as they said that for the past couple of months the lake had been a bit moody. They put the improvement down to the moon! Yes, they were quite serious, and why not: I know of quite a few French anglers who firmly believe that the phases of the moon influence the fishing and these guys were adamant that the last quarter was by far the best. They French guys left but said that they would be returning at the weekend as there was a fish-in planned at the lake. I liked the sound of that!

It looked as if the lake had died on us for the time being, so, leaving Carole on the rods, I drove into town to try and get some groundbait ingredients. Would you believe it? They�d sold out! I bought a bag of Frolic and some jumbo-sized tins of sweetcorn, but wasn�t happy: the bream would play merry hell with that.

It took me an hour or so to do the shopping. While I was at the checkout I had a strange premonition. I can�t explain it but Carole often cracks a fish out when she�s on her own while I�m away on some errand or other. I couldn�t get out of the hypermarket quickly enough and I drove back to the lake as fast as I could. Sure enough, as I pulled up onto the grass behind the swim Carole came across to meet me, hopping up and down with excitement. �Where the hell have you been?� she demanded.

�Shopping! What have you caught?�

�A sodding great thirty three pound linear mirror!� she replied, beaming all over her face. �My personal best!�

The fish had taken about half an hour previously, just when I�d been queuing in the hypermarket feeling odd about something!

We did the photos in the bright afternoon sunlight. What a magnificent fish! And it was just a start�!

Tat had just put back the big linear, which actually weighed 34lb 2oz, when I had a run from a fish that I managed to bump off almost straight away. Clearly they were stacked up out there and I just knew that we'd get some more action imminently. The fizzing and bubbling out there looked like a Jacuzzi!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#335 28 Nov 2018 at 4.17pm

In reply to Post #334
Carole picked up her run, struck and was greeted by dour but not frantic resistance. She said, �I�m going to need that net before you, I reckon.� She was right. In a few minutes she had worked the fish into her feet where it lay, beaten awaiting the net. Carole hoisted her prize ashore, sacked it quickly, then came back in time to net my carp, now almost finished with its antics. Now we had two fish on the bank, Carole�s a very pretty 19lb 4oz common, mine a blistering near-thirty pound (29lb 40z to be precise) common. What a scrap it put up. I wondered what a big thirty or, dream on, a forty might scrap like! I sacked it for it's dawn appointment with the camera.

We sat in the bivvy in the warm light of the strip lamp and drank a toast to the first twenty of the trip. Was it a portent of things to come? We certainly hoped so. That was not our only action of that night and carp continued to splash occasionally out in the darkness. I felt it was only a matter of time before we had another fish, and sure enough, at five o�clock in the morning I lost a fish that felt like a good lump - don�t they all. It took a bait off the plateau, a feature that was plainly fast becoming a hot spot. Then just as the dawn was breaking, Carole had a take on a rod that was fishing in the gully to the left of the plateau, a nice upper double mirror.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#334 28 Nov 2018 at 3.34pm

In reply to Post #333
Darkness fell quite quickly, a brilliant red sun lighting up the sky on the western horizon behind us. It foretold a hot day tomorrow, thank God! Sure enough, as the sun set, the wind died away to no more than a zephyr of directions breeze. The carp seemed to have left the shallow bay off to our left, and the only fish showing were the hundreds of thousands of small fry dimpling the surface as the light went. It was eerily still and silent; not a man made sound nor natural noise to be heard. No birds, no insect noise, nor traffic or tractor, cough or cry. Almost total silence. Very spooky. How many times have you heard perfect silence? if there is such a thing.

The night chill sent us early to the shelter of the big canvas bivvy, where coffee laced with local Cognac quickly dispelled the cold. The night fell completely and the creatures of the dark hours began to show signs of life. A few rats, or maybe coypu scurried about in the thick bankside undergrowth. An owl hooted far off above a distance maize crop. The ubiquitous French dog that always seems to turn up wherever we go began its weary bark Would this one go on all night, as others had on different waters?

And then the carp began to feed...!

It was just after four in the morning when one of the rods cast onto the plateau gave a single bleep. We had tossed a coin for the first run and as I had won the toss, this was my take, if it developed. I was at the rods quickly. The indicator on the rod that had signaled the interest was a fraction lower than the others. I felt the line but there was no tension, nor any significant slack. A line-bite, perhaps? I gave it a few minutes then decided there was nothing to it. I�d just returned to the warmth of my sleeping bag when the same buzzer bleeped again. I had an awful feeling that I knew what was going on; bloody bream!

I was lying in the darkness of the bivvy cursing the slimy buggers when the `bream` took off on a flier. By the time I�d struggled to the rod to find the line pouring from the reel. I picked up the rod and struck; it was almost wrenched from my grip as a very strong fish took exception to my action. The carp - it was certainly no bream! - set off into the night, tearing away to my right, heading for the barrage as if the hounds of hell were at its heels. I could make no impression on that fish at all, and was rapidly loosing control of the fight. I�d have liked to follow the fish down the bank to my right, but the big oaks at the water�s edge made this impossible. I had no option but to hold on and hope for the best.

On and on the fish ran, tireless and brutishly powerful. If it carried on like this I would loose it for sure. By now Carole had joined me at the rods. There was only one thing for it. �Can you get some rocks or stones and get away down the bank there and heave �em in? This fish will shred me off on the bankside the way it's going.� I asked her in desperation. Still the fish ran, the rod arched around almost parallel with the water, pounding off towards a distant goal. A few moments later I heard some light splashes. �Use stones, not fairy dust!� I shouted in exasperation. �I can only find grit,� came a faint reply. But the grit seemed to do the trick. Suddenly the line began to angle out from the near bank towards the center of the lake as the fish changed direction. The headlong dash slowed and then stopped and at last I felt as if I had some say in the matter. I pumped and gained line; pumped again. Slowly the fish came back towards my bank. I put the torch on to illuminate the net at my feet and as I did so the other rod on the plateau was away.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#333 28 Nov 2018 at 3.27pm

In reply to Post #332
A fresh warm wind, a feeding wind, was ruffling the surface and the sun was now peeking through the clouds with growing intensity. At last things were going our way.

From the bar we drove across the grassy banks surrounding the lake and pulled the little Renault into the area behind the swim where Nige had fished in June, which we had called The Point. We had the lake to ourselves so we set up and then I went out in the boat for a scout around with the echo sounder. The swim is marked with a small red dot in this graphic. (This is a modern image. The swimming pool and the dam surrounding it were not there when we first fished Boffin's.)

I found a very interesting feature about eighty yards from the bank where a small plateau curved gently up from the bottom. It was about twelve feet to the top of the plateau, about fifteen to eighteen feet to the surrounding lake bed. It seemed to be about two or three square yards in size, almost square, rather like a dining table set out below the surface. I placed a marker at the back of the plateau and extended the area of search, using the marker as a reference point. Circling outwards from the plateau I found two gullies about a foot deeper, leading towards the plateau from the north and the south. The Grey Line function on the sounder told me that the main lake bed was covered with soft silt about a foot thick, but the silt on top of the plateau was only an inch or so deep, the sounder revealing that the bottom was mainly hard-packed gravel or stone. It cried out to be fished so I jotted down a couple of rough intersecting landmarks in case a fish moved the marker�and pretty rough they are as you can see.

This tactic must seem so old hat these days, what with GPS-enabled sounders and bait boats, but I am an old salty dog taught to take land bearings from an early age!.

We fancied using groundbait on the plateau and in the gullies and there was a big supermarket not far away where I would be able to buy maize, millet and canary seed, and of course Frolic dog food, which was rapidly acquiring legendary status as a must-have part of any baiting campaign. However, in the meantime we decided to fish only with boilies and judge whether we needed groundbait after that. I rowed back to the plateau with about two kilos of boilies - shelfies, pure fishmeals and some birdy/fish home mades - and then we cast two of our four rods out onto the feature. As usual Carole and I fished four rods between us. We would take alternate runs, regardless of whose rod got the run�First get your run!

The other two rods were cast out to the gullies so as to cover both sides of the approach to the plateau, one in each gully, a cast of about seventy yards. These two rods were baited with stringers only in the hope that carp leaving or arriving at the plateau would be tempted by the meager offering. It is surprising how often this little trick works. We knew that some pretty cute anglers had fished the lake - Rod and Dave to name but two - so we added a extra dimension to the presentation; we fished two baits on the hair and the stringer was made up of three or four separate pairs of baits. This would leave individual pairs of freebies on the lake bed and we hoped the fish would wolf down the double bait hookbait without suspicion.

As we sat and ate the curry, washing it down with several bottles of beer. A few fish began to crash out at the top end of the lake towards which the breeze was blowing. I was tempted to move at least one rod to cover this area, but that meant rowing the bait up to the spot where the fish were showing. I thought that this would be a self defeating exercise as the boat would probably spook the fish from the shallow water. Anyway, if I knew my French weather, the wind would go down with the sun, and the fish would move out of the shallow bay, passing close by our baited area as they did so.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#332 28 Nov 2018 at 3.24pm

In reply to Post #331
So there we were on Pete's lake, catching only smalls and being deafened by the frogs and threatened by the snakes! We were only a few hours away from Arnout's lake so we had pulled off Pete's lake and driven south for what seemed like hours until we reached the outskirts of a town. Crossing a slow-flowing river, we set off through fields of nodding sunflowers, along a winding back road until we came to the lake itself.

First impressions? Heaven! Nestling in a quiet valley the lake sits in peaceful solitude among fields of maize and corn. The village appears unchanged since before the revolution and the lake, about twenty five acres of it, nestles among its surrounding poplar trees and gentle slopes like a jewel in Paradise�s crown.

I�d love to be able to tell you that we caught stacks of fish, but as you may have read in the earlier posts that would be a lie. But it was enough simply to be on the lake. I learned later it was known by the Brits who fished it regularly as the Boffin's Lake, more normally just Boffin's. The local anglers were friendly and more welcoming than any we�d previously met - and that�s saying something - and though Colin blanked and I caught only one fish, albeit a magnificent linear mirror, it didn�t seem to matter one jot. Nige, as usual picked the only swim on the entire lake that contained any carp and did well, as usual. His top fish was a mirror of just over thirty pounds. Jammy git! That trip really fired up the blood and I kept going on about it to Tat throughout the following months. "About time you got your arse in gear and took me down there, then," she demanded. I needed no further asking as I had been gagging to get back there. So it was that Carole and I made plans to fish Boffin's in September 1995.

The lake lies less than a hundred miles from the Spanish border so we took a couple of days on the road to get down there. The weather all the way down was changeable so we stayed for a night at the small hotel by the river we had fished previously where Tat had caught her PB.

Not at all disheartened by the weather, Carole and I did the sight-seeing bit, eating and drinking well as we made our way slowly south through the hills and forests of central France. The rain caught up with us at Uzerche so we again stopped at a small hotel just outside the town on the banks of the R.Vezere, which was running high, fast and coloured. However, it looked a very good prospect for some river carping so the area was filed away with a view to a future visit. From the hotel I rang the bar overlooking Boffin's: �What�s the weather doing where you are? I asked.

�Il y�a un petite soleil timide,� replied Giles, the owner.

�A shy little sun?� I thought to myself. �What on earth�s he talking about?�

Next morning, the `shy sun` had reached Uzerche and a glimpse at the weather forecast for the next few days in the newspaper told us it was set fair for the next week or so. A few hours later, by way of a meandering series of D-roads heading steadily south west, we arrived at the bar. The sun was blazing down and the shy little sun was now as bold as brass. We had a beer and Giles brought us up to date about what had been happening on the lake. From the bar we looked down on the full panorama of the lake, glinting in the sunlight in the valley below. After the summer heat the level was slightly down from our visit in June, but Giles told us that it would soon be back to normal as the recent heavy rain had filled the streams that fed the lake, which were running high and fast. A rainbow kissed the far bank by the road. Was this a sign that we should fish there? Nah! I wanted to fish the swim where Dave and Nige had done so well.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#331 28 Nov 2018 at 3.22pm

In reply to Post #330
BOFFIN'S POOL: SEPT �95.

If you have followed this tale so far, especially the more recent posts detailing the start of our French journeys, you will note that for a little old Cornish buoyo, used to catching doubles and the odd low twenty - if you were lucky - my early trips to France had been very successful by my comparatively low standards. True, College held a single biggie of just over thirty (which I caught in 1983!), and there was a few twenties to go at, but to catch mid to upper twenties, a scattering of thirties and even a low forty was something very special for a Cornish carper.

So let's have a brief recap of 1994, a year that will always be infamous in my memory. France had been pretty kind to me and Tat since our first visit in 1988, but that all changed with 1994. That year carved an indelible black mark on our previously successful sorties to France. To say that it was not our best year�s fishing, both at home and abroad, is putting it mildly. I suppose you could sum up how bad it was by the fact that up until the early autumn of 1994 we had caught between us just nineteen carp in the UK and in France. Undaunted and in the hope that French carping would come to our rescue, in September of �94 we set off once again in search of golden carp in France�Well, that was the plan at any rate.

It was a nightmare of a trip! We had twenty-five days holiday saved up and we spent nineteen of them driving over 2,000 miles in the pouring rain, along the motorways, N-routes and back roads of France in a vain attempt to find either a river that wasn�t flooded, a lake that wasn�t being emptied and a sun that wasn�t constantly obscured by cloud. The former two we never found; the later we found only when we went out on deck as the ferry left France, six days ahead of our planned departure date. We were shattered, worn out and defeated by the remorseless downpours, a leaking tent, a car accident, a spell in hospital for me, and not a single carp to our credit. To rub it in, the sun shone down blissfully for the entire six hour ferry crossing, adding a rather pathetic brownish glow to our normal pallor. When we went into the pub that evening they said, �You�ve got nice tans. The weather must have been lovely.� I felt like screaming. That was 1994. Goodbye and good riddance!

The following year I went back to France with Colin and Nige, a trip described in the immediately preceding posts. We�d been told about a lake in the Vendee by my friend Pete McDermott had heard about. We met up with Pete and his pal Mikhail in mid-June and struggled to catch four decent fish between us. The lake Pete put us on was as wild and dramatic as anything you�d find in a South American jungle with mossies the size of small helicopters, wasps, hornets and snakes. It was more like an SAS survival course. In the end it became too much for all of us and when the snakes started coming into our bivvies we just knew it was time we looked elsewhere.

At the 1994 Pyramid Bait and Tackle Carp Exhibition held at Hooten in Holland I was told the name of a lake that supposedly held some good fish. Arnout, the guy who put me on to the lake told me that he had not fished it himself as it didn�t hold big enough fish for him! �There are no fish over twenty kilos,� he told me. �No good for Dutch carp anglers. There are plenty of twenties and thirties, though.�

�Do none of the of the Dutch carp men fish it, then?" I asked.

�I doubt it,� he replied. �They are after bigger stuff than twenties and thirties. It's the lake Hutchy and Annie have been fishing the past couple of years.�

I'd been searching for this venue for the past couple of years. Had I now dropped onto it like a lucky bugger? Puzzled by this somewhat dismissive attitude I filed the name of the lake away in my mind for a possible visit next time we were in the area.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#327 28 Oct 2018 at 2.55pm

In reply to Post #326
(As it turned out Tat and I enjoyed several; trips back to the lake and for several years I ran a French/English syndicate on the lake. The membership included both Dave Ball and Rod, Mally, Speedy Bill and the Thames river carpers, Big Bill, Bri Skoyles and a few other Yorkies plus a few well trusted Cornios. We enjoyed some of the best fishing imaginable, but all good things come to an end. A team of French fish thieves were about to plunder the lake's stock of carp to line the pockets of an unscrupulous bar steward. The syndicate was disbanded in 1999. The lake has now been taken over by a new owner and once again fishing is available. Sadly the stock is not what it once was but we have hopes that it may one day return to its former glory. I doubt if Tat and I will return but Nige and his better half still visit the lake from time to time.)

Coming up the tale of Tat's first visit to the lake, several PBs, lots more great food, wonderful company and incredible fishing.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#326 28 Oct 2018 at 2.54pm

In reply to Post #325
"Sadly for me and Colin it looks as if the carp have had enough of the commotion on the bank and in the weed and have legged it. Not seen sight nor sound of one for the best part of twenty-four hours now. This is the swim that was alight at the weekend, yet it seems devoid and empty now. Perhaps there were too many fish caught in a relatively small area of what is a fairly big lake. Perhaps they've gone off to sulk somewhere. Certainly there's nothing here but water and weed. Hey-ho�it's very frustrating. I don't think Colin's up for a move as it would be his seventh in six days but I might shift if nothing happens tonight. But it's a fabulous day and if you forget the fishing, then everything's perfect bliss. As Colin said, if you are going to blank, you couldn't ask for a much nicer place to do so.

"Nige is in for a bit of a shock in a minute. He's got to go up to the caf� to pay his bar bill. He's looking a bit shaky but then, I don't suppose I'm looking too perky. It's now coming up to a quarter to ten, Monday morning, and hope is doing its best to spring eternal but it's having a bloody hard job! The well of optimism is running dry on this bank. Nige is obviously firing on all six, but over here...? Hey-ho, can't be helped. Speak to you later in the day. Bye for now."

"It's now Monday night about eleven, and it's going to be our last. I'm living in hope more than expectation. I don't think we're going to score now. There's an east wind blowing away from us and if the fish hadn't spooked from our area after the weekend, I'm sure the strength of the breeze will push them away. A good angler, keen and at the start of his trip, would move with the breeze but I'm knackered and looking forward to a good night's sleep. It's been thirty-five, thirty-six degrees today. Roasting hot, far too hot for carp fishing.

"We decided over dinner to call it a day and head back to the barrage where Pete's still fishing; spend the last night with him. So this is our last night here. This has been without doubt the best trip I've been on with the lads. Yeah, the best ever. I've had three runs, landed one eight pounder at the barrage and a gorgeous linear down here that looked almost like a College fish. Beautiful. But that big linear seems a long time ago now and with twelve hours still to go maybe, just maybe, something special will come along tonight but I'm not holding my breath! Night, night, darling. Love you!"

"Hey, ho! Tuesday morning and another blank night. I think I expected it but it is still a mystery how the swim completely switched off. We are doing exactly the same as Nige - he's caught another two twenties by the way - and yet we are sitting here with our fingers up our noses. It's not as if we are miles apart, really we are fishing more or less the same part of the lake.

"Colin is being very philosophical at blanking but the news from home has kept him smiling through the blank hours. 'Sh*t happens,' is what he said to me this morning. Nige's got nothing to be disappointed about and that's for sure. I think he's had four or five lovely twenties and a magnificent thirty pound mirror plus quite a few doubles as well. I knew when he blanked up at the barrage he'd get his own back!

"So were going to pop in to see Pete on the way home. I rang his house last night, not expecting to hear from him, more to check that he was still fishing, but he's back home, having pulled off after a five day blank. In hindsight this was a good move on our part

"There it is, this edition of French Message comes to an end. A bit of a disappointing end but there you go. I can't wait to get home now. So, I'll see you soon, Tat, and I hope we'll both see this little bit of Paradise in the not to distant future. I can't wait to bring you out here to enjoy what is without doubt the best lake I have ever fished in France, nay, possibly in my fishing lifetime. I'm sure there are other challenges awaiting us somewhere along the line, and we can look forward fishing them, but I shan't be looking any further afield than this little bit of heaven, that's for sure.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#325 28 Oct 2018 at 2.48pm

In reply to Post #324
"Back again with a big grin all over my face, not because I have had another carp but simple because this has been a magical day. It's Sunday night now, Tat and I have just spent one of the best days I've ever had here in France, In pure angling terms we've had better (laughing and a bit slurry!) but today has bee splendid. Me, Nige and Colin went up to the village at lunchtime for a meal. We had a good drink and plenty of superb grub, then came back to find that Jose, Jean-Louis and all the rest of them had got the picnic going and the wine flowing. J-L was in fine form with the bottle.

They invited us to join them�no, they insisted that we join them. So we sat around most of the afternoon sipping beer and wine and eating foie gras and Chorizo, camembert and rochefort cheese, smoked salmon and langoustines. God, it was horrible, but we just felt we had to be social! Here are l-r Jean-Louis, Nige, Francois, kids, Jose and Colin, while in the background the Little Man opens yet another bottle and for the rest of the day we just sat and drank and talked the afternoon away.

"We had the most wonderful evening, sharing the Entente Cordiale. There was Grandma and mum, nephews, nieces, sons and daughters and all the French carp anglers and us all sitting around and enjoying this wonderful, laid back way of (French) life. It was just absolutely splendid.

"It got dark and at about ten o'clock the French guys said 'au revoir', piled all the gear into the cars and drove (yes!!!) off into the sunset. What a fantastic crowd they were. Me and Colin moved the rods a bit to the right so we were now fishing the French guy's water and by the evening we were ready to start fishing. I am now overlooking the part of the lake that has produced ten fish including one for me, so far this weekend. Will we catch? Who knows. I could do with a good kip to be honest after this afternoon! Think I'll get the rods out and put my head down�No, hang on�Oh yeah! I nearly forget the best part of the whole trip.

"While we were in the restaurant, Colin phoned home and got some very good news. It seems he is going to be a dad again! So we had to have a good drink for that. Everybody is so happy for him, all the women clucking around him, beaming like mother hens and they don't even know him! The poor chap is just about awash in wine and cognac, all the blokes shaking his hand and the women fussing over him. Oh, it's just a great time, that's all. You've got to come here, Tat. We have got to get here together. It is truly Paradise. I'd adore it if you could come here for a week or so. OK, it's a hell; of a drive but what is waiting at the end of the road is worth all the hassle of getting here. It's a little bit of heaven just waiting for you to visit and catch a carp or two. You'd love it, kiddie. Just adore it! "Right. This time I really am going to get some zeds. Sleep well, darling. I'm missing you but I'll be home soon."

"Well here I am again and it's morning after yet another blank night. I slept like a log and I have woken up without a headache, which is astonishing really all things considered. The French guys told me that you don't get hangover if you drink that gut rot rose. Maybe worth considering�Not!

"So now it's Monday morning, eight o'clock and the sun's beaming down yet again. Not surprisingly, we've had naff all over this side during the night, and considering the state we were in that's probably a very good thing!

"Apparently at some stage during the night Nige had a fish that weeded him up. He came over for the boat and Colin went back to help him try to land it but they lost it in the weed. It's as well Colin was there for Nige was rat arsed and had no idea what he was up to, nor where he was going. Colin helped him bait up again. It seems that Nige was in the bar till the small hours, getting legless with Jean-Louis and Jose and Giles, the owner. He's a bit unsure what happened during the night anyway but in true Nigel form he managed to get the rods out despite being wrecked.

"Well the sun is well up and we are going to go into the village in a minute for supplies. I expect we'll have to have a beer while we are there too! What a pain! Just looking across to the Point and I can see than Nige is into a fish. He's sitting on a lot of good fish, is Nige, and to prove it, hangover or not, has just landed a superb 26lb common. Again it found the weed and so we both wound in and went round to help him. By the time we had walked all the way round there he'd managed to land it. What a fish!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#324 28 Oct 2018 at 2.38pm

In reply to Post #323
"Good morning French France! Here we are on a bright and sunny Sunday morning and if I am sounding a bit croaky it must be the wine. I've cracked it and so has Nige. I've had a beautiful linear of just over twenty-seven pounds and Nige has had a 30lb 6oz mirror, a 19lb mirror and a 15lb common.

Just down the bank from me, Jean-Louis and the other French guys have had another four carp, including another twenty. Here J-L and Jose do the pix for the guy they just call The Little Man!

And this is J-L with a twenty pound common.

Here's the Little Man with a nice mirror.

"This became something of a regular occurrence that weekend; people gathered around while they take pix of one another's fish, kids and all! Brilliant.

And Little Man again with his son.

"Colin's not had so much as a bleep but Nige is yet again becoming the kiddie on this trip. Why do we keep bringing him? He invariably tucks up everyone else on the trip...Still, he is brilliant company and that's the important bit...Oh yes. He can get hold of the transport too! Still, van and fantastic company or not, I think I'll break his neck if he carries on like this. He could catch carp in a water butt!

(This pic shows the house on the hill that was a familiar landmark in Rod's photos, one of which he used on the bobbins of mono he used to sell. This saddoe carried one of the labels showing this farmhouse around in his wallet in the hope that one day he'd trip over Rod's little paradise. Well, it paid off!)

He also had this beauty that night. Golden balls has our Nige!

"So anyway, we are just getting spruced up a bit, a shower and a shave, and looking forward to going up the road into the village for a meal. It's Sunday and we have reserved a table and the menus looks pretty decent for 120FF. I expect we'll have a beer or two and glass of wine, maybe. I'm sure I don't need to tell you, Tat, that one of the highlights of any trip is a Sunday lunchtime nosebag."

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#323 28 Oct 2018 at 2.27pm

In reply to Post #321
Being a prominent member of the Surrey carp angling fraternity, Bill recognised Dave Ball straight away. He's a bit of a secret squirrel apparently but Bill told us later that he's a member of some very exclusive lakes to the west of London and he has caught more than his share of biggies. I knew of him from his photo on the Cover of Carp Fisher 5. And of course, Rod being there confirmed Arnout's tale. We had a walk around the lake and arriving on the far side opposite where Dave was fishing we came across another bivvy and a set of rods and some carpy smelling sacks. Someone had been doing the business! It was Rod, of course.

"He was in convivial mood. "Fancy a whisky?" he asked me. I accepted happily. "Want lemonade in it?" I said OK. He poured a clear flat liquid into my whisky glass (Rod does nothing by halves) and handed it over. It nearly did for me�Whatever he'd added to the whisky, it certainly wasn't lemonade! Dave told me later it was probably vodka! Nige tells it differently; he reckons it was white wine. Ether way it was certainly high powered rocket fuel.

"Now, a few hours later I realize why they were not best pleased to see us, as this lake is a little gem, a hidden paradise, Tat. It's about 20 acres, maybe a bit more and it's glorious, absolutely glorious. You've got to come here, Tat, there's no question about it. You'll love it. It's even got a little bar and small restaurant!

"The bar was where we bought our permits and had a beer or two. The patron, Giles, was very nice and even bought us a round. There were a few small photos up on the wall above the bar and Nige and I saw a few familiar faces. You can see them top right of the photo.

There were pix up there of Rod, of course, and Dave, plus the other Dave from the tackle shop in Richmond, and his missus Kay. I remember seeing her on the cover of Carpworld a couple of years ago.

"This lake�It's gorgeous, so beautiful and friendly and welcoming and it's everything a French lake should be, really. There's an atmosphere about it, almost as if you don't even need to catch fish to enjoy its magic. It is... perfect, that's the word.

"So anyway, as I say, it's Friday morning and we've had twelve hours of fishing and, as far as I know, none of us have caught. Dave and his missus and Rod have pulled off and from what I could gather from the guy in the bar, who has apparently been enjoying their custom, they've had some nice carp up to fifteen kilos, which is about thirty-three pounds, I think. Dave actually came round and apologised for cursing me and so we had a swift half before he hit the road. He's got nothing to apologise about as far as I'm concerned. I know how he felt, believe me.

"I'm now set up in the swim Rod was fishing. I'd be a fool not to! There is a small bush to the left of the swim and I swear I have seen it before in a few of Rod's trophy pix from this lake. I am going to call this swim Rod's Bush. I think Nige has moved into Dave's swim which is more or less opposite me. It's on the corner of the lake opposite on the bar side. It's like a sort of point so that's what I'll call the swim. Yeah, I think Nige is in there now as I can see a light flickering over there. I heard Dave talking to Nige while we were having a beer and he told him to jump in and fill his boots. Knowing Nige that's exactly what I think he'll do!

" So we've split up now trying to cover a fair bit of the lake. It's a very interesting lake but my main focus is an island that is just about in casting range, or failing that I will use the boat. Colin's set up about a hundred yards away to my right fishing onto an area of shallows�well that is what Dave and Rod called it. The sky is crystal clear and the stars are amazing. It's fantastic, Tat. We are definitely coming back to this place. Well, that's about it for now. I'm thinking of you and missing you. Talk to you in the morning�Bon soir, mon amour. That's French you know!"
-

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#322 28 Oct 2018 at 2.18pm

In reply to Post #321
"Whose idea were snakes anyway? I mean, what are they for? No wonder the origin of temptation was in the form of a snake. Evil looking things. "Snake in the grass" was one of Bill's favourite phrases. Never did find out what he was on about. We'll see what tonight brings. I think if we don't catch something hefty tonight we are going to shift. No idea where? I quite fancy trying a river for the first time. I know that the Charente holds decent carp and I have been tipped off that the stretch through Cognac is worth a look. That will please me greatly as you know how I love a drop of Cognac! Speak to you in the morning, kiddie. Bye, sweetheart!"

"It's morning and a lot's happened since I last spoke to you. Yesterday was a day of moving. We've packed it in at the barrage where we were fishing with Pete and Mik. Although Colin had two more carp and a bream, Nige and I blanked. Nige was in tears doing the photos of Colin's fish. Could have been hay fever, I suppose.

"So it was decided to move on. We never saw anything worth staying for, though I'm sure there are some real lumps in here. The trouble is, the restrictions imposed by the limited night fishing zones, together with the poor access means that you can physically only fish, I'd estimate, a ting proportion of the lake. So, unless you've got unlimited time to build up the swim, you catch what's in front of you and if that's small fish, so be
it.

"The fish have little need to wander far and wide to find food, the natural food potential of this lake is astonishing. In one night I netted out twenty crayfish the size of small lobsters. They were very nice cooked up with a glass of white and some French bread. There are empty mussel shells and the water is thick with daphnia. There's absolutely no doubt that the lake is capable of producing a real monster, but I don't think we've got the time to sit it out for maybe one run between us on this visit. I'm sure there are big fish in the barrage but we didn't see anything like it, so we decided to try the lake I'd been told about in the winter.

"So, with my heart very firmly in my boots in apprehension if I'd got it wrong, we came on further south to that lake I told you about, Tat, the one that Arnout had told me about at the Pyramid Exhibition in February. This was apparently 'Rod's commons lake' as he put it.

(Rod and Annie had been all over the press of late with some glorious photos of some very impressive commons. I guess the world and its wife was trying to find the lake, and if Arnout was correct, that's just what I'd done.)

"Arnout told me that he hadn't fished it because, and I quote, 'The fish are too small for me; no twenty kilos or bigger'. Sad, eh? Still, according to the info I've picked up on my travels since then, the lake could be worth a look, but it might all be rubbish. It could be another five hours on the road for nothing. We'll have to see. Speak soon. Bye for now."

"Well after another arduous trip we have finally arrived at the lake. We got a bit confused as there are two lakes in this valley. One didn't look as if it had ever been fished. It was an impressive size but bare as a badger's arse. It looked very new and it didn't fill us with any enthusiasm. So we moved on to take a look at another lake that we spotted from the road.

"And yes. we dropped right on it! Dave Ball and, would you believe it, Rod himself were on here when we arrived. I guess Arnout's tip was spot on! Dave is here with his missus and we stumbled over them as we started to walk around the other lake. We came around a corner and there was a bivvy and a set of rods. It was Dave and his missus and they were not pleased to see us, to put it mildly. Dave swore and kicked a nearby tree! "Not you, Townley! Of all the people to get sussed by it had to be you." I know how he felt having been rumbled on a water like this. I remember when Les came back after stumbling across my beloved Pads Lake in northern France. When he rang me and told me I wanted to kill him. I think that's how Dave and his missus feel about us!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#321 28 Oct 2018 at 2.15pm

In reply to Post #320
These fish are absolutely pristine, I doubt if they've ever been caught before in their lives. They've got mouths that are unmarked, with the full curtain membrane just inside the mouth, a sure sign of virgin fish. Immaculate, like they've just been made.

So that's the story right up to date. Goodnight, sweetheart. See you in the morning (singing�very badly)."

The tape resumes to the sound of a gazillion frogs doing their thing. What an awful racket. It is truly the most grating and annoying noise and it never stops!

"Can you hear that lot! They are driving me insane. It's impossible to sleep and even if I had a run I doubt I'd hear it. Anyway, there's not much to tell you�it's the morning after the night before and it's been a blank for all of us. Still, it's a lovely morning and I am sitting here with a cup of tea gazing at the lake and hoping to see signs of carp. The sun has just started to kiss the bivvy driving away the overnight dampness and condensation. There's a beautiful bird of prey of some kind circling overhead. I expect he's look for frogs: there's enough of the feckin' things, it'll get fed up eating them. I think it's a red kite. Beautiful!

"It really is a picture this lake, especially when the sun's shining like this. I don't want to go through another experience like last year, Tat. Later I'm going to the village to get some bread and some of that lovely creamy butter, a wedge of Camembert and a bottle of cholesterol-laden full cream French milk, and I'm going to have myself my first proper French breakfast in the sun. Speak to you soon. Bye!"

"I'm back�Not much to report. In the end the village shop was closed so we went into the town for a beer and a meal. A bloke in the bar asked if we were fishing - how could he tell�perhaps it was the smell - and when we said yes and told him whereabouts he told us that it was well known for its pike and zander. Our faces fell and he asked, "what's wrong?

"We're fishing for carp," we said.

"Ah! That's could be a problem, then," he replied. "The lake was emptied last year and the big carp were removed. They then stocked with small carp of about three to four kilos."

Large festering ball cocks!

"So we've spent about four hours away from the lake. The guys are a bit despondent as they seem to think we're only on small fish. It's a bit awkward for me, as I have this sneaking feeling that they are right but we haven't really given it anything like a fair trial yet and there's Pete to consider. It would not be a nice thing to do just to bugger off, saying, Cheerio Pete! after he'd gone to so much trouble to put us on the lake and tried so hard to get us some decent pitches.

"Thing is, we are catching what's here and what's here are small and if we believe the guy in the bar then that's all we are likely to catch. I suppose a move would make sense, but to where? The rest of the lake is so wild and the banks are so steep it would be impossible to fish most of the perimeter. Mind you, the bloke in the bar by the lake, where those photos of the big commons are up on the wall, still reckons that they didn't net out all the big carp and that they lake definitely holds fish to over 20kg. What to do? The few fish that we have caught have all be singles apart from Colin's eleven pounder, and it has to be said, they are immaculate.

"So, the story at the moment is that we are going to give it one more night. We have moved Nige along the bank into deeper water; the shallows where he'd been fishing were clearly not going to produce fish. Colin and I have stayed put. The tiddler snatching competition held this afternoon resulted in a resounding win for matchman Colin. Loads of skimmers and the odd roach; no poisson-chat, thank goodness.

"The snakes are a bit more active this evening after the warm sunshine of today. While we were moving Nige a monstrous great one slithered across in front of me. Far too big to be an adder, it must have been a grass snake.
Either way, I stopped dead and Colin turned white. Nige, who hates snakes, nearly jumped out of his skin!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#320 28 Oct 2018 at 2.11pm

In reply to Post #319
"I decided it was time to renew my acquaintance with the bar. I couldn't resist its neon call from across the river so I jumped into the boat and scooted across to the other side. It was coming on dark and I'd just finished the first beer when the patron came out and told me that Nige and Colin were fishing in a no night fishing area! Oh no! Nige would be steaming after all the hassle.

"I looked across towards their swims and, even in the twilight, they looked pretty obvious. No thoughts of concealment of course, they thought they were in a legally authorised area. What do I do? I thought to myself. If I don't tell them and they get a tug they'll be a bit pissed off, but if I put them in the picture, they'll be even more so. I had another beer or two while I pondered this weighty problem and, in the end, I decided to row back straightaway - well, after one last beer or two - and warn them. As I'd feared, they were not best pleased.

"By the next morning, after a blank night Nige and Colin were on the move. They'd not fished the night but had heard nothing jumping and were not happy where they were. Looking about from the boat they'd found a nice spot on the caf� bank, fairly clean, good access by van and with legal nights. My single night in the bay had been totally uneventful and I'd heard nowt either, so I decided to move across the lake with them.

"Unfortunately Pete's influence with the Powers That Be had no effect, which is how we come to be where we are. We've been fishing these swims for less than 24 hours now and had a couple of fish, so I think the move seems to have paid off. Pete and Mik have stayed put on the opposite bank but they've not had anything so far, nor, as far as I know, nor has Nige.

"This really is a very pretty lake, heavily wooded and almost totally wild. I've seen plenty of snakes but I think they're grass snakes I hope. There are buzzards and red kites overhead and an osprey put in a fleeting visit at first light this morning. As least, I think it was an osprey. It swooped down and ate a fish and that's what ospreys do, isn't it? The frogs are a nightmare after dark. You just cannot hear yourself think, and as for sleeping, well I've not done much of that. You have to wait for dawn, which comes at about 5.00 a.m. before the racket starts to die down a bit, then you can maybe get a bit of shut-eye, but it never really stops. Even in broad daylight they don't shut up!

"I've just been out in the boat this morning while the others were still asleep and I've been messing around with the sounder and found two or three really nice features at longish range.

So I've put one rod on an area right across on the other side of the lake, some 150 yards away in l4ft of water where there's a very interesting looking bar or plateau. No need of a marker as there are two pike poles on it. Bloody nuisance, but saves me using a marker. Diagonally inside from that, back towards me some 30 yards, I've got 28ft of water where I'm assuming the track of the old river bed runs, and that is, I hope, the one that's going to produce one of those monster commons like those in the photos in the bar.

"There's something about 28 feet of water: I don't know what it is, but I always feel confident in deeper water over here and once I've found 28 feet my confidence doubles. Illogical I'm sure, but that advice came from God � that's Hutchy by the way, so who am I to question it. Inside about another 30 yards from the river bed, there's another peculiar mark on the sounder on which I've put a small marker. That one's at about 80 yards from the bank, so I'm fishing in a diagonal line from 80 yards out to my right, to 130 yards off to the left. And it's worked! O.K., only small, but a carp's a carp.

"Colin, to my left, is fishing into the bay area with a few trees in the lake in front of him, which may make landing fish a bit of a dodgy proposition. He's baiting up in a similar pattern to me and he too has had success. Nige is off to the right and he's in an all-or-nothing swim, if you ask me. It's shallow and very weedy and looks as if it should hold fish but I don't think it does, but time will tell. So far Nige has not had anything, but knowing Nige, that mean's he'll be in at the finish with a bloody hatful. (Little did I know just how prophetic that throwaway line would turn out to be.)

"So there we are. Two nights fished. A move after the first night. Rebaited the new swims. Rewarded with two carp between us, admittedly only small but hope springs eternal.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#319 28 Oct 2018 at 2.07pm

In reply to Post #318
Bait was the usual assortment of groats, crushed hemp, flaked maize and a few trout pellets; anything that took a minimum of preparation. This we supplemented with about 50 kilos of assorted Nutrabaits ready mades, which I had air dried for a month to try to harden them up against the possible attacks by crayfish and poisson-chats. The van groaned under the weight of all the gear and the bait but when we bunged a two hundredweight fibre glass boat on the roof it really kicked up a fuss. How we managed to cram all the odds and sods we needed for a trip into that tired old workhorse I'll never know but somehow we managed it.

The lake we were going to fish was 600-acre Lac du Barrage in the Vendee. We'd been told about the lake by my mate, Pete, who we've met before in this thread. Pete lived in France and, he was going to join us for a few days, along with his French mate Mikhail (Mik). Pete told us that the lake was not being fished a great deal but it had the potential to do some very big fish, so we took his word for it, said, thanks, Pete, and went for it. Nige did the driving, as usual, and we traveled overnight from Plymouth to Roscoff, arriving at about 7.00 a.m. the next morning, after a very smooth crossing with plenty to eat and even more to drink.

In the winter I had been given a nudge about a lake where Rod was currently fishing. For the past couple of years he and Annie had been popping up from time to time in the press and in his catalogue with some drop-dead gorgeous commons. Meanwhile us ordinary folk were desperately trying to find the venue he was fishing. Rod had released a mono and on the label was a photo of the man himself with a lovely big common, which had also appeared in one of the catalogues along with pix of several other large commons. In the background of the photo you could see a house on a hill and sad man that I was, I kept a copy of the label in my wallet against the day when, chance in a million, I landed up on a lake with just such a house on a hill. How sad is that! If our first lake was no good, we planned to go searching for this other lake as a fall back option.

The tape starts�

"Well, here we are, Tat! It's one o'clock in the morning. I think it's Tuesday but then again it might be Wednesday. I've only been here for the blink of an eye and already France has cast her spell on me and I've completely lost track of time. How wonderful? We spend too many hours watching the hands of the clock go round and no doubt we'll still be watching them when we drop off this mortal coil. What a waste! There, that's the philosophy out of the way. Now to get on with this tape.

"More important than philosophy is the fact that I've just landed the first carp of the trip. It's no size but it's a start. Anyway, that's the first fish of the trip. I took it up to show Colin who'd bivvied up about thirty yards down the bank from me. Pushing through the undergrowth and vegetation my steps must have sounded like some monstrous creature of the night approaching his tent. I think I scared the life out of him.

"I've just listened to that bit again. Can you hear those bleeding frogs in the background? God knows how we get any sleep with that lot on the go. It's a full moon tonight, a real harvest moon and it is so bright I can actually see my nearest marker and it's eighty or ninety yards away. I reckon I could read my book by its light as well. No wonder the frogs are giving it so much wellie.

"We've seen quite a bit of movement over the baits and away down the lake to my right, but for the most part it seems to be from small fish. It's a gorgeous lake but the noise�! I don't know if the frogs are going to come out on this tape. I'll just turn the volume up a bit and poke it out the door a minute."

(There follows a deafening racket as about ten million little green blighters set about their nightly courtship rituals.)

"How about that�It is a mind-numbing noise that rules out all thoughts of sleep. I don't know if that comes out. I hope it does. OK, I'll say goodnight now and in the morning I'll go over what's happened so far in more detail. Goodnight, kiddie."

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#318 28 Oct 2018 at 2.01pm

In reply to Post #317
Sorry it's been such a long time since I added to this thread. What with one thing or another things have been pretty ****ty since the last time. A couple of health scares, some financial worries and of course, getting old! Result? Could not be arsed to continue. But I have got my sh*t together for the time being so here goes with some more of my ancient history, starting with the time we stumbled over a lake that was well on the secret list. It would have remained so to this day had it not been decimated by a team of sh*t bags stealing carp on an almost industrial basis in order to stock a previously devoid (of carp) private lake. The 'Team' as they liked to call themselves plundered lakes and river all over the south of France but eventually they and the owner of the lake into which they were putting these fish were outed and publicly named and shamed. They say that sh*t sticks�well sadly in this case it didn't and today he goes on his merry way without any apparent stain on his character.

The lake has since been restocked but the magnificent carp that once put smiles on the face of one of the greats of modern carp fishing (Rod) are now living in the aforementioned private lake that costs a bomb to fish nowadays. However, the little bit of Paradise that we stumbled upon still does the occasional biggie and its magic is not reduced by the fact that the angler is now fishing for smaller fish. The lake owner has changed and the place has been renovated to a good standard and it now welcomes campers of all kinds to its site. My mate Nige, who figures large in these tales, has been back and, like he does, caught a whacker so maybe the phoenix has risen from the ashes. PM me and I'll give you a link.

Anyway, that is ancient history and most folk say to forget it, move on, water under the bridge. Me, I'll never forget or forgive and if you read on you may see why.

St Louis Blues - May 1995.

Some of you guys might remember a few of my old Carpworld articles wherein I transcribed my audio diaries addressed to the missus, nickname, Tat. They took the forum of a more-or-less verbatim transcription of micro-cassettes that described the day to day goings on of me and whoever happened to be with me on trips to France. These were pretty popular at the time so I thought it might be an idea to reprieve one of them as part of this thread.

You may have read the posts describing the 'Nightmare' trip and will have noticed that that it was not blessed with an abundance of good humour. Sure, we caught some nice fish but the weather almost drove me to suicide and, at times, I felt that my company was at times as welcome as a fart in a phone box and I know that I tried the patience of my fellow anglers to its limit. It says much for their patience and forbearance that they didn't just drive off and leave me!

By complete contrast, this story tells a very different tale, one of the best fishing trips to France ever, even though I caught only a few singles and one lovely linear. So, though the fishing was crap, the craic was fantastic. It takes a lot more than a few slimy old carp to make a trip.

Once again, I was joined by my mate Nige Britton and again we were indebted to Nige's boss for the use of the company van, an ageing Maestro diesel with a couple of hundred thousand miles on the clock. Those of you who were around at the time will know that the Maestro was a Devil's brew of a vehicle, one of Leyland's worst, made at a time when the factory was on strike more often than it was working and you were lucky if anything made therein made it to its first birthday. Clearly Nige's tender ministrations with a spanner had meant that this particular vehicle mostly ran like clockwork. Here Speedy empties the old beast on a campsite somewhere in France.

Joining us for his first French carp fishing holiday was young Colin Stephens, a very likable ex-Army Signaler and general nice guy. Being the newcomer, Colin got the unenviable third seat option in the van - that being a Low chair wedged among the mountain of gear - a position he bore with great fortitude, uncomplaining and undemanding. I could not have said the same had our positions been reversed. The fact that such a seating arrangement was highly dangerous and would actually have voided the van's insurance mattered not one jot to Nige! After all, where else was the guy supposed to sit.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#317 5 Apr 2018 at 3.28pm

In reply to Post #316
On the ferry home there was talk of a pike trip, maybe a bass fishing trip. Me? I wasn�t interested. I�ll stick to carp fishing for now. There were places to go and people to see, and I had heard this whisper about a lake in the Vendee where you couldn�t fail to catch thirty pound commons! I bloody wish!

I would return to this lake the following year with Bill Cottam. We were plagued by muskrats diving on the baits. Bill even reeled on in whereupon it tried to take lumps out of him. We blanked but Bill claims to this day that he saw the biggest carp in his life while drifting about above the emerging pads. "It dwarfed the boat," said Bill. Another monster for another day.

Before I leave this particular memory, let me tell you the strange story of the funny dream about a throwing stick.

Throughout the trip Nige and I had been using the heavy metal Cobra throwing stick to get our baits out at range. Bill looked intrigued, not having seen that uniquely shaped Cobra before. I offered him a go with mine. He put a handful of boilies in his pocket and one by one tried to fire them out into the lake. Each one landed with a great big splash right at his feet. "They take some getting used to," I told him. "Take it back to your swim with you and have a practice. In fact you can keep it as I've got another at home." Bill thanked me and trudged back along the towpath to his bivvy.

The next morning I was standing looking at the canal while drinking a cuppa. A canal boat passed and bobbing in its wake I saw a small black object about four inches long floating upright along the canal. It looked remarkably like the plastic-covered handle of a Cobra throwing stick, more or less awash with water, floating upright gently down the canal. I walked up to Bill's bivvy. "Alright, mate?" I asked. "How you getting on with the Cobra?"

"Pretty good, thanks," Bill replied.

"That's good," I said, "Coz I had a funny dream last night. I dreamed that I saw the end of a Cobra throwing stick bobbing about in the canal�I'd hate to think you'd chucked it in!"

Bill grinned sheepishly. "Stupid ****ing thing," he said!

Bye for now!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#316 5 Apr 2018 at 3.14pm

In reply to Post #315
I stuffed it straight into a sack and sat down, shaking. Then, when I got my breath back, ran up to Bill to get the scales. He was fast asleep! Though I didn�t want to waken him, I was desperate to know the weight of the fish for I had a niggling feeling that it was over thirty, but without the scales the weight would have to wait until morning. Still, I was a very happy chappie! Another fish for the Book of Dreams.

The big mirror was the climax to what was, for me, a somewhat traumatic fortnight. At times I felt like I�d been in heaven, at others I might have been trapped in a hell on earth. There were long, dreary periods of mind-numbing boredom, trapped for hours on end in the zipped-up confines of a mouldy-green bivvy, but that fish put me in seventh heaven. It�s amazing what a fish can do!

I lay awake through most of the night, checking the sack at regular intervals. I searched around in the confusion under my bedchair and found four bottles of beer that I didn�t know I had, so I celebrated the capture as the night passed slowly by. I had my prize!

Friday morning. A bright and sunny morning. And I felt pretty bright and sunny myself. The big mirror was a thirty, as I�d guessed. 31lb 4oz, again! Lovely! A thirty from two different waters for me this trip. I was going out with a bloody great bang rather than with a pathetic whimper. I couldn�t ask for better than that could I? The sun was shining, God�s in His heaven, all�s right with the carp world!

The last day was something of an anti-climax. In the evening Jean-Yves ran me up to the bar on the back of his scooter. Seventy mph along the towpath! He insisted on buying me a few more beers. Who am I to refuse! I said my goodbyes to the locals in the bar - the ancient rugby fan was there with his old cronies, and they kept buying too. Then the patron and his wife pushed the boat out, insisting I drink some weird Belgian concoction called, Sudden Death. It wasn�t as bad as Special Brew, but it was bad enough. It was really good to laugh again after what had felt like purgatory at times.

Jean-Yves bought a crate of beer for Bill and Nige and we brought it back to their swims on the back of his scooter. I hate to think what might have happened if we�d come off. Canal one side, lake the other, carrying 24 bottles of beer! In spite of that, I had a very pleasant glow on as we rode along the towpath to my bivvy. Nothing like as scary a trip as the journey up to the bar. I can�t think why! What a nice day! And a thirty as well. The nightmare had passed to become a fading memory. The afterglow of the big carp was much more memorable. I can still recall that tremendous fight. The rain and the mud and the purgatory were long forgotten. The brain has a way of eventually putting bad memories behind it.

It had been a strange old fortnight. Some good fish landed and some not so good. The weather had cramped our efforts I am certain and I wondered how we would have fared if the weather had stayed fine.

That was it for another year. I suppose in retrospect I could look back on the trip and say I was pretty happy with it. I�m sure both Nige and Bill would say the same. Yet somehow there is a feeling of, I don�t know, call it anticlimax, call it failure. No, that�s too strong. Not failure; more of a let-down, I guess.

I had expected more, fished badly, yet still been rewarded. All the same, I�d experienced a darker side to my French fishing than I�d previously known. As I said at the beginning of the previous chapter, I had never expected to come so close to packing it all in before, especially when fishing in France. But I had looked my own personal purgatory in the face and laughed at it after coming out on top. True, I�d come perilously close, but if the Gods thought they�d got the better of me this time, they�d have to think again, though I have suffered with my back ever since.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#315 5 Apr 2018 at 3.12pm

In reply to Post #314
Once again I trudged up to Bill�s swim, and found Nige and Bill sharing a coffee. Bill had caught another carp during the storm, this time a mirror of just on 21lb in weight.

The day passed quickly with a return visit to the bar at lunchtime. Steak and chips and ice cold beers gave a whole new meaning to the word, contentment. Jean-Yves, the French fly fisherman we'd met when we arrived, came to see us and brought some of his home-tied trout flies along to show to Bill who also ties his own trout flies. He was full of praise for Jean-Yves�s efforts which certainly looked good to me, but then, I don�t know one fly from another. It helped pass the time though and the afternoon soon slipped by in a welter of beer and conversation.

When we got back to the bivvies we had a few more beers to round off the day then sat around in the cool of the evening and watched the stars come out. For once it wasn�t raining. Isn�t that typical. Here we are, coming towards the end of the trip, and the weather looks like settling down.

As the light left the sky that evening I baited up heavily once again. I was casting into three quite distinct separate areas, though all three were in or close to the pads. By hedging my bets in this way, I hoped to cover more fish that might be cruising in and out of the pads during the night, and in order to stop them dead in their tracks if they entered a baited area I wanted to give them a meal worth lingering over. So each area was filled in with five hundred boiled baits and the hookbait was accompanied by a five-bait stringer.

I sat in the darkness of my bivvy as the night passed, drinking beer and eating chorizo sausage, listening to countless owls calling to each other through the still air. Unlike the previous night, this one was cool and calm, the sky full of stars with a huge full moon to light up the glittering lake. Out in the pads a carp jumped noisily setting the coots screeching in angry protest.

It was just after one in the morning when the orange LED on the middle rod glowed in the darkness. No tone, just the light. That was the buzzer that had been playing up all week: was it a fish or another fault? I got off the bedchair, pulled on my boots and stood outside by the rods in the cold night air. It was perfectly still and eerily quiet. There was an almost tangible air of tension in the air. Suddenly the middle buzzer gave a brief water-soaked squeak and I heard the faint click as the reel gave a few inches of line.

I picked up the rod, clamped down on the reel, took three or four strides backwards and struck. The rod was almost wrenched from my grasp. Out by the pads a huge swirl showed at the surface as a good fish fought against the pull of fifteen pound line. It was the start of a fantastic fight from one weedbed to another. I think the fish found just about every weedbed in the lake; it was a bit like playing �join the dots�. Even when I got the still very angry carp in open water in front of me, it continued to fight like a maniac, but at last I got it into the net. It was a stonking fish, golden and long with massive shoulders, so like a Leney fish, it could have been from Savay. In the breathless torchlight I took a good look in it�s mouth and was pleased to see that it was pristine with no bruising or obvious hook marks left by previous captures; a fish that doesn�t get caught a lot. That gave me a great deal of satisfaction.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#314 5 Apr 2018 at 3.10pm

In reply to Post #313
The two days rest and relaxation had done me the world of good and the pills had made me feel like I was floating. I have no idea what they were but they did the trick. Now on this new lake in a nice flat swim with NO MUD! I felt as if the trip had only just started and I was full of enthusiasm and eagerness for a carp. With just two days left to go, I felt I had to prove to myself that my zest for fishing hadn�t floundered in the sea of mud that I�d left behind at the other lake, and this was just the place to do it. This was bliss compared to the previous lake (though admittedly this pic was taken the following April when I went back to the lake with Bill Cottam).

We spent a very enjoyable three or four hours with the locals up at a nearby bar. They were amazingly friendly and went out of their way to make us feel at home. It was so typical of countryside France and the attitudes of rural Frenchmen. I must say we�ve always been lucky in this respect whenever we�ve fished in France. We met a French rugby supporter up at the bar who must have been eighty in the shade if he was a day. He told us that he�d been to Twickenham three times to watch the internationals and he�d had such a good time that he decided to show us that the French can be excellent hosts too, and we all got a little bit here and there on the strength of his memories of English rugby�s hospitality.

By Wednesday evening the weather had deteriorated once more. Heavy rain swept towards me down the full length of the lake, carried in the teeth of yet another gale-force south-westerly breeze. But now I was dry, warm, rested and relaxed. The weather could get stuffed! I couldn�t give a damn. I fell asleep early that evening, just as darkness fell. A deep, dreamless sleep on cloud nine. As so often happens when you crash out too early, I awoke in pitch darkness, groping for my watch. Just after midnight. Is that all!

It was still raining, and the wind was beginning gust quite strongly. I wandered up the bank to Bill�s swim to find him and Nige sitting in the darkness under the shelter of his bivvy, sharing a few beers. Bill had caught another common that he�d sacked up but if the truth were known, they were both a bit on tenterhooks having been up all night looking out for the Garde-Peche. We�d had several guarded hints during the course of the day that the enforcers of senseless French laws were around, but I couldn�t for the life of me see them coming out in all this rain. Still, for all that, I wanted to get my rods in as soon as the storm passed.

The storm didn�t pass. In fact it got worse. By two in the morning it was blowing a hoolie, nine, maybe ten of wind, I�d guess. The bivvy was shaking about like a mad thing and the noise of the rain pounding once again on the bivvy roof was deafening. I was sitting in the darkness of the bivvy, the door zipped up, holding onto the brolly pole for extra security, when all three of my buzzers went off at once. Not fish, that was for sure. I unzipped the door and shone my torch at the swim. No rods, front bar lying drunkenly at an angle. Bother - or words to that effect. A huge gust of wind had blown the rods right off the rests and carried them three or four yards along the bank.

Luckily nothing was damaged, not even the buzzers which looked to have taken the brunt of the blast. A large tangle of branches clutched the line and the indicators in a tangled mess. I bit through the lines at the reels and dragged all three sets of tackle in by hand, then threw the whole shebang into the back of the bivvy, climbed back into the dry, warmth of my sleeping bag, said, �sod the fishing!� and crashed out into a deep and contented sleep. Carp fishing? You can keep it!

What I didn�t know at the time was that I had slept blissfully through one of the worst storms France had suffered in years, completely unaware of the turmoil going on around me. The fury had passed by the time I awoke at about seven o�clock, though the radio was full of tales of destruction, damage, even death. I was glad I�d slept so soundly. I dug the rods from the back of the bivvy, re-tackled and cast out as the sun once again graced the water with a shimmering kiss that sent shafts of bright sparkling light dancing across the surface. It was a morning to savour after a night to forget. This is looking up the lake from the inlet end.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#313 5 Apr 2018 at 3.09pm

In reply to Post #312
I think I was on my third or fourth beer when the drenched pair of Nige and Bill, appeared dripping copiously over the bar, the carpet and everything in their vicinity. �Enjoying yourselves?� I asked. �Sod off!� was the reply.

They ordered beer and a bite to eat and told me that they had set up at the far end of the lake where the large bed of lily-pads dominated the lake. It was an obvious carp-holding area, one which Jean-Yves had pointed out during our tour of the lake the previous day. They seemed quite sympathetic towards my back problems, and I felt a little bit less of a **** when I decided to spend another night in the hotel. That evening I splashed out on a great big meal and a bottle of Bordeaux, followed by a few brandies. I slept like a log for another nine hours.

The next morning, Wednesday, dawned bright and clear. I drew back the curtains to a strange sight. The sun was shining. Bloody hell! Another night on a decent bed had returned my back to something like normal. I grabbed a quick breakfast and almost ran the two to three miles down the bank to the far end where Bill and Nige were fishing. By ten o�clock I was all set up. It was a lovely morning, hot and steamy with little or no wind. A far cry from the deluge of the past week. I even managed to get everything dried out, including my sleeping bag, the bivvy and the groundsheet.

I set up right at the far end of the lake looking out on the same patch of lily pads that Bill and Nige were fishing. They were quite a way further up the bank from me. I suppose it was just possible that they might cut me off from fish, but I couldn�t help feeling that there were a lot of fish that never moved far from the sanctuary of the pads. Why should they? Bill was to my left, about two hundred yards away, and Nige was another seventy or eighty yards further on again. Bill had an easy cast to the pads but Nige? Well, I just didn�t know why he chose to set up where he did, as it didn�t look as if he could reach the pads.

The lake was constructed in the Napoleonic era at the same time as a long transport canal that ran alongside it. The water in the lake was used to supplement the canal and help operate the lock gates. This is how it looks today, though at the time we were there the pleasure beach on the north side of the lake was not there. We set up like this.

Here you can see Bill and Nige set up on the towpath that runs alongside the canal, though I don't think horses have plodded their way along it for a century or two!

They had both caught fish during the night. Bill had had four takes, loosing two fish in the pads but the two he had landed were both commons of close to twenty pounds apiece. And while Nige had caught only the one fish, it too had been a common. The carp were all long, dark fish, with a good deal of wildie about them. The Nottingham lads had enjoyed some action too, but they were being a bit cagey so it was hard to be sure what exactly had happened. Sadly the fish were not the pristine, uncaught virgins we�d been hoping for or expecting. Most were showing signs of having been caught before with varying degrees of bruising around the lips, and though we were slightly disappointed about this, in a way that was no bad thing. At least it showed that they knew what boilies were.

My swim was very comfortable, being both level and lump-free and just as Jean-Yves had said, I found three prominent and distinct hard patches of gravel close to the pads in front of me, which I baited up with boilies and a small scattering of tigers. It was a week since my last fish and I was getting twitchy for a take and now I felt very confident that this was where I�d get one.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#312 5 Apr 2018 at 3.08pm

In reply to Post #311
I looked across the road and there it was. Heaven, in the form of a flickering, beckoning neon saying `Augerge du Lac`. I asked, �How do you fancy some of that? We can make a fresh start in the morning after a decent night�s kip with a few beers and a bit of decent grub down our faces - become a bit civilised after all the muck and bullets. It will do us the world of good. What do you think?�

�I don�t know,� said Nige. �I think I�ll stay on the campsite. What about you, Bill?�

"That'll do for me," said Bill.

�Well it won't do for me�**** the campsite!� I exclaimed. I was beginning to feel like a right pariah but I was buggered if I was going to fart about in the pouring rain on a sopping little six-quid a night campsite when for a tenner I could get a decent night�s kip in the hotel. Sod you lot!

So, leaving the others to do as they pleased I lugged my dripping holdall across the road to the hotel, where the evening and the night that followed were spent luxuriating in comfort and Joy the proprietor! (Only kidding, Tat.) It was absolutely wonderful. The bed was so comfy I slept right through the night for about ten hours solid in the comfort and warmth of the hotel room. And though I felt a bit of a **** for doing so, my back was desperately grateful, for a few hours at least.

The relief didn�t last. In the morning when I awoke m y back had gone completely. It took me ten minutes to get out of bed, and a further half an hour to straighten up. I was really struggling. I could neither sit down properly, nor could I straighten up. I was lurching about the place like Quasimodo. From the big French windows of my hotel room I could see the lake stretched in front of me, a furious rain-lashed gale sweeping its full length, the branches of the trees along its banks whipping viciously in the teeth of a storm force south westerly. So much for the forecast.

Across to the left of the lake, behind the sailing club, Bill and Nige were packing up their bivvies on the campsite. Bill was throwing gear into the van with gusto, or was that fury! It was raining, a torrential downpour, and blowing a good nine or ten of wind to boot. Isn�t that lovely! There�s no way I�m fishing in that lot, I thought to myself. So I ran myself a brim-full bath of scalding hot water, grabbed my book and for the next three hours or so I soaked away the aches and pains of the past eight days. It was magic and afterwards I could even walk upright!

It didn't last and within an hour I was bent over like an old codger. I asked at reception desk for directions to the nearest chemist. There the pharmacist examined my back, said, "does that hurt?" and prised me off the ceiling after my agonised response. He told me that I had slipped a disc and that he had manipulated it back into place but it would hurt like hell for a few days, and I should go home and rest and then rest some more. I explained that I was 600km from home and was on a camping/fishing trip with my mates. He advised against it but saw that I was determined to carry on regardless so he gave me some really strong pain killers that did exactly what it said on the tin Bliss!

By midday the rain had stopped so I went down to see if I could find the others. I noticed four bivvies parked in a row at the top end of the lake and went over for a chat. The bivvies belonged to a party of four lads from Nottingham, friends of Rod Hutchinson, who had asked them to give the water a try to see what it was like. According the Rod it was one of those waters where you have to wade through the small commons to get at the bigger fish. I don�t mind wading like that, even in France, though I accept that it isn�t what everybody goes to France to find. Mind you, wading was hardly what the Notts. lads appeared to be doing for they�d only had a couple of fish between them in the five days they�d been there, and neither had been anything special.

I talked a while but when it started raining again I went back to the hotel, sat in the bar and got started on the ales. I was on holiday to enjoy myself, and that didn�t include any more fishing in the sodding rain, thank you very much! I wasn�t interested in big fish, small fish, ANY bloody fish. I just wanted to enjoy myself and sitting in the rain in the most appalling conditions doesn�t qualify as enjoyment to my way of thinking.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#311 5 Apr 2018 at 3.06pm

In reply to Post #310
An hour or so later the others were packed away. The boat was lashed securely to the roof rack, the back of the van stuffed full of dripping fishing tackle, clothes and gear. We went up to the bar for a farewell coffee, (in my case more beer and a couple of cognacs) and after bidding `au revoir` to all and sundry, we set off for pastures new.

�Anyone any idea where we are going?� I asked.

�Leave that up to you, Ken,� was the reply. Thanks a bunch, chaps. That�s nice of you. What am I? A bloody tour guide! Hey ho. Where to now?

�How about Foret d�Orient?� I suggested. �Joe�s swim might still be free.�

�Anywhere but there!� they said.

I listened for a spirit message. Go west, young man, it said. We turned onto the motorway and followed our noses. As we drove out of the valley the sun came out. The promised clearance had arrived. A hour later and we�d have packed up in the dry. We headed in the general direction of north for several hours and I dozed to the drone of the engine and the tyre noise. Next thing I knew, we were being flagged down by some very menacing traffic police on dark blue BMW bikes. They shepherded us into the next service area and as we stopped half a dozen plain-clothed officers surrounded the van. They were from the customs bureau; what on earth had we done to upset the customs service?

They questioned us briefly, asked us all to get out of the van, to open up the rear door. They took an despairing look at the mountain of gear jam-packed every which way into the back of the van and exchanged exasperated glances. They were in for a long job if they wanted to search that lot. When a flood of turgid rainwater fell from the sill, accompanied by the stale, dank aroma of long-stay, soaking wet carp men, they decided that we hadn�t done anything wrong after all, and we were waved on our way.

Yet more pounding miles along the motorway led us, eventually, to a new water. It was one that Rod had mentioned to me after he'd heard rumours that it held some decent fish. It was on the way home for us so why not?

It took some finding and we spent a couple of hours going up blind alleys and taking countless wrong turnings before we got it right. Even then we couldn�t believe that we were in the right place. By the time we�d found the lake the bloody rain caught up with us again and the heavens opened. Just what I needed.

I got chatting to a short, stocky French guy who was walking the banks in the rain. He seemed very pleased when I replied to his questions in French and I think this broke the ice as he soon volunteered to show me the way down to the far end of the lake. He drove me around on the back of his motor scooter, my back protesting at every bump, then he drove me back to the cafe where I�d arranged to meet Bill and Nige. By now the rain was really belting down, and the thought of setting up in the rain did not appeal one little bit.

To make matters worse my back was now giving me some serious gyp. The prospect of struggling to a swim in the rain in the gathering dusk, setting up a soaking wet bivvy, then climbing into a sopping wet sleeping bag was not one I relished. I was almost ready to call it a day mad head for home, but what I really fancied most of all was a hefty meal, a few beers, a long hot bath and a good night's kip. Tomorrow I�d wake up to a decent breakfast and - maybe - a few more beers. See how I feel about the world after that lot!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#310 5 Apr 2018 at 3.05pm

In reply to Post #309
I had not had so much as a twitch for over three days now, but I suppose I should have expected no less: I was hardly what anyone would call 'going for it' as my enthusiasm levels plunged lower with every twinge in my back!. The weather wasn't helping and now I had the bloody boat anglers to contend with.

Later that day Bill caught a small double that he didn�t weigh, just unhooked it in the net and put it straight back. Nige blanked, I blanked. The boats full of pike anglers got in my way all day, and it rained hard, and the forecast was terrible yet again; my buzzers started playing up and the reels filled with water. I could hardly move and then as if I needed any more hassle, the elastics on my bed chair gave way. All in all I rather wished I was somewhere else. Anywhere else!

Saturday morning dawned still, overcast and very damp. The boat anglers were pretty fair with their attentions dividing them equally between the three of us. By mid morning they'd wiped out each and every rod. The rain fell all day; the flood level rose in my bivvy; the drowned-out buzzer refused to work, despite all attempts to dry it out - though in truth these were never really likely to succeed, given the torrential rain; my back was killing me; the bed chair sagged alarmingly; the bivvy started to leak along the door seams, and when Bill dropped a case of bottled beer as he was carrying it back from the van, the catastrophic events of the day reached their climax. We could only try and laugh it off, but it was hard work! Just one of those days. I should never had got out of bed!

We went for a drive around in the rain and looked at two other lakes nearby. Both were deserted, which spoke volumes. The whole valley simply wasn�t fishing, full stop. It was go-though-the-motions time. Another blank twenty-four hours followed and even Nige was coming round to the idea that we should move. I was now in pretty savage pain as my back had become decidedly dodgy and I could hardly stand up, let alone pack up and move. But I felt that we simply HAD to move if we wanted to keep our sanity. The rain was interminable.

Monday morning crept up on me in a wave of apathy. It had rained hard all night, and though Nige and Bill fished, I wasn�t up for it for the pain in my back was becoming almost unbearable and I lay awake all night unable to sleep. I took a few too many pain-killing tablets, and eventually they began to have an effect. I listened to the radio and at last found some good cheer, the French station�s forecast finally announcing an improvement in the weather. Not before bloody time either!

The pain-killers slowly worked their way to the seat of the pain in my back and I began to drift off to sleep on the Jerry-rigged bedchair. It was bliss, but I was not to sleep for long. At a touch after eight o�clock in the morning I was woken by a tapping on the bivvy and the door was unzipped. Nige and Bill were standing there in the pouring rain. The promised improvement had not yet arrived.

Nige said, �I think we should move.�

�Thank Christ for that, but let�s wait until the rain stops, though, eh?�

�No, we want to move now!�

�In this f...... lot?�

�Might as well, it doesn�t look like it�s going to stop.�

�But I�ve heard the forecast on the radio,� I said. �They�ve given sunshine and showers for later on and we�ll be able to pack up in the dry. Dry bedding, dry tent, dry-ish clothes.�

�Nah! Let�s do it now and get it over with.�

�No way, guys!� I was adamant. �I�m not packing up until this bloody rain stops. We�ve been here at least two days too many as it is. Another couple of hours won�t make any difference, will it?�

�I thought you were the one that wanted to move,� said Bill.

�Damned right I do!� I yelled, beginning to really lose my temper. �I�ve wanted to move for the past four days. We�ve been wasting our time here, that�s for certain, but I can�t see the point in getting soaked packing up, when in all probability, if we wait a couple of hours, we can do it in the dry and with a bit of sunshine to cheer us up. In fact the only way I�ll be unpacking my gear again if I have to pack it away while it�s soaking wet is if the sun comes out and it�s nice and warm. And if that means that it doesn�t get unpacked again this trip, then so be it!� I was wet, angry and in a lot of pain.

There was much muttering and gnashing of teeth. Then Nige stomped off saying, �I�m going to pack my bloody gear away and I�ll just leave my bivvy up until you can be bothered. You can do what you like.� Bill said more or less the same, but in actions that spoke deafeningly louder than words. All of which left me with no choice. In the midst of a fairly hairy thunderstorm we started to pack up. An hour and a half and two hikes back to the van later, urged on by a seething rage at the world, I was all packed. I rowed the boat across to the other side while Nige and Bill packed up and wandered up to the bar - yes, at last our wandering barista had returned. About time to�just when we were leaving.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#309 5 Apr 2018 at 3.02pm

In reply to Post #308
We were all absolutely soaking wet, very damp and, speaking for myself, a bit depressed. I�d been picking up the local French radio station on the radio, listening to their weather forecasts. There was no sign of an end to the storms that were sweeping all of northern France.

I was getting pretty fed up and every twist and turn caused my back to protest angrily! The rain had by now turned the once-grassy banks into a thick and muddy morass and the dreadful weather was beginning to get to me. And the poor fishing wasn�t helping either. By Friday, after a particularly severe storm that had been accompanied by twenty-four hours of torrential rain, I was feeling pretty miserable. The lake had risen several inches and the deluge of rainwater had turned the once crystal-clear lake into a thick, chocolate-brown soup. The stream at the top end of the lake was rushing through over its banks, flooding lake and putting the kiss of death on the fishing in the process. I wanted to leave and leave right now!

Earlier, in a (probably vain) attempt to improve the fishing in my swim I had introduced a widespread carpet of groundbait to cover a roughly circular area some fifty yards in diameter between seventy and one hundred and twenty yards out in front of me, and marked it with two markers at each end. The ploy had not worked and my rods remained lifeless in the rests. My swim had definitely died completely on me, as had Bill�s down the bank to my right. We both felt it was time to move.

Bill moved a bit further to the left into the mouth of the bay, while Nige shoved his damp and dripping gear into the van and drove around to the opposite side of the arm, more or less opposite Bill's new area. At least it would be handy for the bar if Jan-Francois ever returned! That's our trusty Maestro van across the other side with Nige's bivvy below it. Meanwhile Bill set off in the boat to see if he could find his little hotspot from last year.

Me? Well I fancied anywhere but this ****'ole!

We still hadn�t risked fishing at night, though so far the Gardes de Peche had been conspicuous by their absence. I�d almost have welcomed a tug, if only to get the adrenaline flowing once again. Bill moved again during a brief lull in the downpour on Friday afternoon, this time into the arm itself. The ground was a lot harder here and at least the slightly less muddy bank held some obvious attractions. The bar was much closer for a start.

It was a move that paid off almost immediately in the shape of a twenty-five pound mirror taken on a bait rowed out into the centre of the arm in about ten feet of water. He didn't weigh it, just put it straight back, as it was again pissing down.

I had by now started to attract the unwanted, yet considerable attention of several pike and zander anglers who seemed to be using my markers as homing beacons. Whether or not they were acting deliberately or not, their antics soon put paid to my fishing while they were on the lake. Once, when I had just got back from rowing my baits out, a pike angler made a beeline for the same baited area and dropped anchor right on top of it. In next to no time he had caught my lines with his spinner, sending the frantic Frenchman into a gesticulating and highly volatile tantrum.

Eventually he simply cut through my lines leaving me the best part of six hundred yards of nylon adrift. As if the wasn�t enough Mr Angry was soon joined by another couple of boats and their presence finally brought the fishing in my swim to a complete halt. It was totally impossible. The occupants of the three boats appeared to take considerable pleasure in their bloody-mindedness leaving me fuming helplessly on the bank. There was nothing I could do about it but wait for them to go in for lunch then remove the markers. That might confuse the buggers!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#308 5 Apr 2018 at 3.01pm

In reply to Post #307
During the night the wind shifted yet again, this time round to the east. I emerged from my bivvy shivering with cold to be greeted by the sight of white horses galloping up the surface of the lake. The wind was cutting, blowing a gale or more along the length of the valley, and with the east wind came the cold as the temperature dropped ten or twelve degrees in less than a couple of hours, though for a while it did at least stop raining. We spread our damp gear on the roof of the bivvies in the hope that the wind and a pale watery sun might dry things out, but it was a forlorn hope.

The respite was cruelly short and soon it was raining harder than ever. Most of my gear was soaked through from a torrent of rainwater that had found its way into the bivvy. It came in under the rear right-hand quarter and flowed out at the left front. There was mud everywhere and it was thoroughly unpleasant. For the rest of the day the rain kept everyone cooped up in his bivvy feeling sorry for himself.

All through the following night the rain poured down in a continuous deluge. The river running through my bivvy became a flood and the mud seemed to find its way into the most impossible places. Later that night the most ferocious thunderstorm I�ve ever experienced crawled overhead with agonising slowness. The lightning conductors on the barrage and the village church were both hit, and the forest on the far bank was also struck as the storm tracked right over the top of us. At its height, the thunder and lightning were accompanied by a frightening hail-storm that left the ground carpeted with stones an inch across, to a depth of three inches or so. It looked as if it had been snowing!

At one stage my bivvy was shaken around in a whirlwind of hail and wind as a ferocious storm battered the region. It felt as if it were being savaged by a pit-bull terrier. I didn�t know whether to be scared or simply to marvel at the awesome power, the brutal, almost primordial forces that unleashed themselves upon us. The lightning was incredible, as if thousands of strobe-powered flash guns were going off on the other side of the bivvy door. Countless times a second, hundreds of separate flashes. An amazing and very awesome experience, and in the middle of it all, Nige had a run!

He didn�t hear it of course. He was sheltering in Bill�s bivvy while the worst of the storm passed, but I doubt if he�d have heard it even if he�d been in his own bivvy. By the time he got back to his rods the carp, if carp it was, had created a cat�s cradle of his other two lines and left, laughing!

Thursday dawned to a scene from hell. The thunderstorm was still rattling around the heavens; in fact it hardly seemed to have moved at all. The rain was back with a vengeance and the mud was thicker than ever. A tree was hit in the woods less than sixty yards away behind me, leaving a long white scar, savagely burnt at the edges, to mark the path of the bolt to earth. The woods on the far bank seemed to be smoking in the early morning light. There was a peculiar smell in the air - metallic, sinister. Is that what brimstone smells like? I asked myself. And to cap it all, I had put my back out during the night. It was agony!

There were a few fish crashing out, but it wasn�t what you�d call hectic. The surface had become mirror-calm as the wind died away leaving heavy rain falling straight down from the thick, grey clouds. I wasn�t exactly hoping for a take as my back was killing me. I could hardly move and never has the phrase 'bedchair back' been more appropriate. I lay on my back with my knees up - seemed to relieve the pain a bit - and listened to the rain and watched the thunderstorm rattling around the valley, lighting up the overcast sky with savage flashes of sheet lightning.

By mid morning the breeze had shifted yet again, back into a more southerly direction. In the UK you expect all these shifts in the wind to blow away the clouds, but not here. Having more or less boxed the compass in the last twenty-four hours, the wind brought with it even more rain, more hail and yet more thunder and lightning. The rain relented briefly later that afternoon, allowing Nige and me a few hasty minutes in which to move our bivvies to less muddy areas.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#307 5 Apr 2018 at 2.59pm

In reply to Post #306
We wound the rods in at about eleven o�clock that night and had a few beers to round off the day. Night fishing was a dodgy business as the Gardes-Peche had a well-deserved reputation for being tough on the rule breakers in the area. It simply wasn�t worth the risk. Last year Gary had been caught and let off with a comparatively light fine: this year we�d heard horror stories about tackle confiscation and heavy fines. Just before I turned in I topped up the bait carpet with the usual mixture of ready-mades and fishmeals in equal proportions; about three hundred of each.

The threatened rain and wind arrived at about one in the morning and it rocked the trees and shook the bivvy like a dog with a rat, but come the morning it had stopped and the clouds drifted on their way north. I slept only fitfully and was awake before dawn. I unzipped the bivvy door and the sight that greeted me away to my right scared me half to death! The land was black, the sky the same, with a fire-red strip of sunlight between the two. Talk about a red sky in the morning.

As dawn grew into a grey morning, dull with a fresh SW wind blowing towards the dam I felt certain we were in for a deluge. In the chilly morning air I cast out then put the kettle on. The others were not up yet so I sat on my jack drinking the cuppa and eating breakfast. It was noticeably colder than previous mornings but it still looked pretty carpy. I sat in keen anticipation of a repeat of yesterday morning�s performance, though I felt less certain of a take as the night had been very different to its predecessor. It had rained hard for much of the night with a fresh breeze from the south-east blowing straight into the bivvy door. I slept fitfully, and so, it turned out later, did the others. None of us heard so much as a single splash during the dark hours, whereas the previous night we couldn't sleep for the noise of carp crashing out everywhere.

I noticed that the lake had come up a few inches so we must have had a real downpour of rain during the night, and I didn't much like the look of the sky away to the south either. I made more tea, lit a fag and got back in the bag, as it had turned suddenly very chilly. A few loud crashes of thunder echoed down the valley and the tense atmosphere of an approaching storm hung heavy on the morning dampness. Dark, almost black thunderheads built up in the valley away to the south, moving slowly but surely towards us. The stillness was oppressive, even the birds fell silent. The comforting swoosh of a breeze in the trees died away and the air crackled and rumbled in electric anticipation. By seven in the morning the storm had arrived, with driving rain and thunder and lightning. There was no wind to push the murk on its way, the dirty weather was obviously set in for the day.

I zipped up the door to the bivvy, climbed into the sleeping bag and went back to sleep. If the carp were feeding, they�d soon wake me up for I had the extension box right next to my ear. Later that morning Nige had a fourteen pound mirror and Bill opened his account with an eleven pound mirror. The shoal must have been going through my swim to get from Nige�s baits to Bill�s but I never had a sniff. Mind you, the last thing I wanted was a run in the torrential rain that fell for most of the morning. The weather certainly wasn�t conducive to pleasurable fishing and I lay on my bed chair praying that the big lump could hold his hunger in check until it eased off a bit. He could pick up my bait then, by all means.

The rest of the morning passed slowly in a welter of heavy rain, thunder and occasional flickers of lightning. The sun popped out very briefly to shine on a twenty-one pound mirror that picked up one of my baits during the afternoon�

�but then it started raining again, this time heavier than ever. It was a miserable day that lowered all our spirits. I think we�d all have benefited from a trip to the bar for a meal and a few beers, but that sod, Jean-Francois was still on his holidays.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#306 5 Apr 2018 at 2.58pm

In reply to Post #305
Then just when we thought his swim had died, a lovely, pale Italian-strain mirror just a few ounces short of forty pounds fell to his rods. I don�t know what happened to the tennis elbow, but he wasn�t complaining any more.

Fat old beastie isn't it!

Nige was pretty happy with it, though!

After all that action, it was inevitable that it should slow down, and as the afternoon wore on so the fish moved up towards the barrage away to our left. In the lull, Bill and Nigel went out in the boat, searching the bottom with the echo sounder. It was very hot and the fish were obviously making the most of the autumn sunshine, for there were no signs of any substantial marks on the echo sounder to indicate the presence of carp still on the baits.

The afternoon was quiet, calm and peaceful, and, given our hectic morning, I don�t think Nige or I were complaining that the fishing had slowed. Bill still waited patiently for a take. He wasn�t in any rush. There was time to relax and lie back to watch the world go around.

The lake is a wildlife paradise to those occasional bird watchers like myself, who have only a passing interest. The grey and rather drab bird life of Cornwall pales alongside the magnificent red kites, ospreys and black storks that prowl the skies above and the banks beside the still waters of the lake. I�d heard from Jean-Francois that there were wild boar in the woods behind the west bank, where we were bivvied. I wouldn�t have minded seeing one of those, but not at close quarters. A herd of wild boar had driven two Dutch friends from their tents on the banks of the Foret d�Orient to stand up to their necks in water while the forest pigs destroyed their camp, rods, everything. That was one good reason for our earlier cowardice.

It was a lovely, peaceful and relaxed afternoon. Little did I know that it would be the last I�d enjoy for some time. Happy though I was with my success so far, I couldn�t help feeling that we were missing out by leaving Foret d�Orient. Before I�d left the lake at the weekend, I�d arranged with Joe that we could slip into his swim when he left for home that coming Saturday, and there was a nagging sensation in the back of my mind that this is exactly what we should do. It was hard enough to get a swim on that wild and woolly lake; to be handed a swim on a plate - and a damn good swim at that - was an offer I felt we should not turn down. I voiced my feelings to the others but Bill and Nige felt that there was more to come from this lake.

Maybe I put the jinx of the lake by hoping that action would die off which should encourage the other guys to move. Was it wrong of me to pray that the place fished like a pudding from now on? I suppose it was, especially when it looked as if my prayers would come true as later that afternoon a dark, menacing blanket of heavy cloud moved relentlessly towards us from the south. The heavily laden clouds soon threatened to block the sun completely and we could hear the rain and an increasing wind hammering the forest behind us. This was going to get nasty! Little did we know that as the sun bade farewell we would not see it again for several days.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#305 5 Apr 2018 at 2.56pm

In reply to Post #304
It didn�t take the carp long to find my baits. The rods had been out less than three quarters of an hour when I had my first run, the buzzer playing its wonderful tune. That take came right in the middle of a downpour. Doesn�t it always! Still, who cares! It�s a fish. So there I was getting a drenching while a strong fish put distance between itself and danger. After the first headlong dash the fight reverted to a predictable give and take pattern and eventually I shook the meshes up around a fat, dumpy mirror carp that went a fraction over twenty. It was almost round; we could have played football with it!

The noise of the run and the splashing of the fish in the margins brought Nige and Bill out to play and soon the bank was a hive of activity. Strange how a fish galvanizes people into action, there were rods and baits flying everywhere!

As dawn came, the fish stopped showing almost completely, but they hadn�t stopped feeding. Less than a hour later I had another run from a fish that came straight off the pages of the Book of Dreams. I have always yearned for a monster common carp and the image of Gary�s long, lean beastie from the previous year still flitted across my sleeping moments from time to time. Now I had my turn, a dream no longer but the spectacular reality of a thirty pound common, 31lb 4oz in fact.

And what a fight, from an unbelievably powerful fish. It was one of the most magnificent carp I�ve ever seen, though as usual I only had a fleeting impression of it while the honours were performed. We took a roll of transparency film of the gorgeous fish, including several of it going back. It wasn�t until I got the photos back that I realised that it was actually the same fish that Gary had caught almost a year to the day previously. Same pose too!

Meanwhile, Nige was suffering severe and crippling pain. A savage re-occurrence of tennis elbow was playing him up badly and he couldn�t use a throwing stick to get his baits out. I have had my fair share of tennis elbow having cortisone injections in both elbows three time in each one. This is a problem that all carp anglers need to be aware of. Throwing sticks, especially the metal variety, are bad news for elbows. So I baited up his swim as well as my own, dashing too and fro. In fact, I was in his swim, waving the Cobra around, with boilies shooting off in all directions, when I heard another run start again on my rods. Middle rod. Great! Another great big mirror of just under thirty pounds, a long solid fish, a proper carp!

What a brilliant morning�s fishing I was having, so far I�d landed three fish. A twenty pound tub, a thirty-one common and a late twenty-nine pound mirror. I was all of a quiver. I put the kettle on for a cuppa, while my three rods rested uselessly against the bivvy. I wasn�t in any rush to re-cast. Let the others have some action for a change!

Which is exactly what happened, at least for Nige if not for Bill. The fish must have moved through my swim and up to Nige�s, for in the next three hours he landed an further three fish. A common at just under 12lb, a dark almost red mirror that looked much like Gary's from the previous year�but wasn�t�

Here the lovely creature goes back.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#304 5 Apr 2018 at 2.55pm

In reply to Post #303

The level was down quite a bit from last year, revealing three of four yards of thick, gooey mud at the water�s edge. Apart from that not much had changed by the look of things, though our little French carp-fishing pal was missing from his usual place on the point. We set up in roughly the same spots as last year put a bit of bait out and then went into town to get permits for Bill and Nige and to do some shopping for food, wine and beer, returning as the light faded, just in time to put the rods out for a couple of hours. We were arranged like this:

As the evening drew in we ate a dinner of the by now customary Boeuf Bourguignon with new potatoes and carrots, all washed down with a bottle or two of very cheap, yet ever so cheerful claret. Very civilised. It was a very cold, clear night with not a breath of wind. The sky was filled with stars, its clarity at least promising no rain. A few fish were moving splashily away to our left towards the dam, but all in all it wasn�t looking terribly encouraging, especially after a day of very strong, cold east winds. Then, just as it was coming in truly dark, at about ten o�clock, Nigel had two bleeps on one of his rods. He struck, and there was our first carp of the trip. Not big, a mirror of perhaps fourteen pounds, but what it lacked in size was made up for in its significance. It told us that the lake was fishing after all.

That beautiful little fish really lifted all our spirits, for I think we were each feeling a bit low. After all, here we were, Monday night, having been in France for over sixty hours, driven God knows how many miles, spent precious francs on wasted fuel and food and until this afternoon, not so much as wet a line. Yet with our baits in the water for just a couple of hours, we�d already had a fish. Now all they needed to do was get bigger! I couldn�t forget that huge fish that Bill lost last year. Hope we see a few like that on the bank this time.

I awoke at about four o�clock the following morning. It was still pitch black in a wet and soggy pre-dawn drizzle. Thin tendrils of damp penetrating mist clung to the tree tops nestling on the steep wooded hillside opposite, cloaking the valley with a damp stillness. Though it was legally still too early to cast out, the temptation to do so was irresistible as there were fish lumping out all over the place. Dawn was well over an hour or more away but I figured if we were going to get visited by the Garde de Peche they would have arrived around one or two in the morning, not now, just an hour before dawn.

The weather had changed completely during the night, turning cloudy and warm. The breeze had gone and the surface of the lake was mirror-calm. It looked grey and a bit forbidding but there were fish moving just about anywhere we looked. Even as I cast out, ripples came lapping onto the shore at my feet, caused by fish crashing out all over the lake, and especially over my baited area, where huge splashes marked the whereabouts of some of the lake�s giants. It was a magic sound, though the darkness meant that I couldn�t see the culprits. After Nige�s fish last evening it all looked very hopeful.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#303 5 Apr 2018 at 2.53pm

In reply to Post #302
Curiosity got the better of Bill and Nige, who got the boat out and went for a row around and a play with the echo-sounder. As I watched them pottering about on the enormous expanse of water, I felt the awesome presence of the towering mountains that dominated the view. I had never been this far south before and my only previous experience of mountains was a rather measly effort involving one or two hills in the Scottish Highlands. The Alps were a different kettle of fish. Here they were, so close that I felt as if I could reach out and touch them. It was so quiet and peaceful in the shade of the trees that despite the teeming multitudes on the other campsites, I felt as if I was alone. The fading heat was dry and clean and not at all oppressive, while the cloudless sky, of such a deep azure blue, had a sense of the unreal about it.

I set up my bedchair in the door of the bivvy, stretched out in the crisp shade and fell asleep while Bill and Nige spent the remainder of the afternoon rowing around the lake but the echo sounder only confirmed the detail of the contour map. In addition much more of the fishable bankside was privately owned than we�d previously thought. The prospects didn�t look good at all. They woke me on their return to break the news: they had not been encouraged by what the echo sounder had revealed.

That evening we walked down into the village for a few beers and a meal. A large match of boules was just coming to its conclusion on the flat sandy pitch opposite the bar, the competitors now engaged in noisy argument about a disputed point or some matter of etiquette. Whatever, it was good humoured and the racket was made more tolerable by the free beer that the patron was dispensing to all the players. If he was annoyed when our English accents and atrocious French revealed that we had not been taking part, he didn�t show it. We got a free beer like everyone else.

I asked him about the fishing. He said that the lake was well known for its big carp, which was good, but that most of the big fish were caught from the private landing stages and fishing platforms on the few shallow areas of the lake, and were usually killed after capture, which was definitely not so good. The rest of the lake was either private, too deep - sixty feet just ten yards out from the bank - or owned by the many camp sites that were dotted around the lake. It looked as if we had driven all that way for nothing.

We slept on the problem and it didn�t look any better the next morning. Though the lake was spectacular and beautiful, and even though it certainly held big carp, the access problem was practically insurmountable as far as we could see. �How about going back to Foret d�Orient?� I asked, hopefully, yet inwardly certain that my plea would fall on deaf ears. It did! We settled on a return to the Forty Lake though we were now actually nearer to St Cassien which was certainly a better prospect.

So we headed northwards once more and arrived back at the barrage by mid-afternoon to find that Jean-Francois was still away. What on earth would we do for a beer? And who gave him permission to go gadding off to God knows where without letting us know! The lake was completely deserted. Was that a good thing or not? Perhaps the lake was fishing like a pudding.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#302 5 Apr 2018 at 2.51pm

In reply to Post #301
Five or six hours later we turned off the main south-bound motorway at Lyons and drove towards the distant mountains. It was blisteringly hot, well over ninety degrees Fahrenheit. The sun scorched down from a cloudless sky turning the inside of the van into an oven. We squirmed and sweated against the sticky seats. The monotony of the motorway down to Lyons now gave way to breath-taking scenery, with steep slopes, littered with thick copses of pine trees, dark green against the lighter hue of rock and boulder. Dotted here and there about the hillsides stood colourful little alpine cottages and larger hotels, while ahead of us towered the Alps themselves. At first they were just indistinct, blue-haze shadows shimmering and dancing in the heat, but as we drew closer the shadows firmed up and became towering, stark silhouettes.

We drove on towards the border, through several claustrophobic, dripping tunnels carved out of the solid rock of the foothills, and as we broke out of one particularly long, dank tunnel and emerged into bright daylight, a glittering panoramic view of the lake sprang up at us as it nestled in a wide valley below. At first sight it was rather startling. The water was bright green! Towering mountains dominated the valley on its eastern side, appearing to climb almost straight up from the water�s edge for thousands upon thousands of feet. A narrow twisting road ran around the lake�s perimeter so we cruised our way round on a lazy tour, stopping here and there to gaze down at the water. In the shade of a grove of trees that stood on a rocky outcrop, a huge flock of great crested grebes preened and dived for fish. I have never seen so many of the species in one group before, and it was clear why they were there. Below the surface massive shoals of what looked like roach or rudd turned this way and that in the crystal-clear water. They were huge, perhaps two or three pounds apiece. The grebes were having a field day.

The lake was obviously very deep, for nowhere on our travels did we get a glimpse of the lake bed, even though the water was so clear that we could see perhaps fifteen or twenty feet down. In addition the banks were dangerously steep and strewn with rocks and boulders among a profusion of heavy weeds, trees and ferns. Large areas of bankside were fenced off for private dwellings with their own beaches or with steps going down from terraced gardens to the water�s edge. Second homes for the well-to-do, no doubt. From a vantage point high above the lake, in the car park of a large hotel, we had a dazzling view over the whole lake. Such areas of bankside that were not in private hands were clearly owned by several camp sites dotted at regular intervals around the lake; camp sites that were heaving with humanity.

�It looks as if there might be a bit of an access problem,� said Nige, pointing at a thousand screaming kids playing in the only shallow area on the lake, that had been roped off to form a safe swimming area, �And that�s putting it mildly.�

�Busy, isn�t it? exclaimed Bill, always a man for the studied understatement. A thirst approached: we could all feel it coming so we dived into the nearest bar to enquire about the immediate availability of a glass or three of beer. To hell with the fishing, first things first. In fact, chance had taken us into the only bar on the lake that sold fishing tickets and we were about to stump up the required francs when a detailed contour map on the wall caught the eye. It indicated that the lake was seventy metres deep in places, and shallow areas were virtually non-existent. Did we really want to fish in three hundred feet of water? I think not. We decided to hold off on the fishing tickets until we had found out more about the place.

We cruised around the lake again as the afternoon wore on. In the shadow of the huge mountain the cool Alpine air refreshed us almost as much as the beer. We decided that we all needed to get a decent meal, a few beers and a good night�s sleep before considering what to do about the access problem, so we booked onto a tiny camp site, nestling under the mountains, and as the fierce continental afternoon heat slowly dissipated to a more tolerable British coolness, we set up the bivvies for the night in the shade of a well-tended wood that stretched down to the lakeside.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#301 5 Apr 2018 at 2.47pm

In reply to Post #300
We continued our patrol of the massive lake and found plenty of other English guys there. The word was well and truly out. Mangrove Joe (Bertram) was installed in one of the highly fancied swims but so far he hadn�t had any success. (I later heard that he caught a very big carp during his second week on the lake - a just reward for patience and effort). Joe told me that he was leaving the following weekend and that if we wanted to take over the swim when he left, he would hold it for us until noon on the Saturday. A generous offer from one of carp fishing�s gentlemen. I said we�d pop in and see him from time to time during our stay and, assuming that we had not done well, would take up his offer in a week�s time.

Joe warned me that the French weather bureau had been forecasting heavy electrical storms for the past week but nothing as so far materialised. I might have known that the minute we turned up the heavens opened and the lightning flashed furiously across the sky. Little did we know it at the time but this weather pattern was to dog our steps for the rest of the trip.

Though most of the known swims were taken I felt we were in with a good chance of a swim somewhere as the lake was way down from its July levels, albeit leaving the bankside a bit more muddy. But despite spending three or four hours driving around the lake and exploring every little track or pathway, we found each nook and cranny occupied, though there was one small promontory tucked away by the limit of the bird sanctuary looking out towards Little Italy. At first we couldn�t believe our luck, but when we left the car and walked across the soggy banks, we soon discovered why there was nobody fishing there. The soft ground was covered by hoof prints and ragged deep holes in the bankside. A sure sign that the area was a hunting ground for a herd of wild boar. When these things move into your swim, you move out! We gave discretion the better part and left the swim to the wild, aggressive creatures. Cowards? Damn right we are!

By early evening we had done the grand tour of the lake twice without finding an area that we could fish so we adjourned to the bar at Mensil for an Official Committee Meeting. I was all for staying put until we could get a swim, even kipping in the car parks behind the swims if necessary. After all, we had two weeks to go, the fishing had not even started yet. But it was clear that Nige and Bill were not too keen, either on my idea, nor, as it turned out, on the lake itself. Bill fancied going back to the Forty Lake again - not surprising really after last year - so I tried to ring Jean-Francois to find out how the lake was fishing. There was no reply. As it was Nige�s first trip East he said he�d go with the flow and the flow seemed to be saying, the Forty Lake so we drank up and hit the road.

A few hours later we pulled up outside the bar. It was closed, which explained the unanswered phone. A notice in the window told all and sundry that Jean-Francois and family were on holiday. Well, that�s a damn good start, isn�t it! And I really fancied a beer too! We were all feeling the effects of the long and broken journey so we dug among the tangle of gear in the back of the van, got the bedchairs out and set up our bivvies by the side of the road overlooking the lake. It was a lovely night, cool but clear with a myriad of stars. I had a wander along the barrage before turning in, listening for carp crashing out in the darkness. Last year fish had showed close to the barrage after midnight and maybe old habits died hard with them.

Nige, who had done all the driving, slept like a log, but Bill and I slept fitfully through the night, lying restless through the times when we�d have expected to hear carp leaping, but neither of us heard any fish throughout the hours of darkness. That was rather worrying, and the fact that the bar was closed made up our minds for us. As a cold and dewy dawn broke over the sleepy valley we got the map out and after a bit of humming and hah-ing decided to fly a kite and head even further south to a lake in the foothills of the Alps, a completely unknown quantity and, as things turned out, a wasted journey.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#300 5 Apr 2018 at 2.45pm

In reply to Post #298
WELCOME TO MY NIGHTMARE: SEPT �93

I hope by now you�ll have gathered that I treat France and French carp fishing in a very light-hearted manner. I look on every trip purely as a holiday. I am out to enjoy myself, end of story. The trip is not an endurance test nor a battle of wits with the Garde de Peche. Neither is it a no-holds-barred contest with French lakes, French carp, and certainly not with the French people. My watchwords are enjoyment, rest and relaxation and I have always asserted to myself and to others that when I stop enjoying carp fishing I�ll simply stop doing it. Mind you, I�m not actually sure if I mean it or not, but I can assure you that there have been times when I�ve come perilously close to it. However, I never expected to come as close as I did in the autumn of 1993 when we paid a return visit to the lake where I�d caught the forty the previous year.

I had enjoyed a brief visit to the now famous Forest d�Orient lake in July �93 in the company of a few of the Nutrabaits team and though we�d blanked it was obvious that the huge lake was, indeed, a very special carp water and I was keen to get back to the lake as soon as possible. My first experience of the big lake had taught me just what a heart-breaker the place could be if you weren�t on fish. True, that applies to any lake, anywhere, but the problem with Foret d�Orient is that there are precious few swims available, bearing in mind the size of the lake. When the water levels are at their highest, in spring and early summer, it can be very difficult to get a swim on the lake, let alone one that is on fish.

If truth be known, our remaining schedule for 1993 did not involve a return trip with the lads. Carole and I had plans only to go back to the pure bliss of Georges� gite, for a week in late October, so the idea of an earlier trip with the lads had not even been discussed. However, the prospect of fishing Foret d�Orient once again wormed a crafty path to the carp passion site in my grey matter, and when Nige and Bill agreed to come along for the ride, all that was left for me was to present the fait accompli to Carole.

The trip took place from 4th-18th September. Once more Nige prevailed upon his very generous boss for the loan of the works van and we borrowed a heavily built ten foot long fire-glass dinghy to help with the baiting up. Orient is a big water and the waves can get pretty awesome - no place for a small plastic inflatable. As for bait, I inveigled Bill Cottam into doing a silly-cheap deal for us on sixty kilos of Big Fish Mix and the same of their prototype ready-mades and we crammed these, along with sacks of groats and hemp and a few kilos of tiger nuts into the back of the van. Once again it groaned and sagged ominously on overloaded springs. We crossed Ramsgate-Dunkerque because it was the cheapest route, and arrived on French soil at about midday on Saturday 4th September 1993; by mid-afternoon we were on the tree-lined banks of the fabled Lac de la Foret d�Orient. It was great to be back!

First stop, the swim at Mensil that we�d fished in July. Even though we�d blanked the swim I knew that it was one of the very best on the lake. Not for nothing is it known as Bivvy City. Gary and Mark had fished it the previous year and done well so the swim�s reputation was well founded.

As you can see, though the level was well up when we fished it, we had no idea of the problems that would face us if we actually hooked a carp. Nobody told us that there was a bloody great wall to scale down to get to the water's edge.

Naturally, when we arrived at the lake the a party of Dutch anglers had the area completely stitched up. Leaving Bill and Nige to look around the rest of the area, I went down for a chat. Unusually, these particular Dutchmen were an aggressive and tight-mouthed crowd, and they just glared at me, gesturing their failure - �no carp!� they exclaimed. Did they take me for a right prat? There were drying sacks and slings all over the place. Almost without exception the Dutch carp anglers that I�ve met on my travels have been great company, but this lot were the exception.

It was clear that they were holding a vast shoal of carp in front of them, and I soon found out from the owner of the holiday cottages above the swim that the Dutch carpers had been hogging and rotating the swims amongst themselves for the past three months! A few years later some Brits had their vans torched for doing that!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#299 3 Apr 2018 at 11.19am

In reply to Post #298
Just got to select the relevant photos for the next section.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#297 2 Apr 2018 at 1.20pm

Please be patient, chaps. Got a lot on my plate at the moment but rest assured, there is more tosh to come.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#296 24 Mar 2018 at 2.13pm

In reply to Post #295
The level was going down visibly now. If it carried on like this there would be no water left. The lake was actually one of the four in the general area that supplied water to the large navigation canal and river to keep them topped up and supply water to towns and cities further north. All four hold carp to a greater or lesser degree and the one we were fishing was probably the least popular as it was not thought to hold fish of a decent enough size to satisfy the mainly Dutch and German anglers who fished the region. They were awesomely beautiful though, so sod the so-called 'small' carp

If my forty was to be my last fish for the trip, so be it. I was happy as Larry; my first forty. I prayed quietly to myself that it would be the first of many but was now really hoping that Bill would get among the bigger fish. We both fished hard that day and were rewarded with a fish each. A small common for Bill that was returned without being weighed and a nice low twenty for me. I posed as Bill took the pix feeling a bit self conscious. The fish should have been swapped around, the twenty for Bill and the scamp for me. Mind you I don't think for one minute that Bill was in the slightest bit fazed. He is one of the most laid back guys I have ever met.

Last day coming up�Come on Bill, mate! We sat around as the day dragged on fishless then suddenly at last Bill was away and this time it looked to be a better fish off one of the small gravel patches we'd found with Gary's boat and echo sounder. I think this proves two things: a) just how much of an asset a sounder can be: b) how tiny a hot spot can be. A couple of square yards in two hundred acres. I remember Rod writing something along the lines of a hot spot can be as small as a foot square in a 100 acres or words to that effect.

Bill's carp dragged him around the lake a few times before giving up. What a beautiful fish it was too, a shade over thirty pounds. We were all pleased for the guy. He'd sat it out while others were catching all around him but had been rewarded for his patience with one of the prettiest mirrors I have ever seen.

Bill and I moved the next day. It was clear that we were getting fewer and fewer takes where we were. Our friend fishing the point had still to have a take. Even Gary�s action was slowing down. With only one more night to go before we had to leave, we fancied our chances on the plateau on the opposite side of the lake. We set up well away from Orange Marker�s swim, but I guess it must have been a miscast when my left hand bait splashed down within a few feet of the gaudy marker. I left it where it lay!

I�m sure we�d have caught fish that afternoon, if only a succession of pike anglers hadn�t kept rowing through our lines. It was impossible to fish properly, and in the end we wound in and packed away the gear ready for an early start the next morning. At least Bill had caught a decent fish, and naturally I was delighted with my big mirror, but somehow the trip ended on a slightly sour note. Gary�s fine, the French pike men�suddenly I had the homers.

We were ready to go. Ali and Gary were crossing into Folkestone while we were taking the return route from Dieppe so we said our goodbyes and thanks them for sharing some great times with us. The journey back to the ferry port was tedious in the extreme. So too the crossing, and the drive up to Bill�s house. A few pints of decent beer cheered us up though and as the golden ales slipped down, we planned next year trip. A return visit perhaps? Very likely!

Incidentally, on our return to the UK I sent a selection of photos to Carpworld and surprise, surprise, the one of Gary with his PB common made it onto the front cover albeit nearly a year after he caught it. Proud as punch, he was!

Not to be outdone Ali also made it onto the front cover a couple of months earlier with her 44lb mirror from St Cassien. My caption to the cover was 'Gorgeous girl: gorgeous fish' . "Can't argue with that," wrote Tim.

Coming up Bill and I join Nige on a return trip to the Forty Lake. It was not a lot of fun as you'll read in the coming posts.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#295 24 Mar 2018 at 2.07pm

In reply to Post #294
By the following morning the weather had reverted to its usual pattern of warm days/cold nights. Bill had been awake since before first light having slept on the rods. He was full of anticipation and I could see why�Carp leapt and shouldered through the surface over the baits, a sure sign of feeding fish, and Bill felt that he was on a good number of feeding fish for the first time this trip.

Sadly nobody had told the carp in front of him, that they were supposed to pick up his baits, and instead it was Gary who took the first fish of the morning, yet another twenty pound mirror that snagged him up on the same mooring pole that had been my downfall earlier in the trip. While he took to the boat to free the fish, another of his rods was away. Ali needed no further encouragement and played her fish to the bank in less than ten minutes, while hubby fussed about in the boat. They made a pretty picture, Gary with a twenty-five pound mirror, Ali with her twenty-one pound leather. The pix had to wait while the sun came up. It gave Ali plenty of time to put on the war paint and the bling, change her clothes and wash her hair! She needn't have bothered; she'd look great if she was dressed only in a carp sack!

I think Bill was beginning to loose heart. It was understandable if truth be known. Gary was catching, I was catching, now Alison had caught a twenty on her first run of the trip, albeit on hubby's rods, but he didn't seem to mind even though so far Bill had caught only three doubles, all he had to show for a hell of a lot of effort. We were running out of days and I think he was tempted to do the night but in the end like me he took them in. And a good job he did, as at three in the morning our 'friendly' G de P returned. Do they take us for idiots?

We awoke to a bit of a shock. The water level had gone down by about 18 inches and suddenly the troublesome pike poles were revealed above the surface. Gary had been plagued by the things and had lost gear and/or fish to them on several occasions. There are actually just off the photo to the left but you can just about see a single pole further down the bank.

You can also see Gary's little boat�it really was tiny but believe me, we'd have been a lot worse off without it. That little dinghy showed just how essential a boat is on French trips and for us the days of tiny kids plastic beach toys were over once and for all!

The day was carp-free and with only a day and a half before we had to pull off we felt a trip into town was called for. Our little French mate had arrived and we sitting in 'his' swim in his own little dream world so we asked him to keep and eye on the gear and then went up to the bar to get a taxi. For some reason we never got around to ordering it so the lovely town, built on a plateau and surrounded by a defensive wall, one of the most historic towns in all of France remained unvisited. Shame on us!

We were a bit tired and emotional when we left the bar at God know what hour. We had enjoyed superb hospitality and made some good friends among the regulars. They couldn't have been more friendly and welcoming�I had a feeling Bill and I might be back some day! After all, a decent bar serving fresh bread and decent meals is almost as important as the quality of the fishing

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#294 24 Mar 2018 at 2.03pm

In reply to Post #293
I slept the night away dreaming of monster carp. Monday dawned as before, bright and sunny and white calm.

Neither Bill nor I fished the night but Gary fished on, giving proof, if proof were needed, that fishing at night was the answer as he caught a lovely looking mirror of 29lbs 4ozs.

It rained on and off for most of the day and Bill and I fished all through it on the two long range gravel patches that we�d found with the sounder, though this meant rowing every hook bait out to the markers, not something I found terribly enjoyable at the time, especially in the pissing rain. Later, as I became more experienced I realised that this was by far the most efficient ways of catching carp anywhere, not only on the Continent. Indeed on a deep mid-winter trip to an Italian lake with Bill C. we found ourselves having to take them out getting on for 500 yards. By then braid on the reels was the way to go, and even at this range Bill still knew the minute the duck picked up his hookbait. Mind you, he didn't know it was a duck at the time, and as he wound it in it got progressively heavier as it neared the bank. It took him the best part of ten minutes to get it to the net and we never for a minute doubted that it was a carp! Sadly it was dead by the time we 'landed' it.

That afternoon the rain intensified. It was the first serious rain of the trip. Rain or no rain Ali did her stuff, preparing a proper spaghetti Bolognese dinner for us that evening. It was made with really fresh pasta and a sumptuous meat sauce made with minced beef (steak hache), tomatoes onions and all the trimmings. What a star she was. We sat under the brollies, all togged up in waterproofs, filling our bellies with heaped plates of Ali's finest. It was delicious, all the more so because of the conditions. Neither Bill nor I are great bankside cooks (though we won't sink so low as to depend on Pot Noodles!) so without Ali's cooking we'd probably have relied on tins of Cassoulet and Boeuf Bourguignon, not that they are not nice, but you cannot beat properly prepared home cooking. Thanks, Ali!

The rain stopped at dusk and we went to our separate bivvies. I slept like a log and heard nothing of the alarms and excursions of the night. About an hour before midnight Gary had another big mirror, this one just two ounces short of thirty pounds. He sacked the fish for a morning photo session and sat back to await the next run.

There were fish crashing out all over the place, he told me later. More movement than he�d seen at any time since he�d arrived. He expected great things from the coming night. I�m sure his optimism was well founded, but unfortunately his fishing was to be rudely cut short. At one o�clock in the morning the G de P paid their not-unexpected return visit. This time they got lucky. There was little aggro from them, they even stayed for a beer and a coffee. To be honest, I think they were only keen on one thing and that was to collar one of us, it didn't matter who. Though they were quite nice about it they left Gary with a five-hundred franc fine, though at least they didn�t confiscate his gear or the car, which they were quite entitled to do.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#293 21 Mar 2018 at 5.13pm

In reply to Post #292
I let the fish leave my arms and slowly she drifted away into the warm waters of the lake; back to her mysterious depths. I fell over backwards into the lake, splashing and yelling like a little kid. Forty pounds!

I had to tell Carole the news so I ran up to the bar to use the phone. While I waited to get through he poured me a very large cognac. He could see that I was overjoyed with my capture, and that is an emotion the French are particularly sympathetic towards. As Carole and I spoke another large cognac appeared at my elbow. A crowd was gathering at the bar as the Sunday afternoon customers were put in the picture by Francois. By the time I got off the phone the queue of cognacs had grown alarmingly, and by mid-evening I a bit the worse for wear. Did I care?

More to come as Bill, Gary and Ali get among the lumps too!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#292 21 Mar 2018 at 5.08pm

In reply to Post #291
Finally Gary slipped the net under the beast. He grunted as he took the strain of the weight of the fish in the floor of the landing net. �It has got to be forty, mate,� he told me. I was shaking like a leaf. Bill had to take the rod from me and together he and Gary carried my prize back to the swim. We weighed it on Bill�s Salter scales, zeroing the weight of the sling, a new one from the Nash stable, light as a feather but very strong, a far cry from the monstrous things we carry around with us these days.

�Forty-one,� said Gary.

�No, Gary,� said Allison. �Look, it�s under forty. Thirty-nine, fourteen.�

We lowered the fish onto the mat and Gary took the scales and tried again. I wasn�t looking. I couldn�t! Bill looked over Gary�s shoulder and shook his head. He said, �The needle is swinging about too much. It�s certainly close, though.�

�I�ll sack her up for a moment,� I said. I wanted to get my breath back, finish my dinner, have a good slug of wine and then maybe we�d be ready to weigh the beast properly.

By the time I�d finished my meal, got over the shakes and enjoyed a calming cigarette quite a crowd had gathered.

�Can we see your fish?� asked a little French lad who was out with his family.

�Sure. We�re just going to weigh it now,� I told him and removed the sack from the margins. This time we used one of the oars through the eye of the scales to keep them steady. Up she went and once again the needle swung down to the forty pound marker. Alison looked at the dial, then turned away. What had she seen, I wondered, for from where I was standing supporting one end of the oar I couldn�t see the weight myself.

�Come on, Ali. Put me out of my misery. What does it say?�

�It is very close,� she said. �Just over forty, perhaps.�

Perhaps wouldn�t do. Was she just being kind to me? Bill and I have known each other since 1968 when we started fishing together. I knew he would not flatter the fish. If it was 39.15, that�s what he would give me.

I recalled the story of Fletch�s Mangrove common, and his now-famous retort to Tim�s �I�ll give it 19.15� comment ran through my heard. �Give me those f------ scales!� Fletch had exclaimed.

�Bill! What does it weigh,� I asked my oldest friend.

An agonising few seconds passed as the needle steadied once more following a brief kick from the fish in the sling.

�It is exactly forty pounds,� he declared. �Bang on the mark!�

I don�t know what I did then. I may have shouted, cried, laughed. Whatever, I don�t recall. The pictures flashed by and half way through my flash unit packed up. What timing! The crowd grew by the minute�

�and for a moment I wondered if we were going to run into problems when it came to returning the fish. But no, they even clapped as the fish finally regained its freedom as Gary took some final shots of the fish going back.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#291 21 Mar 2018 at 5.02pm

In reply to Post #290
The sun blazed down and the heat took the sting out of the fish�s appetite. More and more local walkers were strolling up and down the banks and we drew a few curious looks as well as some good natured "bonjours". Early afternoon and Gary had a small common, and then it all went quiet for a few hours. The little French carp man arrived once more. We exchanged greetings while he set up as usual on his point. So far we�d not seen him have so much as a take, let alone a fish. There were a few pike anglers about and they gave us a few uneasy moments when it looked as if they might catch our lines, but all went smoothly.

Meanwhile both Bill and I got busy making boilie crumb. Back in 1992 nobody had heard of this little trick and to be honest, it was a big edge at times. Of course we did not have any weed grinders or Ridge Monkey gizmos that are around today. No, we simply crushed each bait with a pair of pliers.

We saw that the carp angler we had taken to calling Mr Orange-Marker was actually fishing, for the first time. 'His' swim was on the opposite bank and apparently there was a fairly large plateau at casting range that he was fishing. We�d become accustomed to his evening visits to bait up from his little blue-hulled dinghy, but this was the first time we�d seen him cast out a bait. He didn�t seem too interested in the world that was passing him by; surreptitious scrutiny through the binoculars revealed that he was fast asleep. Not a bad plan!

We spent the afternoon in lazy contemplation of the lake. A few cars drew up along the far bank as several groups and couples took their post-Sunday dinner stroll around the lake. A lone sailboarder juggled his plank in the light afternoon breezes: it was all very peaceful and idyllic, and I dozed off in the cooling sunshine as the weekend drew to a close.

At five o�clock Ali cooked dinner for us all. She did Boeuf Bourguignon and it brilliant. It was also a good excuse to open a couple of bottles of wine. I had just tucked in to the first mouthful when my buzzer sounded. Why do they always wait until you�re eating a hot meal before they take?

I dashed down the bank to my rods. The fish was going like a train but eventually it slowed and I managed to get a few turns of line back onto the reel. Then it was off again fighting in the deep water more or less half way between our margin and the far bank. On such a long line I had little control over the fish; it could do more or less whatever it liked and it liked the idea of putting as much distance between us as possible. Finally it reached the distant plateau way up towards the barrage. There it stopped, turned, and powered its way back across the lake. It was obviously going to plough right through the little Frenchman�s lines, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. This is me doing my best Christopher Robin goes carping impression, hanging on for dear life while the fish does whatever it wants!

By now Gary had joined me with the net, and as we were pulled along the bank by the still-powerful fish, Bill asked our friend to drop his rods as we passed though his swim. The fish was still way out in the lake, hugging the bottom and refusing all my fruitless attempts to turn it or bring it closer in to the bank. And so we went on, getting ever further from my swim as the fish continued to pull my arms off. It was an awesome fight. Gary told me later that it lasted only twenty minutes. I say 'only' but from where I was standing it seemed like hours.

We saw the fish for the first time when it swirled among some tendrils of weed growing in the margins of the west-facing arm - yes, that�s how far we�d been dragged by the fish. It looked big, but not that big. Then it turned head on and we saw the width of it. I started to shake; I think I�d always known it was a good fish. Indeed Gary later mentioned that the first words I�d spoken when he joined me with the net were �big fish!�, but now I got a look at it, I needed no further telling. It was well over thirty.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#290 21 Mar 2018 at 5.01pm

In reply to Post #289
I did a yard of pix on both his camera and on mine, and though it was only seven o�clock in the morning, we got the cognac bottle out for a celebration. Little did I know, as I stopper'ed the bottle, that I was just one year away from catching that same common myself, nor, in the more immediate future did I know that later that same day I would be pulling the cork from the neck once again - this time for my own celebration.

Sunday was a day I�ll not forget in a hurry. It had started on a high note with Gary�s big common, but for Bill and me the most notable thing to notice was that the number of runs we were getting was gradually decreasing. It occurred to me that perhaps Gary was cutting us off as fish moved up the lake from our right, arriving at his widely baited area first, then spooking into deeper water, further from the bank, whenever he had a take.

I borrowed Gary�s boat and sounder and went for a scout around. I have had considerable experience of echo-sounders, gathered over the years while I have been at sea, and while I have never placed much store in them as fish-finders. For finding features and depths they are indispensable, especially if they have a Grey Line facility. This allows the experienced user to differentiate between a hard and a soft bottom, isolating patches of silt or gravel, weed and more solid snags. Gary�s was one such sounder.

For most of the morning I rowed back and forth, following a distinct drop-off contour at twenty-eight feet. I remembered what Rod had said about this depth. According to the Maestro it was the 'magic' depth to fish in really deep waters. I plodded back and forth along the 28 foot contour line. The lake bed seemed to be almost entirely made up of soft silt about six to eight inches deep. However, I found one area of really hard gravel situated in front of Bill some one hundred and eighty yards out. I dropped the anchor on it and 'donked' and the reassuring thump that came back told me that the sounder had not lied, the lake bed was rock solid beneath the boat. I dropped a marker on the feature so that I could find it again, for it was very small, no more than a couple of square yards or so.

While I was out in the boat, Bill had a run. The fish had picked up a bait that he�d rowed out into no-mans-land, simply throwing a dozen free offerings around the hookbait that was lying in thirty feet of water, at least two hundred and fifty yards from the bank. The fish was another double, sixteen pounds, a mirror. Being a Sunday there were quite a few after-diner ramblers taking a stroll around the lake and Bill's fish caught some attention.

�What have you put that marker on, Ken?� Bill asked me when I got back to shore. I told him and he immediately took over the boat, and while I held his rods, he rowed two hookbaits and a hundred freebies out to the marker. He had a run on one while he was rowing back! He rowed �till his arms were falling off, getting back to the bankside while the fish was still in full flight, and soon had a mirror of about seventeen pounds in the net. Point proved, I think and "thank you, Rod!"

As soon as Bill had rowed the rod back out to the marker I once more began my own search for a similar piece of hard ground in front of me. I found one, but it was a good hundred and fifty yards from the bank. Still, needs must and all that.

By midday I had all three rods and three hundred freebies sitting out there in twenty-eight feet of water and by three in the afternoon I�d had two takes, and lost them both. It was my first experience of fishing at such a range and I�m sure the hook had not been set properly. On each occasion the fish had got off within a few seconds of picking up the rod. There's a hell of a lot of stretch to deal with when you are fishing at that sort of range. Of course, I knew all about the advantages of using braid�from a charter boat, but it had never occurred to me that braid was the answer to the problems of sensitivity and stretch when fishing for carp at range.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#289 21 Mar 2018 at 4.59pm

In reply to Post #288
Mid-afternoon: the little French carp angler settled into his swim on the point. For a couple of days we�d kept things on nodding terms only with maybe a wave and a `bonjour`, but gradually the ice was broken. The previous day we�d shared several beers together, conversing in my broken French. Today he returned the favour with a couple of bottles of home-made wine. It was rich, strong and truly delicious, but coming on top of the drinks we�d had with lunch, also a bit overpowering.

A little later, towards the evening, Cor and Marlies arrived, together with their dogs. They were camped on the site at the lake where we had stayed the first night and where Gary and Alison had been trying to catch carp for a week.

�I�d give it a miss if I were you,� Gary warned, with good reason.

�Why not come on here with us,� I offered. �There�s plenty of room.�

�Maybe,� said Cor. �We�ll see how we get on at the other lake first.�

(l - r: Alison, Marlies, Cor and Gary.)

Alison cooked an excellent supper for us all and we gathered in their swim for the social whirl. More wine, more beer, steak sandwiches with fried onions and mushrooms, and...what�s that noise? Yes. It was a run for Bill. He dropped everything and left in a hurry. It was a brief fight from a small fish but at last he managed to put one on the bank, a common of just over twelve pounds, but he�d broken his duck.

Night fell and as usual we wound in at about eleven. Gary however, decided to risk it.

�We got checked at one in the morning on our first night here,� we warned him. �The Garde-Peche are a bit hot under the collar about illegal night fishing in this region.�

�I�ll take my chances,� Gary said. �I�m here to catch carp.�

Can�t argue with that. It was Gary�s decision, his problem if he got caught. When, next morning, Gary peeled back the soggy sides of the carp sack to reveal a thirty-three pound common, we wondered if we had been right in keeping to the rules. But silly though they may be, they were the rules of the land. I suppose we all catch fish on our own terms.

As it turned out, the night had been a feast of action for Gary. Just after midnight he�d had a screaming run from a fish that snagged him around a pike mooring pole. Shortly afterwards he had another take, this time a seventeen pound mirror. A bream followed at three in the morning, then, with dawn approaching on a gunmetal sky, the big fish. It had fought, Gary later told us, like nothing he�d ever caught before, stripping many yards of line off his reel. The fight had lasted nearly half an hour, and by the time he had landed it, he was three hundred yards down the bank and the sun had risen well above the tree line. At 33lbs 8ozs it was a personal best common and at the time Gary�s second biggest ever carp.

Looks a bit grumpy�the fish, not Gary!

Ali does the pix of Gary's big common.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#288 21 Mar 2018 at 4.56pm

In reply to Post #287
Alison was all for the idea. She had not enjoyed the last couple of days as Gary�s German friends had proved rather too... what? Exuberant, shall we say? And that�s putting it mildly. I think that once I�d told them that our lake offered them peace and quiet and hopefully a few fish and the odd laugh or two, Alison was convinced. Gary was not so sure. Quite understandably he was in rather a black mood - and who wouldn�t have been - but his wife is very gorgeous and has a way with the lad when she wants to get her own way. She whispered seductively in his ear. Whatever she said it had the desired effect: �We�ll come and join you,� said Gary!

We drove back to our lake to find Bill looking disconsolate. He had lost another big fish! My heart went out to the bloke. He was having some really tough luck this year and it didn�t look as if his fortunes were about to change for the better. Gary and Alison set up about eighty yards away to our right, and while she did the easy bit - you know, putting up the bivvy, preparing the bedding, the kitchen. the pots and pans - Gary did the fishing bit�He was really going for it. Action Man at the ready. He took their tiny boat off the roof-rack and then he was away, paddling about the lake like a mad thing, maize and boilies showering around his head as he baited an extensive area of the lake more or less out in front of him. With the help of his echo sounder he quickly found a small gully running through his swim and he concentrated most of his baiting in this channel.

I was so engrossed watching Action Man at work I almost forgot to put my own rods out again. It was a few minutes after eight o�clock in the morning: I had just cast the third rod out and was adjusting the indicator when middle rod was away. Nothing very spectacular, but the fifteen pound common was a nice greeting for Gary and Alison. It was proof at least that I had not been telling porkies.

An hour later, and Gary needed no further proof. He was away himself to a very strong fish that fought hard for a quarter of an hour or more. When at last it was in the margins we could all see that it was a very pretty, heavily scaled mirror of perhaps thirty pounds. Certainly the biggest fish Bill and I had seen so far.

�You�ve got some neck, haven�t you?� I joked. �Coming on here and stitching us up in less than an hour.�

I wish I�d kept my big mouth shut. The fish swirled on the surface and was gone. Gary is more vociferous than Bill and is well into rod-chucking. Then he swore, loud and long. I don�t blame him; it had been a very good fish.

The day passed peacefully enough, the weather continuing to bless us with warm sun and fresh southerly winds. Mid-morning I landed a very small carp, less than five pounds I�d guess; we didn�t weigh it. We all had lunch at the bar. By now we were on first name terms with Francois, the owner, and his growing friendliness was soon extended to the two newcomers to our party. We sat outside on the terrace eating steak and chips, drinking wine and watching the world go around. There was no need to hurry, the carp would still be there when we�d finished lunch. The little bar also doubled as the village's bakery and the fresh bread smells were divine, and the bread itself even more so. He was a busy bee was Francois.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#287 21 Mar 2018 at 4.55pm

In reply to Post #286
On any English lake, if you�d waited patiently for fish to move onto your baits and eventually been rewarded by a few fish, you would be quite within your rights in imagining more and bigger fish to come the following day, yes? Not here! Friday was a complete blank for both of us. Why? I wish I knew. The conditions remained perfect, identical to the previous day. Could it be that the baiting program we�d agreed on and which had apparently been working fine, suddenly seemed to have let us down. It looked as if the lake had only built up our hopes in order to dash them on the rocks of over-confidence.

We took the rods in for the night at about ten o'clock and the rest of the night passed quickly, as we slept soundly, knowing that we had no reason to slumber on tenterhooks listening for a take, or the dreaded visit from the gardes. We recast at dawn and by six-thirty in the morning we were beginning to feel that we were on the wrong lake. Gary had not been come to join us a and I was more convinced than ever that I knew the reason. He was too busy catching carp! I had to find out what was going on. Though we were catching I wasn�t so certain that we really were on a big-fish water after all. Twenties are nice, but if Gary was catching forties, well, we wouldn�t miss the twenties all that much!

Leaving Bill on the rods I pulled off to go down to see Gary and Allison again but when I arrived on the bankside opposite the point where they had been fishing, it was clear that they had moved. There were three new bivvies in the swim and I could see through the binoculars that it was an German carper we both knew with a couple of his German friends. I shouted across to them, �Where is Gary?�

�They have moved to another lake,� was their reply amid much ribald laughter.

�Another lake? Where?� I asked.

�Grenoble.�

"Grenoble! Don't be bloody silly, it bloody miles away." The Germans were clearly on a wind up. I started driving back to our lake, then changed my mind as I passed the barrage at the bottom end of the lake that Gary and Alison had been fishing. Pulling off into a rough lay-by I crossed the road and looked out over the lake from the middle of the barrage. There on the boat slip was Gary�s car. I drove down to join them. They were just about packed, only the boat left to tie onto the roof-rack. A very tall, sun-browned Dutch guy and a much shorter English angler were helping him.

�What�s the drama then, Gary?�

�We�ve had enough of this place,� Gary looked thoroughly pissed off. �We�re heading south to the sun.�

�Nothing doing here then?�

�Nothing!�

More nothings. I was getting used to them. �Anybody else catching?�

Gary turned to the English guy who was looking pleased with himself. �John�s had a thirty-nine pound mirror. That�s it.�

Big fish! I wondered why they wanted to move but said nothing. �We�re catching, Gary. Why not give our lake a go for the weekend. Don�t go flying off down south just yet, come and join us. If you don�t fancy the lake or you still want to move on, you can always do it on Monday. The roads will be chocker now, it�ll take you ages to get down there. What do you say?�

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#286 21 Mar 2018 at 4.51pm

In reply to Post #285
A bit later he came to join me for a consolatory beer or two. He was still shaking:

"You know me, mate,� he said. �I give �em wellie. I�m not soft on fish. I�ve landed my share. But that fish? Well, that fish was something else!�

Enough said. The action, though fruitless, raised our spirits considerably, though being a natural born pessimist, I couldn�t help wondering how Gary was doing further down the valley. He must be catching by now, I thought. I was tempted to drive down there and see how he was getting on, but was torn between the likelihood of another take, this time for me, and the urge to find out how the other lake was fishing. My fervent desire for a carp, of any size, got the better of me, so I sat it out until well after dark, but to no avail.

Once again we pulled the rods in at about ten-thirty. It was our third night on the water, and we hadn�t been revisited by the G de P as far as I knew. It was breaking my heart, winding in at a time when I felt sure fish would be feeding, but the first night nod was better than any wink.

The weather continued warm and tranquil throughout the daylight hours, with temperatures falling after dark. The wind, what there was of it, stayed firmly in the south, bringing little expectation of any major change. I felt that perhaps a bit more breeze might stir the carp into feeding.

Thursday dawned fresh and muggy. It wasn�t exactly raining, but it was trying hard. The sky was overcast and a south-westerly blew up the lake, carrying dampness on its warm currents and leaving a coating of soft drizzle in its wake. The surface of the lake ruffled slightly in the breeze and it looked as if we were in for a bit of a blow and some rains. Not nice for holidays; much nicer for fishing! At eight o�clock as I was eating a thick ham sandwich, I had my first run of the trip. It put up no fight to speak of, but at least it was a carp. All five pounds of it. Not what we were here for!

I recast the rod and put quite a lot of free offerings around the hookbait. I was beginning to think that perhaps I wasn�t putting enough bait out, and lamented our lack of space which had forced us to leave our beloved groats behind.

Whether I did something right for a change or whether it was pure luck, I was away again at eleven. A bit bigger: sixteen and a half pounds. Half an hour later I had another run but lost the fish after a few minutes. Like all fish that get off, it felt quite sizeable. Meanwhile, Bill was sitting impatiently, waiting for his next run. Though we were only fishing a few yards apart, this morning what runs there were seemed to be coming to my rods.

At lunchtime, I wound in and left Bill to guard the rods; my impatience to know how Gary was getting on had finally got the better of me. I drove down the valley through the woods, until I came out on the point opposite Gary�s swim. I whistled to him and soon he was ashore, but he was wearing a long face. �Nothing?� I asked him. Nah, nothing!� he replied. I passed on the news of our bit of action. Gary decided to stick it out and I returned to the lake to join Bill.

It was about three o�clock by the time I got back to Bill. Quickly I cast my out to my marker, and less than an hour later had two more fish on the bank: 24lb and 21lb and taken within ten minutes of each other. Two hours later I had another twenty, 23lb to be exact. That's more like it. Meanwhile Bill remained fishless, poor bugger. We were on the same bait, same rig, fishing more or less side by side in virtually the same depth of water, yet apart from Bill�s lost fish yesterday, all the runs and all the fish were coming to me. I wasn�t complaining, but that sort of carry-on can make you feel uncomfortable. At least we both felt that we were on the right track in staying not only on this lake, but in the same swims. It was surely only a matter of time before Bill cracked a big fish but for now, at last a few fish had come my way:

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#285 21 Mar 2018 at 4.49pm

In reply to Post #284
From the bar we could see our bivvies nestled under the woods of the west bank. As we ate our host explained that though the swims we had picked were generally well thought off, unfortunately they weren�t fishing at all well at the moment. He told us that we were fishing an area that a Dutch couple had spent the previous week blanking...How nice! They had moved to the opposite side of the lake and had also blanked the area close to the plateau. Not for them the niceties of the regular�s etiquette. Finally they had moved yet again, this time to fish a gully more or less opposite where we were fishing. Here they had finally run into a few fish. I wondered if we shouldn�t move to the gully as well.

�It is early days yet. Let�s see how the next couple of days work out. We can always move later on if things don�t go to plan,� said Bill.

�Yeah, OK. Who knows, maybe Gary and Alison are catching a hatfull.�

News of the Dutch success had geed us up a bit. So what if they had blanked where we were fishing, who�s to say they were any good. Maybe they were fishing it wrong. Perhaps the carp just weren�t there at the time. We had plenty of time to sit it out...

Which is exactly what we did. For the next thirty-six hours we watched motionless indicators, mocked by silent buzzers. We ate lunch at the bar: played at pike fishing to while away the odd hour or two: drank a few beers and a bottle or two of wine and generally fretted. Should we move; should we stay put. We stayed put. We took it in turns to walk the lake looking for fish, and nearly forty-eight hours after moving into the swims, we were rewarded - after a fashion.

It was mid afternoon, Wednesday. We were dozing in our bivvies, lunch and a few beers encouraging rather droopy eyelids. I was almost asleep when I heard a buzzer scream out in a long continuous shriek. I had no idea if it was my rod or Bill�s that was away, but I scrambled into my flip-flops and charged out of my bivvy. Bill was halfway towards the rods, his arms wind milling as he plunged down the steep bank to the water�s edge. His middle rod was in full flight.

Whoosh! He swept the rod up, clamping his hand over the rapidly emptying spool, and struck, hard. He was answered by a wrench that almost tore the rod from his grasp and the fish took of at twice the speed. On and on it plunged, defying all of Bill�s efforts to stop it. I could see the darker backing line below Bill�s 15lb Big Game.

�That�s some fish, isn�t it, Bill?� I asked.

�It�s unbelievable!�

�What do you think?� I asked him. �It�s surely a right lump, no?�

�Got to be. I can�t do anything with it.�

Still the fish ran. Savage, arm-wrenching runs that pounded Bill�s thirteen foot, three pound test Armalite as if it was a little kids rod. Bill had no control over it and the situation was rapidly getting out of hand. **** or bust time loomed large. Bill clamped the spool again, holding the rod high to try and stop the fish�s headlong rush. I watched the line pick up off the water. It seemed to hiss under the tension. Swiftly the angle of the line where it entered the water decreased and suddenly, with a massive swirl, the fish broke the surface. It was immense! Even though the fish was over two hundred yards after that fantastic run, I still got a clear view of an immense golden flank, massive broad shoulders and an impressive paddle-shaped tail. It wasn�t a carp, it was a bloody whale.

Then it was gone. The line fell slack then started to fall as the lead dropped back down towards the lake bed. The fish had shed the hook. Bill was gutted but he is not a man given to extremes of temper. Not for him the rod-flinging tantrums or yelled expletives directed at the Gods of fishing. He simply turned away from the water with the briefest curse and walked up the bank towards his bivvy. At moments like this most anglers prefer their own company to the sympathetic words of others, so, handing him a beer, I left Bill alone to get over the lost fish in his own way. I was all set to take a pic of Bill in action when the line went slack as the fish shed the hook. The shutter fired at that exact same moment!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#284 20 Mar 2018 at 5.30pm

In reply to Post #283
At about ten o�clock we decided it was time to get the rods in. Several different sources had warned us that the gardes-peche were very active in the area, not least the owner of the local bar who told us that our presence had already been reported to the authorities by a neighbour, well known for his interfering, busy-body outlook on life. Not even French anglers were safe from his over-zealous vigilance as he scanned the banks with binoculars from the veranda of his house that looked out onto the lake.
�He is a pain in the arse,� declared Francois the bar owner, throwing another Pastis down his throat. At least, that�s what I think he said! We would get to know him and Pastis a lot better as the holiday progressed! Here this most convivial of hosts shares the wicked aniseed-based liquor with two of his equally convivial customers (though they don't look it here!).

We propped the rods up against the bivvies in full view from the track that followed the lake�s edge and with a final sip from the wine bottle we both turned in. I was awoken sometime later. I had no idea what time it was. A torch was flashing about the banks, playing its beam over my bivvy. I could hear soft whisperings. My first thought was that it was someone after the gear, then I realised that I was in France. That particular aspect of modern carp fishing has yet to strike over there. So if it wasn�t thieves, who? It had to be the gardes. I struggled with the sleeping bag, climbed out and crouched in the doorway. The torch was flashing around Bill�s bivvy now. In the newly risen moon I could see their outlines, the soft light glinted off the dull sheen of their guns� Of their what! These guys were loaded for bear!

They spoke hardly a word between them, and then, only in whispers. Satisfied that we were not breaking the night fishing ban, they left as silently as they had arrived, without uttering a word to us.
�Bill!� I called. There was no answer. My friend had slept through the surreptitious visit.
�Well, that�s a result,� I said to myself, climbing back into bed. Just as well we�d got the rods in. I told Bill of our nocturnal encounter when he awoke the following morning. He was as pleased as I was that we�d played it by the rules. There is a certain satisfaction in being law-abiding!

We cast out and made the tea. Dawn�s crispness brought a heavy mist that drasped dampness over our bivvies, rods�everything. I got the rods out and then went for a short walk towards the southern end of the lake where I came across dozens of herons, standing motionless in the shallows. I�d never seen so many in one gathering. �What�s the collective noun for herons?� I asked myself. The lake must be teaming with fry. From a distance they looked like frock-coated old men, hunched backs, spindly legs.

The early morning mist swirled around them, softening shadows and blurring outlines. They stood like grey ghosts, silent witnesses to epic carp battles of the past, perhaps? I strolled back to my bivvy where Bill was still asleep. I left him to his dreams and got back into the bag. It was still chilly and a cup of tea warmed the inner man most effectively!

The morning dragged its feet towards beer-o-clock. The carp weren't playing ball and the bar looked very inviting across the other side of the bay. A swift half at the Auberge du Lac was called for: "Two steak-frites and two large beers please, Francois."

Off for a beer or six as it's my birthday but there's more to come...and we even catch some fish!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#283 20 Mar 2018 at 5.27pm

In reply to Post #282
We set up the bivvies about a couple of hundred yards down the bank from the French guy's point. At water�s edge the margins were slippery and very muddy, but about twenty yards back, fresh dry grass and ferns grew in profusion giving a flat, comfortable area on which to bivvy. It was early evening before we were both set up to our satisfaction. We'd put a bit of bait in sort of willy-nilly but spread over a large area using a throwing stick in my case and a caty in Bill's. He could not get the hang of a stick no matter how hard he tried; in fact the harder he tried the more frustrated he became and I'll tell you a funny story about that one day!

The weather had been kind to us from the minute we�d set foot in France, and it continued that way, sunny but not too hot, with a moderate southerly breeze that puffed towards us up the full length of the lake. The sun had long since dropped behind the trees behind us, but it still shone brightly on the sand-golden shore of the far bank where a few young kids were playing and swimming. On the point our new found friend sat crunched on an uncomfortable folding stool, gazing intently at the water and his rods in turn, as if willing one of them to burst into life. He was not using buzzers, his only indication of a take coming from a slice of potato, slit half way across and wedged onto the line. Shades of Dick Walker!

Bill looked up the bank at his motionless form. �He�s a bit bloody keen, isn�t he?�
�He�s only a child, Bill,� I told him. �He�ll learn. For the moment he has youth and patience on his side. One day, when he�s older and more blas�, no doubt he�ll loose some of that keenness, and become a plebe like us.�
We went into town to do some shopping and get the licences, stopping on the way back for fresh water from a tap in a village square. A small bar looked inviting and as both of us have the breaking strain of a Kit-Kat, we didn�t take much persuading.
�Fancy a beer?�
�Need you ask!�
Later that evening, as the last of the suns rays slid away from the treetops on the far bank, we sat by the bivvies eating a dinner of Boeuf Bourguignon, new potatoes and carrots, all washed down with a couple of bottles of Bordeaux. We felt, at last, as if we were actually on holiday.

We were both fishing about seventy yards out, our baits lying on a silty lake bed in (we estimated) about twenty feet of water. We�d seen no sign of a fish so far, but we were hopeful. It seemed that on the bank we were fishing the lake bed sloped gradually and evenly away to a depth of about thirty feet before rising again as it neared the far bank. Here the contours were much more broken with a few bars, gullies and the big plateau that the guy on the point had mentioned. Unfortunately we couldn�t fish these areas without incurring the possible wrath of the other `regulars`, despite the fact that, for the moment they were nowhere to be seen.

Dusk fell, then night came fast. The sky cleared and a profusion of stars sparkled overhead. The heat of the day had fled with the sun and a keen chill fell over the lake. The wind dropped away completely and in the still air the only sound we could hear was the hooting of an owl in the trees on the far bank. It was a perfect ending to a hectic day.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#282 20 Mar 2018 at 5.25pm

In reply to Post #281
We went down to the bar by the lakeside and ate an unfulfilling Continental breakfast, then set off to look for Gary. I had a rough idea where to look, but despite that, we still got lost several times, often taking what looked like promising side roads that should have led down to the lake, only to find ourselves in a farmyard or a field, Finally we got it right and broke through a stand of trees to find the lake stretched out in front of us, dominated by a point that Gary had been advised to fish by some German friends. Sure enough, there was Gary�s bivvy.

I shouted and whistled across the quarter of a mile of calm lake water that separated us. Two small figures appeared from within one of the bivvies, waved, then took to a small dinghy and started rowing across to us. Squelching through the knee-deep mud that lined the margins, Gary and Alison waded ashore to greet us. We explained our late arrival and then asked him what was wrong with Chantecoq. What was the problem? This is what he told us...

�Problems? You name it, it�s there. The bays near the church were completely stitched up. There were rods everywhere. We drove round to another likely area on the south-west bank and that was busy too. Finally we ended up opposite the church at the northern end of the lake, only to find loads of French and Dutch anglers there who seemed very upset at being spotted by an English angler. It appears that this area is the new hot stop and we heathens haven�t yet discovered it. You've been rumbled! We drove back to the church and looked at the rather disappointing campsite we�d been told about. Very expensive and not too clean. And then there's the mud, acre upon acre of it. We said `sod this!` and got back into the car for the drive down here. That�s about it really. The mud you see here is nothing compared to Chantecoq. It was an arse�ole of a place, as I said on the phone. Wouldn�t fish it if it held carp of a hundred pounds.�

�So when did you get here?� I asked.

�Two days ago,� said Gary. �By pure chance we drove straight down the right road, arrived here and saw that the swim was free, so we loaded up the boat and went over right away."

�So, any good?� I asked.

�Had a bream.� said Gary.

�No carp?�

�Nothing!�

�Seen anything?�

�Nothing!�

�Heard anything?�

�Nothing!�

�Is there anyone else fishing here?�

�Yes. There�s an English guy down there in the bay. He�s fishing with a Dutch friend of his. They�ve had nothing. There�s a party of four Dutch anglers on this bank about a mile down to the left.� He pointed. �There, see them? They�ve been here a week and they�ve had nothing. There are two French guys right down by the damn...�

�Not now there aren�t,� I interrupted.

�Then they must have moved, or perhaps they�ve gone to another lake. Anyway, they�ve had nothing.�

�It�s fishing well, then?� said Bill, laughing.

�Brilliantly!� said Gary, not laughing.

�****!� I exclaimed.

�Quite!� agreed Alison.

It was time for Bill and me to make a decision. I rummaged in the car for the motoring atlas. �Why don�t we try this lake down the valley. The tackle dealer I spoke to on the phone told me that there were carp in there and Cor de Man has also tipped me the wink about it. We can�t do any worse that you are doing here, so we'll give that place a try and if we start catching we'll come and tell you and we can team up. Same applies if you start bagging up"

�Good plan,� agreed Gary.

Leaving our bivvies and most of our gear on the camp site, we set of for the next lake on the list and about fifty minutes later we pulled up on the barrage. The lake was completely deserted.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#281 20 Mar 2018 at 5.24pm

In reply to Post #280
(I am reminded of an, allegedly true story. Keith the Tooth and a mate were en route for St Cassien, driving the tackle laden van, while the other members of the party belted south ahead of them in two cars. The Tooth had only the vaguest idea of the route but one thing he had been told was to always keep the Eiffel Tower on your left. Keith reminded his mate of this little piece of wisdom, telling him to keep his eyes open as they approached the city from the north, on the motorway in from Calais. �Fair enough,� said the mate. All seemed to be going well, except that they seemed to have been on the ring road for longer than Keith had expected. He began to get the nasty feeling that they might have missed their turning and were about to do a second circuit. His worst fears were confirmed when until the mate spoke: �This Eiffel Tower thing,� he asked warily. �What about it?� said Keith. �What does it look like?� asked the mate!)

Traffic seemed light on the way in from Dieppe but snarl-up that greeted us as we drove through the underpass at the southern end of the Bois de Boulogne and onto the Periphferique was horrendous. Now I knew why all the guide books, backed up with the advice of friends, said avoid this ring road at all costs! Why had I ignored them!

I knew the exit we wanted, it was called the Porte de Bercy. It looked quite jolly as we drove under it, still on the ring road. I couldn�t have crossed over to the exit if my life had depended on it. There was so much traffic criss-crossing in front of me I was feeling dizzy. Luckily I managed to work my way across into the right-hand lane in time to make the next exit, the Porte de Charenton in the Bois de Vincennes, and somehow, by a mixture of good luck and lousy judgement, we managed to find our way onto the A4 Paris - Reims motorway, only to hit the wrong turn-off which took us onto the N4, a dreadful, single carriageway road that was choked with Sunday drivers.

Turning off towards Provins and Troyes eventually brought us back onto the south-bound motorway, the A5, and as we picked up speed at last, Bill told me that we were passing a big reservoir that I�d heard about from Cor earlier that year. �Shall we have a look at that one on the way down,� he asked. �Bugger that!� I replied. �I�m not stopping until we get to our original destination. There had been enough detours today already, thank-you.�

What a mistake that was! The reservoir we were rushing past with gay abandon was none other than the now very famous, the Lac de la Foret D�Orient. In less than a year�s time, history would be made on its banks. Leon Hoojendjik was just twelve months away from a seventy pound common!

After a brief stop for a meal, we finally arrived at the lake where we had agreed to meet Gary at nine o�clock in the evening after an ten hour drive. It wasn�t supposed to take that long, but you learn from your mistakes, and taking the Peripherique was just one of the many that I made that day. Too shattered to go looking for Gary in the gathering gloom, we drove on to the lakeside camp site, pitched the bivvies and went to find the nearest bar.

I slept like a log that night and awoke early on the Monday morning to find a beautiful sunrise just peeping over the tops of the heavily wooded hillside that loomed over the northern bank of the lake. It was quite chilly and very still, the air crisp and fresh. Below me the lake spread before me in a panorama that dominated the valley, its surface calm and undisturbed. It was beautiful! I sat on a rock, overlooking the full length of the five-hundred acre wilderness, and as the sun rose, huge and orange, it kissed the lake with a warmth and softness that only added to the poetry of the moment.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#280 20 Mar 2018 at 5.20pm

In reply to Post #279
I got busy making up forty mixes of a Preservabait-enhanced Enervite/Hi-Nu-Val combination, flavoured with a sweetener and the same liquid enhancer that Bob Baker was using in the birdfood shelf lifes. The finished baits were dried out for 72 hours before being bagged. I had my fingers firmly crossed that my home made preservative would do the trick. Bill, meanwhile, was hard at work in his own bait kitchen, making tons of his own, highly unique, Obnoxious Blend mix, also flavoured with the liquid enhancer that he�d been using since his early days in Savay. By a strange coincidence his baits smelt remarkably similar to my own. I can�t think why!

With over seventy kilos of boilies to cram into my little Renault, let alone the rest of our tackle and clothes, there was absolutely no room for any particles or mass baits. We would just have to rely on boilies to do the trick. As we waited impatiently for departure-day to come around, news came back from Chantecoq of still more incredible bags of big carp. It certainly appeared that the lake was one fit to go straight into the book of dreams, with thirties being commonplace and forties almost equally so.

Franck Matin (see earlier posts) rang to tell me of a trip to Chanty from which he�d just returned. In a ten day period two of them had caught fifty-three fish of which thirty-three were over thirty pounds and ten over forty pounds! Franck broke his personal best five times in two days and when I tell you that his previous PB was thirty-eight pounds, you�ll realise what a staggering achievement that was! On the down side, Franck told me that there was considerable aggravation from the authorities over night fishing and the need for boat licences. Camping on the lakeside was strictly forbidden, even putting a brolly up was construed as camping. And then there was the mud! If you�ve fished there, you�ll know what I mean. If you haven�t, well, lets put it this way, Franck said me that, no matter what I had previously experienced in the way of mud, nothing compare to Der when the level was down.

It sounded awful and though it was clearly the next big circuit water, full of thirties and forties. I think there has got to be a bit of beauty in a lake, and fishing a sea of mud, albeit for big fish, wasn�t as tempting to me as you might imagine. For all that, it would be silly not to take a look at the water.

Just before he was due to leave, Gary rang. Someone had been tempting him too. and he was going to look at Chanty on the way down. I agreed that a look at the lake couldn�t do any harm adding that we could always move on if it was not to our liking. I knew only one landmark on the lake, the church at Champaubert, so we arranged to meet up by the church. Cor had mentioned a reasonable camp site there, so we amended our plans.

I poured over the map, and eventually sorted out what I hoped would be the best route to the lake from Dieppe. We would be arriving in France at about ten in the morning on the Sunday. Five hours maximum to the lake, I thought. The allegedly terrifying Peripherique, the ring road around Paris, will be almost empty! Piece of cake...Oh, you think so do you?

The day before we were due to sail I packed the car and then dove up to collect Bill on the Saturday before we were due to sail. After squeezing his gear into the car we walked up to the pub for a few beers to ease the tension that always swamps me whenever I get anywhere near the M25. A message awaited us when we got back to Bill�s house: Gary had rung to say that Chantecoq was an arse�ole of a place! Cancel Plan B: revert to Plan A! I wondered what was wrong with it. Bill�s sister who had taken the message mentioned something about mud! I was secretly pleased that we�d be giving the lake a miss, to be honest.

Sunday, first light, saw us boarding the ferry at Newhaven. I was knackered having passed a sleepless night in excited anticipation. The crossing was the usual mix of beer and boredom, but at least the weather was kind to me. At Dieppe we drove straight off the boat and in minutes were deep in the heart of the Normandy countryside, heading for Rouen, and the motorway to Paris. By lunchtime the slender finger of the Eiffel Tower loomed ever larger as we approached the capital and its legendary ring road, the Peripherique.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#279 20 Mar 2018 at 5.19pm

In reply to Post #278
Which is how I came to fill a quarter of an hour of tape with the recorded voice of a distant tackle shop owner dripping priceless jewels of carpy information onto the machine�s slowly revolving spools. Several hours with the dictionary and I had all the information I required. Five, possibly six lakes , plus a stretch of river, all of which had produced some very big carp. The lakes were not being heavily fished and the river�s potential had hardly been touched. Oh, yes! One of the lakes had produced a leather that had weighed in at thirty-one kilos. Surely this was the venue where Arnout had caught.

The lake in question, one of four that lie within an hour of each other along a deep valley, was big - seven hundred acres big, long and narrow, divided into three sections by bridges that spanned the long finger of deep water. A railway line to the south, a main road to the north. Shouldn�t be hard to find. I opened the map and went straight to it. I was all of a twitch, now that I knew where a truly monstrous fish had been caught, but then a letter from Cor de Man arrived. Enclosed was a copy of an article in German magazine, `Blinker`, by a German guy who�d tracked down Arnout�s lake. Not only had he caught the same fish, he also gave chapter and verse of how to find the lake etc. Thanks a bunch, pal! Cor wrote that the lake was now getting heavily pressured and the Garde-Peche were becoming fierce! In the same letter Cor mentioned that he�d heard of another lake nearby that was producing some big fish but it too was becoming very busy with loads of Dutch and German anglers on it. It looked is if it was now or never if I was going to get onto one of these lakes before the world and his wife joined me. This is the lake in question, or a small part of it. The pairs of poles driven into the lake bed are a common sight on many French barrage lakes. They are used by pike and zander anglers to moor up. They can be a right pain in the arse!

Now to book a ferry. I was tempted by a good deal on Stenna Sealink�s Newhaven-Dieppe route offering a fifty percent reduction for return trips taken in September. It tipped the scales. My mate Speedy Bill had earlier mentioned that he would be only too happy to go carp fishing in France again whenever I fancied. I gave him a call to ask if he was free for the proposed dates. Yes, he was. Excellent!

Before we left home I phoned Cor to tell him where we would be fishing and when. He told me that he and his missus were taking some leave in mid-September and were planning on visiting the same region; that it would be great if we could arrange the dates and maybe fish together. I booked the cheap Newhaven - Dieppe crossing for the morning of 6th September. I knew that Gary was crossing the same route two days earlier and was intending to fish one of the four lakes. We arranged to meet him on the bankside.

Meanwhile, we needed some bait! I rang Mick Richardson of Supremo baits and arranged for Speedy to go round to his house to collect 40 kilos of mixed ready-mades. The information that was filtering back from Cor indicated that there was something of a crayfish problem on the all the big eastern lakes and rock hard boilies were the order of the day. We knew from sad experience that the Richworth shelfies of the time were too soft and not even their 18mm jobs would last any length of time given the presence of crays and poison-chats. A shame, for I had always done well on the Birdfood Enhancer version but there was no getting away from it, the Richworths were too soft for most waters in the east of France. American signal crayfish, six inches long, make short work of most baits, and only rock hard jobs would suffice if we were not to be plagued by hoards of the little monsters.

To augment the ready mades we I got busy with rolling tables and bait guns. As it happened, I was at the beginning of a research program into chemical preservatives that would work on ordinary home produced baits. I had been in touch with a laboratory in Exeter where a member of the staff suggested a preservative called potassium sorbate that he reckoned might do the trick. I bought 500g of the stuff, half of which I sent to Speedy for his bait. (Much later I passed on my findings to Big Bill at Nutrabaits and not long after, with my full approval, the company released their own boiled bait preserver, Preservabait.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#278 20 Mar 2018 at 5.18pm

In reply to Post #277
Cheers, mate!

Now read on...

RUMOURS: September 1992

In the early summer of 1991 I began to pick up the odd whisper on the grapevine about an astonishing catch of big carp from an unknown water in eastern France. My French pal Franck had told us when we first met of a water in the east that was producing loads of big carp. It seemed that a Parisian carp angler had caught twenty-eight carp, most of which were over thirty pounds in weight, his biggest fish being fifty-one pounds. And all this in just three days fishing, on his own during daylight hours only. He�d caught 1,000lbs of fish, with an average weight of thirty-eight pounds!

I had an inkling that the water was Lac du Der but wasn�t sure�I should have picked up on that shouldn�t I! Later that same year I heard that Alan Taylor had enjoyed similar, if not better success on a lake, described variously as being in both southern and northern France at the same time. Was this Lac du Der? Finally, in the winter of came news from Bill Cottam of Nutrabaits. He was in the process of putting together the bait catalogue for the coming year. One of his Dutch tackle shops had sent in a story for the magazine. It concerned the capture of a massive carp, almost seventy pounds in weight, from a French lake, somewhere in the east of the country. Apparently a of Dutch guys had put together a catch comprising of thirteen twenties, thirteen thirties, five forties and the Beast, as they called it. Not content with their success one of the party, Arnout Terlouw, a carp angler of great repute in Holland and the rest of Europe, went back to the lake and caught the fish again at a weight of over 65lb. Lac du Der again?

By the summer of '92 I had been corresponding with Dutch fishing journalist, Cor de Man for over a year, and it was from him that the word came back about the lac du Der-Chantecoq, and this was the lake that had been throwing up the big bags of large fish. Arnout's fish was not from the Der but from another, much smaller barrage in eastern France the identity of which was not immediately forthcoming. I began scrutinising the detailed maps of the region with greater care. Previously the area had held little attraction for me, my preference being for the less popular lakes of western France and Brittany. I knew that it was only a matter of time before the masses of UK anglers discovered these wonder lakes but these impressive catches were hard to ignore and I found myself becoming ever more drawn under the spell cast by the prospect of a truly giant carp, so armed with a list of potential lakes and Henri Limouzin�s reference book, �Where to fish in France�, I began telephoning the local tourist offices, the offices of the regional angling federations and the larger fishing tackle shops in the region.

My confidence with the French language had been growing with every visit, to a point where I was now able to carry on a basic telephone conversation, ask the right questions and, up to a point, understand the answers. But several phone calls later, I was no further forward and was becoming just a tad dispirited. Then came the breakthrough I was hoping for. It started innocuously enough with a phone call to yet another tourist information office. After a somewhat halting exchange the girl on the information desk gave me the number of a tackle shop in the town. They would be able to give me all the help I required, she told me.

I rang the number, �Hallo!� came a Gitaine-laced greeting. In for a penny, Ken...

�Bonjour, monsieur. Je voudrais des rensegnements de la peche a la carpe dans votre departement, s�il-vous plait!� I impressed myself if not the guy on the other end. The babble that came back over the wire was far too quick for me to understand. I didn�t even know if I had phrased my question correctly - I would like some information about carp fishing in your area, please - that was what I had tried to say. The babble continued in my ear. �Lentement, lentement, je vous en prie." (Speak more slowly please.)

If the bloke on the other end understood me, he gave no sign. I had obviously just contacted France�s most talkative tackle dealer who was now pouring valuable information down the phone, information that I could not understand. I put the phone down on the hall table, hoping that he would not realise I was not listening for the moment, and dashed into the living room. There I grabbed my pocket tape recorder, checked there was a new tape in the machine and got back to the phone with my own personal French Connection still in full flow.

scozza

Posts: 17132

#277 17 Mar 2018 at 7.37pm

Not looked in here for a while and only just scanned through the latest additions to this magnificent thread, gonna take me a while to catch up!

Absolutely brilliant Ken, a real carp life

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#276 13 Feb 2018 at 4.30pm

In reply to Post #275
Going to take a bit of a break for a week or two. It's been a long winter but at last I feel the urge to fish again. There is more to come though so be patient!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#275 13 Feb 2018 at 4.23pm

In reply to Post #274
Happy daze!

The evening seemed to fly by and the drinks slid down. It was getting on for midnight when we tried to get away. Both of us had had too much to drink, but all the tackle was in the car and I didn�t want to leave it. �No problem,� said the `patron�. �My wife will drive your car home for you and my son will follow to bring her home. Have another drink!� How could we refuse?

So that was that for this trip. It was not the most successful trip we�d ever had, but it was certainly the most enjoyable so far. We�d caught a decent number of carp using just the four rods between us. All bar one were doubles, with a personal best for Tat, backed up with four other twenties from both venues. As for me, I had that solitary twenty pound common from the river and a few other doubles, but Tat had been the kiddie on this trip, no question. Think I'll leave her at home next time!

We spent the next day looking at a couple of lakes nearby that Michael had said were worth a look. One was private but the other was a huge water that had a reputation for huge pike and zander, but also for some very big carp, which were supposed to live in it's dark depths. Little did I know it at the time but one of those two lakes was going to figure large in my angling life in a few years time, but that tale is for later. That evening, as Tat prepared a farewell feast, I strolled down to the point on the big lake by the gite. In the windswept darkness a couple of French carp anglers were just packing up. They�d had no action all day. I felt quite smug inside!

Georges and Jeanine came up for our final evening along with yet more Chateau Georges. If you were to put a fancy label on his produce and sell it in the UK you�d think nothing of paying twenty quid a bottle for it. We were getting it for practically nothing. The door bell rang. It was Michael and his pals from the bar, come to celebrate out departure in style. If you wonder why we keep going back to France time after time, perhaps now you can understand.

Two years later, in October 1993, we went back to the gite for a week. The big lake looked just the same apart from the level. The summer of that year had been appalling and heavy rains had brought the level up. The point was all but under water. Sadly the river was completely unfishable; over its banks and going through like an express train. But the fisherman�s bar was just the same, Michael and his friends just as friendly. The Chateau Georges was better than ever.

Michael told me that in the summer he had been called out to witness a carp that had been caught by accident by a French pike angler. It had taken a livebait! The angler had kept the fish alive in a hessian sack until the official scales had arrived. After it had been weighed and recorded he wanted to kill it. Michael stopped him and returned the fish to the water. He watched as it swam off strongly and he turned to the astonished captor saying, �That one is for Tat or Ken.� What a lovely thought, and a startling change in attitude from a guy who had previously avowed death to all carp! The fish? It weighed fifty-five pounds!

(The record for the reservoir now stands at 28kg and because of this it is getting heavily fished by French carp anglers. I think I have given you enough clues if you want to find it yourself, so good luck if you happen to trip over it on your travels.)

Postscript: In January 1994 we had a �phone call from an English angler who had found George's gite by accident in much the same way we had. He had sad news. Georges had died just before Christmas of a heart attack. We were devastated. Georges had become a true friend and his gite a real home to us. We have not been back. Somehow it just wouldn�t be the same without him. Memory fades, but from time to time, usually as I�m sipping a glass of rather inferior wine, I think of him, his fabulous wine and his amazing zest for all the good things of life, and I raise my glass, take a gulp and with a lump in my throat say, �Here�s to you, Georges.�

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#274 13 Feb 2018 at 4.20pm

In reply to Post #273
We set up in the usual place on the jetty with the two rods fishing down the edge and two out in the middle. Runs seemed to be coming mainly from the foot of the jetty's wall and Tat laid claim to the rods straight from the off and as it turned out she was bang on the money. I caught three small commons that final day; Tat caught five commons and three mirrors including another big twenty�Bless! She puts her good fortune done to her mascots, which go everywhere with her when she goes fishing. I've taken them with me on occasion but they never bring me her sort of luck, if that's what it is. Here they are giving me a wave (though it's a good job they don't have fingers as I expect I'd be getting a couple!

And here are a few more of the lucky lady with some of the other fish she caught from the river.

I wouldn't mind but she is so laid back she's almost asleep most of the time. She's either got her head buried in a book or she's filling her face�I love her really, but sometimes I wish she's lay off catching so bloody many!

This is her final fish of the trip�another twenty! Can you hear my teeth gnashing?

We just had to call in at the fisherman�s bar that final night. Michael was wedged at the bar with a glassy-eyed look on his face. He�d obviously been there some time and he had a big grin spread across his face. �What�s he caught?� I asked one of the others.

�Un Brochet. Onze kilos. Magnifique!�

I turned to Michael. �Congratulations. What a fish!� He beamed a red wine smile at us. �And you?� he asked. �How have you done today in your quest for small carp?� He was back on the jibes again.

�Not so small, old pal.� I pointed at Tat who was trying to look modest and failing badly. �Tat has caught five fish over ten kilos,� I told him.

"From the big lake," he asked, astonished!

"No, one from the reservoir and four from the river." Tat was trying to hide her big smile to no avail.

"Well done lass," said Michael. What was the biggest? Not as big as my pike, I�ll bet.�

�Shall I tell him?� I whispered to Tat. She nodded.

�The biggest one from the river was 14.5kg and the others were all over ten kilos."

His jaw dropped as the whole bar laughed that a mere woman could best him. Then he grasped Tat in a big hug. �What are you going to drink? I have to celebrate with a beautiful girl who can fish as well.� He looked at me with a scowl. �Nothing for you! How can you let your wife out-fish you?� He had to get the last word in, though we were kindred spirits for the moment, both seen off by a mere woman!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#273 13 Feb 2018 at 4.15pm

In reply to Post #272
The next day's weather was a repeat of what we'd experienced for most of the trip. Warm and still. Tat had been looking at the Series Bleu IGN maps which are very detailed and ideal for spotting tracks not shown on other maps. She had her eye on another swim not far away by an old stone road bridge that looked as if nothing had crossed it since the Revolution. The river here was slow and very deep, even in the margins we found ten feet of water. It was also much wider than the other swim, perhaps 200m across with hardly an discernible current. It looked very tasty! We set up the two pairs of rods to cover the margins and the middle of the river, chucked some boilies hither and yon and sat back to await developments.

As we sat in the sunshine we heard a loud cacophony of car or lorry engines and looking up we saw a procession of vehicles of all shapes and sizes coming slowly towards us down the track to the river. About a dozen assorted vehicles passed a few yards away and the drove along the unmade road alongside the river, heading upstream. It was clearly a group of travelers of which there are many in France, and they were obviously scouting out a new location to set up camp. I was a bit uneasy and I could see Tat was a bit nervous too and even when she had a take she was not her usual calm and gentle self. The fish was soon on the bank and Tat said, "let's get out of here!" Shame we hadn't found the spot earlier as the fish she'd caught was a good twenty, I'd say, though we didn't weigh or photograph it, as the gypsy encampment started to send a delegation down towards us. I felt sure they were going to ask us for the fish so it went back without the usual ceremony. We didn't fancy hanging around, just in case we caught another one. Exit the Townleys stage left!

(We went back to this spot in 2002. The place looked like a rubbish tip, though the gypsies were nowhere in evidence. There were rats running all over the place, in broad daylight too. We didn't stop. If they ever get around to cleaning up the place we'll be back.)

The next day we returned to the jetty swim. Once again the weather remained remarkably mellow for the time of year. Somebody up there likes us! As usual we fished the two and two arrangement and as usual it was the rods on the jetty that produced the majority of the action. Here's Tat in action with a fish that took hard up against the concrete wall of the jetty. Clearly they loved to feed along the wall, probably feeding on the crayfish that must have been here, though we never had any trouble with them.

�and here's the jammy lady in typical pose with a another twenty pound common.

We never need an excuse to sink a few and that evening found us in the bar again celebrating Tat's great day. Two twenties from the river�no mean feat. I was getting my arse kicked by the good lady wife (grrr) in no uncertain manner!

I was pretty happy with our results so far and with only a day of fishing time left we needed to make the most of it. Naturally once again we made a late start thanks to the demon drink but we were on holiday after all. I apologise if the constant references to bars, restaurants, beer and wine goes against the grain for some of you but for us carp angling is as much about the 'afters' as it is about the fishing.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#272 13 Feb 2018 at 4.13pm

In reply to Post #271
We had three brim-full buckets of soaked groats ready to go that we'd started the previous night. Incidentally, you may have seen me write about cats and carp bait before, namely: if you want to know if your bait is any good see if the cat will eat it. If it goes mad for the bait then so will the carp. Seems like the gite's kittens love groats!

I put the first bucket of groats in with the bait scoop and topped up the carpet with boilies and then we set up the rods, one set on the concrete sill of the jetty with the baits fishing straight down the wall, the other pair covering margins some twenty yards upstream of the jetty. Note the bucket of groats extreme bottom left of this pic.

It was a glorious day as far as the weather was concerned, but as far as the carp were concerned they weren't hungry! This is par for the course with river carping. The shoals can be huge but they can also travel miles in search of food. Sure, they have their favourite feeding zones with which they are familiar - same as with lake dwelling carp - but sometimes it is a bit of a waiting game. The most important thin g is to make sure there is plenty of bait waiting for them when they arrive at their feeding zone (hopefully your swim!). It was now one o'clock and as true Francophiles we felt the need to feed. Being a Monday the Rabelais was shut but the local creperie du lac was not far away. We piled in another bucket of groats and boilies and adjourned to it's welcoming comfort.

Well fed up and agreeably drunk (sorry, Gerald!) we walked back to the river, and got the rods out of the car. In the warm afternoon sunshine it was hard to keep one's eyes open and maybe one or both of us did nod off for a few minutes. It wasn't for long, though, as a yell from the rods on the jetty jolted us awake. My turn for a fish�Maybe I'd get lucky and land on of those lovely big mirrors�on the other hand, maybe not!

I reckon this little scamp was the last one left in the swim as it was the first and the only take of the day. Perhaps we'd been a bit hasty going for lunch, but what the hell! We called in at the bar before returning to the gite. Pete had left a message for us saying that there were fish showing off the sailing club. Sadly the bankside here was reserved for sailors and plank users so there was no fishing allowed. It looked a very tasty area to be honest and it looked a nice alternative to the other spots we'd fished.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#271 13 Feb 2018 at 4.11pm

In reply to Post #270
Though it was only mid afternoon and there were for sure more fish to be caught down the wall, we'd caught decent fish, a near thirty for Tat and that pristine common for myself, plus a few other doubles. If for no other reason, two lovely twenties meant it was time to celebrate!

We were very happy with our results on the river and at for the time being it looked as if the fishing on the big ressy was likely to be rather grueling unless we got more favourable winds to help push the carp towards us. That meant anything with east in it would do, but there was nothing like that in the forecast. So rather that sit it out and hope, we thought that the river offered better prospects. For a start it seemed as if the river carp we were catching were definitely getting bigger, and also it appeared that the carp were obviously getting used to stopping in the swim on their trek up and down the river in search of food. In the meantime, a glass of beer awaited us in celebration of the day�s fishing. (That's one of Roger's glasses of beer, by the way�That will mean something to one or two of you!)

Ah! The best laid plans...Sunday dawned dreary and miserable. It was raining heavily, blowing a hoolie and, to cap it all, there were two French pike anglers in the swim! Undaunted we tried to fish the jetty from the opposite end but it was a difficult cast to get right and we felt that the baits were landing too far out in the flow. So we moved downstream of the jetty to an slight bay that created a small eddy that might hold a few carp�It didn't and we spent a few hours sitting under the brolly watching the river swell and colour-up. In my barbel fishing days, I always considered such conditions as a waste of time and so it proved with the carp as well. Writing that one off to bad timing and bad luck we sought solace in the bar!

We were determined to go for it now, as we were running out of days. The river beckoned and we put any idea of fishing the ressy out of our minds. We would get an early start in the morning and give it our best shot on the river, assuming the swim was free. Meanwhile Tat prepared a casserole for the following day's evening meal and we shared a last glass of Armagnac before turning in.

For once we stuck by our good intentions and were at the river by first light. The swim was free�Yes! but Up the bank some fifty yards or so away a party of ancient French pike anglers were fishing. There seems to be thousands of these old guys throughout France, all fishing antiquated methods, catching sweet FA yet perfectly content in their pastime. They were friendly enough and as usual looked on in amazement at the carp gear. Once again it was the buzzers that fascinated them the most, and we spent a few minutes tweaking the line to produce false runs. After the cold, the wind and the rain of yesterday, today was a complete contrast being warm with a light breeze.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#270 11 Feb 2018 at 4.29pm

In reply to Post #269
�So strong� muttered Tat. � This is a decent fish for sure�. I didn�t answer. I don�t think she knew she�d spoken aloud anyway. I was standing on one of the rock outcrops as the fish slipped by, just a foot or so beneath the surface. I couldn�t help letting out a startled exclamation. It was a lovely big fat mirror, a proper carp to my way of thinking, it might even go thirty. Then the carp�s shoulders broke the surface as it swirled on the top. Now Tat got the first impression of the fish�s awesome size.

�Here�s your personal best, love,� I murmured, adding a silent �Don�t loose it,� under my breath.

Then suddenly, it was over. After a good fifteen minutes of give and take, the fish just gave up and lollopped into the waiting net. I took the weight and it felt heavy. Up on the bank, we peeled back the net and just stood there for a few seconds, gazing down at the thing of beauty, lying there, in the autumn sunshine, in all its glory. Then Tat just burst out laughing and the spell was broken. It just had to go thirty. It had to! But the scales only gave her 29lb 8oz, no matter how many times we hoisted the sling. (I have this silly dream. Some may call it a nightmare. I dream that I have played a fish of a lifetime to the bank only to weigh it, be disappointed and return it after photos. It is only when the photos come back that the doubts start. It looks far bigger than the weight I�d given it at the time of its capture. Had I weighed it badly? Surely, I must have done. Look at the size of it! It's an awful dream, I tell you!) But what�s in a weight? Nothing could take the magic of that moment away. The trip could end right here and now and we�d still return home happy and proud.

But the gods hadn�t finished with us yet! There was icing on the cake in the form of a lovely, scale-perfect, twenty pound common for me that took a hookbait cast just inches from the concrete wall of the jetty. Here the water was only about eight feet deep and being comparatively shallow we could detect the presence of carp in the swim, as the discoloured water rising to the surface betrayed their presence.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#269 11 Feb 2018 at 4.25pm

In reply to Post #268
The following morning we were on the road bright and early before it got light. My fear was that news of our captures the previous day had got out, possibly from the restaurant owner, and we would arrive in our baited area to find someone else fishing there. With our hearts in our mouths, we drove down to the river. Was someone in our swim? No. What a relief! Out came the rods and some bait and I baited up by using a bait scoop to introduce a bucket of groats that had been soaked in strongly-flavoured water overnight. Three hundred boiled baits followed. Baits on, stringers tied. Any barges in sight�No! So here goes. Four splashes and four rods were soon fishing the margins under our feet.

The weather continued to be kind to us with good sunshine, no rain and light breeze. For some reason I figured that river carp like the opposite weather conditions than lake-dwelling ones�No idea why but there you go!

While we had needed the heavier rods to cast across from the far side, as had been the case on our first day on the river, now we were fishing more or less under our rod tips so the Horizons got left in the rod bag and were substituted with a pair of the 2lb test Hutchinson Spirolites, which we had bought back in the College days. We've still got them and use them too, as they are a dream to play fish on. Here they are set up on the concrete sill of the jetty.

They were joined on the bank by a pair of lovely little Sportex eleven-footers that Tat loves so much. They were built for us by Savay legend Bob Jones with full corks and tiny, lightweight rings. I think the blank was designated the 3353 and they are apparently built to mirror the old glass North Western SS5s; so soft that in a scrap everything bends, even the handles! They are very light with a test curve of 1.5lb, but they are a dream to play fish on, which isn�t something one can say about the Horizons.

An hour or two passed without any signs that there were fish in the swim. I wandered up to the village for some grub and a few beers in the hope that my absence might trigger a take. If that sounds strange, well it�s often worked in the past; I go off for some reason or other and return to find Tat with a whacker on the bank. It�s happened in France before, as well as in the U.K. at Waveney, College and Redmire, to name but a few. This time it didn�t work, but I think I might have brought the fish down river with me.

Tat had her head buried in a book, deep in the mystery of Agatha Christie. I was staring at the water and as I watched, a small carp came splashing to the top in that typical untidy leap typical of small carp. We�ll have a chance in a minute, I said to Tat. She sat up from he book tensed as if we were both thinking the same thing. It's almost as if we knew that something significant was on the cards. It wasn�t anything tangible, but we knew that a take was imminent... 100% certain.

Tat had got up from her chair and was now standing over her rods, while I was up the bank a few yards. For some reason, I looked around and saw that her two rods were banging and shaking in the rests. So did Tat! The buzzer had time only for the briefest of shrieks before she had the rod in her hand and the reel was screaming its head off as a good fish took off across the river with an incredible burst of speed. Savage, searing runs ripped the line off the clutch with consummate ease. Those French carp sure do know how to fight and Tat was now into one that didn�t know when to give up!

I guess the fish must have crossed almost to the opposite bank before Tat managed to get a modicum of control over it. Then, in mid-river, the fish slogged it out on a long line, staying deep and using the flow to exert every ounce of pressure on the rod and the line. Gradually, she worked the fish in towards the bank, only for it to take off again on another searing run, this time upstream along the near bank. I was worried that it might shred the line on one of the rocky promontories, but it all held together while Tat worked the fish back with her usual patience.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#268 11 Feb 2018 at 4.22pm

In reply to Post #267
As we drove west into the glare of the setting sun, both of us felt that at last we were getting to grips with the fishing in this new part of France. The locals in the village bar were all ears when we told them we�d found some proper fishing at last. Michael bought a proper glass of red all round to celebrate our success. By proper I mean a red that came out of a bottle with a cork in it and the neck wrapped in foil. The usual fare in the bar came out of an unlabeled five litre plastic bottle.

As usual everyone was astonished that we didn�t have anything to show for our day�s fishing, but we had managed to get across to them the fact that we only fish for the pleasure of the sport and not to kill the fish. �In England, if we killed a carp on purpose we�d be banned from our clubs and probably end up tied to a tree to reflect on the error of our ways,� I told them.

�You mean it is illegal to kill carp?�

�Not illegal,� I explained. �Worse!� They accepted this with a Gallic shrug. Nice enough people the English, but crazy!

While Tat did the dinner, I strolled down to the big lake to see what, if anything we were missing. The lads were still on the point, but their dry landing nets continued to mock their efforts. The wind was no more than a gentle puff from the north, not enough to stir the carp into life, that much was clear. They rinsed out a glass and poured me a generous measure of Pastis, and in the fading light we chatted as carp anglers do wherever they meet. They were quite knowledgeable about the lake and told me that there were only a few big fish in the lake, mostly mirrors ranging between twenty-five and thirty-five pounds, with two or three huge commons of over forty pounds, fish that were rarely seen and even more rarely caught. Most of the other carp in the lake were commons in the 8-18lbs bracket, though before the lake had been emptied it had produced a monster common carp of fifty-two pounds to a French angler fishing with spud on 30lb line. They�ve got to be thick those French carp! But if they were that thick, why couldn�t I catch them! Don't answer that. Sadly, this huge fish had been killed and paraded around the village by its captor before being eaten.

The French lads said they were fishing until Sunday and invited Tat and me to join them on their pre-baited area and after talking it over with Tat and considering that the next day would be the start of the weekend, when the river would probably be heaving, we decided to take them up on their offer.

And very glad we were too, for just as the afternoon lassitude was setting in one of Tat's rods was away. Considering there was a crowd of quite 'tired and emotional' French carpers looking on and offering advice, she played it like a true pro and eventually brought a lovely looking common of 22lb 4 oz to the net. Were we pleased! The other lads maybe not so: they'd been there for three days and blanked and then along comes this lass and nicks out a twenty from under their noses. That's my girl!

We said our goodbyes soon afterwards, as the French lads were looking like **** and were either snoring in their bivvies or asleep in the warm afternoon sunshine. We felt that a further celebration was called for and one of us was a bit the worse for wear by evening.

We fished the next day with the French lads but had no further action. Considering there were over twenty rods fishing the point it was not at all surprising. The racket some of the French anglers kick up would make Dick Walker turn in his grave�Study to be quiet�My arse! One thing was noticeable; a previously unseen flock of coots had arrived sometime over that weekend and they had soon cottoned on to the baited area. Carnage ensued and we couldn't wait to get back to the river!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#267 11 Feb 2018 at 4.19pm

In reply to Post #266
I cast the rod out again and added another batch of mixed boiled baits. This was more like it. Sunshine and carp, good food and wine in la belle France. A small white van made its way along the top of the bank towards us. It was Jean, the guy from the Rabelais restaurant. He brought a bottle of red wine and a corkscrew with him. What can you say about a nation that seems to brush its teeth in red wine. How can they be anything else but friendly and convivial? If ever a people seem to have got the meaning of life well and truly sorted out, it is the French. Work to live, don't live to work!

We shared our friend�s wine in the sunshine before he was called back to work by a large lady, furiously beckoning and shouting from the terrace overlooking the river, that there were customers needing to be fed. An hour had gone by since the first fish. Had they moved off. Perhaps there wasn�t enough bait to hold them. I�d read somewhere that river carp require big carpets of bait to hold them in a swim, but I was wary of putting too much in.

Just to go off at a tangent for a moment. I often ponder about just how much bait qualifies as 'enough'. I�d found it hard to believe the amount of bait the carp in the lake we'd fished earlier in the year were capable of eating, while the Cannonball fish were cleaning up seven or eight mixes in a day. I was once criticised over an article I wrote for a magazine, my critic suggesting that the amount of bait I had recommended was obscene, but I doubt if he�d ever fished in France. I have no doubts at all that due to the warmer water temperatures the carp�s metabolic rate is much higher than that of English carp. Hence their healthier appetites.

Back to the river, where I was having my doubts about the amount of bait in the swim. Was there enough or should we put in more? Tat said, "sit on your hands and do nothing." As always she was right. A buzzer sounded. It was one of Tat�s rods. The fish, a mirror of fourteen pounds, was quickly followed by another about three pounds heavier. After the carp-drought they could have been thirties, so gratefully were they received.

�They�re getting bigger,� I joked. I should have kept my mouth shut. The next fish was a common of about eight pounds. There was obviously a shoal of small to medium carp over there, but at least we were catching. We�d waited a long time for these fish and were going to make the most of them.

The afternoon sped quickly by. The carp fed steadily through the afternoon but the action slowed as the sun went down and the fish moved off altogether after Tat had landed a last gasp 17lb common.

Before leaving, we had a beer at the restaurant, promising to return the next day, for the fishing in the river was much more productive than at the lake. �We�d love to be able to fish this bank,� I said to Jean, the owner. �Obviously it would be a lot easier if we could fish the deep water from this side rather than cast across from the opposite side."

"It�s a private bank but it's never used these days so nobody will bother you if that is where you want to fish." He then drew us map on the back of a menu and added, �This how to get down to the jetty from this said," he said.

We went on our way detouring briefly to see if we could find our way down to the concrete jetty. In the gathering darkness it wasn�t the easiest route to follow but after a few twists, turns and blind alleys we eventually came out directly opposite the spot we�d been fishing on the other bank. The lights of the restaurant burnt bright and clear some four hundred yards down the bank and in the gloom we could just make out the waving figure of Jean. I waved my thanks back. I was right. Fishing would be a doddle from here. Planning to return the next day we baited up with a bucket of boilies, a mixture of ready-mades and fishmeals that we were making up daily at the gite. Was that enough. I wondered. Probably!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#266 11 Feb 2018 at 4.16pm

In reply to Post #265
The swim that Franck and the restaurant owner had pointed out to us was grassy and comfortable at the top of the bank, giving way to a muddy, slippery water's edge, made even more slippery by the wash from the barges ploughing up and down river. The deepest water looked to be across in front of the concrete jetty about 100 yards away on the opposite bank. The flow was hardly noticeable and we knew that we would be able to get away with four ounce leads. The water was quite clear and obviously very rich for there were empty swan mussels shells in profusion at the water's edge.

I plumbed around a bit and found out that there was about twelve feet of water across on the other side with a much deeper channel running down the middle of the river where I found a good twenty feet. Then the river gradually shelved up towards the near bank where we would be fishing. There were obviously quite a few snags about on the river bed as I found to my cost after loosing a couple of leads while plumbing the depth and feeling the bottom. The snags felt like boulders or large stones, but perhaps they could have been waterlogged trees washed down by winter floods. With all those snags, mussels and boulders on river bed it�s small wonder the swim was apparently a good one for carp.

Here and there along the bank great outcrops of solid rock fell off into the deep water encompassing little bays with sharp eddies and swirling currents. They would certainly be worth exploring but to start with we wanted to fish the steadier flow and greater depth of the far bank.

I got busy with the throwing stick and put couple of mixes of fresh fishmeal boilies and a kilo of Richworths across towards the far bank. Opposite, the jetty was deserted and looked like it was never used, so overgrown was the concrete surface of the structure. Downstream from the jetty was another restaurant. It was shut up tight and the place had the mournful look of a seasonal gold mine once all the punters have gone home. Further upstream the small bar/restaurant we�d used earlier seemed busy enough, judging by the cars outside in its car park. It was lunchtime, after all and the French need no excuses to down tools and tuck in.

I put on stringers and cast across the to the far side. Tat returned with a bulging shopping bag. With the rods out awaiting who-knows what, we set about the cheese and wine with a vengeance. This is the part of French fishing that we both really love. So many of the lakes and rivers have tracks around or along them, and often it�s just a matter of stopping the car, getting the gear out and starting fishing. No walking down mud-strewn paths for mile after mile, only to get to that distant hot-spot and find some other bugger in there. Pile everything into the boot, stop where you will, start fishing, begin the picnic. So, in France, we tend to take everything bar the kitchen sink. Out came the full works; chairs, table, proper glasses for the wine, plates and decent knives and forks.

The early afternoon passed in a pleasant, lazy doze. We were getting a bit philosophical about it all by now and had resigned ourselves to probably not catching fish, so we�d have a good time instead. The sun beamed down, and it seemed to get even hotter. Watching the river flow and listening to the distant, almost restful hum of the traffic heading down south on the motorway, I was half asleep when I heard a funny, almost inaudible clicking sound.

�What�s that?� I asked as I came fully awake. �Silly bugger,� said Tat. �You�ve forgotten to turn up the buzzers. It�s a run, you fool!�

Sure enough, the reel was clicking away on a light-set clutch. I swept up the rod, tightened down to the fish and felt an answering thump come back up the line. The rod hooped over and the fight was on. The fish hugged the bottom, using the current to take it downstream. This only brought the fish in towards my bank though, and soon it was in the shallower water about fifty yards down the bank. Slipping and sliding through the mud, I scrambled my way down towards the fish, Tat, slip-sliding on the muddy shore, followed with the net. By the time we eventually got to it, the fish had done all the fighting it was going to do, and flopped gratefully into the net. A common. No monster but very welcome nevertheless. Well, wasn�t that nice. My first river carp, first time of asking!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#265 11 Feb 2018 at 4.13pm

In reply to Post #264
Next day, be buggered! If the carp fishing gods had relented, it was only briefly. The deteriorating weather proved only that there were fish to be caught when the conditions were right, but - wouldn�t you know it? - the next day was white calm and hot and we never had a sniff. Franck called in for a chat and we passed on Pete's message and mentioned that we were tempted to fish the river opposite the concrete jetty. For a second I thought I had dropped a spherical one; maybe I shouldn't have let on that Pete had passed on one of Franck's secret spots. I need not have worried. Franck was in full agreement with us. The ressy was not worth the effort and the river was a much better bet.

The French carp anglers had arrived early that morning. Full of themselves they felt certain they would have fish. They went on the point and by the time they had finished setting up the area looking like a porcupine, rods everywhere. They baited up a huge area about three hundred yards down the bank from our swims and fished four rods each.

The day was a long one and our faces got equally long with the setting sun�s shadows. We blanked as did the guys on the point but they were going to fish the night. Perhaps that would tell us if we were missing out by not risking it. The evening had turned into something of a celebration over the capture of the first fish of the trip, and a few beers in the bar heralded a bit of a session back at the gite. Burgers on the BBQ and a few glasses of Chateau Georges were called for and the evening passed in a pleasant haze, eating and drinking and playing with the kittens, of which there were dozens, or so it seemed.

I got up with the dawn and walked out to the point. No sacks or slings hanging up to dry, no bank sticks in the margins, no wet landing nets nor the sweet smell of drying carp slime drying on victorious sweat-shirts. Blank night. Disheartened the French guys may have been, but they didn�t show it. They were sitting down to coffee and breakfast, which included several glasses of Pastis! Out over the baited patch the first carp I�d seen jump all week cleared the water in front of me. But disappointment followed and despite yesterday�s fish the more I thought about it the more I fancied trying the river.

It was decided: Today we'd fish the river. After a somewhat tardy start we arrived at the river rather late in the day and it was about ten in the morning when we eventually arrived in the car park by the little restaurant, and by the time we�d said hello to Jean, the friendly patron, it was even later when we actually started fishing. I told the guy that we'd been advised to go across to the other bank where we could drive along the bank to the point opposite the jetty and he agreed that this would make for easier fishing. However, as we were leaving he said, "watch out for the boats." What was that about, then?

As promised the access to the river along the opposite side was easy and we unloaded the gear. I set up the rods and got organised while Tat walked up to the main road to buy lunch. The picnic is as important to us as the fishing, providing the weather allows. Today was a return to the settled weather of the previous week. Yesterday�s brief gale was already a distant memory. The air temperature was already up to the low twenties, which considering it was the middle of October was pretty decent! How do the French stand it! All this great weather, lovely food, sublime wine and carp fishing too. They don't know they're born!

Let me just describe the river for you. It is, in turn, wide and deep, narrow and shallow. It runs through overgrown jungles, alongside neatly tended, poplar-lined footpaths. In places the bankside is solid gravel, overgrown with brambles and bracken, elsewhere its banks are a muddy morass that can cause problems to the unwary. It has weed beds and snag-trees and is navigable for much of its length. Yachts and pleasure boats swing around their permanent deep-water moorings. This is a river for all seasons, an angler�s paradise.

On the downside is the presence of the huge barges that Jean had warned us about. They sat low in the water even when empty but on their return, loaded with sand dredged from the river, they looked dangerously low. Their bow waves were impressive too and we later found out to our cost that the prop wash distributed our bait carpets over a huge area of river bed. Here's the same boat going down empty and coming back a few hours later laden to the gunwales.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#264 11 Feb 2018 at 4.11pm

In reply to Post #263
I rather thought we'd be seeing a lot more of this little restaurant and its friendly owner as the holiday went by. "Maybe we�ll come back towards the end of the week,� we told him, and thanking him for the information, to say nothing of his superb cooking, we headed back to the gite. (I should add that this pic was taken several years later when we returned to the area for a few days .)

Back at the gite it was very noticeable that the weather had improved - from a carp angler's point of view - and a fresh blustery wind carried squally showers right onto the point and into the bay. The change in the weather had transformed the lifeless ocean we�d been confronting for the past week or so. Now it looked like a proper carp lake with waves lapping the shore and a more lively feel about the whole place. It looked so nice we couldn�t wait to get the rods out. The wind was really hacking in, accompanied by savage bursts of rain, yet through it all the sun tried to shine. The passing squalls left the odd bright rainbow over the water. The end of one seemed to touch the inside marker. Pot of gold?

I pumped up the little dinghy and in between squalls rowed out just enough bait to rouse the interest of a passing carp. I was getting wary of putting in too much bait, thinking that while the carp may be visiting the baited areas for a bite every now and then, they were not what anyone could call 'getting their heads down'. Once back ashore, soaked from the waves washing over the front of the dinghy, I got the tangle of rods out of the car and we baited them with fresh hook baits and stringers. I was a bit doubtful if the bulky stringer and hookbait would cast into the steadily increasing wind so I was glad to see the hefty splash as the first cast landed right next to the marker and the hookbait dropped into eight or nine feet of water. The wave action had begun to discolour the water from its previous gin-like clarity. If there were carp worth their salt in the lake, surely they�d be out there on the lee shore getting the invigorating benefit of the wind-whipped water and the stirred up food from the bottom.

To raise our spirits still further, the rain stopped and the sun came out and the wind dropped away slightly. The fresh conditions brought the sailboards and yachts out in force but so far they remained well off shore and did not threaten to wipe out the rods, as had happened the previous year when we'd fished with Franck and Jean-Yves. On the extreme right of this pic you can just about see our little R5 in the middle of the bay, the photo being taken from the point. This perhaps puts the size of the ressy into some sort of perspective.

Perfect the weather may be but still no carp came our way. We didn't even see any shows and it looked as if the river was calling us. The afternoon gradually lost its heat as the sun dipped towards the horizon and Tat left to put on the dinner, walking across the marshy grass, trying not to step on any of the hundreds of thousands of grasshoppers now setting up a cacophony of sound as the evening fell. A vain hope. They were everywhere. I don�t think she had much faith in my carp-catching abilities anymore. I wasn�t sure if I had either.

As the sun set, it took with it the breeze and all my hopes for a fish and I sat in the fading light gently cursing the gods of fishing. I was aching for a fish! But then, where else could I find such peace? Where could such beauty and tranquillity seem to exist only for me? Where else could I have all those acres of paradise to myself? Where else could I find to blank?

Out of the blue, a high tone-buzzer gave a single bleep. A fish? Surely not! One bleep, then another, then a constant scream as a fish took off with the hook bait. God, what a wonderful sound is that first run on a new lake, especially when you had waited several days for it. This one was a flyer and I could make no impression on the fish for about a minute or so and in that time it must have taken a good many yards of line. However, inevitably the carp tired and I pumped it in towards me. The strength of that fish was fantastic, but the disturbance and
agitation of the water on the wave-lashed shoreline seemed to drain the strength out of it and soon it was in the net. Up onto the scales. A touch under 18lb. A freshly minted common.

Beautiful! Never had a fish looked so good, or brought such relief! I sacked the fish and, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, drove back to the gite to collect Tat to come and take the pictures. We�d cracked it at last. We�d hammer �em now. Next day - watch

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#263 11 Feb 2018 at 4.02pm

In reply to Post #262
Pete told us if we wanted to try another venue that we should give the river a go. He gave us directions to a spot on the river that Franck had put him on to. "It's worth a try as there are some good fish in that river. Go to the road bridge then walk downstream about 400 yards. Look for the concrete jetty and fish close to the wall. Franck's had some nice fish from that spot." I told him I'd never carp fished a river before. "It's like riding a bike," he said. "If you can catch them from a lake then you'll be able to catch them from a river. If anything they are easier to catch as they are generally nomadic and don't come across anglers too often so they are pretty green.

Pete has since become a good friend. He is my sort of carp angler, not a driven man on a headlong plunge for the next monster. Carp are his passion, regardless of size. He is a man who can still see the value of a fifteen pound fish, while his twenties are celebrated with a pull from the Famous Grouse bottle. Pete lives in a country where the carp grow big, but he has his feet planted firmly on the ground. Size isn�t everything to him, so he finds his pleasures easy to come by as the capture any carp, whatever its size, gives him great satisfaction. A man after my own heart.

We moved again the following day. While setting up Tat came back from a walk along the bank to tell me that there was a boat down the bank with grains of maize in the bottom. Could that be the answer? Were we being a bit too technical for these carp? Still, at least the presence of the maize showed that people were, indeed, carp fishing on the ressy so we fishing blind.

The next day was spent away from fishing. We wanted a break so we got into the car and followed our noses on a trip around the countryside. I suppose in the process we were also looking for an alternative water to fish but this was largely unspoken and a lazy day of casual exploration was just what we needed to restore our slightly dampened enthusiasm for carp fishing. We spent much of the time in village bars and cafes asking questions about lakes and rivers, but getting nowhere. We thought we�d got lucky when we stumbled across a rumour of some very big commons taken from an arm of the river Pete had mentioned, but when we visited the spot it was dried out. This was getting silly. What next?

�I know,� said Tat. �Let�s eat!�

She was right, a decent meal would brighten our spirits. A sign beside the road indicated the way to a restaurant. River views, proclaimed the sign. It sounded just the job, the very place to drown our sorrows. I followed the signs into the car park and I could see the glitter of flowing water ahead. The car park was pretty full but we found a space where we could see the river more clearly. To our left was a large road bridge crossing the river. River, restaurant, road bridge...Could this be the one Pete had mentioned? (I should add that this pic was taken several years later when we returned to the area for a few days R&R when we were doing long sessions on the Chateau Lake, much more of which later.)

As things were to turn out finding that restaurant was serendipity. Not only was the food to die for but Jean the owner, waiter, head chef and bottle washer was well versed in the local fishing so I asked him if there was any decent carp fishing in the river.

�Oh yes,� he replied. �There are some nice fish but they can be hard to find as they roam the length of the river. At this time of year the shoals are split up too, but you should have a chance or two just downstream� He tugged at my arm and pulled me outside and pointed downstream. There in the distance about 400 yards away was a fenced in concrete jetty! Bingo! The gear was back at the gite but if the fishing on the ressy remained dire this would be a nice spot to try, especially with a good restaurant within strolling distance. The river widened towards the far horizon but where were standing it looked to be no more than about 120m across. This is looking downstream to the spot where the river widens.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#262 11 Feb 2018 at 3.59pm

In reply to Post #261
We returned to the gite early the following afternoon, having cut short our fishing in favour of a blow-out meal and a few bottles of Chateau Georges. If the truth were known, we were a bit down in the mouth. OK, we had not come solely for the fishing, and everything else about the trip was just perfect. But, a fish would be nice. As Tat did the meal I opened the wine, ostensibly to let it breath. Most bottles of red wine that I open are allowed to breath for at least a minute but this was no ordinary plonk; this was prime Chateau Georges so to drink it straight down would be sacrilege. In the meantime we had some nice local beer to sample�and very nice it was too!

Meal eaten we were just sitting down in front of the fire when a large white, left-hand-drive Mercedes pulled up outside. A tall, imposing grey-haired gent with a thick, bushy mustache climbed out of the car and crossed to the open double doors. �Anyone home?� he said, obviously English.

�Come on in, whoever you are!� I offered. �Have some wine. It�s always nice to hear a familiar accent.�

And thus was my introduction to one Pete McDermott, ex-pat, ex-copper, ex-body guard, avid carp angler, now married to a French girl and living in the big city several miles away. How had he got to hear that we were staying here?

�I�ve been fishing the big lake,� he told us over a glass of red. �I met the president of the angling association who told me that there was an English couple carp fishing the lake. He told me where you were staying, so I came to find you. I think you have already met Michael, yes?�

�Oh, yes!� I replied, pouring the wine, �We�ve met Michael all right!�.

Pete drank deep and looked appreciatively at the glass.

�Good stuff. Where�d you buy it?�

�Georges, the owner of this gite makes it himself,� I told him.

�Hmm! I must get hold of a case or two of this,� said Pete. "I hope you don�t mind me looking you up. It is so nice to hear an English voice for a change, and the chance to talk carp fishing made your presence doubly irresistible.�

�Not at all. We�re glad you called. How did you get on today?� I asked, secretly dreading the thought of a bumper catch to put Tat and I to shame.

�Blanked!� was the answer. "Mind you, it's the first time I have fished it but I am told it has a few decent fish in it."

I was taken aback, "That's not what we are hearing. In fact Michael reckons it's a waste of time fishing for carp on the reservoir."

�Well he's wrong about that. I know there are some good fish in there as a mate of mine from Vitre has had a thirty seven pound mirror. Pete assured us.

We passed on our tale of our blank week then asked, "This bloke from Vitre, would he be Franck Martin by any chance?"

"Yes," replied Pete. "Do you know him?"

I told Pete of our meeting a couple of years ago and our trip together to Cannonball. Pete told me that he had phoned Franck a few days previously and had hoped to fish with him on the ressy but he'd not turned up. Pete had to go to work the next day but asked us to keep an eye out for Franck and pass on Pete's best. He reckoned that fishing was going to improve as a big wind and plenty of rain was forecast. He added that there was a group of carpers from his area coming to the big ressy soon: "Have a word with them if you get the chance. They are good anglers and they are just beginning to get to grips with this lake. They�ve had fish to twenty-six pounds from the point.�

I breathed another sigh of relief. At least we were not on a duff water with no carp in it. I could only assume that the reason we were not catching was either because we were not fishing at night, or simply because the weather was against us. Still, we should worry! We were on holiday, and who wants buckets of rain on your holiday?

We spent a very pleasant evening supping wine with Pete. Georges himself came around that evening bringing a home-made cheese-cake and a bottle or two of red, and while he and Pete babbled away in French to each other far to quickly for me to understand what they were saying, Tat and I carried on supping. The Chateau Georges flowed as we swapped tales of carp on both sides of the Channel. Georges told us he was pressing some grapes for the co-operative the next day and we all said we'd pop round to see the process and maybe sample a glass or two of the 1984 vintage. This is Georges hard at work.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#261 11 Feb 2018 at 3.56pm

In reply to Post #260
That evening we drove around the lake as darkness fell, stopping here and there to listen and watch for signs of carp activity. We neither heard nor saw a sign of a carp, though this was not surprising as it was a still, cold evening with the temperature dipping down towards freezing. I couldn�t help feeling that we needed a bit of a wind and less settled conditions to stir them up a bit.

The hoped-for breeze of warm southerly wind did not materialise and the following morning dawned cloudless and still. Inspiration came there none but we had to start somewhere, so we opened our campaign on the broad shallow point projecting out into the lake where the policeman had reportedly caught his twenty-pounder. It was as good as anywhere under the circumstances and, not surprisingly, going in on a wing and a prayer like that, we blanked.

The weather the next day was equally calm with not a breath of wind. Very pleasant, but not conducive to good carp fishing. So far we�d not had so much as a twitch. The weather on day three was identical, as it was on day four. We�d not seen hide nor hair of a fish, nor of another carp fisherman, and I was beginning to wonder if we weren�t on the end of a gentle wind-up by Georges and the locals.

It wasn�t as if we weren�t working at our fishing. Every day we baited up two areas some fifty and a hundred yards out with a mixture of boiled bait (half fishmeals, half ready-mades), along with a heaped bucket full of flavour-soaked groats and a scattering of tigers around each marker. Each night we fished on well into the dark hours; each morning we fished from just before first light. We gave the swim a couple of days to produce and then moved from the point to the middle of the bay nearest the dam. We felt we were making all the right moves, but the carp (if there were any in there) were not impressed!

To hell with this! The local bar in the village was a dark and unprepossessing affair from the outside. Inside it was bright and cheerful, full of noise, red wine fumes, cigarette smoke and, as luck would have it, anglers. It was the regular rendezvous for the local fishing club. We stumbled upon it one evening when seeking solace for our sorrows with a beer or two. As usual, the stares of the locals were a bit intimidating at first, but they soon went back to their loud conversation and copious drinking. The door swung open and a huge French guy looked straight at Tat and I as we sat, minding our own business, while the bar quivered with a noisy hubbub.

�You have left your lights on,� grunted the newcomer in thick guttural French. He was obviously in no doubt that we were the owners of the right hand drive car outside. I�m sure we carry an invisible sign hanging over our heads saying ENGLISH in big capital letters. We can�t see it, but the French can. The big guy had seen the rods in the car. �You have been fishing?�

�Yes.�

�Any good.�

�No.�

My reply was met with a stream of French that I didn�t understand, but it tickled the blokes standing at the bar. OK, I thought. I can take this for a while. It might lead somewhere, you never know. I thanked him and went outside to turn the lights off. �Can I get you a drink?� I asked when I got back inside.

�A small red would be nice.� I ordered it and refills for Tat and me and the guy thanked me and sipped his drink. At three francs a glass (about 20p back then before the bloody euro came along and set inflation soaring) I�d be happy to buy his booze for him all day if I thought it might lead anywhere. His name was Michael and he was the president of the local fishing association.

�You are fishing for carp?� He looked incredulous.

�Yes.�

�You must be mad. They are vermin.�

What could I say. �We love catching them in England,� I told him.

�Perhaps, but you are all crazy over there. You put all your fish back in the lake!� This was obviously the height of absurdity.

�Where are you fishing?� he asked.

�The big reservoir,� I told him.

�You are wasting your time there. There are only a few carp in the lake. True, they are quite big, but you will never catch them."

My pride was injured by his jibe but there was no malice whatsoever in him, and we looked forward to our evening visits to exchange tales of woe with the customers of the little bar. We found out from the owner that Michael was a notably unsuccessful pike angler himself, which gave us ammunition for his next attack. One thing was clear; it looked as if Michael was right about the big lake. We had to look for pastures new.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#260 11 Feb 2018 at 3.54pm

In reply to Post #259
We ate breakfast on the terrace in a balmy twenty degrees. You can be lucky at this time of the year in France, but you can be equally unlucky. We cleared away the debris of our meal, the bird life thankful for our crumbs, then wandered down to the lake less than half a mile away.

The point that Georges had mentioned was an obvious feature, one that would surely get plenty of attention from pike and zander anglers. A pair of deeply etched wheel tracks sweeping across the grass leading down to the swim told their own tale. There wasn�t a breath of wind, so deciding where to start fishing would be tricky as without the faintest puff of a breeze to stir them up, we were really on a hiding to nothing expecting to find fish easily.

We settled into the cottage, did a big shop in the hypermarket, sorted out a licence for Tat, bought two dozen oysters and we returned to the gite to devour them. Oysters are an acquired taste: I�d acquired it! (I have since been forced to un-acquire it after developing an allergy to oysters, I put my first bout of sickness and diarrhea three years ago down to a bad oyster, same for my second and much worse bout the following year. My third bout nearly killed me and the French doctor who attended me said that the next oyster you eat will be your last! Say no more. Shame 'coz I adore them!). Outside stood a large barn and peeping inside I saw row upon row of cages of various wild life. There were rabbits, guinea fowl, chickens, turkeys and pigeons and I rather doubted that these were household pets!

Georges came around with further samples of red wine. Where was he getting all this booze from? �I make it myself,� he told me. I couldn�t believe it. It was fabulous stuff. Rich and full with a kick on it like a mule. This was a wine fit for the gods.

�Can we buy some bottles from you?�

�Of course. That and just about any other farm produce you care to name. The wine is ten francs a bottle and it is about fourteen percent!� said Georges.

That�s silly-cheap, I thought to myself and promptly ordered two bottles. We christened the beautiful nectar Chateau Georges. There were fresh vegetables, fruit onions and shallots. We'd not need the supermarket again at this rate.

Tat made her selection of produce and Georges dispatched and skinned the two rabbits she'd chosen for dinner in seconds flat. "Do you want to try the wine?" he asked her. Never been known to turn down a free drink, my missus quickly accepted the offer. Georges used a siphon to draw four glasses of wine from a large barrel that probably held fifteen or twenty gallons of wine, so we wouldn't go thirsty.

"Try some of this," he said, offering us a glass each. "It's six years old so it is just about ready for bottling now."

It was manna from heaven!

After lunch we borrowed Georges's four meter pulling boat and had a gentle row around. In the warm afternoon sunshine the lake seemed to glow, the flat calm surface dimpled here and there by the odd small fish. Of the carp, there was no sign. Prodding and probing with the oars revealed that the lake bed was very similar to Cannonball Lake, where we�d fished last year, being fairly flat and featureless, mainly sand, silt and rock with very few obvious holding or feeding areas. However, it was noticeably deeper and as we ventured further from the bank the oars wouldn't reach the bottom. Judging by the amount of natural food, it was quite possible that some big carp lived in the lake but after talking to Georges and to the locals in the cafe, it didn�t appear to get any serious carp-fishing attention and nobody seemed to know if there were any really big fish in there. We'd just have to take pot luck.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#259 11 Feb 2018 at 3.50pm

In reply to Post #258
He was away only a few minutes. Jeannine and Tat, wine glasses in hand, settled in front of the roaring fire, already chatting away nineteen to the dozen about whatever it is women talk about. �I have just spoken to the Gardes,� said Georges, back on the sofa after his trip to the phone. �The local policeman caught a carp of nine and a half kilos just this weekend. Fishing on the point out there.� He waved his arm vaguely in the general direction of the night. �How far from here?� I asked. �Couple of minutes,� he replied. That�s �andy �Arry!

Dawn on the first morning in a new gite in France. I woke with first light and lay in bed listening to the bird giving vent to a bright chorus of song. The sun was just peeping over the far side of the lake. It was a beautiful autumn morning, still and calm with a chill in the air. The sun was just lifting over the tree-line many miles away down the valley, reflecting off the surface of a huge lake that peeped through a small copse of poplars in front of the cottage. Insects danced in the warming sunshine, while out on the lake a solitary rowing boat cut soundlessly across the mirrored surface leaving a silent wake between the regular swirls of groaning oars. If there is such a thing as true perfection, maybe this was it.

France slows you down. You get infected by the relaxed laid-back atmosphere almost as soon as you arrive. If I�d been in England I�d have been in a panic to get fishing, get some bait out, prepare the groundbait, whatever, but not here. We had a late breakfast, and while the coffee dripped its way though the ancient percolator, I walked down the hill into the village to buy bread and croissants, and half a pound of gorgeous Normandy butter. On the way back from the village I stopped on the barrage and looked out at the lake. It was white calm and almost completely deserted. A lone pike angler coughed Gauloise smoke and rubbed his hands to keep warm in the shadow of the barrage. His four rods were spread out at fifty yard intervals along the bank, a folded piece of silver paper at the rod tip being the only indication that an unfortunate pike had taken his bait. They love to eat pike, zander and perch (and very delicious they are too) so the French are not going to put any capture back, so instant strike rigs and sophisticated British techniques are not required.

It looked as if the level was down about six or eight feet and a walk around a the margins by the barrage revealed a profusion of empty mussel and snail shells, as well as the odd washed-up crayfish. That�s always a good sign. It shows that there is plenty of natural food for the carp to grow big on. The lake itself was huge. A big notice board on the barrage declared that it held so many millions of liters of water in its 450 acres.

Beneath the protection of the thick glass covering the notice board a faded photo showed a happy crowd of about a dozen anglers posing proudly with their catch of pike. The photo was dated 1932 and showed, so a caption read, members of the local angling association. Underneath it was pinned what looked to be a piece of parchment bordered with black. In an elaborate hand someone had written, �Mort dans la guerre�. A list of names followed. This was a memorial to those happy anglers smiling at the camera all those many years ago, and other men and women of the area who had lost their lives during the Second World War, when this part of France had been at the fore front of the Resistance Movement. It seemed so strange to be standing here in such peace and solitude with the ghosts of dead partisans staring out from a bygone age, before the dreadful spectre of war stole the innocence of the photo away.

I wandered back to the gite with my thoughts. The photo had been a sombre reminder of the history of this part of France. Georges had mentioned a monument to fallen resistance heroes in a village about four miles away. I felt as if I should go there before I left. I simply cannot imagine what it must have been like to live in occupied France during the war, nor in the occupied Channel Islands either for that matter. I had spent some time fishing out of Alderney with John and I knew full well the history of the Channel Islands during WW2.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#258 11 Feb 2018 at 3.47pm

In reply to Post #257
CHATEAU GEORGES: OCTOBER 1991.

October at last. The May trip with Bill and Nige seemed a lifetime away but holidays were here again. Ahead of us, three weeks in a small country cottage on the Loire. The pre-trip arrangements were much as before. Bait, ferry, tackle, route, insurance, the thousand and one things that need to be sorted out before you leave. Of course, there�s always the one thousand and second thing that you forget, which later turns out to be vital. I�m a fusspot, I can�t deny it. Tat got fed up with me fussing. �I couldn't give a damn if we have forgotten something, it�s too late now,� she said, slamming the front door shut with a decisive crash.

The journey was reasonably uneventful. Well, no different from others. Leave home, drive, get on ferry, be sick, get off ferry, drive, get lost, get un-lost, arrive. Finally we arrived and were soon sitting at a long oak table, sharing a bottle of very rich red wine with the gite owner. England might have been a million miles away. We had the best part of three weeks ahead of us in which to catch fish, put on a stone in weight, drink too much red wine and, as it turned out, meet a whole host of new characters, including the amazing Georges, of whom, more later.

The lake was only minutes away. It was supposed to hold carp, but if it didn�t, we�d find somewhere that did. The area of France we�d chosen was completely new to us. Earlier in the year when we had been studying the holiday brochures, this particular gite caught our eye. The advertising blurb mentioned the good fishing nearby and referring to the map I could see they weren�t kidding. It showed a very big blue bit - just a few hundred yards from the gite itself. OK, there was no guarantee that it held carp; that�s a risk you take when you decide to take a cottage which then becomes your base for the holiday, but it was a fair bet that there were fish worth catching in it. Pot luck had paid off for us in the past; we hoped we�d got it right this time. All the planning, the hope and expectations, were about to be put to the test. The yellow dot marks the position of the gite, while the red dots are the spots we fished.

The lake is nearly 4,000 yards from east to west, is about 450 acres in size and holds most species of coarse fish. However, it is as a pike and zander venue that it was well known when we fished it. The dam was started in 1811 under Napoleon and was built by Spanish prisoners. It was opened in 1842. As you will read in this section, the lake was not a well known carp fishing venue and it is also regularly emptied. However, these days the local federation have realised the value of carp fishing as a decent source of revenue and now the larger carp are retained at each vidange. As a result there are now fish to over 50lb in there and it also features three night fishing zones. At the time we visited night fishing was not allowed and as far as we know the biggest fish were low twenties. It was then, and remains, a pretty imposing lake as this pic of the western arm shows.

The cottage was spotless, well appointed, warm and comfortable, with a great big comfy settee in front of an open log fireplace. Georges, the owner, was effusive and generous with his wine and while his wife, Jeannine, showed Tat over the house, we broke the ice in error-ridden French (on my part) and appalling English (on his).

It was pitch black outside, but I could hear waves lapping on a nearby shore. Georges assured me us that the lake was just a short stroll away, and that it did indeed hold carp, though he wasn�t sure to what size they grew. Nobody fished for them in any case. They were second class fish. He showed me a heavy leather-bound volume, its title etched in gothic script picked out with gold leaf.

�This is my `Livre d�Or de la Peche`,� he told me proudly, opening the pages on photographs and diary accounts of the fishing that his visitors had enjoyed while staying in his cottage. I flicked through it searching for signs of carp. There were none. Georges noticed my concern. �The anglers who come here fish for pike and zander and perhaps for a perch or two,� he told me. �If they catch a carp they kill it.�

Certainly the photos did reveal some impressive catches of big predators from the lake; pike to over twenty pounds, a twelve pound zander, a five pound perch. There was a photo of a huge brown trout, all of fifteen pounds. How had that managed to escape capture for so long, I wondered. �Don�t worry about your carp,� Georges assured me, topping up my glass with wine. �Let me make a phone call and I�ll get some information for you."

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#257 31 Jan 2018 at 5.20pm

In reply to Post #256
...and yes, I finally did manage to capture that sunset!

More to come...

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#256 28 Jan 2018 at 4.12pm

In reply to Post #255
And that was it for another trip. We were due to leave for the ferry by ten o�clock and had promised to call in and say goodbye at the bars and the creperie, but waking early I felt there was still time to catch one more carp. I grabbed the rods and a net and got down to the camp site swim as dawn was breaking. Naturally my friends the pike men arrived a bit later and I was glad of that as we had got on famously with them, to say nothing of one guy averting a possible bit of aggro. So far we�d yet to see them catch a pike or anything else for that matter but they seemed happy with their fishless state and I spent the last few hours in halting conversation.

And I did manage that one last carp. At 6.00 am. I had a half-way-upper which came to naught, and at 8.30 am. had a flyer that was my last take of the trip...another of the kindergarten carp but size didn�t matter; honour was satisfied.

Sadly we packed up and paid our dues for the camp site. The stay cost us around ninety pence each per day, and that included a beautiful site with all the amenities. Spotless showers, toilets, washing facilities etc and all the hot or cold water you need, plus a security guard and secure perimeter after dark. Less than a quid a day each.

We did the rounds and said our goodbyes. The saddest part was that we�d not be going back for a while as the vidange would remove the carp and thus the reason for going there. I think we might just have sewn the tiniest shred of doubt in a few local minds about the wisdom of the regular removal of all the big carp, but then again, they regard their waters in the same impersonal way that a farmer might look on his fields, as the place where the cash crop grows. In this case the cash crop was carp!

Our kind hosts in the creperie foisted a breakfast of savoury pancakes upon us before they would allow us to leave, and it was with a lot of sadness that we said farewell to the little village. If the six hour ferry crossing had seemed to take just half that coming over, it seemed to take twice as long going back. But even as we were sitting in the gloomy atmosphere of the ship�s lounge, plans were already afoot for a return visit. Bill had been so impressed by the friendliness of the locals and the whole ambience of the trip; the food, the wine, the people and of course the fish, that even his brush with the law hadn�t quashed his enthusiasm.

We couldn�t wait for the next French trip and Tat and I were all set for a holiday in October, to a gite on a lake, belonging to a wine-making Frenchman called Georges. New lakes, new challenges, new friends. Zombies to be avoided!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#255 28 Jan 2018 at 4.10pm

In reply to Post #254
Pointing at me they said, "You will come with us" and pointing at Nige said, "Stay there!" This looked serious and these guys pack guns on their hips. I got in the back of their car and we drove through the lanes around the back of the lake arriving at the creperie car park. It appeared that Bill had run into a little bit of bother. What now? Apparently he�d been accused of fishing in the nature reserve but I knew he'd been well inside the notice that marked the limit of the reserve. We'd both fished this spot several time during the trip and had had plenty of visits from the old pike anglers. If we were truly fishing an out of bounds area I am damn sure they'd have told us.

Because by now the Gardes knew I spoke a bit of French and they now insisted that I accompany Bill to the police station. Here we sat and waited for two hours while they made phone calls trying to find out just how much to fine Bill. At one stage I thought I heard some suggestion from someone in an office behind a frosted glass screen to the effect that the speaker thought they were making far to much out of such a trivial offense and my hopes rose for a fair outcome. But I must have misheard for eventually they imposed a fine of 350 francs (about twenty quid back then before the �). How ridiculous! There was no way Bill was deliberately breaking the rules, if rule there was, which was very debatable. Bill tore his fishing permit to shreds and advised them what they could do with the bits! I can�t say I blame him.

That incident highlights the possible pitfalls of fishing abroad. If they want to do you for something they most certainly will, right or wrong though you may be. Talking later to the owners of the creperie, they suggested that we had actually become targets from very early on, not only for catching so many fish, but also for putting them back under the noses of some very jealous and frustrated anglers and locals. Apparently the Gardes had been confident of catching us fishing at night and their frustration at not doing so had probably welled over into this farce.

The jealousy of some of a few of the other French anglers and the gypsies had been obvious, and in such a tiny rural community it was obvious that the police would support local feelings. Which strikes me as strange, for we had been welcomed with open arms in the village and had got on really well with most of the anglers we�d met, especially the ancient pikers. We had all spent quite a bit of money in the village, at the campsite and in the bars and restaurants, yet the attitude of the police had been so confrontational. It left a bad taste in the mouth; not because of the size of the fine, but for the petty mindedness of the authorities who wouldn�t listen to anything we had to say.

By the time we got back to the shop where Nige was waiting in the van he was getting worried. He thought they�d incarcerated us both in the Bastille as we�d been away so long. Fishing was a waste of time now as the sun was beaming down from a cloudless sky and the carp had moved off up the lake again for more nookie. (If you ask for Nookie in France don�t get your hopes up to high if she says yes...It�s a brand of ice-cream!).

�Sod it!� said Bill. �Lets go and sink some. It�s the last day after all so let�s celebrate a damn good trip, despite the trials and tribulations of the past couple of days.�

So we ended the holiday with a nice little jaunt around the bars and restaurants, finishing in the early hours of the morning playing dirty pool for drinks against all comers, beating the pants off the local hustlers in the process. I wondered if we should have warned them that Nige plays pool to county standard. We called him Nige 'Chinzano Bianco' Britton as once he was on the table you couldn't get rid of him. (See Dave Lister - Red Dwarf).

The few drinks we won did a lot to restore the jollity and soon the unpleasantness of the afternoon was forgotten in a welter of beer, wine and of course dear old Armagnac. Oh yes...I did have a couple of Zombies, and now I understand how they�d got to Bill and Nige so badly. I was a bit the worse for wear that night!

I realise I have made quite a few references to our boozy habits and make no apology for the fact that socialising as as much a part of our trips as the fishing...what's the point of going on holiday if you can't enjoy yourself�And we certainly did that, big style!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#254 28 Jan 2018 at 4.06pm

In reply to Post #253
Once I�d set up, I wandered down the path to where Nige was brewing up. As the kettle started its song, suddenly two of his rods went off almost simultaneously. I grabbed one and he took the other and both fish shot off at a terrific lick, luckily in different directions. After ten minutes both fish were still well out in the lake, pulling hard. Suddenly my fish was gone, a hook pull. This left the swim now clear for Nige to play his fish to the bank. Franck turned up for a brief visit in a rattle trap of a Renault 5 that he had bought the previous weekend. By the state of it he was lucky he'd even managed to get it home! Here's Nige in action, the inevitable fag in mouth, sacks in the margins with yet more captures, looking cool as a cucumber. If I needed only one image to covey a typical Nige moment this would be it!

A few minute later one of my rods screamed a take and a strong fish went off like a scalded cat and I�d no sooner got that one in the net, when another of my rods roared off. It was yet another low twenty! This is nice isn�t it, I said, as my third rod roared off. Smaller this time, just over fifteen pounds. I looked around as another buzzer sounded. It had to be one of Nige's as I was now playing a fish on the only rod if mine that was still fishing. This was crazy fishing. The swim looked like it had been hit by a tornado with rods and gear scattered everywhere. Neither of us had a rod in the water! Nige chucked a rod out that still had a bait on: it was snaffled up before he could put the indicator on. Then, unbelievably, the same thing happened to me. It was quite incredible fishing and without question our best French fishing to date. Sure, Steve, Nige and I had enjoyed some pretty hectic fishing on The Starship Enterprise trip but those fish had been a lot smaller. This was carping the like of which we had never experienced before. Here Franck nets one for Nige.

Over in Weedy Corner we noticed Bill was busy baiting up along the shallow bar using the boat. The fresh east wind that had sprung up mid morning ever since we'd arrived was now blowing across from Weedy Corner towards the car park bank where we were fishing. Who says carp don't like east winds�Poppycock!

But hang on�what's going on?�what was the boat doing drifting around in the middle of the lake...Nobody aboard either? Slowly the Plastic Pig drifted towards us across the lake, carried on the fresh breeze. Bill certainly wasn�t in it, but most of his tackle was. Thank God for that favourable breeze. If it had been going the other way, up the lake, it would have been hard work getting it back. As it was he had a long walk round to the car park to wait for the boat to drift into the bank.

Bill departed at the oars for his long row back to his swim while Nige and I continued to fish on through the morning until about midday when a small white and blue car pulled up. It was the Gardes again, the pair that Nige had encountered in the small hours. Having already checked Nige's carte de peche and found it to be in order, they then looked at mine very carefully. It too was OK. They pulled a face and rather grudgingly handed it back to me. They left soon afterwards. Me and Nige felt a beer coming on so we packed the van and set off around the lake to pick up Bill. On the way we called in at the shop for some supplies, and came out to find the Garde de Peche waiting by the van. Were they after us yet again. What�s going on?

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#253 28 Jan 2018 at 4.02pm

In reply to Post #252
The fishing was certainly hotting up now as our morning had produced over twenty runs between the three of us. We spent lunch time trying to assess just how much action we�d enjoyed. So far we reckoned we�d had over thirty twenties and around seventy doubles. I dread to think what we�d have had if the fish hadn�t been spawning, but the fishing was every bit as good as we�d hoped for before we set of, so there was no begrudging them their amorous activity. After lunch we carried on fishing and I joined Bill in Weedy Corner for the afternoon where we continued to catch a seemingly never-ending stream of very obliging carp.

That evening we convened in the creperie for a nose bag and a few ales and made our plans for the next day, which was to be our last. God, hadn't time flown by? I decided to join Nige over in the car park while Bill couldn't keep away from Weedy Corner. It�s the Savay man in him that calls him to fish these weedy hot spots. Once a pads man, always a pads man! Once again we really piled the bait in heavily that evening and Nige and I used up four buckets of groats, and six mixes of boilies while Bill introduced a large carpet of mass baits along the bar at the back of the pads in Weedy Corner. By now his particle mix of cooked hemp, buckwheat and maples mix was smelling really evil but it seemed that the worse it whiffed the better they liked it.

Nige wasn�t going to miss out on an early start so he left us to drive round to the car park where he had decided to kip the night. As he drove off I turned to Bill and asked, �Do you think we ought to go up to the pub then?�

�Well, you�re forced to aren�t you?� he replied.

I awoke to the shrilling of the alarm clock. Four-thirty in the morning and black as your hat. Do I really want to do this? I made a quick cuppa and kicked Bill out of bed, then set off for the hike round to join Nige. The farm dogs were giving it wellie as the dawn light pushed away the night and the crickets and frogs joined in the canine chorus with a vengeance. What a din! How did any of us ever manage to get any sleep at nights? Alcohol I guess!

It was really chilly in the cold dark but I arrived to find Nige already fishing. morning but by the time I got round to the car park swims I was boiling over. He'd been joined by a young French angler who had set up in the spot I had intended fishing. His gear was a mish-mash of unmatched poles, solid glass rods, creaking reels and wonky banksticks. No buzzers and a trout angler's flick-up net. This should be fun! Luckily he 'fished' only for a couple of hours (fishless) before he threw his assortment of gear into the back of the car and left, shaking hands before he left! I jumped right in behind him!

My markers, which I had re-positioned after the canoeists had moved them, were luckily still in place and Nige told me that fish had been showing over the baited patch right through the night, and that he'd had to sit on his hands to keep from casting out. It was as well that he didn�t for at one o�clock in the morning a van pulled into the car park. It was the Garde de Peche who were glad to see that Nige's rods were in the car.

I reasoned that with the activity through the dark hours that Nige had mentioned, it was a good bet that most of the groundbait had been cleared up, so I dug out the throwing stick and topped up the swim with about five hundred boilies. It was hard work and I was sweating cobs by the time I�d finished. If only the dinghy were here, I thought, that would have made life a lot easier. But we�d left the inflatable with Bill over in Weedy Corner. Here he is looking lost at sea in the Plastic Pig. He is baiting up the prominent bar that runs out into the lake from the right.

By the time I�d finished topping up the Car Park swim, it was getting close to seven o�clock. Time for the first run of the day. Yes! They were that predictable. But though we�d fished the car park swims quite a bit by now, it still wasn�t clear what it was about the area that made it so productive. Franck had said that the bottom was uniformly hard throughout this part of the lake, but none of us could find anything other than soft mud and silt, with odd strands of thin, scraggly weed. All we could think of was that we�d created a hot spot purely through the introduction of so much bait and that the carp were now paying regular visits to the larder for a bean feast.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#252 28 Jan 2018 at 3.58pm

In reply to Post #251
Then my ancient pike angling pal came storming to my aid, piling verbally into the younger man with a torrent of abuse. I couldn�t catch what he was saying, but the gist of it was that I was fishing purely for pleasure, and if I wanted to return the carp that was my privilege and if he didn�t like that he could just shove it and piss off...Or words to that effect. Exit younger man, thoroughly well told! These are two the old fella kept from being bumped on the head.

Little did we know at the time but over on the far bank Nige had been having identical hassle with a group of three similarly disgruntled gypsies who got the hump because he was returning the fish. They decided to demand a carp with menaces! Now, Nige may make a stick insect look fat but he's a feisty little bugger and he gave them both barrels! We had not encountered this attitude before though it should be remembered that back then the widespread and now current "No Kill" policy was not even thought of. However, being asked so aggressively for a fish left a sour taste in the mouth. Eventually these guys got into their battered old Renault and drove off.

Nige came around round at midday to tell the story. He had two fish sacked up awaiting photos, but could we hurry as he didn�t trust the *******s not to have returned and raided his sacks while he was away. As it turned out, all was as he�d left it, but even as I was doing the pix, one of these aggressive guys came up and started in on the pair of us. We told them to do one and Nige's two fish, were returned to live out their lives as best they could until September when the vidange would sentence the carp to death anyway. He's Nige with a very spawny twenty with the aggressive guy muttering threats behind him.

And here's the other fish�

I guess by now you can judge for yourself the stamp of fish we were catching. About one in three was twenty pounds plus and they were all very young fish, maybe only six or seven years old. Imagine if they 'forgot' to empty the lake once or twice�Dream on, Kenny boy!

And what of Bill? After we got back from doing Nige�s pix, I reeled in and we both went down to join him in Weedy Corner. It was chaos; all three rods had fish on, and all three were snagged up. It was a job to know which one to pick up next! So we decided to lend a hand and pumped up the Plastic Pig to paddle out to the weeds and free the snagged fish. That was the plan anyway, but when Nige got out to the pads all bar one of the fish had got off and the one that was still attached was buried in the stems of the pads. Bill had had a hectic morning with eleven takes of which he�d managed to land seven, not a bad morning�s fishing for all of us! Here's three shots that show the swim and the action quite well. The bar runs out from the reeds you can see on the middle right of the photo. The pads don't look much but they were really thick, a real pain in the arse.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#251 28 Jan 2018 at 3.56pm

In reply to Post #250
He staggered off, buried under an avalanche of fishing tackle and headaches. It sounded like quite a night to me. I wasn�t sure if I was glad or sad that I had missed it! I found out later that the drinks were called Zombies, which I seem to remember Billy Connolly in his drinking days describing as the most lethal drink he�d ever had. Which explained a lot! So if you want to avoid a mammoth hangover, don�t make the mistake of buying the patron a drink and never drink a Zombie!

By the time Nige finally surfaced into the heat of the day the fishing was all but over for the morning. Once again it had proved impossible to hold fish in an area once they were determined to move off. Fish spooking away with hookbaits and heavy baiting up over their heads seemed to affect them not one bit and they fed avidly in an area for as long as they felt like it, but once they decided it was time to go, that was it. Nothing would stop them. Really curious behaviour. We wondered if it wasn�t some sort of aberrant behaviour caused by the necessity to feed to replace lost energy after the rigours of spawning.

I was just wondering where to go for lunch and if the others would be up to a hefty meal and a litre of wine when Nige suddenly remembered through the haze that he�d booked us in for a meal up at the restaurant. I was raring to go, though the others were not at all keen. I dragged them along anyway and enjoyed the full-on steak-frites and a beer or three. Bill was up for the hair of the dog but Nige was done for finished and he retired to the shade of the camp site to sleep the afternoon away. By early evening he was up and fit for the fray again so we blitzed the three swims ready for an early start the next morning.

Determined to make up for a lost day�s fishing Bill and Nige decided to sleep by the water so as to be ready at first light, Bill in Weedy Corner, and Nige back in his favourite car park swim. I would take the middle area again in front of the camping, which meant I could kip in the comfort of my bivvy. Bill was by now fully recovered and ready for more, but Nige wasn�t risking further brain damage and left the two of us to it, so we wandered along the footpath in front of the camp site up to the creperie. We watched as the sun set in a blaze of spectacular colour and over a beer or several we set about putting the world to rights.

For once the promised early start was unaffected by any outside influences. My morning�s action started at 6.30 am and lasted through to about midday. All told I had eight mirrors on the bank to low twenties and again all the fish came to the right hand side of my marker, even though I�d spread the bait carpet much more widely around the area. It made me wonder if there wasn�t some sort of feature there to the right that attracted and held the fish, but later plumbing and swimming never revealed anything out of the ordinary. This is one of three low twenties I caught that morning.

The fish scrapped like crazy all the way to the net and the ancient pike men danced attendance with one old boy insisting on netting every fish for me and taking some pix too. He didn't do a bad job of it either.

Me and this particular fella had held several halting conversations during the course of the holiday, and his friendship was to stand me in good stead as the morning progressed. I�d had a couple of runs and the old fella had netted and photographed the fish for me. I returned one without problems but as I was about to return the second carp a lively discussion broke out between the old boy and a younger man who looked a bit of a gypsy who took exception to me putting the carp back. I recognised him as one of the hangers-on who�d been drifting around the car park swims in the company of the two jealous anglers we�d encountered earlier in the trip. He got pretty irate and became very threatening. It wasn't a big fish but I was buggered if he was going to get his hands on it. I didn�t need this sort of aggravation.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#250 28 Jan 2018 at 3.54pm

In reply to Post #249
I was trembling with the cold of my first-light dip, but a run within seconds of casting out soon got the blood circulating vigorously. The run had come from the right hand rod cast well off the bait patch, and resulted in another nice low twenty, and the re-cast to the same spot was taken as soon as it hit the bottom, another twenty! Two twenties within quarter of an hour. I moved the other rod to the same general area that had produced the takes. It was odd that takes were coming to the right of the marker, but I figured that I had probably tended to scatter the groundbait that way in the darkness of the early morning, swimming bait-up!

To be honest, I wasn�t bothered where they took, as long as take they did! I was feeling very pleased with myself, a self-righteous reasoning telling me that I would rather be catching carp than sleeping off a wicked hangover.

Suddenly my action finished. It was as if someone had flicked a switch, yet I�d put loads of bait out to try and hold them down in the swim. Surely they hadn�t cleared it all up in less than two hours. I was considering a move to Weedy Corner, though it had been agreed that Bill would fish there that morning. I didn�t think he�d be doing much fishing after last night so and wandered down to the swim. My concern for Bill was academic anyway. There were two pike anglers fishing Weedy Corner.

Late morning and Bill came staggering along with his rods heading for Weedy Corner. I told him not to waste his time and he cursed the drink that had meant a late start and loosing the swim. �Sit down there, old son, and tell me the tale of last night,� I demanded.

Bill groaned at the memory, shook his head in 'never again' disbelief.

"We were up at the restaurant having a quiet drink when we made a fatal mistake."

I knew what was coming next.

�Don�t tell me that you bought the patron a drink!"

�Got it in one,� said Bill. �How did you guess?�

�Don�t ask!� I replied, remembering our similar mistake in September last year, when the Calvados had got the better of Tat and I after we�d made the same mistake. Buying the patron a drink seems to be looked upon as an open invitation for you and him to get smashed.

�That was the start of it all," continued Bill. "Next thing I knew he had this funny sweet liquor going into our lagers and we got a little pissed.�

�A little!� I exclaimed. �Have a word. You were rat-arsed!�

�Oh yes I know,� he replied. �But that came later. It wasn�t there that we got totalled. No, we wanted a nightcap and Nige fancied a game or two of pool so we called in at the other bar at the bottom of the hill. The owner was just closing up but he said he didn't mind serving us one or two. Well that guy did for us good and proper.�

�In what way?� I asked.

�Well,� Bill continued. �We were the only two in the bar. It was late, about 11.00 and the owner was very pleasant and a good pool player so we had a couple of beers. We just wanted to be sociable and though we were only a tiny bit pissed at the time, like a pair of prats we went and did it again!�

�Are you telling me you bought him one too!� I cried, appalled.

�I know, I know,� said Bill. �But that�s what we did all right, and then he reached up and got these big glasses down from the top shelf, dusted them off and started pouring all manner of poisonous-looking boozy things into them. I don�t know what went in so don�t ask, but one minute we were sitting there feeling pretty good about things, still more or less sober, the next we�re pissed as handcarts. I�ve never got so drunk so quickly in my life. Those drinks were absolutely lethal."

Bill shuddered at the memory. �Next thing I know Nige got up to go to the loo and discovered he�d lost the use of his legs! We picked him up and plonked him back on his stool while the barman made us yet another of those...things. We knew if we drank it we�d be out of it, but we didn�t want to insult the guy�s hospitality so we put that one away as well. If anything it was even worse than the first headbanger, but we struggled out of the door before he could do us any more damage and the rest you know.�

Bill groaned, holding his head in his hands as memory piled upon memory of things he�d rather have forgotten. �Oh yes. One more thing,� he said, hoisting his gear onto his back and heading for a swim further down the bank. �We told
him we had a mate back at the site, so we�ve arranged to take you in there before we go back home for an ale and a few games of pool with the local hustlers, so look forward to a very decent headache, you gibber!�

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#249 28 Jan 2018 at 3.51pm

In reply to Post #248
I woke early in the evening to find that the other two had gone AWOL. I guessed that the boozy buggers were up at the creperie, so I took my headache for a walk across the field to look for them. No, not in there. Maybe they were fishing. Out of politeness, I had a beer or two in the creperie, then strolled along the camp site bank and down to the barrage. Still no sign of them so I returned to the creperie to await their return. I had a couple of nightcaps while I waited. Well, you�re forced too!

The sun blazed it�s way down the evening sky. I kept expecting to hear the hiss as it seemed to enter the water on the far horizon. I had been meaning to try to capture that sunset on film since we�d arrived but for some reason or other I still hadn�t got around to it. Too many nightcaps? Perhaps. I went back to the bivvy�Still no sign of Bill and Nige. I stretched out on top of my bed chair and was quickly in the land of Nod, only to be woken by inane giggles and laughter. The lads had returned and they were legless!

Nige, The Pot Noodle Man, was all for digging out the stove for a quick Chicken and Mushroom (or some such repulsive mixture). �Wake up, Townley. Make Pot Noodles,� he yelled." You can sod off for a start,� I replied safe behind the door of the bivvy. Their antics and laughing continued for a while until Bill realised that Nige was too far gone to hold a sensible conversation. In fact he was talking to himself, as Nige had fallen asleep. I tried to stifle my laughter as Bill cursed and struggled with the incredible Puffing Billy of a death trap he calls his cooker. There were farts and groans and mutterings and at last, after a particularly savage jet of flame lit up the night, he gave it up as a bad job. Nige was fast asleep on the dampening grass and Bill, worried about the heavy dew that was forming, man-handled the torpid form into his bivvy and onto the bedchair.

As my two sozzled companions snored the night away, I lay awake planning my attack on the camp site bank swim that we'd marker'd a couple of evenings ago. Nige was planning a return to the car park swims assuming he was feeling well enough! He and Franck had done so well earlier in the trip and they looked to be the hottest swims on the lake, probably due to all the bait that we had put in since arriving.

There was no doubt that the fish were capable of clearing up a vast quantity of groundbait during the brief dark hours, and rather than bait up the camp site swim heavily the night before fishing, I figured it would be best to put the mass bait in at first light, ready for the carp�s arrival mob-handed on their way from the car park swims up to Weedy Corner. I lay there, not relishing the thought of either a row out with the Plastic Pig or alternatively a early morning swim with a ten-kilo bucket balanced on my chest.

Dawn arrived cold damp and drizzly with a heavy dew on the ground. Not the ideal morning for a swim. Then I realised that the Plastic Pig was locked in the back of the van, and the van was nowhere to be seen. God knows where it would be after last night�s revels� Bugger! That meant an first light swim for Ken.

So it was that five o�clock on a chilly spring morning found yours truly swimming frantically out in the general direction of the marker (which I couldn�t see as it was still dark) balancing upon my chest a heaving bucket slopping over with a heady mix of groundbait, particles and boilies. The water was warm enough, but it was dark and threatening and I wasn�t really happy until I was back on dry land again.

I went back to the bivvy some sixty yards away on the camp site and made a quick cuppa against the numbing chill, then dashed back to the swim with the gear to make sure non of the old boys with their ancient pike gear spread themselves out in the pre-baited swim. Of Bill and Nige there was no visible sign, though the groans coming from their bivvies indicated that they were still a long way from a state of bliss!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#248 28 Jan 2018 at 3.49pm

In reply to Post #247
We got back to the lake at about eight o�clock in the evening. The camp site and recreation area was still busy and in the lakeside creperie a party of some kind was in full swing. Somehow or other we managed to get involved and ended up having a beer or two in very jovial company. The locals were extremely friendly and seemed determined to make sure we enjoyed ourselves. A long table held a sumptuous running buffet that seemed inexhaustible and our busy hands made light work of the feast. The convivial party looked set to go the full distance but if we wanted to fish for carp the next day, we needed to get away right now. With great strength of character we managed somehow to drag ourselves away and get back to the lake in time to put a marker on the rough area we had fished with the French lads last year. We felt sure we could pick up fish there, possibly bigger ones that might have been spooking away from the car park swims due the number of carp that had been caught there since we�d arrived.

Monday dawned crisp and clear yet again. This weather was amazing. I couldn�t believe how kind it was being to us. So far all we�d had in the way of rain had been the merest drizzle very early in the morning. At first light Bill, Nige and I stood on the deserted camp site bank gazing out on the unruffled surface of the silvery lake. It was going to be another scorcher. Bill and Nige left for Weedy Corner while I decided to fish Weedy Corner.

Every morning the dawn arrived in company with a crowd of little old French pike anglers, though our jealous friends from the first day were not among them. Once again these ancients were out in force along the camp site bank, which was the most accessible of the lake�s banks. From time to time one or two would wander up towards our swims, and after a bit of ice-breaking we all got on famously together. Far from appearing jealous of us, like others we had met, they were absolutely fascinated by our high-tech carp traps. The buzzers in particular had them totally intrigued and each time any of us got a run they�d be there in numbers crowding around the swim as the fight progressed. At first there was a slightly tense atmosphere when we put the fish back, but gradually we managed to get through to these old fellas that we fish only for the pleasure and that we�d get strung up in England if we went around killing carp!

Down in Weedy Corner I sat and shivered waiting for the sun to kiss the water. It was clear that the fish were not in the swim while the sun was off the lake, but as soon as the shadows shortened and the full heat of the sun warmed the shallow water off the distant bar, the swim came to life. I scanned the water close to the bar through my binoculars and thought I detected a golden shadow beneath the surface, but I couldn�t be certain. Then a shimmering dorsal fin broke the surface like a sail, catching the rays of the sun, sending me a glinting message across the water. The carp had arrived!

The first take came shortly after eight o�clock, a fish that came off in the pads and I realised that I would need to beef up the gear to improve my chances of extricating any hooked carp from the jungle, allowing me to pile on the pressure once the fish reached fringe of the lilies some fifty or sixty yards out. You see, it was no problem getting takes off the shallow bar, which was about 80-90 yards out but the problems started when they got to the pads that lay between the bank and the bar. There was no alternative but attempt to bully a hooked fish through the pads and hope for the best. The stronger tackle did the trick and I landed the next five takes on the trot, three high doubles and two low twenties to 22lb 8oz�Very satisfying!

If I was a very happy with my morning�s fishing, Nige and Bill were definitely not, as the blanked completely when on previous days this had been the most productive time of day. Was it possible that the fish had cleared up all that bait? It looked as if that might be the case. Even Weedy Corner died on me as the morning wore on and soon the fish could be spotted away up the lake, splashing frantically among the weedbeds of the nature reserve as they got down to another bout of pretty serious sex. We were forced to adjourn to the bar once again, and we slept off something of an excess through the boiling hot afternoon.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#247 28 Jan 2018 at 3.47pm

In reply to Post #246
By first light we were back at Weedy Corner. In the early morning light we could just see Nige and Franck across in the car park swims. The sun was just touching the tips of the trees on their bank but the Weedy Corner was sheltered from it�s early light and we sat and shivered in the cool morning. The swim itself looked dead and it wasn�t until 8.00am when the sun began to brighten the water out beyond the lilies that I had the first take off the distant bar. All went well until it reached the pads, then it was a case of hold on and hope. I felt the stems buck and jag as the line tried to cut through them, while the pads twitched and shuddered as the fish fought for freedom down below in the tangle of stems.

I was lucky. That fish came through, but Bill�s first one didn�t, nor did my next take, or the next. It was clear that the pads were thicker than they looked. Then I had another fish that came through the jungle all right, but Bill lost another two, one on my rods after I�d had two takes at once. One thing was certain, the carp were feeding along the bar in a big way but getting them to the bank meant pulling them through the pads, a risky business. It was exciting, arm-wrenching fishing and I got lucky and managed to winkle out three nice doubles. However, I lost three and Bill�s run of ill luck continued; he had four takes but never got a fish to the net.

Nige meanwhile had enjoyed a hectic night in the car park swims and between them him and Franck had landed about twenty fish between them. However, the night was somewhat spoilt for Nige as four of Franck�s friends had arrived and set up as between Nige and Franck and then began casting directly at his marker! Too tired for aggravation Nige decided to leave them to it and leaving his best three fish sacked up drove around the lake to fetch me for a photo session.

By the time we got back they�d moved all his fish, scattered his gear over most of the swim and broken the head of his landing net. Nige was well annoyed by their attitude, and blamed Franck for not putting his mates right. It put a damper on what had otherwise been and exciting night�s fishing. I did a few pix of Nige's fish and then we drove back to Weedy Corner where Bill had caught a couple and lost one too. Here's a couple of Nige's fish.

Our earlier estimate of the possible patrol route appeared to be spot on as it seemed likely that the shoal of carp from which we caught fish in the car park swims at night and through the first part of the morning was the same shoal that eventually arrived in Weedy Corner by mid-morning. As one area went quiet the other one came alive. They must been moving en masse across the lake from the car park to the Weedy Corner. Indeed, some of the carp we caught on the bar behind the pads were crapping out bits of boilie and groats that we�d put around the markers in the car park swims. This seemed to show just how far and how quickly those fish were prepared to move about the lake looking for bait, the two swims being about 500 yards apart!

The next day was a Sunday; fishing would be a waste of time. Anyone who has fished in France will recognise the significance of that statement. Quite simply, the world and his wife, dog, kids etc turn out into the countryside every Sunday whenever the weather is favourable. The lakes are a solid mass of humanity on, in and even under the water and until the activity dies down late in the evening you would be well advised to enjoy the day doing anything but fish. We decided to take a drive in the country, look at some more lakes and enjoy a meal at the little restaurant at Redon that we�d visited the previous year.

The English speaking owner and chef once again laid on a feast fit for a king. I don�t know how they do it for the price, but I�m not complaining. Smoked trout, snails in garlic and then poached salmon followed by Roquefort cheese, a chocolate mouse, coffee, cognac, and then more cognac. On the way back to the lake we stopped to look at a couple of new lakes. There was no one fishing them but they looked like big-fish lakes, assuming they�d not been emptied recently. Local inquiries revealed that one had not been emptied since 1977. If there were carp in there they�d be worth catching. We were almost tempted to go back and get the gear, but recalling last years mad dash about the French countryside when we�d fished four waters in ten days, we decided not to make the same mistake again. Best to stick to the water you know until you�ve got the best from it rather than gad about the country in a mad pursuit of the unknown.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#246 28 Jan 2018 at 3.43pm

In reply to Post #245
By the time we got back to the lake Bill was into a fish. It had taken bait cast close in under his rod tip while the two long range rods cast out to his marker had been ignored. Isn�t that always the way! The fish was just over twenty pounds, at last a big fish for Bill. Meanwhile Franck was chatting to some people in an official-looking van that had drawn up in the car park. They were employees of the Departement and had bad tidings, at least for Franck, and to a lesser extent for us if we were planning a return visit. The threatened vidange was now scheduled for the coming winter. The lake would be emptied and all the small carp would be sold, either for the table or to stock nearby lakes. Any unsold carp would be killed and taken away by the local farmers to be turned into fertiliser. What a bloody crime.

The news upset Franck, and I�m not surprised. Remember that these fish had only been in the lake since the last vidange in 1986 and now they weighed over thirty pounds. Given another two or three years of similar growth they�d go well over forty, I�m sure. We were all feeling a bit down in the mouth when the fish came back to revive us. I had another twenty: a long, pale leather of 22lb 12oz. Nige then had two in an hour, mirrors of 17lb and 18lb 4oz. Both were immaculate, looking as if they�d just been made. We were doing the pix of these gorgeous fish when a voice chipped in, �Don�t tell them they�re going to be dead in November,� said Bill.

By now a definite feeding pattern was beginning to emerge. It appeared that through the dark hours the fish fed their way down towards the car park swims along the west bank, also coming up towards our swims from the long arm leading down to the barrage. They would arrive in force on the markers at around seven o�clock and feed for two or three hours. The amount of bait they could get through in such a short time was staggering, and no matter how much bait we put in, there was no way we could hold them in the baited areas once they�d decided to move on. By now were each using ten kilos of mixed bait around our markers, that�s thirty kilos along a strip some hundred yards long. When the fish arrived I reckon they just put their heads down and hoovered up the lot. It was nothing to get three, four, even five runs at a time, so God knows how big the shoal was.

Our next logical step was to identify where they went after they left the car park swims. You�ll recall that Franck and Pierre-Yves had pioneered the shallower areas in front of the camp site bank when Carole and I had joined them there in September �90, so naturally I was keen to try one of these swims myself. Alternatively there was a weedy corner on the opposite side of the lake that also looked promising. I felt sure the fish were following a patrol route right across the longest bank of the lake from the car park up to the weed beds. From there I thought they were probably heading up into the bird sanctuary where they spent the rest of the day either in frantic spawning activity or in idle sun bathing, for the weather continued settled with daytime temperatures in the mid- to upper-twenties. This may help give you some idea of the swims:

That evening as dusk approached Bill and I wound in our rods (no night fishing remember), but Nige had decided to take a risk and together with Franck, they were going to fish the night in the two adjacent car park swims. As the light went they baited up with three buckets of groundbaits and boilies - about 30kg worth! Bill and I meanwhile planned to fish the next day in a couple of swims we had not fished before near Weedy Corner, so after putting a bit of bait into the general area we adjourned to the nearby creperie for a bite and a beer. This handy little hidey hole was a Godsend as it was situated just a few yards from the lakeside. You can just see Weedy Corner on the other side of the trees on the left of the photo.

We sat on the terrace as the last of the sun�s afterglow left the sky, overlooking the promising weedy corner, where the thick set of pads grew in sheltered protection from the prevailing winds. The swim had look of Savay Lake about it. A carp sanctuary if ever there was one. A long shallow bar stretched out into the lake from the reed beds about eighty yards out and around twenty yards past the pads. Surely the fish would find this weedy corner and that tempting bar very much to their liking. As we sat and sipped we heard several fish crash out along the edge of the rushes that bordered the swim. Otherwise it was very quiet and peaceful and we sat well into the dark, drinking cool beer and listening to the frogs croaking their mating calls into the still air.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#245 28 Jan 2018 at 3.37pm

In reply to Post #244
The afternoon heat was building all the time and the sun beaming down on the bright gravel of the car park itself made your eyes hurt! Only Franck seemed immune whereas we Brits did what we could to avoid the heat. Here's Franck (yellow t-shirt and back to the camera) about to have a word with the guy clocking his rods (my rods are to the right of Franck's). You have to remember that in 1991 modern carp fishing was in its infancy in France and a matched set of rods sitting on front and back bars with buzzers adorning the front ones appeared very futuristic to the majority of the French public. You can almost feel the heat coming out of the photo in this pic.

As the heat intensified the spawning activity seemed to get even more intense and clearly fishing was going to be a waste of time for large parts of the day if they kept this up. The Pig was launched once again, and Bill rowed out to the markers with several slopping buckets of mixed groundbait, boilies and particles ready for an evening session when the cooling night airs might put a stop to the carp�s spawning frenzy. Then we abandoned the lake for the cool comfort of the bar. A few beers we were ready to take up arms again.

Back at the lake we found the swims full of French idiots on planks (sailboards) playing silly buggers. In addition a dozen canoeists were creating mayhem in our swims. It looked as though they�d been designing a slalom course with our markers as one was nowhere to be seen and the other three were way out of position and most certainly not on the baited areas. Fishing was out of the question until the activity died down and the canoes left our swims in peace. While they played silly buggers we tried out the bar on the road across the dam. They had a pool table and Nige's eyes lit up. He is a real pool hall hustler and when he is on song you can't get him off the table. Somehow or other fishing got forgotten for the rest of the evening.

All things considered, I didn�t feel too bad the next morning. Again the dawn was cold and damp, the wind still blowing in from the north. The barometer was high and steady, and though I�ve never liked high pressure in the UK there are times when the exact opposite seems to apply in France. I put the kettle on and had a cuppa and then we drove round to the car parks swims where Franck was already fishing. He just shook his head and blew out his lips in a Gallic shrug. I think he was getting used to our cavalier attitudes towards our fishing. He�d slept in the car park, listening to the fish crashing out in the darkness over our baited areas. Then, at first light he�d cast out and had no action at all. Odd.

I had the first fish while I was still baiting up the second rod. �Good fish,� I grunted as the rod went over. The fish did a fair impression of an Exocet missile and when it turned out to be a small but beautifully formed mirror of around twelve pounds I was amazed as it had put up such a scrap... Small but who cares�I was more than pleased.

The sun was now burning it�s way through the fog and it was getting very hot once again, but there were still carp in the swims. I had a very welcome twenty pound mirror which was followed by twenties for both Nige and Franck, two completely different fish. Franck's was a humpy-backed big scaled mirror while Nige's was almost a pure leather. This was just fantastic fishing. A runs water where the runs were largely twenties.

Once again sport slowed as the morning went on. Nige and I drove into the village for some French bread, cheese and milk and some false caviar. I love that stuff! It�s really lumpfish eggs, but as I�ve never had the real stuff, it�ll do for me until I know better. It is also a fantastically effective attractor and when mixed in with loose feed such as groats or crushed hempseed it really gives the bait carpet a boost. So much so that it is actually banned as a fishing bait in France. Me, I can't stop eating it so it seldom if ever gets as far as the groundbait bucket.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#244 28 Jan 2018 at 3.33pm

In reply to Post #243
We were still busy with the cameras when Franck had yet another run. The fish must have been going around in one huge shoal for us to get such concentrated action. This fish was a long, lean leather of twenty-three pounds. It was clear that the fish were shoaled up in the general area fronting the car park swims so naturally Bill and Nige set up along the bank to Franck�s right. Given the obvious size of the shoal out in front of us we could expect takes to come at any time and throughout the rest of the morning we all enjoyed some hectic action. Often we had several takes within the space of a few minutes. Initially all the action came to Franck�s and my rods. Twice we both had fish on at the same time, but them they moved a little bit further down the bank towards the barrage where they came upon Nige�s baits. Bill, fishing below Nige nearer still to the barrage, remained strangely fishless.

I felt perhaps we were cutting him off from the fish but at last they arrived in his swim in numbers. Bill�s first fish went just over seventeen pounds, the next nineteen. Suddenly the action just stopped dead and way over on the far side of the lake a tell tale commotion told us that the carp had stated spawning again. What to do? Sit it out in the hope that they�d come back, or go and get some nice ice-cold beers down us? No brainer, really!

We sat in the bar�s and had a beer and a light meal. My lack of sleep was catching up with me, and I went back to the bivvy to catch up on some kip while the others went off with Franck to the far end of the lake in the no-fishing nature reserve to watch the carp spawning. The evening was spent pottering about in the inflatable. We all felt that we might have a better chance of keeping the fish in the baited area if we had a big carpet of groundbait in the swims in front of the car park, so several buckets full of groats, buckwheat, hemp and nuts, along with a scattering of boiled baits were deposited around the markers ready for the next morning.

Later that evening a dark blue van pulled into the camping's car park and three Garde-Peche strolled down to the water�s edge. They didn�t speak to us, nor did they check our licences, but it was obvious that they were sending some sort of silent message. They knew full well that we were carp fishing and much as I think we would have liked to fish through the night, it simply wasn�t worth the risk after such a blatant, if unspoken, warning.

The next morning dawned foggy, misty and damp with a light drizzly rain, but it remained warm and humid and, as on the previous day, everything looked and felt very carpy. We were awake before first light, totally refreshed after a restful sleep and were at the car park swims just after dawn. Franck had beaten us to the swims but in the fog was having trouble in finding the little patch of hard ground that had been producing takes all through his campaign on the water. Visibility was down to about fifty yards and he couldn�t see his marker.

Small carp were spawning in the rushes that fringed the bay to my left, but there was no sign of any bigger fish among them. I hoped that maybe they were too engrossed, feeding on the groundbait we�d introduced to the swims the previous evening. The drizzle relented around mid-morning and the sun poked through the overcast. By eleven o�clock the sky had cleared completely and the lake steamed gently as the heat burnt back the mist and fog, driving the dampness from the air.

As the light improved the markers became visible from the bank so we all re-cast our rods, topping up the bait carpet with home made boilies and a scattering of groats from the boat to supplement the heavy baiting we�d carried out the previous evening. After yesterday�s hectic action we were naturally expecting a repeat performance, but strangely, all the English anglers blanked as the morning belonged to Franck. France 4. England 0.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#243 28 Jan 2018 at 3.29pm

In reply to Post #242
I got busy with the cameras, firing off several shots of Franck�s two fish that had been sacked up for some time now, and as the two earlier captures came out of the sacks they were replaced with the two we�d just caught. I hoped there was more to come. Quite a crowd had gathered to watch the weighing and photographing ritual. A couple of ancient, sun browned and wizened pike anglers strolled up the bank to join the throng, affecting an air of bored nonchalance. Their murmurings amused Franck. �They are jealous,� he said to me in English. �I have watched them trying to find out the secrets of modern carping from other carp anglers, but nobody will show them the techniques. They would kill all their fish, you see.�

The wind had dropped quite a bit while Franck and I had been playing the two most recent fish, but Franck pointed out that a few carp had started topping in the general area that I had cast to. I was still gazing through a viewfinder when I heard a run start on one of my rods. I put the camera down carefully (in truth, I dropped it), and ran up the bank to my swim, where the line on my middle rod was belting out. I picked up the rod and just hung on as a powerful fish put as many yards in between itself and me as it could.

Was that fish strong! Back and forth it powered on a very long line and after ten minutes I�d still made no impression on it. Then, gradually the fish yielded to the pressure and fifteen minutes later it was in the deep margins at my feet. Now the fight really started with a vengeance; astonishingly powerful surges up and down the margins; great thick oily swirls coming up from below to flatten the wind blown surface. This was a big fish. Slowly but surely the fish tired, and after a dour struggle lasting about twenty minutes Franck slipped the net under my prize, grinned up at me and said, �Fifteen kilos I�d guess.� Whereupon I did a silly dance, up and down on the spot. A thirty!

But the elation was short lived once I got the fish in the net and had a chance to look at it closely: it was certainly a big fish, but it wasn�t a thirty. I searched around for my scales only to realize that I�d left them over on the camp site. Franck had a set of scales that weighed in kilos and he made it fourteen kilos exactly. What the hell was that in pounds and ounces? I had to know. I borrowed one of Frank�s sacks (mine were back at the bivvy with the scales and the sling), sacked the fish and started to run up to the others for a set of English scales, then turned in my tracks to rush back to my shrilling buzzers as another fish took off with the bait. Another hectic struggle followed: �Do all these fish fight like this?� I asked Franck as he waited patiently with the net. He simply grinned and once again said, �Fifteen kilos!� I told him to stop doing that.

Another ferocious twenty minute scrap, another big twenty in the net. Not quite as big as the first, but it made up in looks what it lost in weight. It was an absolutely gorgeous fish! Leaving Franck to guard the fish still in the net I dashed up to where Nige and Bill were fishing to get their scales. �Any good?� I asked. �Nothing,� they replied. �Then get your arses down to the car park. They�re going potty down there!�

And with that I grabbed the Bills scale�s and Nige�s sling and hared off back to my swim�where my third run of the morning had just begun. Unfortunately it fell off half way in, which was OK, really as it gave me a chance to deal with the other two fish. Though I�d told Nige and Bill that I thought I may have a thirty sacked up, I knew in my heart that it wasn�t going to make it. Sure enough, by the time the lads arrived with their tackle I was just lowering the sling back to the deck. It was a near miss, four ounces short of the magic thirty pound mark. I checked it on Nige�s scales and they told the same story. The other, a very pretty mirror, went 25lb 11oz. I was a happy man, to say the least. Here's the bigger of the two.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#242 28 Jan 2018 at 3.06pm

In reply to Post #241
Somewhat later than we�d originally planned, we set off for the lake, the van bumping and groaning its overloaded way down the potholed track, around to the far side of the lake where Franck was fishing his favourite swim in front of the car park. He gave us his usual quizzical look as if to say, �What kept you?� He�d obviously had some action already, judging by two carp sacks tied to a bankstick in the water in front of him. The fish were both twenties. A nice, heavily scaled 25lb mirror and a smaller near-leather of 22lb. The two twenties were backed up with two big doubles. The English were late on parade yet again. Still, better late than never. Here's Nige getting the news from Franck.

It was time to get some bait out there. Bill and Nige decided to set up in a quiet, rush-fringed bay about three hundred yards up the bank, while I chose to stay with Franck, fishing a nice grassy swim some fifty yards to his left where a shallow, rush- fringed bay swept down from a distant point jutting out into the lake.

We had decided to fish only with boiled baits to start with. If a carpet of groats and particles became necessary, we could always blow the boat up later on. (I say boat but it was more of a kids plaything. We called it the Plastic Pig.) I cast into about twelve feet of water, some eighty yards out. All three rods were baited with fishmeals and stringers, but the free offerings surrounding each hookbait were a mixture of fishmeals and ready mades in equal proportions. Because of our late start it was now really getting hot, well up in the high twenties, with a steady, fresh breeze from the north east pushing into the bay and across the car park swims. It looked very carpy.

Yet I couldn�t help wondering if we hadn�t arrived a bit late, and the activity in Franck�s swim did seem to slow, and then stop altogether as the sun climbed ever higher. A further hour with no fish seemed to confirm that we�d arrived too late. Certainly the car park swims now looked dead, I just hoped against hope that perhaps the others were on fish. That would be some consolation.

Franck and I stretched out in the mid-morning sun. As it climbed towards its zenith so the wind seemed to increase in strength and veer more easterly, blowing more or less straight into our faces. That might stir them up a bit, I thought to myself. Then, suddenly one of Franck�s rods was away. He struck hard and the rod took on an alarming curve as a fish took off at high speed. He was still bent hard into this fish when another of his buzzers sounded. �Oh, Ken, for you!� he exclaimed and needing no further invitation I snatched the quivering rod and leaned into the fish. As on our previous session together at Cannonball, another cat�s cradle situation soon developed as both the hooked fish seemed determined to tangle other lines, no matter how hard we tried to
keep them apart. More by good luck than good judgment we managed to keep them apart and eventually brought both fish to the waiting nets. Franck�s fish was a nice 23lb mirror, while the one that I had played out on Franck�s other rod weighed just under 26lb. A nice start.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#241 28 Jan 2018 at 3.03pm

In reply to Post #240
The Channel crossing was the smoothest so far and I only felt sick for the first hour. What is it about big boats and my stomach? A couple of large brandies soon eased the queasiness and the rest of the six-hour crossing passed quickly. Straight through customs, and down to Morlaix. Here the almost empty dual carriageway leads straight to Rennes and all points south. Three hairy hours later (the motion of the overloaded van had been more sickening than the motion aboard the ferry), we pulled onto the campsite by the side of the lake.

It was a lovely warm summer�s evening, the lake lay still and peaceful before us while thousands of swifts dimpled its surface, feasting on the countless insects and mosquitoes that were hatching at the surface above the bloodworm beds. Daylight was fading quickly, the air heavy and warm, an oppressive heat that brought sweat readily to our bodies as we emptied the van on the campsite. By the time the bivvies were up we were ready for a beer so we set off for the nearest bar in the center of the tiny village.

On the way around the lake we stopped off for a look at a couple of swims that had caught my eye last time. On the far bank, just in front of a small car park, we could see a lone carp angler who was just packing up. I�d heard from Franck that there were now a few French carp anglers on the lake and as a little inside information would come in handy we went round for a chat. As we neared the car park I could see it was Franck himself and he told us we had arrived at a very good time. Just that day he had caught five fish including two over twenty pounds. That'll do nicely. The pub loomed even larger.

Back at the camp site the soft, warm night was alive with the croaking of thousands of frogs, while the crickets kept up a deafening chirrup in the wheat fields behind us. Out in the darkness a carp splashed noisily on the surface. Was that a good omen? Though we should have been exhausted after the long day�s traveling, I think we were all too keyed up to sleep and we sat outside our bivvies in the gentle night air, drinking beer, sharing stories of bygone days and listening to noisy carp spawning among the reeds along the western fringe of the lake. As the small hours drew nearer tiredness caught up with Nige and he turned in, but Bill and I were too gee�d up to sleep and we stayed awake a bit longer chatting and drinking. The spawning carp mocked us. They were at it like knives!

Eventually we too climbed into our sleeping bags, but still sleep wouldn�t come easily. A thousand dogs seemed to be doing their best to keep most of France awake with a concerto of howls and barks. No matter where you go in France there is always one or more dog on a mission to dark from dawn until duck, keeping you and the rest of France awake!

Yet somehow I must have slept for next thing I knew it was 7.30am. The sun was already high above the treeline surrounding the camp site, its heat beginning to burn the morning haze away. So much for a dawn start! Fatigue had caught up with all of us during the night, and Nige looked as if he�d been shot at, but then so did Bill and I. We were not really ready for the carp just yet. Breakfast came first, coffee and croissants at the cafe.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#240 28 Jan 2018 at 3.00pm

In reply to Post #239
We spent hours slaving over our respective stoves, building up a huge stock of air dried boilies but eventually we had to call a halt as the van simply wouldn't take any more. Surely there must be enough by now. The home mades added to the bulk bags of Richworths ensured that we would have well over one thousand mixed boiled baits each per day for the ten day�s fishing that lay ahead. The Cannonball trip had shown just how much these French fish like a big dinner so we hoped that boilies, on top of a carpet of groats and particles, would provide a suitably tempting meal.

In early May Franck rang to give a progress report. He said that the carp in the region had still not got down to spawning but that the water temperatures were hovering dangerously close to the spawning trigger point. It did not look too promising, but there was no going back on our plans now, everything had been
arranged and it was too short notice to change our holiday dates simply to account for the vagaries of the carp�s amorous activities. Still, the last thing we wanted was ten days fishing for spawning fish. I suppose we must have been unique in praying that the cold dry weather which had been a feature of the winter and spring months would continue for a while.

It seemed to take forever to come round but eventually the last week in May was upon us and with it came much better weather, just as we�d feared. In France they were getting daytime temperatures in the low thirties. The carp would surely be spawning by now. Bill came down to Cornwall the day before we sailed and on the Tuesday morning, bright and early, Nige pulled up at my front door in a seriously overloaded van, way down on it�s springs and
groaning loudly. The van, the same one as last year only now a bit more battered and bashed, had been loaned to us by Nige�s boss. Thank-you, sir! Nige keeps the running gear in tip top order, and though it is only a modest a 10cwt Maestro with 130,000 miles on the clock, it�s not let him or us down yet, though in the cold light of a 5.30 start, the springs did appear to be suffering signs of being severely over-compressed. Nige said that it was like steering a boat.

I bade farewell to Carole and strolled out in the crisp early morning air to join the others in the van, and we were away. It wasn�t until we got to the ferry port that I realised I�d left the camera bag behind. That�s a good start. The whole point of the trip was, hopefully, to obtain some decent transparencies of beautiful French carp! So much for my organisational skills.

Picture the scene: It is later that morning. Back at home, Carole has just got up for breakfast. There are my cameras on the kitchen table. �Stupid git!� she exclaims and goes running for the car. Now, it�s about forty miles to Plymouth from our house, and there was enough early morning traffic on the road to make the miles seem twice as long. The ferry was due to sail at 8.00am and it was now 6.45am.

�I�ll never make it,� Carole curses. Our car at the time was a ten year old R5 with close to 100,000 miles on the clock, but that morning it was transformed into a Formula One Ferrari. She drove like she�d never driven before and arrived just in time to get the camera bag through customs and onto the boat, where I was wearing a very long face. The trip wouldn�t be the same without my cameras. But when my name was called over the ship's booming tannoy I just knew that Carole had come to my rescue, bless her.

(The death-defying, high speed rush took it�s toll on the way back. Poor little Concorde first overheated, then stalled, coughed and banged her way back to Fowey and was never the same car again, but in view of the many rolls of film that I shot, I think, on balance, that the car�s sacrifice was worth it!)

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#239 28 Jan 2018 at 2.54pm

In reply to Post #238
ZOMBIES! MAY �91

The previous year�s short five day trip had seen Tat and I dragged from pillar to post by our young French friend Franck and his laid-back pal Jean-Yves. Read back a few pages and you'll find the account of the trip and will see that we ended up on a big barrage lake where we managed to catch one or two at last. Franck in particular had done well, catching a superb looking mirror of twenty seven pounds plus. That fish alone had made me want more as it only served to whet my appetite for the lake. During the winter Franck kept me up to date with developments. It looked as if the shortage of rainfall through the winter was going to postpone the vidange for another year. If we could just get through the winter without a change of heart on the part of the local authority, we would be in with a shout. (Vidange is the French for and an emptying so that when applied to a lake it means a complete drain down to empty the water and the fish. This is usually done so that routine maintenance can be carried out on the barrage or dam. Incidentally, the same word is also used to describe a wine harvest).

I spent the winter months with fingers, legs, arms, everything crossed and when the spring months arrived without any sign of the threatened vidange I knew we could go ahead and book up in anticipation of some excellent fishing. I rang Nige Britton and Steve Westbury, old fishing friends from Cornish carping, and we made a provisional booking for mid-May and a few weeks later we met in the familiar surroundings of our local pub for a few beers and the all-important Official Committee Meeting. In the depths of a fishless winter the distant thoughts of those French carp certainly got our old enthusiasm flowing again, but then, I don�t really need any excuse for a beer and a chat about fishing.

The talk was of maps and lakes, dates and rumours, bait, tackle and all manner of essentials vital for any successful French carp fishing trip. Then, sadly, Steve had to pull out. He and his family were planning an extended holiday to
Canada in May with a view to emigrating there later in the year or early in �92, so Steve was unable to commit himself to any long term plans for a fishing holiday in France as well. A great pity, for Steve had always been very good company over the many years we had fished together (Roche Angling Club lakes, College and other venues in Cornwall) and I knew we would miss his unique sense of humour. One thing we would not miss would be his uncanny knack of out-fishing everyone else!

The fact that the threat of the winter�s vidange that had been hanging over the lake had been lifted meant that there was really only one water to head for. It wouldn�t take long for the lake to get out onto the grapevine at the rate it was producing fish and we just had to get back there before the world and his wife arrived. Further information from Franck only served to encourage us. He�d been concentrating solely on the lake throughout the winter with some success.

The committee meetings became more frequent as D-Day approached, and as expected Steve confirmed that he wouldn�t be able to make the trip. His family�s emigration was looking more and more certain now, though there was no definite date as yet. Hopefully he�d have one more chance to get over to
France with us before they crossed the ocean, but it would not be on this occasion. The sad news was countered by good: I�d managed to twist the arm of Speedy Bill and he�d decided to throw in his lot with us for his first foreign carp fishing trip.

One vital lesson that we�d learnt from previous trips was that we had got the bait aspect very wrong indeed. For a start we�d simply not taken enough bait, and the bait that we did take was far too soft, no match for the hordes of bream, crayfish and small catfish that whittled soft ready-mades and other boiled baits to pieces. So for this trip we agreed that we would rather take too much bait than not enough, and we would need to make them harder as well. In addition was also intended to take several sacks of groats as we knew full well how much carp loved the little yellow grains. Finally we forked out on some back up baits, Richworth shelfies, the Birdfood Enhancer version.

By making the home mades up using an egg replacer and water instead of eggs, and also air drying them till they were rock hard, we were was confident that we�d be able to keep the baits in good condition for the whole of the ten day trip. These would be in addition to the Richworth shelfies.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#238 19 Jan 2018 at 2.33pm

In reply to Post #237
As for Tat, to her fell the honour of our last fish from the lake. There was about ten minutes left before our self-appointed packing-up time when another rod roared off. This one did everything properly. It fought backwards and forwards with long, powerful runs. It boiled on the top and swirled up from the bottom, a typical fight from a big mirror carp. It was a last-gasp twenty.

So that was it. Considering we weren�t taking the fishing at all seriously, we hadn�t done badly, over fifty fish between me and Tat, plus Franck's worthy contribution, with a goodly number of twenties to boot. This was the first time we had enjoyed what one might call a satisfactory French trip. It was as if our previous visits had been building to a crescendo, thought as it turned out the orchestra was only just getting warmed up, with future exciting times just around the corner. We were already pouring over the map in search of future barrage lakes with, of course, a gite nearby.

Cannonball Lake had been very good to us but if it hadn�t been for coincidence and the good fortune of Debs choosing the gite using the �stick a pin in the map� method, then I don�t suppose we�d have fished the lake at all, and I'd never have caught 'Rod's Common'. Lady Luck, I love you!

It's getting on for thirty years ago that the above took place. The lake was well stocked back then and if the carp have done as well in Cannonball as they have done in other lacs de barrage in the area then there will be some right biggies in there by now. Imagine this one at fifty plus!

But much as we�d enjoyed Cannonball Lake, there was one lake I couldn�t wait to get back to, the one we'd visited briefly in September with Franck and Pierre-Yves. The carp in there were piling on the weight but the threat of the lake being emptied again in the winter was always a possibility, so the minute we got back from Cannonball we were making plans to get back to the big windswept lake again, hopefully this time without added sail boarders!

I'll leave you with one final anecdote. You'll have gathered by now that after we left the lake of an evening things took a somewhat 'liquid' turn, yes? So when one morning as John came down to cook breakfast and he couldn't find the butter you'll perhaps understand why, after an extensive search we eventually tracked it down to the inside of the microwave. No idea how it got there�ahem!

So it was all over, time to leave the sumptuous gite, the fabulous little bar in the village, peasants and Pernod, puds and pies, carp galore, great company and a rabid attack dog (joke). Memories galore that still linger even after nearly thirty years.

More to follow.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#237 19 Jan 2018 at 2.21pm

In reply to Post #236
We drove back to the gite and twisted the arms of John and Debs to come for a beer (not really!). One beer became several and we walked back to the gite somewhat unsteadily. The clouds were locking up and it looked like rain but so what. We had no intention of being out in it! We spent the evening doing the usual; eating and drinking and playing Trivial Pursuit, girls v boys. These games became quite ferocious at times!

Time was running out and torrential rain fell overnight. At first we thought that it had not brought the level up but then we noticed that our marker was now a bit further away. An influx of cold water�how would that affect the fishing? Not much as it turned out. We were ultra keen now as we were running out of hours so despite a bit of a headache we got to the lake before dawn. The rods went out and almost immediately two of Tat's were away, another nice mirror and a low twenty. Crazy!

It went quiet for several hours after that so I took the opportunity to go out and dump the rest of our greatly reduced supply of bait around the area and at the same time pick up the marker. For one thing we had the casts spot on by now using far bank marks to aim at, and for another we didn't want to leave our 'litter' in the lake. At last I caught my first big mirror, a fish of 27lb 8oz. There were just a couple of hours of fishing time left to us before we headed back to meet John and Debbie for a last night party at the bar. When one of the buzzers went I struck into what felt like an old sack. It was just a solid weight with only the vaguest pulls at the rod tip. No lunges or head shakes, it just stayed put, not struggling or taking in line, but not coming in, either. Then, as if waking up to its situation, the fish began to move slowly and ponderously to my left on a very long line. I tried to pump it but it didn't want to know and just continued unhurriedly swimming parallel to the bank on the same heading. All I could do was follow along the bank keeping parallel with it. After ten minutes or so I was about 100 yards away from the rods and the fish was still swimming left all the time, getting no nearer the bank.

This was getting ridiculous so I piled on the pressure and the fish grudgingly came in a few yards, still trying to go left. In the end I decided just to hang on and hope that its obsession with taking this course would eventually bring it in to the margins, whereupon I could run up the bank towards it, gaining line as I went.

This slightly dodgy tactic worked and eventually the fish kited into the shallows. There was a big swirl on the surface as the fish almost grounded itself in the shallow margins but then with another surge of power it shot off again into deeper water. Now, I know what you must be thinking�foul-hooked, right? I was thinking the same but after a struggle lasting must have been near on half an hour I managed to sink the net under the fish hooked slap bang in the middle of the bottom lip. A mirror and a big one at that, all 28lb of it! Thank you, Lord!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#236 19 Jan 2018 at 12.37pm

In reply to Post #235
And so we come to the Hutchinson moment (at last you are saying!)

Back at the lake I pumped up the Plastic Pig (which you'll have noticed doubled for an unhooking mat!) and rowed the customary bucketful of boilies out to the general area. That should keep them going. It was about noon. We weren�t expecting fish for at least the next couple of hours, but by now they must have been getting used to finding our baited patch and the first run of the day (mine) came out of the blue. The run was nothing too spectacular and within ten minutes or so I had the fish in close. I waded out with the net, expecting another nice double-figure common, and sure enough my first glimpse of the fish revealed that it was indeed a common.

"Small common," I shouted to Tat, who was following me down the bank with the net. Suddenly the rod was almost torn out of my hands as the fish took fright and for the next twenty-five minutes that fish never came near the net. I still hadn�t cottoned on to the idea that the fish was anything other than a mid-double common and I felt that it must be foul-hooked. The fight could only be described as titanic: I can�t recall a stronger fish in over fifty years of carp fishing. I began to worry that I might never see the fish. Finally I landed the carp but if I�d lost it, I swear I�d have reckoned to have lost a fifty, at least.

Suddenly it was all over. After about forty minutes the fish just stopped fighting and sank almost gratefully into the net. Sure, it was a common, but I�d never seen a common that long before. At a rough guess we estimated it was a yard or more in length. On the scales it weighed 27lb 8 oz and I was ecstatic, as at the time this was my PB common.

I thought it looked familiar�hang on a minute�isn't this the same fish that was on the front of the Catchum catalogue this year? I�m sure I wasn't the only angler in this country who hadn�t gazed with awe and wonder at that marvelous common Rod had caught, and perhaps like me they�d also read Rod�s account of his epic struggle with the beast in his book �Carp Now and Then�. I�d been captivated by that fish from the first time I�d seen the pictures, but never in my wildest dreams did I expect to catch it myself. In fact, I doubt if I ever would have done were it not for the incredible coincidence of Debbie booking that particular gite. See what I mean about Lady Luck? The fabulous creature had gained three pounds since Rod had caught it and it was in the best possible condition. We did the photos and I kissed it full on the mouth before slipping it back, watching with awe as it sped off into the mysterious depths of its watery home. Was it wild? It was absolutely crackers!

Our luck didn�t finish there. We fished on through the remaining week, never fishing more than five hours in the afternoons, packing up at dusk to return to another of John�s feasts. We had loads more fish, mostly wildie-looking commons up to low twenties but I was also lucky to catch another lovely twenty common of 23lb 2oz while Tat had a near-leather mirror of 21lb and ounces.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#235 19 Jan 2018 at 12.27pm

In reply to Post #234
Franck�s paddling became ever more frantic, as he thrashed the water to a foam. God, he was shipping some water. Icy dread and mad panic does that to you! Slowly he pulled closer and closer to safety, the boat getting lower and lower in the water with every paddle. We shouted to him to leap out as he was now in only about four feet of water and, relieved of his weight, the boat would not sink so fast and at least his gear would be safe. We had to laugh! It was hilarious to see Franck zooming across the lake as if the hounds of hell were on his heels. At last, half in and half out of the boat, he reached the shore. Tat and I were helpless, though I don�t think Franck saw too much to laugh at.

Needless to say, the move was a complete waste of time and later that day we all moved back to our usual spot. Sure enough, at about the usual time the fish arrived on the baits. We all had fish but this time they seemed to comprise only smaller carp, mirrors and commons up to about fifteen pounds. We weren�t complaining, though.

We pulled off the water for the weekend, leaving it to the hoards of other water users, though we popped back each evening to keep the swim topped up with bait. A bedraggled Franck cadged a lift from someone and dragged himself off home, vowing to return as soon as possible. Sadly we didn't see him again that trip, though I gave him a bell to see if he was OK and whether he was coming back. He said he was OK but was going to go and look at a car�maybe we'd see him later. Sadly we didn't meet up again until the following year.

Meanwhile the bars and restaurants kept our spirits high until the lake cleared of sailboards, swimmers, water polo matches, rowing boats, pedalos, dinghies and a few insane anglers who were prepared to tolerate all that lot. Meantime we enjoyed a bright sunny Saturday at the gite lazing about in the sun, drinking beers and a glass or two of wine. John did a barbie and Tat nearly wore some of it when she asked once too often, "Is it ready yet?" You cannot rush a craftsman�

The weather deteriorated on the Sunday which kept most of France off of Cannonball Lake, and by the time I arrived late in the evening to bait up, the lake was once again bathed in the peace and tranquillity that we�d become accustomed too. I couldn�t get over that fact that we had such a wonderful piece of Heaven all to ourselves.

Sunday�s dirty weather had cleared completely by the time we got back to the still-deserted lake on Monday. Once again it was set fair, temperatures hovering around the mid-twenties with just a hint of a southerly breeze but it was also very humid and close. Thunder to come? Maybe.

The shower was brief but furious and would you believe I had a run right in the middle of the heaviest rain. I wouldn't have minded the soaking had it been a nice twenty but it was actually the smallest fish of the trip.

The rain passed and the sun came out and in next to no time it was up in the high-twenties again. The sand and the land around us steamed gently in the heat and we got the Trangia out for a cuppa. God's in His heaven, all's right with the world. BTW, you can see by the rocks holding down the chairs and Tat's windblown hair that the breeze was now quite strong and was hacking right into our faces. Lovely!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#234 19 Jan 2018 at 12.22pm

In reply to Post #233
Next fish was another of the long commons for Tat and then Franck woke up at last and got in on the act, with two fish on at once, both upper double figure commons. The way those fish scrapped had to be seen to be believed. I don�t think any of them took less than ten minutes to land and some took considerably longer, the long, lean fighting machines in particular. The fish were obviously going around mob-handed. Two, three or even four runs at once were not uncommon. I doubt if any of us will ever forget the incredible �over, under, knit one, purl one� snarl-up when the three of us all had fish that wanted to fight in the same bit of water. In the margins it was only a few inches deep so you had to go out several yards before you had enough depth to net them. You can imagine the chaos of three hooked carp swimming hither and thither while you desperately try to so out the one to scoop up without knocking off the hook any of the others.

Eventually the snarl was sorted out and we each found ourselves with a common apiece like peas in a pod weighing around the 18lb mark�And while all this was going on, one of the other rods went off. There was nothing we could do about it and eventually the run stopped. In the excitement of landing the three fish we all completely forgot about it. We had sorted our fish out, done the photos and put the fish back before both Tat and I both suddenly remembered the run on one of my remaining rods that had stuttered to a standstill while the fun was taking place. On scrambling over Tat in my rush to beat her to the rod, I noticed that the line was all out, down to the reel knot. We were lucky that the fish hadn�t pulled the rod in as well. I picked up the rod and wound down and was astonished to feel a satisfying thump from the other end. Bugger me if the fish wasn�t still on! Not surprisingly, after dragging the best part of three hundred yards of line around the pond, the fight was anything but dramatic - the poor creature must have been exhausted - but it was a lovely fish, another long common of 23lb 6oz. We were standing around, somewhat shell-shocked, when Franck had another flyer, this time battling for half an hour with a cracking looking mirror of 32lb 2oz. the biggest so far.

We didn't want to be greedy and anyway it was beer o'clock at the bar where we were to meet John and Debs prior to diner, so we packed the gear away in the car and drove down to the village, but before we left I went out in the boat with the bait bucket once again. Franck looked askance at us as we prepared to leave, and given the sport he�d enjoyed after dark the previous evening, I can understand his puzzlement that we were not going to fish the night. However, I can assure you that there was no reluctance on our part as we gladly pulled off the lake to join John and Debbie who were happily enjoying the pleasures of the bar, which included a very friendly dog.

The following morning Franck told us that once again there had been a lot of action on the baited area but for some reason he�d remained fishless throughout the night. However, he had also noticed plenty of carpy activity away down the lake, across on the other bank. That was interesting: perhaps that�s where they go when they�re not on the baits, eh? We decided to move down there to see if we couldn�t pick up the fish a bit earlier in the day, as by now it was obvious that they were moving up the lake as the day wore on, arriving at our baits by mid-afternoon. As Tat and I hadn�t even unpacked the car yet, we decided to drive round the lake to the opposite shore, returning for Franck and his gear when we had unloaded the car.

I dropped Tat and was about to go back for Franck when we noticed that he had already packed his gear and, impatient to get fishing, was paddling his little inflatable plastic boat across the lake. The boat looked to be dangerously low in the water, loaded down as it was with all his gear. �I don�t think he can swim, can he?� I asked Tat. �We�ll find out soon enough,� she said. �He�s sinking!� Sure enough, the inflatable was definitely settling lower in the water with each frantic beat of the oars. I hoped he was going to make it - I didn�t fancy going in for him. By the time he�d paddled about half way across it was clear that it was going to be a close run thing.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#233 17 Jan 2018 at 4.16pm

In reply to Post #232
CANNONBALL continued...

John excelled himself that night. He did his own, very special, very alcoholic, Boeuf Bourguignon, washed down with a couple of bottles of wonderful Bordeaux red so it was no surprise that we were late getting to the lake next morning...again! Franck had caught six carp during the night and lost one at the net. No whackers but all doubles up to nineteen - all commons too, which is unusual. I suppose he felt that we�d been silly to miss out on such hectic fishing, but even if we�d known in advance how good the fishing would be that night, we wouldn�t have missed that dinner for anything.

Tat was raring to go so while I inflated the dinghy, she put the rods together and baited up with hookbaits and stringers. Then I rowed the hookbaits out and scattered yet another bucket of mixed boiled baits over the general area around our marker, which was now a further fifteen or so yards further out after getting repositioned by a hooked carp. It was now around ninety to a hundred yards out in front of the point. Get your faces round that little lot, I told the carp. The weather continued to astound us, bright and sunny with temperatures up to twenty-eight degrees. Not a breath of wind disturbed the lake, yet of the carp there was no sign. All through the morning we waited and waited but by mid-afternoon we were getting worried. Had we driven them off with too much bait, perhaps by using high flavour levels? Maybe there were crayfish or bream on the baits. Why hadn�t there been any sign of fish?

We needn�t have worried: the fish moved onto the baits at about two o�clock with the first run coming at a few minutes past the hour. It was my turn for a run and I wasn�t about to take any chances of Tat getting there ahead of me this time. I was sitting over the rods when the buzzer screamed out. The strike met dogged resistance followed by a searing burst of speed. Small common, I said to myself. Not so small as it happens�. It was a common all right, but it weighed 21lb 2oz. We had just finished the photos when it was Tat�s turn - another common, slightly smaller at 20lb 4oz lb. This was more like it.

Yet another common, this one going 22lb 8 oz, came to my next run, sleek as a snake and as solid as a plank, like all the commons we'd caught so far.

Franck meanwhile had been more or less a spectator while all this action was taking place and soon he lugged his gear all the way around the lake to set up on the corner swim where he had first started, about 100m down the bank from us.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#232 17 Jan 2018 at 4.11pm

In reply to Post #231
John and Debs arrived from their sight seeing/shopping trip at about four in afternoon bearing food and drink. We sat in the surprisingly warm October sunshine and contemplated the white-calm surface of the lake, unbroken by any sign of carp, large or small. bar-taut lines stretching out into the murky green depths. As usual Tat and I had tossed a coin for the first run, regardless of which rod the take was on. I won and was sitting in the carp rolling myself a fag when I heard yelling and screaming. My run! I scrambled out of the car in blind panic. A run...my run! I was too late. By the time I had untangled myself from the snare of the seat belt Herself was well and truly in.

�I know I took the usual wedding vows,� I grumbled. �But I don�t remember one that said you can take my runs.�

Stop moaning and get the net,� said Tat. �This is a good fish.�

Sure enough, from the way the rod was creaking and bending, there was something large and angry on the other end. I waded out into the shallow water to net the fish which was by now on a short line with a couple of turns of the shock leader on the reel. Eventually a gorgeous looking mirror slipped across the net cord and into the depths of the enfolding net, exhausted after such a mighty scrap. She was right, it was a hell of a good fish. 25lb 8oz, a gorgeous mirror carp.

We�d no sooner got the pictures of Tat�s fish finished when one of my buzzers gave a single bleep and I was on the rod in seconds. I struck then held on for dear life as an incredibly strong fish set off for who knows where. Every attempt to stop its first headlong rush dragged the rod down to the horizontal and the reel howled in protest. It was going like a bat out of hell. Tat thought I was messing about but I could assure her I wasn't. This creature was obviously a bit special and I was getting well and truly beaten up! In the shallow water near the edge, great swirls came up from the fish as it fought for freedom but it was to no avail and soon a lovely long common slipped into the waiting net. It weighed 24lb and I gave big thanks to Tat that her wise head had prevailed.

John and Debs were almost as pleased as we were but the afternoon was drawing on and John had dinner in the oven back at the gite. He left us to the last hour�s fishing, warning us, �Don�t be late!� as he drove off. Perish the thought. John�s suppers are legendary. To keep one waiting would be sacrilege. Like many chefs he can be a temperamental old sod. He worked for a year as the personal chef to a multi-millionaire, Mike Robertson. One night he was asked for something special as Mike was entertaining some influential businessmen down from London. John did a crown roast of lamb with all the trimmings. His boss and the guests went for a drink before dinner and got back and hour after John had told them the meat would be ready. They found the crown roast in the bin and a tin of baked beans and a tin opener on the dining room table!

I wanted to get plenty of bait into the swim ready for the next day, so before we left so I rowed out with a bucket full of bait to scatter over a wide area in the general vicinity of where we�d had the take. I didn�t know whether we had dropped on a feeding area by pot luck or were just picking up odd fish on their travels, but either way I felt sure that lots of good quality bait was the answer to stopping them in their tracks. Tat and I left as the light went. As we were pulling out of the lane I looked back to see that Franck was into another fish so we dashed back to do the photos. It was another good twenty. I was beginning to like Cannonball Lake.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#231 17 Jan 2018 at 4.06pm

In reply to Post #230
Monday was a day for recovering but I�d arranged to meet Franck in the bar in the village Tuesday and was raring to go by then. However, by one in the afternoon there was no sign of him. We sat and waited�and waited. Franck being late was something we would have to get used to over the next couple of visits! It was a further hour later that a he arrived moaning that his lift had been late. Yea, OK, Franck!

We got top the lake about mid-afternoon. There was no-one left at the lake and we had it to ourselves. The level was well down, possibly by as much as a third. We pulled up by the sailing club and Franck set up his gear. He had only a longer type of chair and three or four blankets. No bivvy, no sleeping bag and certainly no bedchair. The lad we certainly keen. We decided to leave him to it and told him we would return next morning to start fishing in earnest but before leaving I pumped up or cheapo plastic toy dinghy and rowed out about 80 yards and put a marker on no spot in particular. It was clear from donking about with a lead that the lake bed was as flat as a pancake, predominantly sand and the depth was no more than five or six feet. It was one of those lakes where you make the swim with your bait rather than by casting to an significant feature�The were no significant features! I put about two kilos of frozen birdfood baits into a swim in front of the sailing club. This overhead shot gives you some idea of the lake when full.

We�d taken across about twenty kilos of frozen birdfood baits and ten kilos of dry mix, a base consisting of the two Enervites in equal proportions. These we had bricked giving us about four hundred baits to a six-egg mix, and then air dried for a couple of days before freezing. Given our success so far this year we had such faith in our flavour blend that we�d have been silly to use anything else. However, just as a back-up we took across half a dozen bulk packs of ready-mades which would be soaked in a blend of neat attractors to supply a strong initial flavour leak-off which I hoped would pull fish into the baited area.

In the margins, I noticed huge piles of dumped peanuts. I hoped there weren�t equally huge piles out there where I was going to bait up. Sometimes these huge bait carpets do more harm than good. In fact, I�m sure there has been too much emphasis on the need to bait up extensively with particles - mainly peanuts - on foreign waters. I know it works on heavily stocked waters where you need to keep what could be a huge head of fish in one area, but not all waters in France are heavily stocked. Back at the gite, John was doing his culinary bit preparing a seafood feast of oysters, langoustines and shrimps all washed down with a bottle or three of Muscadet.

We arrived at about eleven o�clock in the morning and Franck tapped his watch and shook his head in silent reproach; we tapped out heads and blamed John. There had been no action the previous night up until midnight when he had pulled in his rods, but during the night he had heard fish jumping over our baits. Bingo! Needless to say he had decided to move down to the arms leading to the barrage. While Tat set up our two rods each, I pumped up the joke of an inflatable and took out another two mixes.

The day was still and calm. We would have seen carp jumping a mile off, but the glassy-smooth surface was dimpled only by small stuff and the odd bream. Of the carp, there was no sign. By mid-afternoon I had made up my mind to move - not just swims, but possibly even to another lake. Cannonball was obviously doing a moody and I wanted to get my string pulled. Tat's greater wisdom prevailed, however, and I was gently persuaded to give it a few more days.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#230 17 Jan 2018 at 4.00pm

In reply to Post #229
I told him where we were staying and that there was a lac de barrage nearby. He did not know the lake but apparently he had heard that it held carp. I told him about the carpers from the UK who were fishing by the barrage. A good sign, I thought, unless they liked wasting their time! I asked Franck if he fancied coming to join us and he said that if he could get a lift he'd love to. Of course, I had forgotten that he was still a young guy and while he was 18, and thus older than the minimum age your are allowed to drive in France, he did not yet have a car and relied on mates to drive him around. I gave him directions and he said he would meet us in the village. I told him to look out for our little R5, which would be parked close to the nearest bar!

Back at the gite John was busy in the kitchen, the aroma of bubbling fresh-ground coffee filling the house. We roused the ladies, ate breakfast, then drove into town to do the shopping for the week. On the way back we had lunch in the little cafe in the village, less than two hundred yards from the gite. The menu offered several cheap but appetising plats du jour but it was the free wine that decided the issue.

The locals seemed very friendly and the food, though simple, was fresh, well prepared and plentiful. Over the post-lunch coffees I tried to explain to the owner of the cafe that we fancied finding some decent fishing. I asked about the big lake up the road and met enthusiastic nods and gestures in response. Judging by the owner�s wide stretched arms, there were big fish in the lake. The locals assured me that the lake, which I had nicknamed Cannonball Lake held some nice carp but warned me that it was due to be drained in the autumn. Better get in there, then, I told myself.

(If you want to find this lake look up the French translation of the word cannonball

)

�Do you like pheasant?� the owner asked us. We nodded enthusiastically. "We�ll try to get you a brace for Sunday tea.� he promised. "Come back later. The shoot finishes at one o'clock and there should be some spare. See you at about two and we'll have a drink and you can pick up the birds then."

We spent Saturday doing nothing in particular, apart from looking forward to a pheasant supper. The weather continued fine with a really warm southerly breeze, a big water feeding wind if ever there was one. I was twitchy to start fishing but it was Sunday and the lake was packed. It would be purgatory trying to fish! So we went up to the bar and sat at one of the small tables outside drinking beer in the sunshine while waiting for our new-found friends to return with the promised pheasants. One o�clock came and went, as did two o�clock. By three, we were getting worried about our supper. This is the owner's missus with Tat, John and Debs looking hungry! There was no sign of any pheasants!

Debbie asked them if they�d shot any pheasants, and this somehow creased them up. The whole bar was laughing. We smiled uncertainly, as you do, and asked them what was so funny. Through their gentle smiles they explained that Debbie had asked them if they�d shot any peasants! Joke over, they invited us over to the boot of a battered old Citroen. The lid creaked up, rust flakes falling onto a heap of dead birds. We were allowed our pick. �Take half a dozen if you wish,� the hunters exclaimed, but we took just a couple of brace. The rest of the afternoon drifted by in yet another haze of beer and food laid on by the patron and his family and later back at the gite by John.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#229 17 Jan 2018 at 3.57pm

In reply to Post #228
In fact finding somewhere to fish is not all that than a tall an order; there are so many lakes and rivers in northern France that you�d need two lifetimes to fish them all. The problem is, when you book a holiday near to a bit of blue you don't really know what the fishing might be like. You take pot luck sometimes and sometimes Lady Luck plays her part (and sometimes she kicks you up the arse!)

By 10.00 that night we were seated in the gite in front of a roaring wood fire with a warning glass of something smooth. Debs had excelled herself. This wasn�t a gite, it was a bleedin� mansion, a huge, rambling affair with solid granite and stone walls and acres of garden. Inside we found oak-paneled walls, parquet floors and old fashioned but comfortable. The kitchen was the size of my front room and the en suite bedrooms glittered in a feast of gold plating, thick shaggy carpets and spotless mirrors. They even had four-poster beds.

We spent the first day doing the chores and finding the best eating and drinking holes. Well, you�ve got to get your priorities right, haven�t you? Eventually we stumbled across a little bar cum grocery store in a tiny hamlet close to the gite. Like many such villages the first impression you get from the locals is one of curious and rather unsettling aggression, but Debs and I started in with our ghastly French and soon the ice was broken. (I kept meaning to take a photo of the outside of the bar but forgot each time. Then when I did remember to take my camera it was closed!)

The first 24 hours rushed by in a haze of good company along with good food, good wine and good spirits. Though not by any means a fishing holiday, I was still eager to go and look at the big lake shown on the map, so at first light I dragged my headache out of bed and travelled the short journey a couple of kilometres up the road. First impressions were not all that encouraging. For one thing, the level was well down, perhaps by as much as a quarter, and the bare sand and mud did not look at all inviting. Of course, I thought to myself, if there are indeed carp in there, at least the reduced level would make finding them a touch easier.

Across on the far bank I spotted three bivvies and away down to the left, at the far end of the lake by the barrage, two more. I got the bins out and saw that they were definitely carp fishing, the car�s number plates revealing their British origin. I spent about an hour scanning the surface, but there was nothing showing. I couldn�t spot any drying sacks or slings hung up to dry, so perhaps the other carpers had caught nothing. As I sat in the car at the edge of the water, scanning the lake through the binoculars, I saw that the English anglers were baiting up from a small dinghy out into the middle of the lake. I couldn�t be bothered to drive all the way around to the other side of the lake to find out if they had caught. Maybe tomorrow�

Sunday dawned bright and very breezy. It I knew France the lake would be alive with picnickers, sail boarders, dog walkers, swimmers; all the pastimes guaranteed to muck up a good days fishing. By mid-morning the wind had freshened up to near gale force and in next to no time the water was alive with the predicted sailboards. I was rapidly going off this lake and if you recall our previous encounter with a moronic sailboarder you�ll understand why. I didn�t fancy a repeat performance, thank you very much. I drove slowly around the hard-packed, sandy banks of the lake searching for signs of a fish or two, but after a couple of hours of fruitless observation I drove back to the gite.

It was still early, the others wouldn�t even be out of bed yet: I decided to make the breakfast. Nothing like the smell of fresh-ground coffee bubbling on the stove to raise weary bones. I stopped off in the village on the way back to the gite to pick up the bread and the croissants. I dropped them off at the gite before walking down the road to the nearby phone box; it was time to keep a promise. I wedged myself into the hot sweaty phone box to let Franck know we were back in France.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#228 17 Jan 2018 at 3.53pm

In reply to Post #220
THE CANNONBALL RALLY: OCTOBER 1990.

You are probably wondering why I have kicked off the next section with a photo of Rod? Well, it is relevant, I assure you, so please bear with me and all will be revealed directly.

There�s no question that the intervention of Lady Luck can play a highly significant part in the complex game that is carp fishing. As the autumn months approached, she was about to deal us some pretty good cards as we planned our third trip of the year to France, though as the plans were laid and the holiday booked, we had no idea that la Grande Dame of carp fishing was getting ready to intervene on our behalf.

For a start, our plans had taken a bit of a set back when we had to re-arrange the dates from the late August until the back end of autumn. You see, for the past couple of years we had booked a proper holiday in the height of the French summer in the company of my old skipper and mate John and his wife, Debbie. We have been friends for longer than I can remember and our holidays together are treasured events, keenly anticipated, then over too soon. We look forward to our trips, not so much for the fishing as for John�s superb cooking; he is a Cordon Bleu chef! Good food, plenty of beer, wine, bubbles and cognac and, best of all, good company, those were our priorities, and if there was a carp lake nearby, so much the better.

Tat and I had been looking forward to the holiday for some time, but then on a drizzly, horrible day in June, when I was gazing forward dreamily into the future, anticipating the good times that awaited us in just two months time, the phone rang and shattered my dream. It was Debbie and she had sad news. �Sorry to mess you about,� she began, �but I�ve been transferred to another prison (don't jump to conclusions�she runs a busy library at one of the UK's largest prisons) and I won�t be able to get away until October at the earliest. I know it�s a bugger, but there�s nothing I can do about it. If you want to cancel or go over on your own this year, we�ll quite understand.�

What a bind. But a French holiday without the great company of our friends even if it was in late October, just wouldn�t be the same. It is what it is and at least the gite would be cheaper. We�d just have to grin and bear it and take pot luck with the weather and the thrice-accursed English Channel. The Western Approaches in autumnal gales are no place for the weak-stomached. Big boats and I definitely do not go together.

So the holiday was re-booked for late October and, true to form, the day of our crossing dawned overcast, with low cloud scudding along on a brisk gale-force sou�westerly. A thousand curses on the weather gods and their wicked sense of humour. I�d spent the previous night unable to sleep, listening to the wind rattling the windows of our bedroom, my stomach full of butterflies, apprehensive about the imminent sea crossing. On the way up to Plymouth and in the hours prior to sailing I spent my time dosing myself with Marzine - God knows why; they never work. I was feeling sick before the harbour gang even let go of the ropes.

Just clear of Plymouth breakwater, with six hours of hell ahead of me before the boat reached the calm of Roscoff found me bent over the rail, calling for Hughie at the top of my voice and once again feeling very sorry for myself. It was a grey and dirty October day and crossing the Channel in a force eight gale, cursing stupid Debbie and her stupid job, I heaved my breakfast at the horizon with surprising gusto. Meanwhile in the warmth of the bar, the others sipped their brandies and poured over the map planning the route to the gite some three hours away from Roscoff. Up on deck, I was ready to die.

Meanwhile Lady Luck sat poised to enter the fray. In the past, we�ve always left the booking of the French holiday cottage (known as a gite) to Debs. She knows how important the fishing is to us but she cannot always swing it that we get a gite close to a big bit of blue. Mind you, Debs has an uncanny knack of picking the good ones and in fact she told us that the one she'd booked was not far from a 350-acre lake in northern France. �Pack your rods,� she said. �I�ve found a big blue bit for you just up the road from the gite.� Good girl!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#227 17 Jan 2018 at 3.50pm

In reply to Post #226
Tony Wenkle...There's a blast from the past. Sadly any chance I had of being published has disappeared methinks.

blackfield

Posts: 2449

#226 16 Jan 2018 at 8.39pm

In reply to Post #225
Thanks Ken..... I know I have said this before... you really need to write that book! Tony Wenkle would love it! ( That might just go over the heads of our younger members on here)!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#225 16 Jan 2018 at 5.20pm

In reply to Post #220
More to come soon...

Chrisyp83

Posts: 3

#224 16 Jan 2018 at 12.13pm

In reply to Post #223
Thanks Ken

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#223 16 Jan 2018 at 11.50am

In reply to Post #222
Sadly I am no longer a member of Roche AC and have not fished WR for about three years, so my knowledge of the venue is far from current. That said, I should imagine the fish still get caught from the usual spots and wouldn't mind betting that few members fish the unusual ones!

Glad you are enjoying my posts.

Chrisyp83

Posts: 3

#222 16 Jan 2018 at 11.31am

In reply to Post #94
Even though the fish in Rashleigh are now different, would you say the swims you discuss would still be the best starting point on this lake?

Chrisyp83

Posts: 3

#221 16 Jan 2018 at 9.53am

In reply to Post #101
Really enjoying reading all of this. I grew up doing a lot of time on the duck pond. Never had any of the really good ones but mates had really good ones like starburst, pet and big common to name a few. I haven't done any Carp angling for a long time but my 7 year old recently spotted all my old kit and has been keen as mustard to go so have ended up applying to join RAC. Never joined back in the day but do remember sneaking in to "treesmill" one day to have a look around and seeing you pop out of your bit you not looking too impressed!

Really looking forward to getting up to Rashliegh as, although the fish are now different than back along, it is somewhere I always wanted to fish. Really enjoying reading about places I can relate to.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#220 12 Jan 2018 at 3.28pm

In reply to Post #219
This trio of carp was just the start and yet more long, grey, humpy-backed mirrors came along shared among the three of us. Often carp would pick up two or three hookbaits at the same time and we�d play cat�s cradle with the lines. And what of Tat? Poor lass. So far she�d not had a fish. I said, �Never mind, Lass. You can have the next run on my rods.�

But then the lull set in. We sat and waited...and waited. By now the morning coffee and the wine was getting to her and she legged it for the toilet block at the camp site. I suppose you can guess the rest. The run on her rods came just after she�d passed out of sight and by the time she got back the fish was in the net. Just over nineteen pounds...Bladders can be a bloody nuisance!

Our last day was coming to an end. We had to catch the afternoon ferry and just one fish for Tat would be the icing on the cake. But wasn�t to be: the fish moved off, then a windsurfer picked up all our lines and dragged the rods along the stoney shoreline. He was eventually brought to a grinding halt after a laughing Pierre-Yves struck him off his silly plank. I told you he was laid back, didn�t I? The antics of the windsurfer had me spitting blood, yet this oh-so-calm giant treated it all as some huge joke. Here's the **** on a plank just about to wipe us out!

And so ended another French carp fishing trip. We�d not been what anyone would call going for it, but we'd seen and caught some cracking fish and this was a lake we would definitely return to. None of the carp weighed under over fifteen pounds, which, after such a short growing period, shows the enormous potential of the lake.

It was a shame Tat hadn�t caught this trip, but all that was soon to be put right. We were coming back to France in less than a month in the company of our good friends John and Debbie Affleck and we�d booked a holiday cottage near to another unknown -to us - of a French lake. It was on Franck's to do list, another big blue bit on the map, which would prove to be rather interesting to say the least.

More top follow including a 'wildie' over a meter long!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#219 12 Jan 2018 at 3.25pm

In reply to Post #218
He didn�t need to tell us that. It was certainly a big twenty, if not a thirty pound plus, fish. Franck�s sorrows did not have long to fester. As he was rebaiting another rod was away. Though the scrap was fierce, it was not in the same league as the earlier lost fish, and eventually Pierre-Yves sank the net under a lean grey leather of just on seventeen pounds. It was then that Franck just happened to mention that this was only one of three similar sized fish since first light. Pierre-Yves hadn�t been idle either with a nice brace of big doubles. This was what had we been missing!

I�d not realised how huge the water was the previous evening. Now in the blustery yet clear morning, under a canopy of fast moving, white fluffy clouds, the lake was revealed in all its glory. It was absolutely huge. Dancing on the fresh waves about ninety yards from the shoreline I could just make out the bright red markers that the lads had put out. They looked pathetically close in, given the size of the lake. But there were fish on the bait, lots of them. They were crashing out at regular intervals between the markers, stirred into feeding on the wind that was pushing hard into our faces. (The bright bit of bank across the lake is a car park and in less than nine months that area would see more carpy action than we could ever have dreamed of.)

With trembling hands we put the rods up, baited the hairs and sent the baits flying out to the right hand edge of the baited patch. But our tardy start was going to cost us dear. By the time our rods were out and fishing, the carp had either finished up all the groundbait, or had decided to move on as the wind swung around through 45 degrees. Damn that Calvados!

By mid-afternoon, it was clear that the carp were feeding in one huge shoal that had moved onto the baited patch at first light, fed until the bait was finished, and moved on. In the immensity of that lake, they could be anywhere, most likely as far away from us as it was possible to get. But it was a pleasant day, and Pierre-Yves opened a couple of bottles of wine to blow our cobwebs away. The freshening west wind helped, and by the onset of darkness we were ready for some more good food and wine back at the hotel.

We enjoy catching carp on our own terms, and if that means we loose out on a few fish, well so be it. Tat needed a decent rest, and a knife-edge, go-for-it carp trip isn�t exactly restful is it? So that evening, to the slightly bemused stares of the two French lads we once more decamped for warmth and comfort of the hotel. More langoustines, oysters, Muscadet and the patron�s wicked �special� Calvados. Carping isn�t everything.

We were very good that night and got to the lake at first light as promised. The wind had shifted back to the north west again and was really hacking onto our bank. It had a chilling cut to it so while Tat put rods out, I put up the bivvy to keep the worst of the wind, the rain and the storm-blown sand. It was much colder than the day before and the passing showers kept us cooped up for most of the first hour. Eventually the sun broke through the clouds but when the wind freshened even more it began to look really looked carpy.

Then three buzzers went off almost at once. The fish had arrived. Franck took a lovely pale mirror of eighteen pounds while Pierre-Yves and I both had upper doubles. Both the French lads were surprised at the size of the carp. Remember that the lake had been emptied only four years earlier and the existing carp removed and sold. The lake had then been restocked, but only with small carp of between one and two pounds in weight. Yet they�d grown to this size already. And there were more surprises still to come. Franck�s next fish was a staggeringly beautiful mirror of 27.08lb while my next fish went 15lb.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#218 12 Jan 2018 at 3.24pm

In reply to Post #217
Now I�m a reasonably easy-going guy: I can take the odd set-back or two, but this was getting beyond a joke. So far we�d driven the best part of five hundred miles and fished for about twelve hours, and the trip was half over already. To be honest I was resigned to our fate but Franck wasn�t beaten yet. Out came the map again. He pointed to a big blue bit and said, this lake is not too far away and we�ve got a good chance of a few fish. He also told us that normally the lake is emptied every two years but for some reason or other it had been missed last time around. There are some nice doubles in there but it doesn�t get a lot of attention as the carp are mostly small; too small for the local carp anglers.

Well, it had to be worth a try I suppose and as we were running out of days we just had to bite the bullet and drive and eventually we ended up on a big, wild and windswept barrage that looked daunting in the extreme. Franck had warned us that there was no chance of fishing the nights as the lake was patrolled by the Garde de Peche who weren�t known for their understanding attitude towards rule breakers. This was obviously not going to be our lucky trip and Tat was looking a bit fed up. After all, this was as much a holiday as a fishing trip for her, and the long slog of the work-year and the extra pressure she was under had dragged her down a lot. To be honest a comfy bed, a shower and a decent night�s kip appealed to us both a dammed sight more than any carp at that moment. So while the two French lads set up their bivvies on the adjacent camp site, Tat and I took off in the direction of the nearest town in search of a small hotel and a decent meal. We found a nice one not too far away. It was called La Grenouill�re and the bar looked most welcoming! Perfect!

Too perfect in fact with a restaurant specialising in seafood and a huge set menu for less than fifty francs. The patron also just happened to be the local connoisseur of the local spirit, Calvados, keen to impart his enthusiasm to all English whisky-drinking heathens. He found willing pupils in us. We enjoyed a long lazy supper of fresh local seafood accompanied by a couple of bottles of crisp dry white wine, then adjourned to the bar for a swift nightcap. The hectic day was catching up with us and a soft bed waited.

But if we�d hoped for an early night, we were to be disappointed, for we made the mistake of buying a round of drinks for the patron and his family. Apparently that is the signal for a proper session to get underway and Tat and I weren�t allowed to go to bed until we�d finished a bottle! We pleaded an early start, but to deaf ears. We were both barely sober and the proposed early start saw us arriving, bleary-eyed at the crack of ten-o-clock.

As we drove into the camp site, I could see that the two French lads' bivvies were not pitched and we could not see their car either. The lake looked carpy as hell with a fresh breeze blowing into the camp site bank and though the level appeared to be down a bit, it did not appear too drastic. Just then the breeze carried the faint trill of a bite alarm, mocking our laziness and liking for strong drink! As we cleared the trees we could see that down on a sandy beach revealed by the lower level Franck was playing a fish. His rod was bent around in an alarming curve that seemed to give the lie to his claim that it was a small-fish water. I know French carp of all sizes pull like carthorses, but this was no small fish. As it neared the net it gave a last-minute surge and was gone, leaving the briefest impression of a long grey flank. Franck threw down his rod and cursed vociferously, luckily for Tat's sensitive ears, in French.

�I�ve been playing that fish for half an hour,� he yelled, throwing his rod down and giving vent to a stream of violently expressive French. I don�t think Tat understood a word of it, but just in case he apologised.

�Sorry,� he muttered sheepishly, �but that was a very good fish.�

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#217 12 Jan 2018 at 3.23pm

In reply to Post #216
I wondered about the barrage Geoff Shaw had told us about for our trip in May. Even small fish would be better than nothing. Franck pulled a face, and shook his head. It was clear that he didn�t fancy that suggestion. The level was way down, he told us, with a lot of thick mud in the margins. Fishing would be messy and difficult and the rewards, though plentiful, would be small. Out came the map and we had a ponder. There is so much water in the region that it�s hard to know what to do next. We�d looked at another water not too far away, in May. Franck knew the lake but hadn�t fished it, though he�d been meaning to. Here was his chance! We decided to pack up, have lunch then have a look around.

The gear was reluctantly packed away and we carted it back across the fields. By the time I�d negotiated the electric fence (which gave me one hell of a charge), the mosses, the cow pats, the ditches and the barbed wire, and piled the mountain of gear into the back of the blisteringly hot car, I was sweating like a pig and thoroughly cheesed off. Tat wasn�t very happy about things either but then the Happy Postman suggested a few beers to cool off and we were off and running�literally! By the time Pierre-Yves and Franck joined us in the bar we were already going for it!

One beer led to another and a good time was had by all. Fishing got forgotten for the day. We camped in the official site that night just a few yards from a bar on the side of the lake. The food was cheap and wonderful, Pierre-Yves put away an indecent amount of beer and still stayed sober, and we slept the sleep of the just with the rods tucked away in the back of the car. I like little sessions that just come creeping up on you out of the blue. Even the hangover seems tolerable!

Another clear fresh morning. After a breakfast of croissants, coffee and paracetamols we�re off in convoy, heading north to the new lake. Hope is doing it�s best to spring eternal, but is loosing a battle with my pounding head. Yet as the car flashes along mile after mile of poplar-lined, arrow-straight roads I can�t help feeling the surge of nervous anticipation as we near our destination. Even the headache dims to a distant memory of what was once a life threatening seven or eight on the Richter scale. What awaits us just down the road where the lake lies tucked away behind the tiny village, with it�s medieval skyline of church and chateau? In the square the bars wink their neon signs at us, but we can resist their temptation for the time being. The lake beckons, all two hundred and fifty acres of it, and almost completely covered in lily-pads.

The lake was still brim full. That�s unusual, for by September most French lakes are low from farm abstraction and everyday domestic use. And there was something else that was strange about the water. There was no one fishing, sailing or canoeing on the lake. I felt a sudden foreboding. A prominent notice confirmed my worst fears. No boating, fishing or swimming it said, and a jumble of official looking French explained that the water was contaminated with some toxin or other. Plan C up the spout!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#216 12 Jan 2018 at 3.22pm

In reply to Post #215
As if to complete the sense of elusive unreality, a buzzer sounded, soft and muted, echoing in the hazy mist off the lake. Down the bank Pierre-Yves was playing a fish while Franck danced impatient attendance with the net. I went down to take some pictures and by the time I�d walked the hundred yards or so to his swim, the fish was in the net. A nice long leather of about eighteen pounds. �That�s a good start� I thought to myself. I noticed the lack of urgency in getting the carp weighed and returned and wondered for one horrible moment if they were going to kill the fish. But no, it was just that typically French laid-back attitude.

Eventually Franck got around to wetting a sling and doing the honours, while Pierre-Yves simply carried on re-baiting and so on. The fish was returned without ceremony or even photo. It isn�t that Pierre-Yves is in any way blas� about his fish, it�s just that he rarely takes pictures of them, happy simply with the memory of the sport they�ve given him. The sun rose and the heat of the day took its toll on the feeding carp. In the full light of day we could see pads stretching as far as the eye could see. The racket of carp sucking at the pads slowed, then stopped altogether. Perhaps the fish that Pierre-Yves had caught indicated their willingness to feed more on the bottom than at the surface.

That proved to be the case; Franck and I both had fish by mid-morning, while the oh-so-cool Pierre-Yves had another big fish which was returned in the same off-hand manner that we were to come to know so well. He really is the most relaxed bloke I�ve ever come across. I�ve seen people fast asleep who are more uptight! I�d love to fish a pressured English season with the guy. If the blanks started to get to me I know he�d soon help me get things into perspective. As we talked about this and that in his halting English and my broken French, he told me that he was a postman for a living. Beats me how he ever finds the energy to get out of bed at the required early hour, let alone trudge the streets delivering the mail. It wasn�t until later that he told me that he does most of his work from a post office van and had so far taken three months paid holiday this year. I asked him if he could get me a job like that!

The day was turning into a scorcher and in the heat of the day Pierre-Yves was revealed as a man after our own hearts. He likes his beer! Funny, that: Tat and I were just thinking about lunch! We were about to wind in when I noticed two gendarmes down the bank and headed our way. No problem of course. Our tickets were in order and night fishing was allowed. But it�s always the same isn�t it? You always feel guilty when you see the Old Bill, even if you�ve done nothing wrong. These two fetched up at Franck�s bivvy. God, they did look menacing. For a start they look so impressive: as if they�ve just been poured into their uniforms and told not to get them dirty. The cap may look a bit silly, but the guns they wear on their hips certainly don�t. These guys meant business. First of all they wanted to know if we�d been night fishing. I was about to say that yes, of course we had, and why not? when Pierre-Yves stepped in with a denial.

�Good,� they said. �Night fishing isn�t allowed on here any more.�

Franck gulped but said nothing. He�d been fishing the nights right through the summer, confident that he was allowed to do so. Then the gendarmes explained that the mayor had given permission only for a one-off trip by a well known French journalist. Night fishing was definitely NOT allowed! To rub salt in the wound they told us we couldn�t camp on the water. They called it `camping sauvage� savage camping? I think not! Still, they were the ones with the guns. The bivvies must come down. We can fish till a few minutes after eight that evening and then vacate the water: very official. The only camping was on the official site at the other end of the lake, about four miles from the nearest fish. I thought it was all going too smoothly!

We obviously couldn�t risk carrying on fishing and camping here now that the gendarmes knew we were in the area. We were at a loss as to what to do next. Franck said that many of the lakes he knew of were fishing poorly. We suggested going to Tremelin as we�d originally planned, but then Pierre-Yves, who lives not two miles from the water chipped in with the news that there was a sailing regatta there this weekend! Looks like Plan B was a no-no.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#215 12 Jan 2018 at 3.21pm

In reply to Post #214
We made up the first dozen or so mixes at home and froze them prior to taking them over in a cool box. We also several pounds of dry mix and the necessary flavours should we need to make bait on the bank. I rang Franck just before we left and arranged to meet him on the barrage on the Monday evening. The early boat from Plymouth would give us plenty of time to get down to the lake before nightfall, or so we thought.

Gales in the Channel are no great respecters of carefully laid plans. The crossing was horrendous and I spent the trip calling for Hughie. Why do I get seasick on big boats? I had spent much of my life bouncing around on the �oggin on a poxy fishing boat and hardly ever got ill, yet the minute I step onto a bloody ferry, up comes dinner. Tat, as usual, took all that the Western Approaches had to offer without batting an eyelid, and spent the roughest part of the crossing with her nose buried either in a book or a glass of cognac, or both.

If the crossing was bad, then the delay at the customs was even more frustrating following a terrorist scare, so the gathering gloom of an early autumn evening saw our overloaded little jalopy pounding it�s willing heart out to get us to the lake before it became too dark. We made it with an hour to spare, but we were still half an hour late for our rendezvous with Franck and his friend. There was no sign of either of them. Perhaps they had got tired of waiting. I was a bit concerned, but I needn�t have worried. About half an hour later Franck drove up to the lake accompanied by a man-mountain who made Grizzly Adams look like a stick man. This was Pierre-Yves, all eight feet thirteen inches of him, blotting out the sun and grinning through a thick black beard. Giant Haystacks, eat yer heart out. I could see Tat giving him sideways looks and wondered what she was thinking. It didn�t do to ask!

The two French lads had already set up their bivvies at the far end of the lake, and prepared a swim, all carefully pre-baited for Tat and myself. Wasn�t that nice of �em; all we needed to do was cast out, put up the carp house and get stuck into the beers. The lake here was long and fairly narrow, perhaps some two hundred yards across. Away to our right the barrage that formed the lake rose towering into the darkening evening sky. Lily pads stretched from one bank to the other, with narrow clear channels and small cut-out spots where anglers had prepared a swim. I could see why Franck had suggested we come prepared with heavy line as clearly any carp we hooked would be buggers to extract from that jungle.

Soon the barbeque was glowing warmly and the ale was flowing. The evening was warm, perfectly still and I could hear plenty of carp 'clooping' at the undersides of the pads. In the field behind us cattle shuffled noisily in the quiet air, and from far off came the noise of the occasional heavy lorry as it rumbled through the night. A family of coypu made it�s way along the far margins, returning to its burrow for the night. And I thought the rats at Savay were big!

The gales of the Channel had been left far behind us and in the warm stillness of the twilight the stars gradually emerged and a big, full moon illumined the lake with it�s ghostly light. In a state of utter peace and contentment we feasted on barbequed steaks, burgers and sausages, washed down with rich red wine, the odd beer or two and a final cognac as a nightcap. Bliss!

The carp appeared to be totally preoccupied with their feast of snails - either that or they weren�t aware of the part they were expected to play in the proceedings: for the time being, who cared? The sunrise next morning was truly spectacular. The paint-brush of creation had prepared a canvas of colour over the lake, a hazy mingling of soft golden rays that lit the motionless, sparkling surface like a Turner seascape. I dashed off a few shots with the transparency camera knowing that no photograph could ever do justice to such a splendid dawn.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#214 12 Jan 2018 at 3.19pm

In reply to Post #213
CARP AND CALVA: EARLY SEPTEMBER 1990

I came back from that pioneering trip in May with mixed feelings. Sure, we had caught carp fish from every water we had fished, but I couldn�t help feeling that we�d fished too many! Four waters in ten days, seven hundred miles solely in Brittany?! We had not exactly given the lakes and rivers we had fished much of a chance, had we? Yet with no first-hand knowledge or information to guide us, we managed to persuade ourselves that we had done as well as could be expected. It would be different next year, we said. We�d pick a water and stick to it, hopefully having found out a great deal more about fishing in France than the second-hand gossip that had guided us through our first trip.

My incessant chatter about how wonderful our first trip had been was now getting to Tat, and when she found herself with some leave due, I was on the phone in no time, and soon a short five-day trip was upon us. In retrospect our first trip had really been a bit of an anti-climax and though we�d returned, putting a brave face on it in front of our mates, in truth we all knew that we had done a lot of things wrong. Something of a bull in a china shop attitude had prevailed. If there was a lesson to be learned it was surely that we should concentrate on known waters, rather than blasting off into the blue to God knows where. Sure, we�d caught fish, but with a bit more thought and planning wouldn�t we have been more successful?

The trials and tribulations of fishing abroad are fairly obvious and need no stressing, but if you can learn by your mistakes, then no experience can be called wasted. One of the first lessons that anyone should learn, especially on their first or second trips to France, is to pick a water with a reputation for holding the size of fish you are interested in. If you are simply after singles and doubles, fish any bit of blue you can find. Carp are everywhere in France, in the rivers, in the lakes. A pin in a map will suffice. However, if it is bigger fish you are after then head for the better known waters with an established reputation and keep your ears peeled. You cannot get too much info!

With this in mind, Tat and I planned to fish Tremelin. We�d already heard from Franck that the lake was less now hectic than it had been in May and the park rangers seemed to have become more accommodating. And it was after all, a known big-fish water that had produced some glorious fish during the summer months. It�s not up to Cassien standards of course, but a few of the big thirties had been caught, along with a forty-pound mirror and stacks of twenty-pound fish and big doubles to make up the numbers. That would do nicely.

I wanted a few fish for Tat in particular. It had been a long, hard year for her, what with one thing and another. She holds down a job that carries a great deal of responsibility and recent changes in personnel and working practices had meant long hours and some pretty trying and stressful times. Her fishing had suffered as a result.

Since we�d got back in May I�d been writing regularly to the young Breton, Franck Martin who�d been so kind and helpful to us earlier in the year. Though at the time he was a comparative newcomer to modern carping, he was learning the ropes very quickly. The area around his home is rich in lakes and rivers, and the temptation to flit from water to water, never getting to know any particular lake well enough to get the best from it was an obvious one. Sensibly he was learning to walk before trying to run.

Franck had fished Tremelin a fair bit, accompanied by a friend from Iffendic who was learning the ropes and between them they had notched up some very impressive numbers. However, one very special lake they�d discovered not far from Chateaubriand had been very kind to the pair and a phone call just before we were due to leave for Tremelin soon had us in a maze of indecision. Franck was eager for us to come over and join him on this new lake. What to do? It was no contest really; you go with the local knowledge. What swung it was the fact that night fishing was now allowed on Franck�s water following an arrangement with the local mayor.

The two French carp anglers had caught loads of fish, including mirrors to 33lbs and commons to 26lbs with an impressive average weight of eighteen pounds. The plan to fish Tremelin went sailing out of the window. In the meantime we got the gear ready and made up a few mixes of the fishmeal mix that we�d been on all year. Basically this was a basic red fishmeal base with dried seaweed and a five grams of green lipped mussel extract and flavoured with strawberry and an essential oil. This was the same mix we'd used in the UK and it had done OK so we felt no need to change it for France.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#213 11 Jan 2018 at 4.49pm

In reply to Post #212
To complete the sorry story, yet more boat anglers appeared out of the mist to drop anchor right in front of us. It was the last straw. We didn�t know it then, but we do now. Weekends, particularly Sundays and public bank holidays are bad news in France. The whole nation goes fishing. And yes, you guessed it: it was a bank holiday and the French anglers were out in force.

The gods had conspired against us to make sure that we wouldn�t get any more chances. The night fishing was out of the question and with this lot creating mayhem in our swims, to all intents and purposes the trip was well over. We were booked on the ferry the following day. The three of us went up to the town for a beer that evening. We had a meal and several beers and I watched as some French guys took on Nige and Steve at table football, you know the one, with all the little model players mounted on twist bars. Be warned! The French take this game very seriously so don�t bet against them. I�m not really a betting man, but I won a few beers on the French lads that evening.

I awoke the next morning to find that so scrote had stolen all my bankside gear. Luckily I�d taken the rods and reels in and put them in the back of the bivvy. That's the final straw�it was all over, time to go home.

So, what had we gained from our first French trip? Well for one thing, I couldn�t wait to come back again. I�d had such a good time that it didn�t matter that the fish we�d caught were small, and for a first visit we could hardly call it a flop, could we? True, we hadn�t caught the big fish we�d hoped for, but on the other hand, we had visited four different waters and caught fish to double figures from each of them. Many people go to France and never even get a run. We�d eaten food fit for the gods and drunk more than enough to drown them. Would we go back? Too right we would. But not on a French bank holiday!

I think it might be fair to suggest that this account of our first trip to France might be fairly typical of many back then, nowadays it's all there on a plate for novice traveling carpers. In hindsight - a wonderful thing - our expectations were set too high and our experience level too low, and as a result we did it all wrong, dashing around from pillar to post, fishing too many waters and not getting to know any of them. But it had been a learning experience and the mistakes we made this time, we hopefully would not make again. Tat and I were going over in the autumn to fish with Franck Martin who had a couple of lakes he wanted to show us.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#212 11 Jan 2018 at 4.42pm

In reply to Post #211
I needed no more asking as the photos were very impressive, many being over thirty pounds with several that were well over forty, possibly even more. Sadly he was a bit miffed with Dutch and German anglers breaking the rules by night fishing. In the past the gendarmes had cast a benevolent eye upon the odd infringement of the rules, but when a group of carp anglers had got into a fight with the gendarmes and the French anglers they�d decided to clamp down hard on night fishing.

Steve and Nige turned up and we convened an Official Committee Meeting in the bar. I had by now moved my gear and, as it turned out, Steve was all packed ready to join me on the opposite bank where we could fish to the marker buoys. That left Nige in splendid isolation fishing the point swim, but I think he was secretly pleased that he would have the well-known hot spot to himself.

By that evening Steve and I had set up in adjacent swims within easy casting range of the two buoys. The night was uninterrupted by any fishy activity, unless you count the dammed bream. As instructed we rebaited the rods at about 3.00 am, cast them into the gully and followed the splashes of the leads with a couple of dozen pouches of nuts out of the �pult. All was ready. The trap was baited, and if all went to plan, we were in with the best chance of a French monster since we�d arrived.

The weather was a repeat of the previous morning. Damp and very still. They should start showing any moment now. The run came at about 5.45 am: a real belter. And I lost it. Arrrgh! An unknown snag frayed the line within a few short seconds of my making contact with the fish, leaving me with no more than an fleeting impression of an immensely powerful lump on the other end. I took loosing that fish quite well all things considered, and the rod only flew fifty yards or so.

From the moment I lost that fish, I just knew that I wasn�t going to catch at Jugon. I was just fated, that�s all. It wasn�t to be. End of story. Full stop. I recast to a small fish that showed off to my right, well up the bank: perhaps Steve was still in with a chance. Let�s hope so. I was only just going through the motions but I hoped Steve or Nige, who was certainly on a roll, might be lucky. They weren�t and the rest of the morning passed in an uneventful doze and the day passed interminably. I was at a low ebb, finished with fishing and wishing I was home.

I went into town on my own that evening and had a glass of beer. It wasn�t happening, a waste of time. Low spirits all round. I got back to the swim about ten o�clock. I couldn�t be bothered fishing through the night, and after all, we�d had a more than guarded warning about the garde de peche. It wasn�t worth the risk, and anyway, I simply couldn�t be bothered to cast out, if you can understand that. I laid the rods out on the rests and climbed into the bag. I slept like a log.

I was awoken before dawn the next morning by one hell opf a commotion coming from further up the bank to my right. I got out of my sleeping bag, threw back the door and peered out. The sight that greeted me held me speechless for a few seconds. There were French anglers driving their cars along the edge of the lake, headlights blazing, horns blaring. They stopped right in front of Steve�s swim and started bashing in rod rests with three pound lump hammers. Out over the gully a couple of big metal rowing boats trolled deadbaits and spinners backwards and forwards over our baited areas. What a lash-up. There was no way we were going to get another chance in the channel today.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#211 11 Jan 2018 at 4.38pm

In reply to Post #210
He explained that there was a regular feeding pattern to the big carp in the lake. Each morning, between five and nine o�clock, the big carp patrol the camp site bank between fifteen and thirty yards out, he told me, pointing across the lake to two very prominent marker buoys used by the sailing club. That�s where the old river bed runs and they also mark a deep part of the channel. He told me to try and get the baits in position by four in the morning at the very latest and then whatever you do keep the noise down. Apparently they bigger fish in the lake were very aware of anglers and the more noise they made the more likely the carp were to clear off.

It was clear what this guy was telling me. No strolling around on the bank, no kettle on, no shouting and yelling or larking about. He even advised me to put my bivvy up way back from the water�s edge, above a path that he pointed out, running through the woods bordering the lake. There was a genuineness about him that told me that he knew what he was talking about, so after he�d gone, wishing me I wandered down the bank to talk to the others. We decided to move to the swims John the next day as night was already falling.

That night we all got mullered by the dreaded p-c though they did relent for a while and Steve had a nice mirror of around 14 lb. Not really what we were after though. What else happened that night? Oh yes. There was Nige�s little adventure...

Nige sleep-walks. Not a joke, I can assure you. It can be pretty serious, and he�s got himself into all sorts of trouble on account of what others may consider a trifle. That night, halfway through a nice peaceful snooze he decided to take a stroll - or should that read, a hop for he was still in his sleeping bag - into the lake. Then, still sound asleep but by now minus his sleeping bag and thoroughly soaked through, he returned to his bedchair and carried on dreaming. He woke up, who knows how much later, shaking with the cold and with his sleeping bag doing a passable imitation of a small boat drifting off down the lake. There was nothing for it but to go in again to rescue it.

By comparison my night�s fishing was totally uneventful. First light revealed a white calm surface with a hint of mist lying on the water. Over on the far side, close to one of the marker buoys, a huge fish crashed out twice, right in the spot John had shown me. Then another fish showed about two hundred yards further along the bank. Our British mate was right, there seemed to be fish showing in the deep channel close to the far bank. As we watched, a fish jumped in the far channel by the buoys. The lads on the far side seemed to be fast asleep and all this activity didn�t to stir them up at all and we were keen to move. Nige on the other hand said he was staying put on the strength of the three fish that the point had produced so far. Steve too was still uncertain. I wanted to move; I�d seen the buggers jumping.

It was now drizzling steadily and the lake appeared grey and cold. Suddenly a fish crashed out over my baits. It wasn�t one of the true giants that the lake is known for, but was good enough for me. I guessed it at mid- to upper-twenties. Half an hour passed without any further signs of carpy life. Suddenly the tip of the middle rod, cast way out into the middle as far as it would go, and baited with a single soaked peanut, shook violently and the line pulled out of the clip, but no run followed and I knew that, quick as I had been onto the rod, there would be no answering tug from the other end when I struck. I was right of course. I guess I must have forgotten to pack my slice of luck for this trip. Time I moved.

I went into Jugon for supplies and a beer or two. The village itself is very pretty, especially in the square where most of the better bars and restaurants are situated. On the other hand the place is a tourist trap. Everything seems to cost twice what it should, and they see you coming from a long way The people are nice enough though. I got chatting with the proprietor of one of the bars, a big chap with an impressive beard. He told me that the owner of the bar up the road loved carp fishing, and he had caught most of the bigger fish in the lake, photos of which were displayed on the wall of the bar.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#210 11 Jan 2018 at 4.36pm

In reply to Post #209
It had started to rain quite heavily so I draped the bivvy over the brolly and pushed a couple of pegs in to keep it from flapping too much. I love the sound of rain on the bivvy. It is so soporific. My eyes fell shut with a resounding clang and next thing I knew it was daylight. The swims were a hive of activity as Steve and Nige fell too with a vengeance, bait flying everywhere; rods swooshing and throwing sticks clonking as baits went flying across the gap to splash, tight under the cliff face. Nige had been plagued with false bleeps all night and we wondered if our Richworth ready mades were too soft to stand up to what we put down at first to bream. Later that morning we discovered the true culprits.

A large area of disturbed water in the margins off to our left caught out attention. It stretched for at least a dozen yards and extended out from the bank about five or six yards. Possibly small roach and other fry spawning. I went up to have a look. It wasn't small roach and other fry, it was the dreaded poisson-chat! the slimy horrible little buggers. There were thousands of them and they were spawning, thrashing the water to a foam. In case you have not become acquainted with these ghastly imports. They are actually American Bullhead catfish, famed in the deep south as the prime ingredient of Catfish Pie (but nothing to do with jambalaya). Like all cats they are the most voracious eaters and can clear a big bed of bait in seconds flat!

We spent the lunchtime in a nice restaurant in the town square followed by a few beers in the bar next door. To be honest the sight of those poisson-chat had knocked some of the optimism out of us. They can do that, you know.

Nevertheless as we set in for the dark hours hope sprang eternal! Indeed, at last the little nuisances long enough to allow a nice common of seventeen pounds to get a look in. At last Nige had landed a decent fish, and from what was generally accepted as a comparatively hard water. Maybe the big fellas would soon be putting in an appearance.

I wasn�t happy on the point. I thought there were too many rods cast across the gap to the cliff face and in the shallow water that meant the chances of spooking a big fish were quite high. I decided to move about half a mile up the bank towards the dam, to a swim where a large bay opened up to my left, with a thick marginal weed bed running along the front of the swim. I baited heavily with cooked peanuts and fished nuts balanced with foam. The hookbaits were dipped in neat Strawberry flavour to - hopefully - give them an edge over the free baits in the carpet.

I sat in the sunshine, watching a party of anglers as they arrived on the camp site on the opposite bank. It was clear that some, if not all of them were carp anglers, and it was also clear that they knew exactly what they were doing. No sooner had they arrived than a couple of them ran down to the water�s edge and dropped a few bits of gear in the swims that they wanted. I cursed out loud for they�d picked the very spot I was considering moving to if the fish didn�t oblige where I was. I resigned myself to staying put, whatever happened and put the kettle on for a cup of tea.

The steam had just started pouring from the spout when a battered white Renault 5 with French plates drew up behind my swim. I gave the driver my as usual incomprehensible, bonjour and he said, 'aw right, mate? Caught �em all? What was a Brit doing driving a French registered car? It turned out that he lived nearby and better still had caught some bloody great carp. He showed me the photos of some of his whackers from the lake, told me I was in the wrong place and said watch out for the rangers. He pointed out a few areas that he felt might hold a few fish and told me that he preferred that other side of the lake below the camping in a deep channel that ran close to the bank where the old river bed lay�where all the Dutch guys were!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#209 11 Jan 2018 at 4.32pm

In reply to Post #208
Now what? We had one last lake to try. The lower of the two lakes at Jugon les Lacs was another couple of hours further up the road so we gritted our teeth and set of. By eight o�clock we had arrived at the lake. The lake had appeared in the press when a famous French carp guy mentioned it in Le Pecheur magazine. As result it was now the preserve of Dutch and German anglers. If they want to fish it then there must be good carp in there. In fact as we drove onto the huge campsite alongside the lake we could see a bivvy and a battery of eight rods at the water's edge. I went down for a chat�not much of one as it turned out. The anglers in the bivvy were Dutch and very uncommunicative and it was clear I would get no info from them. Miserable b��s!

We needed to buy day tickets to fish the lakes (no nights) and I got these at the camping reception. I asked about the fishing and it turned out that one of the Dutch guys down by the lake had caught a 49lb mirror from the lake a couple of days earlier. No wonder they didn't want to talk to me!

I had a rough idea in my mind of the layout of the lake, and I had seen photos of some carp against a background of a very prominent cliff towering over a section of the eastern bank. You couldn�t miss such a feature and as we drove around the western side of the lake, sure enough, there it was across on the far bank. There was a nice shallow point running out from our bank that seemed to point straight at the dominating cliff. It seemed an obvious place to start fishing so we put up the bivvies, cast the rods out, and then set about getting some food cooked and wine bottles opened.

I think we all felt a bit shell-shocked after the long, hassle-ridden day, but a crate of beer was unearthed from the back of the van and that helped lift our spirits, that and the report of the 49lb mirror. It helps just knowing that the fish of your dreams are actually in the lake so at least that gave us hope. So far we had been chasing our tails on the back of rumour and tittle-tattle, and while it is all very well fishing unknown quantities we were running out of days and desperately wanted something a bit bigger.

Darkness falls late in summertime in northern France. Even at 11.00pm we could still see to fish. We agreed that it would be silly for us to get a tug for night fishing on the very first night we were there, but in the end decided to risk it. We had almost come to the end of the holiday after all. We all turned in at about midnight. Tired though I was, I stretched out on the top of the bedchair in the warm night air, enjoying a last beer and fag before climbing into my sleeping bag. The surface of lake was white calm, the air still and breathless. If a carp had jumped we�d have seen or heard it a mile off but apart from the ubiquitous frogs and crickets no carpy sound disturbed the stillness.

My eyes were drooping with fatigue and I was sliding gently into sleep when I heard a buzzer. Nige was in! I heard him splashing through the marshy ground in front of his rods, the buzzer ceased its muted yell and the clutch uttered one very short, almost apologetic grunt. Not much of a fight so far. I climbed into my boots and joined Nige with the net. The carp, if carp it was, didn�t seem to do anything. It was just a dead weight at the end of the line, no tugging back or searing runs. When the poor beast was finally brought into the margins we could see why. It was a carp all right, a common of about ten pounds, but it was riddled with fin-rot and looked a very sorry sight indeed. We unhooked it in the water and watched it�s pathetic attempts to swim away with its sad remnants of tail, dorsal and belly fins rotted almost completely away. Poor Nige. I don�t think he was too pleased with this mank looking carp�but a carp's a carp and at least we had opened our account, and on the first night too.

Nige re-cast while I put the kettle on to make the tea. In the pitch darkness we sat, warming our hands on the hot mugs, listening to the sound of the crickets and the frogs at their nightly chorus. Somewhere out in the darkness, over by the foot of the cliff a carp leapt. It sounded like a very good fish. Suddenly Nige was all action as he grabbed the stick and sent more freebies out into the darkness in the general direction of the splash.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#208 9 Jan 2018 at 3.35pm

In reply to Post #207
I was sitting on the bedchair, looking at the rod tips, when suddenly the whole-set up began to bang and shake. For a few seconds I didn�t twig that I�d had a take - of sorts. Then the left-hand rod tip pulled round violently. I leapt to the rod, striking hard�at thin air. Very curious.

The rest of the morning passed by slowly and gently. We were booked for Sunday lunch at the restaurant Nige knew and were due there at one o�clock. But we certainly couldn�t put in an appearance at any restaurant looking like this. Shaded by the overhanging trees and in the cover of the van we had a wash, a shave and a change of clothes and eventually emerged looking reasonably presentable. We packed the rods and the rest of the gear away and set off for the restaurant.

Over lunch we pondered over our plans for the remaining four days. We all wanted a big fish, of course. After all, isn�t that what people go carp fishing in France for? The problem was, where to go? We were perhaps within about six or seven hours driving of Salagou, the well-known water way down to the west of Montpellier and the reports I�d had of this water made it a tempting choice, but we all felt that by the time we got down there and were fishing efficiently, it would be time to come home again. There were s few stand by alternatives in Brittany and it was these that we decided to investigate.

This was our first choice, a huge barrage lake just to the north of Nantes. It was rumoured to hold carp and we thought it might be worth a try. Sadly all we got out of the visit was a glorious sunset!

After a blank 24 hours we moved again, this time to a lake that was becoming more well known in the UK, Lac de Tremelin a comparatively small water of about 100 acres. I had mentioned the lake to Franck, who had warned us that the lake was a leisure center that would inevitably be very busy and crowded. He also mentioned that night fishing and camping by the lakeside would pose a few problems. He wasn�t far wrong.

First impressions of the lake were not good. It looked as if all of France and his wife was either on, in, under or by the lake. It was chaos, with pedalos, rowing boats, sailboards, swimmers and water polo matches everywhere we looked. We hated it at first sight but we figured that, having come this far, we should at least give the lake a fair chance. We had a walk around and after a long afternoon�s recce found a couple of likely looking points on the far bank. Here we would be able to intercept fish cruising in or out of a couple of bays that cut into the shoreline on either side of the point. Unfortunately getting to the swims entailed a forced march carrying all the gear, and as we were knackered anyway from the driving (not to mention the Sunday lunch), we looked around in the hope that we could find a rowing boat that we could hire for an hour in order to get the gear across in one hit, without the route march.

It turned out to be a fruitless task, but after an hour or so I came across a guy who seemed willing to hire us his own boat for a couple of hours. He wasn�t cheap but I parted with the six quid he demanded and we began to load up the boat under the curious, and watchful eyes of a group of uniformed, official-looking Frenchmen who appeared to be taking more than a passing interest in us. Finally, when the boat was down to it�s gunwales with the weight of the tackle, authority reared its ugly head and we were told in no uncertain manner that we were not allowed to camp anywhere other than on the official camp site. Certainly not by the side of the lake, even if we weren�t fishing. We did one night on the campsite and at first light we left! Beautiful lake though it may be but it wasn't our cup of tea at all.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#207 9 Jan 2018 at 3.31pm

In reply to Post #206
Nige was in stitches. �The poor sod hasn�t had a dump for four days�, he laughed. �I think it�s finally caught up with him. I had to take pity on the guy or he�d have burst.� Nige and I sat in the bar and drank a slow beer, followed by another slow beer. Finally, thirty minutes later Steve emerged looking relaxed, very relieved and several pounds lighter. �Come on then, you buggers,� he urged. �There�s fish to be caught. No time to waste hanging about drinking beer at this time of the morning.�

By mid-afternoon we were on the river where our friends had caught carp the previous year, and where Nige had lost a very large, completely uncontrollable fish. The River Oust looks is a carp man's dream with a deep steady flow, dark, turbid water and a small head of natural, wild carp looking more like barbel, in fact, than carp. It joins the river Vilaine, at Redon where the two rivers merge to open out onto a wide glacial plain. Fish in excess of fifty pounds have been landed here and carp equally as big have been seen in the Oust. We chose adjacent swims covering both near and far margins. Steve put his third rod very tight to the near bank, under an overhanging willow tree that stretched its shady branches well out across the river, just upstream of him. As before, we used nuts and maize for bait with a scattering of boilies for good measure.

I went into the nearby village for supplies of beer and fags and got back to the river as it was getting dark. The place looked transformed by the onset of the night, for suddenly the water had become alive with fish, albeit mostly bream, that were topping over the baits. I settled under the brolly and pulled it down low over the bedchair. A road bridge 100 yards away carried a fair bit of traffic and as we wanted to keep a low profile and fish through the night. we didn't use bivvies but slept under the stars. To honest they weren�t necessary for though the night was certainly warm enough.

I suppose I must have dozed off at around midnight, but I can remember hearing a buzzer sound on and off for a few seconds sometime during the night. It didn�t seem to amount to anything so I turned over and went back to sleep. It wasn�t until the next morning when Steve recounted the dramatic tale of his bionic wildie that I realised what I had missed. What an odd looking carp it was! It had picked up his sweetcorn hookbait, fished under the willow upstream of him and then shot off downstream and through the line on his middle rod. This accounted for the strange sounding take I�d heard the previous night. By a quirk of good fortune the two rods had untangled themselves and there followed the fight of a lifetime with a superb, lean wildie that weighed in at just under eleven pounds. Sadly none of the photos I took at the time do justice to this incredible fish. The slope of it�s forehead, the shape and massive size of all it�s fins. I�ve never seen a carp like it; a real powerhouse of a fish, built for living in fast flowing waters.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#206 9 Jan 2018 at 3.28pm

In reply to Post #205
It must have been about midnight, and I thought about getting the rods in when out of the darkness a figure loomed. It was Franck bearing gifts. More beer. Good lad. We chatted for a while and watched as the electrical storm moved off slowly southwards. There had been no rain as yet, but it certainly threatened.

At about two o�clock in the morning I decided to wind the rods in and get a few hours kip. Franck wandered away down the bank, muttering. �I am going to research for carp,� whatever that means. I had just bid him good night when we heard Nige�s buzzer. The run had hardly started when we heard him rush to the rods and bend into the fish. Alas, fortune wasn�t smiling on Nige that night as the fish got away on an unseen snag, as did the next one, and the one after that. The poor bloke was obviously sitting on a bagful of carp and the mother of all snags. The remaining dark hours passed quickly. I slept fitfully for an hour or so but by five in the morning I was fishing again.

The water was flat calm and heavy, oppressive weather of the night before had gone The morning promised sunshine and contentment. I put the kettle on and drank the first coffee of the day as the dawn broke. I�d not heard any action from Nige�s swim, and as I strolled up with a coffee I saw that he was out to the world. Later he told me that he�d been up all night with hoards of bream and had wound in at about 4.00 am to get some kip.

Meanwhile Steve had been busy again. He was definitely the kiddie on this trip. Two more commons of twelve and fourteen pounds had come during the night with a further carp lost. Nice work, sunshine. Nige, Franck and I went down to do the weighing and the photos and polished off the few remaining beers.

Nige was a bit fed up with catching bream, and even Steve, who had hooked four carp so far, felt like a move. We were perhaps being somewhat premature in thinking of moving off to another water already, but we all thought that this lake was unlikely to push up a really big whacker and to be honest, the wanderlust had set in.

I fancied a try for a river carp and as Nige had friends further south (an English speaking restaurateur who could be relied upon to lay on a good Sunday lunch), we decided to move, this time to a river system that had produced fish for some friends of ours the previous year. A new water beckoned, wild river carp and the special challenge they pose.

We packed the gear away on Saturday morning after breakfast. It was a lovely sunny morning when we got on the road heading south and west for the river. The almost empty, long straight French country roads stretched into a distant infinity, bordered by lines of towering poplar trees. It was strangely hypnotic, and I dozed off in the passenger seat while Nige drove. Steve, perched in the folding anglers low chair that passed for the third seat was saying very little. Then, �I expect you boys would like to stop for a beer wouldn�t you?� came Steve�s voice from behind. I came out of my half-sleep at the sound of voices. Did someone say beer? At this hour of the morning? Well, why not. I looked across at Nige. He had a strange grin on his face. He winked and said, �Bit early isn�t it?� �I could really fancy one,� came Steve�s reply.� Not for us thanks,� said Nige. �It�s far too early. Let�s keep going for a couple of hours.�

I looked curiously at Nige. He was trying hard not to laugh. What on earth was going on? We carried on in silence for a few more minutes until we came to a tiny village where we had to give way at a cross-roads. A small bar on the opposite side of the road caught Steve�s eye. �Well I could REALLY do with a beer!� Now this is not like Steve one little bit. It�s not that he doesn�t like beer, but he�s not what you�d call a big drinker. Sure, he likes a glass or two, but his thirst had never bothered him at this time of the morning before. This was completely out of character.

Nige ignored him and turned to ask me how far it was to the next town. I looked down at the map and told him I reckoned it was about thirty-five kilometres. I heard a groan from the back. We pulled over the cross-roads and Nige parked in the small village square. I had no idea what had prompted this change of heart but it was ten-thirty and I suppose we could take a respectable ale or two now. We locked up and Nige and I strolled across the square while Steve ran ahead. �He�s keen to get them in isn�t he?�, I queried.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#205 9 Jan 2018 at 3.26pm

In reply to Post #204
It was around mid-morning and we were all gathered in my swim sharing a few beers when a young lad of about eighteen years of age tentatively approached the bivvy. In halting English he asked us if we had, �taken any carps�. We told him what we�d had and he sat down for a chat. It soon became clear that this was one of the French carp anglers mentioned by the tackle dealer in the town. Little did I know it at the time but this meeting was the start of a friendship that we would strengthen as the years went by. Now a hugely successful businessman in France's carp fishing industry Franck Martin - for that was his name - was to prove a wonderfully helpful asset to us; not just on this trip but on others as yet unplanned and unknown awaiting us somewhere in the future.

Over a cup of coffee we chatted about carp fishing in general and bait in particular. I was clear that this fella was no mug and he knew what he was talking about when it came to bait. Soon his photos were produced to the accompaniment of admiring grunts and gestures. One fish of just under 38lbs, a common, really caught the eye, a very lovely fish that apparently was the record for the water. There were, it seemed, several even larger carp in the lake but according to our new-found friend, the total stock was only around 200 fish. Not a lot in 400 acres. Looking at Franck�s photos, including several multiple catch shots, it seemed as if the carp moved around in a huge shoal and if you were sitting on that shoal, you could really bag up. Here Franck looks on as Steve and Nige weigh another fish.

Franck offered to show us a couple of the swims he had done well in, so we set off for the far end of the lake where a small, inviting bay branched off the main lake. But though it looked very carpy, the whole area was covered in an impenetrable coating of blanket weed that had gathered in the bay on the breeze that was pushing directly into it. It looked unfishable so we decided to do another 24 hours where we were and take stock the next day.

We went into town for a meal and a beer with Franck, and after dropping the young Frenchman at his house, returned to the lake in high spirits. Nige moved from the point to my right to the one on my left, while Steve and I, having both had fish that morning, decided to stay put. It was blisteringly hot and we decided on a swim to clear the slight fog of beer that still haunted the depths of our grey matter. In the cool clear water we could see down the lake bed, with bars and gullies and little silt traps here and there. We put markers out on likely looking spots and piled the bait in around the markers.

The evening brought a lovely sunset but there was a lot of wind in the sky, the clouds looked breezy and I thought we were in for a bit of a blow later, maybe a bucket of rain too.

Sure enough as night fell the crackle of thunder and lightning loomed on the horizon and once again we were treated to nature�s spectacular light show. It was a fantastic sight and I sat on the bait bucket, beer in hand, watching the awesome power of the elements while the air seemed to crackle and hum with energy. Just as on the previous night this one was warm, humid yet dry, and somehow the violence of the still flickering lightning didn�t seem threatening at all.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#204 9 Jan 2018 at 3.09pm

In reply to Post #203
A few beers and a belly full of pizza later we returned to the lake. We packed up in the gentle afternoon heat, piled the gear into the back of the van and set off for the new lake not far away. Less than half an hour later we pulled up on the barrage, dragged the tackle from the van and set off along a steep narrow path that wound its way through a thick pine wood. The wind had picked up during the evening, but it was still dry and warm. The breeze felt very refreshing, blowing hard from an easterly direction, straight into the bay we�d been shown by our friend from the shop. It looked ideal and the lunchtime session had brought with it a feeling of quiet confidence.

This new lake looked absolutely fabulous, and now at least we knew we were on with a chance of some better fish. The lake stretched out down the valley like a long silver snake, winding it�s way between rocky points and headlands. I�ve fished bigger waters since, but at the time it just looked huge and magnificent. I didn�t know how even start fishing it. We decided we would be silly to go anywhere but the places we�d been shown by the tackle shop owner as proven fish producing areas. If they didn�t pay off for us, we could always move on later to other parts of the lake.

By nightfall we were spread out along a nice bit of bank. Steve fishing a nice gentle slope dropping to the lake bed, a depth of about fifteen feet. Nige was fishing just off a point where he could cover a small, shallow-looking bay as well as the main area of the lake in front of him.

We all baited up at catapult range and then sat back to await events. Nothing happened and as the darkness fell we all turned in. I dozed, not really asleep so I was half awake when I heard the first fish bosh out at about 4.30.am. It sounded very close, almost as if it wanted to join me in the sleeping bag. Shortly afterwards another fish crashed out twice. I noticed how warm the breeze was for the early hours of the morning, a real feeding wind. I somehow just knew I was going to get a take and climbed out of the bag and stood by the rods. I heard another fish jump, this time it was in front of Nige and wondered if he�d heard it.

A violent electrical storm was flickering around the sky in the distance. It was dry and humid and you could cut the atmosphere and the tension with a knife. I walked down the bank to Nigel; it was funny but I wanted to share this charged atmosphere. He was lying on top of his sleeping bag, smoking patiently. He�d heard the fish jump in front him but he reckoned it and its mates were moving down on the breeze towards Steve and my swims. �I�ve got to have a chance in a minute, Nige,� I said, accepting the offered cigarette. �Be patient, my son. They�ll be here directly.�

We smoked in silence, listening the gentle lapping of the waves and the whisper of the wind in the corn field behind us. Even the crickets had temporarily ceased their racket. I went back to my swim and stood over the rods. Why hadn�t I had a take yet? Watched pots, and all that, Ken, I said to myself and returned to the shelter of my brolly.

I was lying on top of the sleeping bag when the run came, two single bleeps followed by a blistering run. Everything was shaking and banging as the fish took off at tremendous speed. Nigel was there almost before I was. He�d been changing baits when he heard the run start and came charging over, all energy and excitement. The first run on a completely unknown water can get to you like that. The fish went off like a train and felt big, or should I say, it felt like every fish we�d hooked so far this trip; mean and powerful. It took quite a while to get the fight going my way but once I had the upper hand, the rush of adrenaline dwindled away to a trickle and I realised that the fish was no lunker after all. It still scrapped like a maniac though and it was only after several searing runs for the weed were halted that Nigel scooped the fish up in the net.

We weighed and photographed a very pretty fully scaled mirror at just over seventeen pounds. Meanwhile Steve was in action down the bank to our right. Once more Nige was called upon to do the netting, this time a scale-perfect nice common, also 17lbs. We felt a lot better that morning I must say. We had no further action, and as the sun rose higher in the sky, it was clear that the fish were not feeding during daylight. We saw no sign of fish at all, and resigned ourselves to a long wait until darkness.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#203 9 Jan 2018 at 3.07pm

In reply to Post #202
We must be in a small fish area, we thought. Perhaps a more detailed look around was called for. We spent the rest of the morning scouring the water and peering through binoculars for signs of bigger carp but all that we saw were small fish. The long day passed with plenty of action from the small carp, of which there appeared to be thousands. That night we decided to bait up really heavily with a couple of buckets of nuts and the remains of the maize, with a few boiled baits mixed in with the bits. We had taken a wide selection of baits, including ready mades and several kilos of frozen birdfood boiled baits along with loads of other bits and bobs that we thought might work.

The second night approached and Steve and I really piled the bait in and our baited area was soon carpeted with about fifteen kilos of nuts, maize and boilies. Nigel meanwhile had taken himself off to fish another area well up the bank from us where he�d found a nice shelf and plateau about forty yards out.

For all our hard work baiting the swims so heavily, Steve and I never had a sniff that night but up the bank Nigel had an absolute hat full. In fact he never managed to get all three rods fishing at once, and in the end finished up using just one rod. Fish after fish, but nothing over about five or six pounds. By the small hours of the morning he was so shattered he could hardly keep awake to land the next carp. Sadly they were all small ones but they were really hard fighters. He kept telling himself that it was only a matter of time before one of the big lumps we�d been told about made a mistake. But the stream of single figure carp flowed relentlessly and by four in the morning he�d had enough and he threw his rods into the back of the bivvy and turned in.

We were all getting a bit worried about the lack of better fish but then my first fish of the morning was a ten pound common so we felt a little bit better. Unfortunately it was a flash in the pan as in just a few hours fishing Steve and I must have had close to fifty takes, the majority being commons between seven and eight pounds in weight.

At one stage I had fish on all three rods at once. I landed them all then chucked one rod back out only to have it taken on the drop. It was crazy fishing. Steve was the next one to perform the three on at once trick, then I had another take, then another. Nigel didn't even bother casting out. He said it was tiring him out just looking at us.

This was getting ridiculous. Were there any bigger carp in the lake? We were beginning to doubt it. In the end we decided to find a local tackle shop and see if the owner could help us at all. What worried us most of all was the fact that the fish we were catching looked nothing like the dead and dying fish we�d been shown up at the cafe. Those were thick- bellied, dark golden fish, all doubles at that, while the fish we were catching were pale, slim and torpedo shaped. We had our doubts that the fish came from the same water at all and it was obvious that the crafty sod at the cafe had seen us coming as soon as we got off the ferry.

We drove into Vitre, the nearest big town and got lucky by driving straight up to the front door of the local tackle shop. That�s handy, Harry! God knows how we�d have found it if we�d had to ask directions for the shop was tucked away in a tiny back street and we�d driven straight to it by accident. The owner said that he knew the water we were fishing and assured us that it didn�t hold any big carp at all. These had all been removed a few years previously and killed or moved into private lakes. Following the drain down it had been stocked with 10,000 three to four-kilo carp. No wonder we were getting plagued with them.

He told us about another barrage not far away and pointed it out to us on the map. He even told us that there were a couple of French carp anglers fishing the water who used English methods and that they had caught fish up to mid-twenties. We thanked the shop owner for his kindness and made to leave. The new lake was a fair-sized affair of about 400 acres another barrage lake not far away from our starting point. We were undecided whether to move onto the new barrage straight away or to return to the small fish water for another night. Another committee meeting was called for and that entailed a trip to the nearest bar for light refreshments. We drove back into town, past the chateau and into the old market square. All of us were feeling a tad thirsty, and a few beers would go down a treat. The nearest decent-looking bar was crowded with lunchtime drinkers, getting ready for their midday meal. Idly I glanced at the menu to find a list of some of the most appetising pizzas I�ve ever seen.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#202 9 Jan 2018 at 3.03pm

In reply to Post #201
A beer and some grub was in order for we were tired and hungry after the long ferry crossing and the subsequent drive down to the lake so when I spotted a welcoming sign saying, 'Bar' we needed no further encouragement. It was time to practice my appalling French on the local populace. �Three beers please!� The bemused cafe owner looked at me, a puzzled expression on his face. He obviously didn�t understand a word I was saying. Funny, I thought I was doing really well!

I dug into the French/English dictionary and eventually managed coax three beers out of the patron before attempting to explain that we wanted to fish the lake and please, could he tell us if there were any big carp in there? �Yes,� said monsieur. �Some nice carp have been taken from the lake.� I didn�t catch the nuances behind the word taken until much later: when he�d said �taken� he had meant it literally! I ploughed on in my halting French, Nige chipping in the odd word from time to time as he resurrected memories of long forgotten school days and distant French lessons. Hunger was gnawing a hole in our guts so we decided to eat at his cafe and talk things over during dinner and a few more beers. We were having coffee when the patron came in with a fish box containing a bloody, but still-alive mirror carp of about 12lb. Proudly holding up his ghastly prize he assured us that it had come from the lake and assured us that his friends had two more out in the boot of their car, taken.

We went outside to examine two double figure commons, both either dead or nearly so crammed into a small metal keepnet (for want of a better word). Nasty though the sight of those dead fish was, they were still big enough to whet our appetite and as soon as we were back inside we were reaching for our wallets, for it appeared that our friendly bar owner just happened to sell the permits for the lake as well.

With the aid of a local map the patron showed us where we could get down to the water and kip by the lake, though he warned us about the night fishing which was absolutely forbidden. We were too exhausted to fish the night anyway, so accompanied by a case of beer to see us through it we set off for the lake.

It was not yet dark as we set up the brollies, light enough for us to scatter some bait about and lace the margins with peanuts, maize and sweetcorn against the possibility that the fish would come in close during the night. We stretched out on the bed-chairs and watched a fiery sunset streak the mackerel sky with red, drinking the case of beer and chatting the dusk away to a background curtain of sound from a million crickets. As darkness fell and a thousand frogs joined in the deafening chorus I put the kettle on for the first coffee on French soil and broke the seal on the cognac bottle. Way out in the bay a carp splashed noisily through the surface and big grins broke out all round.

Despite the fatigue I couldn�t get to sleep at all that night. I was kept awake by the almost constant noise of fish crashing out all over the surface of the lake, to say nothing of the never-ending din from the frogs and crickets. Dawn broke chilly and damp with a heavy dew drenching the grass underfoot. With no real plan of campaign it seemed logical to cover all the areas that we�d baited up the previous night. That accomplished I set off to explore, leaving Steve guarding the rods. I�d not gone far when I heard a whistle. I ran back to the rods to find Steve doing battle on one of my rods! �What�s it feel like?� I asked. �May go mid doubles,� came the reply.

That�ll do for starters anyway. The fish was really pulling hard and the rod was bent right round to it�s limit, so we were both astonished to see the size of the carp on the other end. No more than eight pounds, if that. We had to have a photo though. It was a milestone carp after all.

The morning slipped by and as the sun rose a few fish showed themselves over the baits. Not big ones but they were carp for all that. Shortly afterwards Steve had a run on maize that turned out to be another small carp and then I had another and Steve another, not one of them over double figures. Pretty fish, though�

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#201 9 Jan 2018 at 3.01pm

In reply to Post #200
STARSHIP ENTERPRISE: MAY 1989

Back in the early 80s I used to share the odd pint with a guy called Chris. For much of his youth he lived in the south of France in a little village called Montauroux in the Var departement. We discovered over a chatty pint that we were both keen anglers. I mentioned that my passion was carp fishing and Chris told me that there was a lake not far from his childhood home where he�d swum and water ski-ed as a youngster and where he�d seen some very big carp which were seldom fished for by the locals. Nor did he fish for them; he was happy as Larry spending his youth in the south of France and fishing was not high on his list of priorities. Yet this particular lake held everybody�s interest, for it was here, he told me, that on rare occasions a carp of monstrous proportions was landed. One weighed over 30 kilos. And do you want to know the name of this lake that I was told about at least four years before the UK carp masses found out about it? It�s called the Lac du St-Cassien: perhaps you�ve heard of it!

Time passed and though I kicked myself as the tales of those huge carp filtered back to the UK I somehow thought those fish were beyond my capabilities, some mythical monster that I was not worthy to slay. Even when Carole and I went to France for the second time in the autumn of �89 with friends we spent much of the time fishing for mullet and carp fishing never crossed our minds. Yet, back home it seemed there were a few hardy souls in Cornwall who fancied the idea of fishing abroad, and it was fellow Carp Society member, Gary Thomas, who first got the bug in a big way, going to Cassien as soon as the news leaked out. Was I missing out?

As the seasons passed I began to feel a bit jaded with my carp fishing in England and so in the dreariness of the extremely damp and wind-blown winter of 89/90, I sounded out a few Roche A.C. members about arranging a French trip. As it turned out my old mates from College days (and elsewhere), Nige Britton, and Steve Westbury could be persuaded, given a modicum of arm twisting. It was time to bite the bullet and leave the sleepy predictability of our club waters and the ressies and head off for pastures new in search of the (supposedly) big carp in the lakes and rivers northern France. It was Starship Enterprise time: time to split infinitives where no man has split before.

Just one look at the map of the northern France will show you just how much water there is in the region. Draw a line through France from, say, Le Havre through Le Mans down to La Rochelle and see for yourself just how many big blue bits show up on the map. We had set our hopes on a water that I had heard about the previous year when but subsequent inquiries revealed that the lake was currently empty! Bugger!

With our departure only a week or so away our severely limited knowledge of French fishing, was proving rather a drawback. At one stage we even talked about calling the whole thing off, but Steve was having none of that. It had taken many hours of patient work on his missus to get the OK for him to go in the first place: now that he�d got the boss�s permission, he was bloody well going, end of story. More out of hope than expectation I rang Geoff Shaw, whose reputation for catching huge fish from French waters was spreading quickly. I outlined our problem and was delighted when he gave us the name of a water that had apparently produced very big fish of over 50lbs. Geoff did warn us that he had no first hand knowledge of the water and he couldn�t tell us any more other than it was supposed to be a good bet. But as he�d never even seen the water, let alone fished it we were on our own from there on in. Fair enough. What more could we ask? We sailed on the 8.00 am ferry from Plymouth in mid-May, with ten days holiday ahead of us. The crossing was uneventful, the weather staying relatively calm, and after a few hours heading south we reached our destination, the huge lake Geoff had told us about. It was actually a lac de barrage, a dammed section of the River Villaine. This is just a small part of it..

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#200 8 Jan 2018 at 2.57pm

In reply to Post #199
These small fish were not what we had come to France for but to be honest their size did not matter one bit. Francois, his family and his mates became firm friends and in the village the local restaurant treated us like visiting royalty. Though the gite was well fitted out with a modern kitchen, more often than not we ate out, usually in the village and it was the during the small hours that we made our unsteady way back to the welcoming comfort of the gite.

We were invited to the houses of total strangers where wine was opened and glasses sunk. We attended a small fete on the village green, we ate barbeque with Francois and half the village in the grounds of the old chateau. It was magic!

Then all too soon the holiday was over. The fishing had been superb, and once we�d resigned ourselves to the fact that there probably weren�t any huge carp in the lake, we learned to greet each enthusiastic run with the pleasure that a carp, no matter what its size, can bring. We must have caught a hundred fish or more, predominantly small commons. If there were monsters in the lake, we certainly weren�t clever enough to tempt them. Did Francois truly believe in the monsters or was he gently tacking the pith? Who knows�There is more to carp fishing than the single-minded pursuit of monsters.

That first visit over thirty years ago was only the first of many that followed that were considerably more successful in terms of size of the carp caught, however, as a taste of French kindness and hospitality it was one of the best holidays we have ever had. This was a time pre-Euro when we got about fifteen francs to the pound and a beer cost five francs. You could eat a four course meal with a bottle or two of wine for the equivalent of about a tenner. Hey-ho!

We remember that little lake in the trees, the golden sunsets, the seemingly endless blue skies. We remember the village and, of course, the family of M. Renault. We remember the friendliness of the local inhabitants, the bar with its noisy, boisterous good humour. We remember the old boy in the cap who said he was over a hundred years old and drank half a bottle of red wine a day�it was, he claimed the secret of a long and happy life!

We remember Sam the dog and his red scarf who came and sat beside the rods nearly every day. So many memories�we are swamped by them. In a way it was all a bit too perfect and with hindsight it probably spoiled us for other gite holidays.

In '94 we went back, not to search for Francois� mythical giant carp, which we never caught, but simply to enjoy the good things of life once again. It was as good a holiday as our first visit and one day soon we must go back again, though I doubt if the carp will have grown much over the years! They were certainly no bigger in '94!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#199 8 Jan 2018 at 2.54pm

In reply to Post #198
No sooner had we slipped it back than Tat had another, a brother chip to her first fish, another common. A huge area of coloured water showed us that the carp were really feeding hard on the bait carpet and Carole and I had takes almost simultaneously. Carole lost her fish in the pads, but mine was another small common.

And so the day passed. The fish fed sporadically right through it and by the evening we�d had at least dozen or more fish between us, though we�d also lost one or two in the jungle stems of the lilies. We caught nothing big but they were carp for all that, and though we were beginning to doubt our host's proud boast of twenty kilo fish, we were perfectly happy.

That evening Francois and a few members of the local fishing club came down to the lake. They were fascinated by the modern tackle that we were using, in particular the electronic bite alarms and indicators. I had a take while they watched and they fell about laughing at the scream of the buzzer. That evening we dropped the fishing tackle at the gite and walked down to the only bar in the village and for some reason or other did not get back for some considerable time. In my cups I found the label on a soft drink particularly hilarious. See what you think�

The next day�s fishing was a repeat performance. The fish came steadily throughout the day, as did the number of visits we had from Francois and his friends, along with a few curious villagers. They were puzzled at first that we were returning our fish, for stuffed carp is a delicacy on most French dining tables. I explained that in England all freshwater coarse anglers return their fish to the water, and this seemed to reassure them that we weren�t completely mad. If we were happy, then so were they.

We had come to France to soak up the French way of life, so the fishing took second place for much of our stay. Meanwhile we ate seafood that was fit for a king and drank wine that cost less than a pound a bottle and was still better than anything we could buy for a tenner in England. We felt honour bound to visit the glorious chateaux and the region�s beauty spots, and were rightly impressed by both, but each morning and evening we were drawn back to the lake and it�s always-obliging carp. We fished a few different areas trying to find the rumoured monsters, but they remained an enigma.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#198 8 Jan 2018 at 2.50pm

In reply to Post #197
We sat around the garden table in the bright morning sunshine, sipping piping hot coffee and thick red wine while Francois gave us the history of the lake. It was all very pleasant, but in truth, all I wanted to do was get on with the fishing, for the beautiful lake was crying out to me. The deputation had other ideas.

Another car pulled up, disgorging yet more visitors and it soon became clear that, like it or not, we were going to get the Grand Tour. The cars bore us away towards the lake along a dusty road lined with poplar trees and for the rest of the morning Francois and his entourage showed us proudly around the lake while a ragged pack of mongrels, Sam at their head, fussed and blundered about in the thick, cool undergrowth. It was a hot and tiring hike but as the tour wound its way back to the cars, lunchtime beckoned and we were whisked off into the village to be showered with still more French hospitality.

It was late afternoon before we eventually got back to the lake, far too late to do any fishing. A few local pike and eel fishermen were slowly packing up while the sun set. The lake was still and brooding set in the a red haze like a deserted arena waiting for the shadowy night players to make their unofficial entrance.

At the crack of noon the next morning (I blame the bar) we were up and about, preparing the bait for the coming day�s fishing. We had bought a few kilos of maize from the local milling co-operative and the little yellow grains had been soaking in a bucket of flavoured water overnight. We piled everything into the car, and drove down the dusty unmade road towards the lake.

At the water�s edge we set up the rods, baited the hooks with three or four grains of maize and cast across to the edge of the lilies that reached out from the tangle of trees along the far bank. I walked round with a bucket of bait and a baiting spoon and showered a liberal carpet of maize over a wide area. As the sun made its way up behind the tall poplars of the east bank behind us we sat in the peaceful contentment of the perennial angler�s wait.

It didn�t take the carp very long to find the baited area. Before the sun had even cleared the tops of the trees they had moved in and started to feed. Carole had the first fish, which plunged straight into the pads. It looked to be well and truly snagged, but after a while the lilies started to ping up to the surface as the line severed it�s way through their tough roots. Eventually it was free and in open water fighting hard but it was clear this was no monster. Soon it flopped into the net, a small common, maybe five pounds tops. Well, it's a start!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#197 8 Jan 2018 at 2.46pm

In reply to Post #196
Francois had no English at all so I dragged my schoolboy French from the recesses of my memory and haltingly we began to talk. I asked about the fishing and pointed on the map to the river and to a couple of small lakes some ten kilometers away.

�Oh yes,� said our host, pursing his lips and giving a faint shrug. �They are good enough for small fish and small boys. But if you want to fish with the men you must fish our own lake.�

�Your own lake?� I asked.

�But of course,� replied Francois. �The commune has it�s own lake here in the village.� He rose from his chair and climbed the stairs to the first floor, beckoning us to follow. He pointed through a landing window. �Look!� Through the trees the newly risen moonlight painted a dimpled surface with silver.

�What fish have you got in there?� I asked, not really expecting anything too encouraging. �Pike, zander, friture (small fry) and of course, carp." he replied. I hardly dared to ask how big were the carp but I did. Francois simply shrugged and spread his shovel hands. There was a yard between them!

I grinned at Carole. Had we fallen on our feet? After Francois had left, two empty wine bottles later, Carole and I sipped a night-cap from an unlabelled bottle that he had left us. We slept well that night.

I got up early the following morning to a warm sunrise already promising a hot day ahead and walked down through the sleeping village to the lake which lay absolutely still in the quiet morning. It was bigger than I�d first thought, perhaps five or six acres or so. Its was more or less square in shape and it looked old and well established with plenty of bank side foliage and vegetation, the banks heavily wooded but clean and obviously lovingly maintained.

The banks were trim and well tended and it certainly looked to be a comfortable spot to fish, and a glance in the margins of the thick green-brown water revealed lake water that was absolutely teaming with life. The far bank was one big mass of lily pads and thick woods came right down to the water�s edge. It was absolutely gorgeous. A sign tacked to a tree told us that it was a private lake, but that day tickets were available from Francois� house at the exorbitant price of five francs a day!

First things first. We needed supplies and a trip around the massive supermarket filled the car and emptied my wallet. Leaving the car park, I turned left instead of right. Lost once again, this time in the centre of town, we stumbled across a dark and dusty fishing tackle shop, tucked away down a dingy side street. We needed to buy fishing licences anyway, and while we were about it, perhaps someone could show us the way out of this God-forsaken town. The song and dance act that accompanied our purchase of a `carte de peche` seemed to take for ever, but at last we were granted legal status in the form of a buff piece of stiff paper that entitled us to wet a line.

Later that morning, while we were having breakfast, a deputation from the commune came to visit, our host proudly at its head. We put more coffee on to bubble and hiss through the ancient machine, and though it was not yet ten o�clock, in France it is never too early for a glass of wine. Perhaps this is an opportune moment to open a couple of bottles, I thought. Nobody refused. Perhaps they were just being polite, but I rather doubt it.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#196 8 Jan 2018 at 2.42pm

In reply to Post #195
If Francois and his family were sad we were leaving, Tat and I were mortified. Who�d have thought that an evening spent browsing through the holiday brochures in the depths of winter would eventually bring us a brief share of Francois� little piece of Heaven? Now we were leaving after a fortnight's holiday that I swear had lasted no more than a week. We�d had a lot of fun, a few carp, too many wines and too much eau de vie, and perhaps above all, been made so welcome and had felt so at home throughout our stay.

The memories were endless. Tranquil, lazy days by the lake watching the world go by, sipping mellow red wine from chunky glasses over lunch. The weather had been superb and we�d enjoyed a succession of wonderful golden sunsets that kissed the tree tops on the far bank, heralding the advance of darkness, returning the lake to the quiet serenity of the night.

Fishing over for the day, the setting sun would send us back along the dusty road to the cool slate-floored comfort of the gite. We�d stop in the bar, and over a glass of wine we�d rerun the day's events to the locals. For France is a nation of fishermen, and like anglers throughout the world, they love a fishing story, tall or otherwise.

Yet we hadn�t really come to France simply for the carp fishing. Indeed, we had no idea if the area we�d chosen even held carp in the first place and it had been on no more than a whim that we jammed a few bits of carp gear into the already overloaded car before we left home.

The holiday had started in the depths of winter while a full blown south westerly gale hurled angry rain against our living room windows overlooking the river. A collection of catalogues, leaflets and brochures lay spread about us on the carpet in front of the fire. France was a new horizon for us both and the carp fishing was just an afterthought. So the choice was made and next day a phone call to the offices of Brittany Ferries confirmed that the gite was free for two weeks in early autumn when the days would still be long, the weather warm and the schools had gone back.

Late September saw us boarding the ferry and after a silky smooth crossing we were soon heading down the motorway in search of, who knows? Carole drove while I navigated. In the back of the overloaded hatch-back a mountain of fishing tackle, luggage and other odds and sods rattled and shook to the road vibration. It was late evening when at last we pulled off onto a pot-holed track that wound through tall trees into a wide courtyard. In the gathering darkness a dog barked. It sounded large and threatening. I am sure France has a larger population of dogs than it does of humans and they all seem to love to bark. This was our first encounter with Sam the hound, about as menacing as a Barbie-Doll!

A door farmhouse opened and tall imposing figure stepped into the twilit courtyard. He lumbered towards, hand outstretched, greeting us warmly in a growl of guttural French that came to us filtered through the wild expanse of his thick beard, our first encounter with Francois Renault. We couldn�t understand a word he was saying as he gabbled excitedly about heaven knows what while he ushered us eagerly into the cool, shadowy darkness of the gite, our home for the next two weeks. It was spotless, fresh flowers stood in a thick crystal vase on a well scrubbed oak table, a bottle of red wine stood open and in the soft, cooling evening we drank to our holiday.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#195 3 Jan 2018 at 12.29pm

The holiday was over, the time to leave. The dusty gravel courtyard spread out in front of the imposing steps of the rather down on its luck French chateau was overflowing with what appeared to be half the village. From the eldest matriarch to the tiniest babe in arms they were all there.

A rotund Hagrid of a man swooped down upon Tat and I we loaded the car. He held a brimming glass of clear liquid in each hand. We knew what to expect. The glass held a wickedly powerful home made Eau de Vie (literally 'the water of life') and Francois, our host for the past two weeks, and incidentally, president of the local angling association, was determined we would leave his hospitality in style. He thrust the glasses into our hands and insisted we drain them in one, then he grasped us one after the other in a rib-crushing bear hug. He shook my hand and kissed Tat four times - twice on each cheek - as he would old friends and nearly knocked me flat on my face as he slapped me on the back in farewell. Time to leave the cosy seclusion of our gite, which was in fact a few rooms on the ground floor of an ancient weather-worn chateau.

M. Renault and the whole family had turned out to see us off in style. There was Grandpa, burnt and shrivelled like an old grape, yet still proud to be a working member of the chateau's farm. A tattered beret sat square on the top of his nut-brown forehead above a pair of still lively, clear blue eyes, his bright blue 'travail bleu' overalls were neatly washed and pressed, and he was smiling hugely from behind a glass of red wine. I knew why he was smiling, we�d had plenty of that same red wine ourselves and it tended to make one smile.

Madame Renault, as fragile and petite as her husband was clumsy and huge, tutted and fussed over a gaggle of noisy children playing at her feet, while the family dog, a one-eared mutt, mainly collie and cocker, looked uninterested in the leave-taking as he dozed, panting in the shade of the barn, one eye half open to ensure that he missed nothing important. He had become an almost constant companion on or daily fishing sessions and we both adored him.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#194 24 Oct 2017 at 10.16am

FRANCE - FIRST STEPS.

Many moons ago Tat and I went to France for the first time together. I had been over in my youth several times, as had Tat but this was the first time we went as a couple. It was also the first time we went with a specific purpose, namely to try a bit of carp fishing. We were not monster hunting but would be happy just to get our string pulled. At the same time we looked forward to familiarising ourselves with everything that is great about a country that works to live, rather than the other way round.

So in this section of SW Memories you'll find few tales of derring-do in search of France's super-carp. Instead you'll read more about good wine, excellent food, simple pleasures and a few small and not so small carp, caught in the company of great friends who take a similar laid-back attitude to French carping as us. It took us several trips to get things more or les right but the pleasure we got from doing so was considerable. Yes, it took us a while to get a twenty, then a thirty and a forty and beyond but the learning process was and remains hugely enjoyable.

Please also bear in mind that it is much easier to find waters nowadays than it was thirty years ago, however, even if we knew about the now famous 'circuit' waters I doubt we would have fished them. Not our style then, nor has it ever been. We realised early on that you needed to be much more driven if you wanted to fish the super-venues on the circuit and as we didn't even have a chauffeur they weren't for us. We have never been the type of angler who is happy to fight for swims or compete with loads of other carp men either at home or abroad on the more popular waters. To us happiness is not having to share Paradise, and if that means I don�t fish the waters that regularly produce the headlines, so be it, I�m not fussed.

Nor am I particularly bothered if the next carp is fourteen or forty pounds. From preference I like to fish virgin waters, or at least, waters that are still something of an unknown quantity. If I can find a lake, or more likely a river with not another carp angler in sight, I�m in heaven. So if you are looking for tales monsters read no further. On the other hand, if fishing simply for the pleasure of catching a carp, regardless of size, in the country that gave the world magret de canard, Chateau Petrus with cote de boeuf, or Chateau d'Yquem with pate de foie-gras, appeals to you, then read on.
To get a flavour both of our attitude towards France and our lowly ambitions for success over there, perhaps the following brief account of our first gite and carping holiday will give you a taste.

Through the Brittany Ferries gite book we had found what looked like a nice little gite that was actually part of an old chateau not far from the banks of the River Loire. The area is known throughout France as �Anjou� and it is one of the most famous wine growing regions in the country, at least we knew that we�d be spoilt for choice when it came to the good things of life. Deep reds, lively roses, sparkling whites, Anjou has them all and in common with all the other wine growing areas the people of Anjou live life to the full. The very essence of life itself seems to revolve entirely around the grape and the full enjoyment of the local produce. It is also an area rich in the heritage of France, and if you like to study history, magnificent chateaux and spectacular gardens, then Anjou is the place for you�as it was for us.

As it turned out that holiday was memorable not so much for the fishing but for the hospitality of the locals, their friendliness and their capacity for the good things in life. So to set the tone of what is to come here is the tale of that first French holiday. It is not a story of giant carp and epic battles but is more a tale of a way of life that we have embraced from the very start and illustrates just why we keep going back to that wonderful country. We start at the end...

Paulepsom

Posts: 109

#193 21 Oct 2017 at 8.40pm

In reply to Post #189
Tales from your early days in France please Ken, recently listened to Alan Taylor talking about his adventures there on the carp cast and really enjoyed it

Daveperks

Posts: 267

#192 19 Oct 2017 at 10.00pm

In reply to Post #189
I'd like more of the same AND the early France trips - but then I'm greedy!

Dogchod

Posts: 400

#191 19 Oct 2017 at 8.53pm

In reply to Post #189
France

gazza271

Posts: 638

#190 19 Oct 2017 at 7.33pm

In reply to Post #189
France tour

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#189 19 Oct 2017 at 6.20pm

In reply to Post #1
Looking to kick this thread off again through the winter. What's your preference, more of the same, or early days with the Cornios on Tour in France?

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#188 25 Sept 2017 at 1.52pm

In reply to Post #187
Hi Steve,

Good to hear from you. Hope all is well with you and yours.

It's great that you like the thread. Those days we shared on College and other SW venues are among my best ever fishing memories and simply writing and posting has refreshed them no end. Next time you and San come over to Cornwall, get in touch and I'll rope in Nige and we can all get together again in the New Inn. I'll get back to posting

Thanks for the memories, mate. You helped me to light my own carping spark so it was a two-way thing!

Love to San.

Carpsava

Posts: 1

#187 25 Sept 2017 at 3.21am

In reply to Post #1
Hi Ken
Im just gobsmacked mate!
Dick Walker aside....... YOU were the guy who really inspired me to become a better carp fisherman. I really owe you a lot when it comes to our great sport. Terrific thread, Im still carp fishing but thanks for firing the fuse within !!!
We gotta do it again one day!
ATB Steve Westbury

Tinhead

Posts: 16285

#186 8 Jul 2017 at 11.48pm

In reply to Post #185
Well done .

I think Scumbucket have made a huge mistake and will go under.
I'm looking forward to it

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#185 8 Jul 2017 at 11.52am

In reply to Post #184
All done! Phew...Only taken a week...

Thanks a bunch Scumbucket!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#184 7 Jul 2017 at 3.10pm

Nearly there!

Dogchod

Posts: 400

#183 3 Jul 2017 at 8.35pm

In reply to Post #182
Looking forward to more of your memories Ken

Tinhead

Posts: 16285

#182 3 Jul 2017 at 7.49pm

In reply to Post #181
It is appreciated

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#181 3 Jul 2017 at 5.44pm

I am slowly getting this thread back together following the Scumbucket affair. Please bear with me; it's long job!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#180 8 Jun 2017 at 3.50pm

In reply to Post #179
Cheers, Adam. Cornwall has been very good to me over the years in all walks of life and fishing, be it carp, sea, sea trout or salmon. As you know, I now longer fish in the UK as I am getting too long in the tooth to cope with all that walking and carrying. Also the modern carper, even some in sleepy old Cornwall, is something of an anathema to me!

wandle1

Posts: 7000

#179 30 May 2017 at 10.44pm

Fantastic stuff Ken,i`ve made sure my son has read this all....for this is his Cornish carp angling heritage ....

Son is over at St Austell College and i told him to have a look at Salamander,he didnt believe me the place held what it did,but after reading and learning about it from you ,he does now...!

Similar sort of thing to the F1 track at Davidstow in a way,part of Cornish History ,hopefully never forgotten...

Daveperks

Posts: 267

#178 23 May 2017 at 9.54pm

In reply to Post #177
Hi Ken, the 2nd photo helped - if I've got my bearings right I think your head is hiding the entrance to the cut?

Never fished the island(s) but often waded out there - depth was right on the limit of my waders mind- one wrongly placed foot & you got to test the water temperature!!

I remember one day counting about 30 fish tightly shoaled up & swimming clockwise in the small gap between the islands, they didn't even mind me getting in & wading through them to get to the small island - they were even bumping into my legs & didn't seem too concerned I was there!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#177 21 May 2017 at 5.25pm

In reply to Post #175
Give that man a coconut!

Well done, Dave.

It is indeed the point of the island that we used to cast to from the Swamp. There were times midweeks if the level was down a little you could wade to the point of the islands in chesties, but only if there was nobody about! It was like shelling peas. Single rod stalking on 40-acres. It was bliss; could watch them pick up the hookbait!Happy daze!

Slash-2

Posts: 718

#176 19 May 2017 at 9.29am

In reply to Post #174
NE point.

Daveperks

Posts: 267

#175 18 May 2017 at 7.39pm

In reply to Post #174
Hmmmm!
I'm wondering if you've thrown us a cheeky curveball? Were the pics taken on the island?

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#174 18 May 2017 at 3.59pm

In reply to Post #173
Here's a hint (giveaway), Dave. The original shot is facing west, the shot with the common is facing east, both taken from the same swim!

Daveperks

Posts: 267

#173 17 May 2017 at 7.23pm

In reply to Post #170
I thought I knew the general area but that second photo has confused me!

FrankDownUnder

Posts: 161

#172 17 May 2017 at 4.09am

In reply to Post #170
You've not been sneaky and printed the photo back to front have you Ken ?

DeanoFish

Posts: 1157

#171 16 May 2017 at 2.11pm

In reply to Post #170
This a great read Ken. I hope one day to have as many nice photos and tales to tell

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#170 16 May 2017 at 11.48am

Anyone else?

Slash-2

Posts: 718

#169 12 May 2017 at 6.46pm

In reply to Post #168
It looks like its way back into the reeds , well hidden

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#168 12 May 2017 at 2.51pm

In reply to Post #167
Then I would say it was the ponderosa ken. Nope!

To be honest unless you have fished College I doubt you'd guess...In fact, even if you have fished there you may have a problem!

Slash-2

Posts: 718

#167 12 May 2017 at 11.52am

In reply to Post #166
Then I would say it was the ponderosa ken.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#166 12 May 2017 at 10.21am

In reply to Post #165
You guys are correct that it is College, now just guess the swim. The Swamp was so named because it was a swamp, this swim was always pristine and at times it was crawling with carp.

Slash-2

Posts: 718

#165 11 May 2017 at 8.58pm

In reply to Post #162
I would say it was the swamp at college.

Daveperks

Posts: 267

#164 11 May 2017 at 7.23pm

In reply to Post #160
Thanks for articles so far Ken - can't wait until the winter for more of the same!

Re: photo, I want to say college - the very top end (east bank) - but probably miles off!

Slash-2

Posts: 718

#163 11 May 2017 at 1.45pm

In reply to Post #162
Then I'm sorry but I haven't a lot of experience outside of Staffordshire or Cheshire.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#162 11 May 2017 at 11.16am

In reply to Post #161
Let's put it this way, Paul. It's definitely not in Staffordshire!

Slash-2

Posts: 718

#161 10 May 2017 at 3.58pm

In reply to Post #160
Not a clue mate,don't tell me its on my door step or I'll kick myself,i could name a place but the farm building in the back ground doesn't fit.

Slash-2

Posts: 718

#159 10 Apr 2017 at 10.58pm

In reply to Post #157
Good read ken, keep em coming mate, don't forget to save some for the book.

Chuffy

Posts: 6582

#158 10 Apr 2017 at 3.38pm

In reply to Post #157

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#157 10 Apr 2017 at 1.55pm

In reply to Post #156
A further three mixes produced another seven fish including, Humpy at just under 19lb, the Pet at 21lb 2oz, landed at one in the morning, returned without a pic, and Goldie at 19lb 4oz.

This is Humpy going back.

And this is Goldie. The self-takes pix that were taken at the time of this capture did not come out well so I have used this one of Goldie at the time of a subsequent capture. I think the colour on the trees provides a perfect background. I think this is a fantastic pic and thanks go to Tat for doing such a good job!

And here's Goldie going back ...

And so the session came to an end with a dozen coming to the next�And this from a lake where every take is regarded as a precious gift from the gods and one fish a session is good going. This is the final page of my diary for that memorable session first on College and then on Salamander.

Two trips; ten twenties. Thank you Tim and Keith. Where would I have been without you!

As a rather nice footnote, I returned to Salamander for a short day session while my car was at the car doctor�s just down the road. I had only one take, but it was The Pet once again, and this time I did manage a pic or two!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#156 10 Apr 2017 at 1.52pm

In reply to Post #155
There was only one other angler on the lake, a local policeman called Dave. He had been developing nicely as an angler and was also well and truly hooked on the idea and concept of quality bait. Dave was down at the outlet end of the lake and he reported lots of movement in front of him with fish puffing up the bottom. I wished him luck between gritted teeth. When they are clouding up like this the Salamander fish seem to loose all caution. This madness doesn�t last long, however, and you need to be on your toes to take advantage of it.

I had a good kip that first night, undisturbed by any carpy action whatsoever, but when I crept down to my left hand baited area the following morning I saw that all the bait had gone. The eels in Salamander were notorious bait robbers and any bait with milks in was asking for a visit. The resident swans too were not averse to wiping you out during the night. Undaunted I put a fresh (frozen) mix of The Bait into the swim and rebaited with the same bait as hookbaits, and at 10.00h that morning had a big old mirror we had nicknamed Gutbucket, with good reason, as you can see from the photo!

Now one fish per 24 hours is considered good going at Salamander so when I had two more before nightfall including another twenty, Jellybelly at 23lb 6oz, I thought things could not get any better. This is the relevant page from my diary on the 3rd October 1987 after a blank first night.

Things most certainly did get better�I had Big Daddy at noon the next day and persuaded Dave to give me a lift back home for more bait. His payment was a mix for himself. He used it well, opening his Salamander account with, unfortunately, the smallest fish in the lake! Here Daddy rests grudgingly in the landing net!

And here's the old girl going back.

And this is Dave the Plod with his first Salamander carp. The first is always the hardest to catch, so the folk lore has it. There must be some truth in that old adage as he went on to fill his boots in the subsequent years.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#155 10 Apr 2017 at 1.46pm

In reply to Post #154
The rain continued to teem and the fish continued to feed. Three more twenties followed, a 23lb common and mirrors of 21lb 12oz and 20lb 2oz. This made it four twenties on the trot. Everything right was coming together at once, the bait, the hookbaits and the weather. Peering out into the lowering skies I saw a carp poke its head and shoulders out less than thirty yards out. It was shallow there�we waded past that spot to cast for heaven's sake. Still, if that�s where they want to feed, then that�s where I�ll put the baits! This is page two of the relevant diary entries.

I put in some more bait and added fresh hookbaits to the hairs and cast all three to the general area where I had seen the fish and then sat down to my first meal for over 24 hours. Somehow in all the excitement I had completely forgotten to eat! Then half way through my meal I had the fish we called the Near Leather. This was a comparatively rare capture during College's 'special years' as it was seldom caught.

The rain had long ago stopped but the midnight shipping gave gales on the way and falling pressure. I took advantage of the lull to clean the bivvy of accumulated mud and debris, some of which was clinging to the roof�How on earth did it get up there?

At one in the morning I had the most friendly carp in the lake, Two Scales at 18lb 6oz. It was widely thought that she had died after the peanut blitz as she had looked rough as rats on her last capture. I popped her in a sack to show Gra in the morning - he had now moved into the Swamp.

I then decided to part with the rest of my frozen bait and three fresh hookbaits. I had to be away by ten that morning and I never took any bait home with me. The final four mixes including all but half a dozen overloaded hookbaits went out onto the hole in the weed where the fish had showed. It was so close in and therefore shallow I could have put them in by hand if I�d had my chesties.

Graham, now in the Swamp, came up to the Ponderosa for a social so we shared a glass or three before tuning in. Two fish on at once came at 04.50, then a lull until a double figure common at 08.15. With only three hookbaits left I rebaited and chucked these out to the same area and within the hour had another big double on the bank. The fish were showing all over the baited area, though I doubt there was much bait left apart from the smell of the solubles and the rapidly dissolving and softening paste that had once been boiled bait. Further takes were a racing cert and they came half an hour apart at 09.20h and 09.50h, the final fish being an awesome half-linear mirror with a huge mouth, that went by the unlovely name of Big Gob! Gra did the pix and I packed up, thankful that I had managed to do so in the dry.

Well that was very nice I said to myself as I left the car park; five twenties and nine back ups! Must try to get back here soon as possible�But my plans to revisit College were thwarted by a car that adamantly refused to start�so I got a taxi to Salamander instead.

The generally low pressure that had been sweeping Cornwall for a couple of weeks showed no signs of moving on. Water temperatures hovered around the magical 50 degree mark (I say magical, as in my experience this is the optimum temperature for sustained feeding activity. I have been convinced of this fact ever since reading Carp Fever, in which KM draws similar conclusions. If they are good enough for him, then they are good enough for me.)

I went into the Lifebelt swim and fished with two rods away down along the left hand margins, heavily baited, and the other away along the right hand margins baited only with a stringer of mini baits to bring them onto the high attract Betaine Special hookbaits.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#154 10 Apr 2017 at 1.46pm

In reply to Post #153
When I was first getting into bait both Tim and Keith set great store in freshness. Indeed, they was adamant that all my bait should be 'freezer fresh' as Tim put it. It seemed that freezing was the key to the bait as it never worked as well when it was introduced de-frosted or even freshly rolled. Something positive clearly happened to the bait while it was in the freezer and though I had no idea what, it was obviously significant in terms of attraction.

I used to take my bait down to College still frozen and store it in the freezer of The New Inn at Mabe Burnthouse, a nearby pub, which became a second home to many College anglers over the years! This gave me the perfect excuse to go down the boozer every day for fresh bait and naturally a pint or two followed. For Salamander, with the lake being so close to home, I had no excuse! Where possible I liked to introduce the bait while it was still frozen and would keep a couple of Thermos flasks of frozen bait in the car or the back of the bivvy if the car got too hot.

So now to the trips in question, which I will illustrate with photos of the relevant pages of my diary. Back in those days there was nothing like the number of active carpers around and midweek it was quite likely I would have the lake to myself. What bliss! To have the run of the place with time to chose the most suitable swim for the conditions without a frantic race from the car park or the threat of violence if you happened to get the �going� swim.

In the case of College at the time there were two or three banker swims, all situated on the west bank where the shallower water could be found. These swims were the Swamp, the Ponderosa and the Beach and when I arrived I found myself spoilt for choice, all three being empty. In fact apart from Graham fishing the SE point I had the lake to myself.

The forecast gave falling pressure and increasing south west wind, which on the fact of it would indicate that the east bank might be a better propositions. However, I knew full well that the College fish were particularly supercilious in accepting human dictates and a large proportion of the College fish stubbornly refused to follow the wind�any wind! I therefore set up in the Ponderosa in the relative lee of the forest behind me. I wanted to get set up before the rain arrived and by seven in the evening the baits were out and three frozen mixes of The Bait had been scattered far and wide over the shallows in front of and to the side of the Ponderosa.

The first run, which came at 9.30 that evening produced a 19lb mirror and this was followed by a further three fish, all mirrors during the night. By now it was raining heavily but in a lull I managed to put out a further three mixes and change hookbaits. This is the first page in my diary that relates to those trips.

We had found that the hookbaits and the freebies bait seldom lasted more than 12 hours in the water before softening up considerably as they took on lake water as the bait broke down and maybe, just maybe, the enzymes worked as intended...a once in a thousand occurrence. It was quite usual to bring back empty hair and a lot of guesswork went on trying to find the optimum time to reel in�when it was pissing down definitely was not the optimum time, but it�s only rain�Can�t kill �ya!

However, it can kill a camera so when the next run scorched off at a ferocious pace at just after eight in the morning when the coffee cup was half way to my lips - it went everywhere - I thought to myself, if this isn�t a twenty it�s going back without a pic. Of course, it simply had to be a twenty and a common at that, so not wishing to get my camera gear drenched and ruined I set up the camera on its tripod and squeezed it into one corner of my bivvy. Cradling the common in my arms I crouched down in the opposite corner and fired off several shots using the bulb operated shutter release. Remember, this was in the days when digital cameras were a far off dream so there was no in-camera reviewing of shots taken to check that they are OK. You just had to wait until the film came back from the processors. The photo here is the best of a very bad lot. It does no justice whatsoever to a lovely fish and leaves me looking like some sheepish fish nicker caught in the act!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#153 10 Apr 2017 at 1.44pm

In reply to Post #152
As you can see, Keith was a member of the famous (or perhaps infamous) Official Longfield Drinking Team, which was perhaps just a tad less esoteric than the Golden Scale Club, which was also around at the time. A am sorry but I have had to blank out some of the product references in the letter as these were then and are now closely guarded secrets�you'll note that one particular product was released commercially and it is still 'out there' in various (predominantly diluted!) guises.

Keith's correspondence contained way more information than I was capable of handling but all that brain power aimed my way was bound to have an effect, and even my tiny mind was open enough to accept that what he said made sense. Not only that, the proof of the pudding had most assuredly been in the eating, as I had enjoyed fishing beyond my wildest dreams using baits based on their ideas and concepts. This is some of the reading material that Keith sent me.

Given the amount of info that came my way via Tim and Keith it is small wonder I became hooked on the science of carp bait and to this day I remain hugely grateful to the pair of them. Many thanks, Keith and Tim.

The more I read and researched the more the concept of natural attraction sat easy with me, all the more so when Keith suggested a number of nutritional aspects of bait that had not really been covered to date. In addition his experiences in the Far East, working with koi rearers, suggested a positive response by carp to a number of what appeared to be natural feeding triggers among them certain amino acids one of which was betaine! Tim was also a fan and had used it I n his original HERNV recipe and Nutrabaits also took on the product. Nowadays there is more betaine in one for or another on the carp bait market to float a boat!

Keith put me onto a source of a crystalline, highly soluble betaine and I incorporated it into my baits right away. Almost immediately it started bearing fruit in my fishing and as my results soared it became clear to me that betaine was a very positive attractor or feeding trigger of some kind. Keith also suggested a couple of other naturally occurring substances that would also help, not so much as nutritional aids but more in the way of detection and attraction. One of these was citric acid, which I have used in just about every bait I have made since.

By now I had moved away from the pure milk protein-based HNV that had formed the basis of Tim�s concept and was now using a bait that was a cross between a milk protein HNV and a raw fishmeal bait. The recipe included the traditional milks � rennet casein, calcium caseinate, lactalbumin � as well as a blend of fishmeals, full fat soya, some Red Factor and a dab of Robin Red. In addition I was using 5g/lb of betaine in with the eggs, and a further 10g scattered over the cooling baits prior to freezing. This bait I rather unimaginatively called, �The Bait�. Finally to act as a label I used a combination of two essential oils at very low levels.

By now I had also grasped the concept of using boosted, high-attract alternative hookbaits thanks to input from Tim and Bill during Nutrabaits' formative years pre-1987 This was a two-egg mix containing additional Betaine and a new ingredient (to me) Green Lipped Mussel Extract (GLME), with elevated levels of the essential oil package. I called these hookbaits my Betaine Specials (more blistering originality there, Ken). Bill had waxed lyrical about the GLM extract as during testing in Kent it had proved to be the best of several extracts that were out on test at the time.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#152 10 Apr 2017 at 1.43pm

Sorry if my random tales jump about in time somewhat but at my age (whisper it quietly�it's 70) I find it increasingly hard to concentrate on a timeline from then to now and subsequently describing what lies between the two points in any kind of structured manner! There are simply too many memories of the south west and elsewhere as so much has happened in my angling life, especially back in those halcyon days when carp fishing was full of uncertainties with none of the vids, TV shows and mags that make it comparatively 'easy' these days. Every trip was a flight into the unknown: new venues, new fish, new experiences, new triumphs and disasters. It seems to me that these days just about everything is handed to carpers on a plate, but that's probably the old fogie in me coming out.

It is inevitable that some memories get mixed up with others and that the repetition of some reminiscences will inevitably occur and possibly even in slightly different forms. Please bear with me! One tale that I think is worth telling recalls a few particularly eventful trips that took place in the late summer/early autumn of 1987.

I guess many of you will think that what follows is pretty nondescript, and I suppose by today's standards you could be right. Nowadays twenties are seemingly commonplace and hardly merit a passing mention in the news. Every youngster and newcomer to the sport has been weaned on a diet of 30s and 40s (and bigger) and they see it as a 'right' that they should land a thirty within ten minutes of their first ever trip! However, 30 years ago a twenty was not to be sniffed at and deservedly so, as they didn�t grow on trees, especially in darkest, deepest Cornwall!

At the time we are talking about I was mainly concentrating my fishing effort on two vastly different venues; College, the 40-acre reservoir near Penryn, and Salamander Lake, my name for a tiny little pond close to my home on the south coast of Cornwall. This first shot shows my Dave Barnes Aqua-Shed set up in The Beach in the autumn of 1987, about the time the events I am about to describe to you took place.

And this is the Lifebelt swim on Salamander, my favourite swim on the lake. You can just catch a glimpse of the lifebelt in the hole in the tree line behind the actual swim. Sadly it looks nothing like so 'carpy' today as the park has been 'tidied' by over zealous staff with too many power tools to hand!

I had been enjoying relative success on most of the lakes I had visited, thanks in no small part to the bait that Tim had put me on. The controversial theory of Nutritional Recognition had long been discussed by better brains than mine for several years and opinions were pretty divided back then as to whether it was a load of old hokum or not. (Pretty much the same as now, then!)

Starting a few years earlier I had by pure chance fallen under the influence of the two arguably greatest brains in the carp world at that time, Tim Paisley and Keith Sykes, and I had been enjoying a prolonged and somewhat confusing (on my part) correspondence for some time with them both. Keith's letters sometimes ran to 30 pages or more, starting off typed, but then as his brain ran away with him in longhand. I still keep that correspondence as the contents are as valid today as they were back then.

h34ds

Posts: 908

#151 7 Apr 2017 at 11.22am

In reply to Post #150
I have thoroughly enjoyed reading these as you pop them onto the forum.
Its a great way of spending your lunch hour

Dogchod

Posts: 400

#150 6 Apr 2017 at 8.47pm

In reply to Post #149
Seen a lot of thIs before, and it's great seeing it all again, brings back fond memeries of the past on Rac waters, happy times.
Keep it coming Ken, love it

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#149 6 Apr 2017 at 4.20pm

OK...More to come over the weekend. Thanks for the last three posts

DeanoFish

Posts: 1157

#148 6 Apr 2017 at 7.46am

I would like more Ken! I am slowly reading through them all

Daveperks

Posts: 267

#147 5 Apr 2017 at 8.23pm

In reply to Post #145
Ken - I'm definitely up for some more articles!

Enut

Posts: 1412

#146 31 Mar 2017 at 10.51pm

In reply to Post #145
I would love to read your further ramblings Ken. A great read so far and takes me back to the good old pioneering days of carp fishing.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#145 30 Mar 2017 at 11.12am

In reply to Post #144
So what with one thing and another Reg had College up to here and when the Cornwall Wildlife Trust expressed an interest in taking College off Peninsula�s hands, Reg jumped at the chance to get these moaning idiots off his back. Revenue was falling and belt tightening meant there was not enough money in the kitty to effect repairs, so the CWT was manna from heaven.

Mark, Steve and Gary and to a lesser extent Steve C, Nige and myself, mounted a fierce rearguard action to try to save the lake, but the damage was done and the lake was closed. In the winter of 1998/9 the lake was netted and the carp were transferred to Argal. In the passing years the great reservoir reverted to the overgrown jungle it was when, in 1982 Tat and I first set foot on its banks at the start of a carping journey that still winds on and on! In just 16 short years College had risen to become one of the top day ticket waters in the UK before falling into disrepair and neglect.

There are still some carp left in College. I know this because I heard from a little birdie or two that during the netting quite a few carp were �encouraged� to find their way under the foot rope and back into the lake. Whether they are still there today is debatable. The otter menace that has affected Cornwall like a plague since the early 90s probably has lead to many of those magnificent beasts being killed. I know that otters are attacking the old College fish up in Argal so perhaps it is no use crying over spilt milk. Here are the three last fish that I caught from College (NE Point swim in about 1994 or '5, a fitting way to end this, don�t you think)?

Just writing this has been hard for me. I miss College more than words can say. In 1998 College closed its doors to angling. Au Revoir College. It was the greatest fun while it lasted. This is one of my favourite views of the lake, taken from the top of the field behind the NE Point

That completes the story of our love affair with College. I will return to the lake from time to time as I recall further South West Memories, but for the moment though, I will move on.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#144 27 Feb 2017 at 12.27pm

In reply to Post #143
Here is a photo of the weed that lay directly in front of the NE Point.

And this shot looks into the North Bay.

As you can see the main body of weed starts about 70m away and then grows quite strongly almost to the other side. I always liked to fish up to the weed, as opposed to in it, across it or over it, as I reckoned this gave me a better chance of a) stopping them from getting into the weed in the first place, and b) getting them out of the weed if they did manage to get in there. The weed was extensive during the summer months but it�s whereabouts told you a lot about the water. You see this weed would only grow in about five feet of water. Any deeper and for some reason it failed to grow properly. It also seemed to favour the more silty areas of the lakebed so if you took the weed as your starting point it was quite easy to find deeper, more gravely areas by fishing to the holes in the weed.

The weed showed me the most likely acres to fish and I welcomed it with open arms. Sadly there was a vociferous group of season ticket holders who felt quite the opposite, and they had the ear of new fishery manager, Reg England of Peninsula Coarse Fisheries. Reg found himself getting increasingly snowed under with complaints, mainly about the thickness of the weed, from a small group of sad losers who, instead of accepting College for the challenges it posed, accepting that the weed was not going to go away and coming to terms with it, niggled away with silly little irrelevant moans. They not only complained about the weed but also about access and the small head of fish! Small head of fish�What�s that all about? The lake contained at least 200 good sized carp in only 40 acres of water and many of them were now pushing thirty pounds with a few others now well into the thirties.

Then they complained about the boards, which it is true had fallen into disrepair in places. Hey guys! You should have seen it before the wooden walkways were built. It was like an assault course just getting to your swim! So now the boards were collapsed in a few places. So what? Get over it! Yes, the boards did for a time make walking around the ressy with a load on your back a lot easier, but hey, things that are worth working for are not necessarily going to be easy! These are the boards in question, photographed when we first started fishing College in the spring of 1984 when bluebells bordered the wooden walkways that for a time made access considerably easier. When a few lengths of these walkways fell into disrepair the moaners got their pens out again.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#143 27 Feb 2017 at 12.17pm

In reply to Post #142
College was always a weedy water at the best of times but some years it was really bad. On the other hand some years the weed died a bit and though it was still challenging to fish, the weed was then comparatively easy to deal with. The problem weed was of course Canadian Pondweed and while this provided plenty of shelter, it wasn�t particularly rich and it seemed to choke off the much more productive water milfoil. However, the milfoil always made a speedy recovery when the Canadian was not so bad and then it provided ample food and shelter for the carp.

College has a pH of around 7.5 � 7.8, quite a high reading that accounts for its richness in natural food. The fish could get a feed more or less anywhere they chose just by sticking their heads down into the silt or by grazing in among the weeds. Obviously the weed was one of the keys to finding the fish but again they were very fussy about where and in which type of weed they would feed. Find milfoil on a hard bottom and you had a chance. The pondweed never produced much, even though the fish went in to seek shelter, and the marginal mares tails were not as productive as you might think.

All in all, the key to success was finding the hard patches in amongst the weed stems As if this wasn�t enough of a challenge, the fish definitely had favourite feeding areas, so not only did you need to find the general area they favoured but also the spot within a spot where they fed more confidently. Once such area was off the point of the smaller island that could be fished from the Swamp. For obvious reasons this was one of the most popular swims on the lake, thanks in no small part to the thick weedbeds behind the island.

Though the weed was not what anyone could call a problem, there were some swims that were weedier than others�this was good for me! You see, very few of the new gang of anglers who had now started fishing College (this is the mid 90s now) seemed able to deal with weed so they tended to fish the less chocked swims in the deeper areas of the lake. Me! Well I just made a beeline for the swims with the thickest weed in front of them!

The North Bay was a particularly bad area (or good area depending on your point of view!) and fishing in either Mick�s Swim or on the North East Point swim at the mouth of the Cut put you right on top of the weedbeds, and therefore right on top of the carp!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#142 27 Feb 2017 at 12.14pm

In reply to Post #141
I well recall one early summer�s morning when I had to leave early to get back home for work. As I walked down the dry footpath leading down to the car park by the dam, I noticed a trail of water leading across the boards and along the path. This gradually petered out beside one of the swims in the Cut. I was beginning to have my suspicions, so I stopped, put my gear down and had a good look around. At the water�s edge in the swim where the trail had started to falter, a big damp area soaked the grass and the path, and then once again the trail of water lead off again towards the dam wall.

This was worrying! Sure enough, as the trail dried out again, also alongside a swim, yet another big patch of water soaked the ground and the path and another trail of water lead across the dam and into the car park. There it stopped abruptly. It was clear that someone had been walking a sacked fish or two from his swim in the North Bay, back to the car park, stopping every now and then to get his breath back and to allow the fish a brief rest in the water, hence the large damp patches where the sack or sacks had been lifted out again.

I knew whose car had been parked there and it was gone, and so too I reckoned were the fish. I went back to the swim where matey had been fishing and noticed those familiar damp areas on the bankside again. I asked his mate who was fishing next to him in the same swim where the guy had gone. �Oh, he�s just popped down to the caff for some breakfast and to buy some fags,� he said. �That�s funny,� I said, �the caff isn�t open for another hour yet�. He flustered and stammered his way through one excuse or another so I said that I would wait with him until his mate got back.

Then I heard a guy walking up the path from the opposite direction. It was big Graham Orchard, season ticket holder and honorary bailiff. He had been walking around before starting fishing and as he came into the swim he saw I was not happy. I told him what I thought had happened, and Gra fronted up the guy about nicking fish. As he protested his innocence his mate returned and he was carrying two well wrung out carp sacks. Caught bang to rights. Graham took their tickets off them and tore them up, then kicked their rods up in the air and their banksticks out of the ground and told them to **** off and to tell all their mates from their home town that they were no longer welcome either.

So while that closed one loophole there was no doubt that other groups were still trying to nick fish. This lead a group of us to ask for a meeting with SWW with a view to about forming a syndicate on College. I think at the time we offered about �10,000 a year, which I am sure was more than they were getting in ticket money, but they refused. We then put a proposal to SWW that a RAC be allowed to put the ressy on their books and thereby increase visitor numbers and at the same time better police the water. This too was turned down. It was hugely frustrating, made even more so by the fact that a few weeks later Gra was admonished for his �heavy handed� approach! Can you believe it? We both resigned on the spot. The whole thing left a nasty taste in my mouth and this was not helped when I received a letter from Del Mills, the fishery manager at the time, telling me that I was banned from the water for 12 months for over-aggressive bailiffing! WTF?!

Well, as I said previously, I was falling out of love with College anyway and this just gave me the extra boost I needed to go travelling, both up-country, mainly to Savs, and across the pond, where there was plenty of virgin water to play with. The Chateau Lake was about to appear on my radar and a whole new set of adventures lay ahead.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#141 27 Feb 2017 at 12.07pm

In reply to Post #140
In 1985 I began fishing the odd trip at Savay as a guest of my old mate from Ockenham days, Speedy Bill. I was not on the syndicate and held only a season ticket but in those days you needed to put in your �apprenticeship� years to allow Pete Broxup to get a look at you and assess whether you would be a good syndicate member - that you didn't upset the applecart by catching too many, in other words! Naturally my trips to College had to be fitted in around the longer journeys but that didn�t stop me putting in my fair share of trips to the ressy. However in 1988 I got into the syndicate and spent a lot of my time over the next three years at Savay. It was not easy finding the time or the money to make the 550 mile round trip and still earn a crust, but somehow I managed it!

Fishing Savay meant giving College a lot less attention than had been the case in previous years, but I still kept my ear to the ground and made the odd trip down there in the early 90s.

By now everyone was on fishmeals and the carp in College were beginning to bulk up, as they have done on other lakes ever since the fishmeal revolution started. Naturally the number of 20s grew and so did the number of up-country lads who were returning in ever-greater numbers as the word about College�s growing reputation spread.

It was round about now that we began to suspect that we were losing fish. It was nothing you could really put your finger on, but old friends (mug fish if you like) stopped appearing on the bank, and there were little signs that some visitors were up to no good. This fish (see below) was an infrequent but always welcome visitor to the banks. We had caught her on that very first trip down west when she had weighed 11lb. Over the years she gradually put on weight and when she made it past 25lb...well, as I a sure you can imagine, she became a very sought-after prize. Nige caught her at 25lb and ounces and then she vanished! After his capture she was did a disappearing act and given that she was somewhat reclusive we were no unduly concerned. However, the years went by an she remained illusive. When I saw her in one of the weeklies from an up-country lake we understood why! That scale pattern made identification very easy so there was no mistaking it was the same fish.!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#140 27 Feb 2017 at 11.08am

In reply to Post #139
Though the tiny baits did give a brief new lease of life to the milk protein bait, there was no getting away from the fact that fishmeals were the future, and little did I know it at the time but Nutrabaits (my bait sponsor with whom I have had a very happy working relationship since 1985) were about to bring out their own fishmeal base mix. Developed and put together by Dave Moore, the Big Fish Mix took Nutrabaits right back into the game and my results on College and other waters really started to fizz.

By the early 90s College was firmly established as a circuit water. Tat and I had started fishing other SW lakes and had in particular turned our attention to the goings on across the Channel, where Rod was piling �em up at Cassien. Steve, Nige and I had already had a few trips across the Pond and to be frank College was loosing its allure.

By 1990 we the place was getting really busy and was not to our taste at all. In fact Tat got so disillusioned with the way College had become a circuit water, and with the carp scene in general that in 1994 she stopped fishing in the UK altogether and she has not fished in this country since. She still fishes abroad when we go on holiday but savage arthritis is catching up and she finds it hard even to hold a rod, let alone land a carp. Mind you when she can overcome the pain she still catches her share, but the glint that used to shine in her eye whenever College was mentioned has faded slowly.

It was sad to fish College on my own after all those years but there was no shifting Tat. However, despite our general disillusionment I always had at least one trip a year there until the fishery closed, just to keep my hand in and teach the new kids on the block a few tricks. Even after the pressure really took hold I was usually able to bag up, thanks to the years I had fished the reservoir. The College carp followed the same patrol routes from day one until the lake closed and you could set your watch by them. There was life in the old dog yet!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#139 27 Feb 2017 at 11.06am

In reply to Post #138
By now the word was out about College and we began to see more and more anglers from far and wide visiting the lake and the fishing was definitely getting harder as a result. I hoped that all of Tim�s claims for his bait would come true and was not to be disappointed. Tat and I started putting the bait in and after a slow start began to catch fish on it catching the lakes first thirty and countless other fish to boot. By late winter the bait was established and our results had begun to show exactly the pattern Tim had suggested it would, namely that his bait began to out fish every other bait on the lake.

I was very honoured to be chosen by Tim (and as it turned out, by Bill Cottam, who was working with Tim on a product line up for the soon to be born Nutrabaits giant). The bait was an out and out milk HNV (or HERNV � higher nutritional value, as Tim called it) and some of the powders I was given to try were the prototypes of the Addit range. Of course, I didn�t know that at the time, all I knew was that if it was good enough for those northern monkeys it was good enough for me.

In fact I almost ruined the bait right from the start by over zealous use of the suggested flavour. Tim had suggested Richworth Blue Cheese at 2ml/lb. I was still stuck on my high attract kick so I ignored this advice and used four times that amount. The bait caught from the off! I wrote to Tim suggesting his level was too low. Back came a furious reply calling me every name under the sun and telling me I was risking ruining his experiments by deviating from the suggested level. Tail between my legs I reverted to the original 2ml and sent a grovelling �sorry� letter to Tim!

Tat and I were first anglers in the southwest to try out Tim's HERVN (higher HNV) recipe and I make no bones about the fact that it was entirely down to the bait that we caught so many carp. Truth be told our fishing skills left a lot to be desired but that just shows you the power of a good food bait. Even a couple of relative novices like us can catch...and what gorgeous carp they were too!

The icing on the cake was the capture of the lake's first thirty. I had written to Tim to give a progress report and he wrote back saying that if things continued in the same vein we would sooner rather than later catch the biggest fish in the lake. Was the man psychic?

Tat and I enjoyed amazing success at College and in 1985 alone we caught twenty-four twenties using Tim�s HERNV recipe. In fact I got so carried away by College that I fell a victim to the numbers game, skived off, lost my job and generally messed up my life for a while. I was caught on the numbers game roundabout and couldn�t get off.

Tim�s HERNV with the prototype Addits was a brilliant bait that we used almost unchanged for seven years. In those years Tat and I caught over 1500 fish from College and to be honest I don�t think anyone ever came close to that! (unless you know better) and some of our multiple hits were amazing. I can recall several occasions in the early 80s when we had twenty fish in a weekend session.

This is my 1,000th carp from College.

But the bait world was changing and down in darkest Kent a plot was hatching to take over the carp world. Yes, the Prems were about to hit College!

I have mentioned the Premier Baits gang earlier and College had been chosen as one of their testing waters for their revolutionary fishmeal-based bait. Towards the end of the 80s these guys started showing up at College with monotonous regularity. Not only that, they kicked our arses for us with their Peach, Garlic and Nodd Oil fishmeals. The milks that had been so effective previously got shoved aside as the oils slicks grew and the fishmeals piled in. They were just awesome and fished every other bait out of sight.

I continued using Tim�s bait and to try to combat the effectiveness of the Prems I even went to extremes going right down in size to 8mm baits. I used the smallest Gardner rolling table and you can imagine how long it took doing a pound of bait and turning it into 1500 or so tiny boilies! Rolling that amount of 8mm boilies was bloody hard work! We used these at Salamander to great effect and for a while they worked well on College, but there was no escaping the fact that the Prems were ruling the roost.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#138 22 Feb 2017 at 4.13pm

In reply to Post #136
As I have mentioned previously, I was not as clued up about bait then as I am now and while I had a decent birdfood bait under my belt, thanks to my Ockenham days with Speedy Bill, in truth my knowledge of what constituted a good carp bait was pretty sketchy. When we first started on College was used a simple soya/semolina boilie heavily flavoured and sweetened with Liquid Hermesetas (aspartame). A pretty poor bait nutritionally but it worked like a charm right from the off. With hindsight I now know that our success was more down to the attractors we used (Geoff Kemp and Hutchy flavours) than to the composition of the base mix! This is the 2nd carp I caught from College back in the autumn of 1983 when Tat and I were using the soya/semo/brown sugar recipe.

However, as carp fishing popularity blossomed the bait world was coming of age and Steve in particular began to get caught up in the spider�s web woven by the mystique of nutritional recognition, milk proteins, amino acids and other strange potions. Tat and I stuck to the 50/50 mix as it was still catching and we saw no reason to change. Steve meanwhile was following a much more complex path using a milk protein and fishmeals base mix. While he caught one or two we still felt that our pretty basic mix was doing the business.

Steve and I had a few disagreements about the direction he was going with bait so we agreed to go our separate ways on bait - but not on tactics. If one bait started catching more than another we would then all go onto the more successful bait. For a while the more successful bait was the 50/50 mix Tat and I were using, as Steve's largely experimental bait had not performed as expected so we teamed up again, albeit briefly.

The early winter months of 1983/4 were significantly more productive that anything we�d previously experienced as the carp seemed to be queuing up off the Beach and the Little Bench, just waiting for a feed. I�ve already mentioned Steve�s Christmas Eve hit and throughout the winter we experienced some of the best winter fishing we had ever enjoyed. What Steve neglected to tell us was that for his big Christmas Eve hit he had reverted to his milk protein HNV while we plugged away on the 50/50 mix.

Tat and I caught reasonably well in 1984 but it was clear to see that our results on the highly flavoured soya/semo bait was starting to fall off while Steve's results just got better and better. It appeared that our flavour levels were excessive, though we didn�t realise this at the time. Consequently we enjoyed brief periods of action followed by a fairly rapid tapering off in our catches. Steve on the other hand, was producing consistent results on his HNV, which was very lightly flavoured. Later I would come to understand more about the use (and abuse) of flavours...I should have listened to Steve!

Though we were fishing as a team, and despite Steve�s seemingly better bait and strategy, I was still not at all convinced that Steve�s milk protein-based approach was all he cracked it up to be, so I began corresponding with Tim Paisley. At the time Tim was the thinking man�s thinking man. What he wrote about bait was ground breaking stuff and his early submissions to the Carp Society�s and NASA�s early mags were required reading if you wanted to get a better understanding about carp bait. To be honest I didn�t know if Tim would reply, as I felt sure my views on bait, as espoused in my first letter to him, would not sit easily with him. However, back came a long letter from Tim explaining his views and giving me a recipe that he had been working on with some of the top carp anglers in the north and in Kent. As far as I know it was the first recipe to use enzymes and other complex chemicals to trigger bait recognition.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#137 22 Feb 2017 at 4.08pm

In reply to Post #136
The week after Tat and I caught a few on the Points we went down for another day trip. There was not another soul on the lake (pretty normal at the time), so having done well on the SE Point we went in there again. Long story short: fishing two rods each we caught 14 carp in seven hours fishing, including a mirror of 29lb 3oz. At the time the fish was a Cornish record, though we didn�t shout about it as we were keeping the place well and truly to ourselves. The fish was another of the big Italian mirrors. It was my PB at the time and while it was not particularly pretty but it was significant in that I would catch it again a year or so later when it became my first thirty. Here she is in all her glory'.

At the time night fishing was not allowed and given that we thought we had discovered the El Dorado of carp lakes, we did not wish to risk our tickets by flouting that rule. The venue was far to good to put our fishing at risk simply to fish a night or two. Accordingly every session involved a hundred mile round trip from home to the lake and back, and we would take it in turns driving. I could tell you some tales about Steve�s driving but he may be reading this and I don�t want to make the guy blush. Suffice it to say, his sense of direction left a lot to be desired! As did the state of his old Ford Cortina; you could see the road going past under your feet through the holes in the floor pan! So given that it was days only � God only knows how many we�d have caught if we had been able to do nights � it came as a very welcome surprise when Stuart Bray gave us, as well and Mick and Bill, permission to night fish. Now we�d see some action!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#136 22 Feb 2017 at 4.07pm

In reply to Post #135
In later years we experienced some pretty severe drought conditions and the low water exposed several elevated strips of light gravel between the silt beds. Locating these afterwards became a priority as the presentation was that much better on the slightly harder bottom.

Now it would be wrong to call these strips of gravel bars exactly as they came up only a foot at most out of the surrounding silt, but we thought that probably they were formed by underwater currents that washed the silt away from the tops of the strips. Right or wrong, we were convinced that finding these strips of less silty gravel was the answer.

Bars or not, we thought finding them was the key to success. This photo, taken from the SE Point shows the tops of the gravel strips that run across in front of the Beach (on the far left) and the Little Bench swims and they are between thirty and ninety yards out.

You can see from this next photo why was usually made a beeline for the Beach regardless of conditions, as the fish had found the bait to their liking and were visiting the area regularly. As quickly as we put bait in, they came along and mopped it up! We thought it was the bait that was responsible for the fish visiting the area but I guess the lakebed may have had something to do with it too!

Good though the fishing was in the Beach we knew that sooner or later we would have to drag ourselves away from the west bank. Steve had created the new west banks swim, the Ponderosa, and Tat and I had cleared some undergrowth and a few trees to create the Swamp from which we started fishing the back of the islands and to the point of the smaller one. While the fishing in both these newly opened swims was excellent, the fact remained that we needed to expand our knowledge of the rest of the ressie. In the end Steve bit the bullet and started fishing the east bank, starting to explore the area off the SE Point swim. He told us that there was nothing very special about the area in general other than the fact that there were always fish in between the two points at the mouth of the Cut.

Piling the bait in, Steve began to catch off the two points. Then, just before Christmas that year and he too started catching regularly Tat and I fished the SE Point for the first time, while Steve reverted to the Beach again, just in time to record his (at the time) historic catch on Christmas Eve 1983.

Meanwhile Tat and I really took a liking to the swim Steve had developed on the SE Point. Clearly there were more carp in College than we had imagined and they were spread out all around the lake, or so it seemed. Certainly the SE Point was very kind to us. This is one of the rare Italian mirrors that had been stocked into the ressie originally. The fish would become an old friend (Two Scales) and if truth be told she was a bit of a mug. She made many a SW carper a happy chappy as she was a PB for quite a few who fished the ressie until she died following the peanut blitz referred to earlier. As far as I know this was the first capture of the dear old thing in the summer of '84

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#135 22 Feb 2017 at 4.04pm

In reply to Post #134
When we started fishing College we were green as grass as far as big waters were concerned, and we didn�t really know too much about fishing deep silt either. So every trip we were on quite a steep learning curve. As outlined earlier in this thread, the bait was nothing special at the time � though it improved considerably not long after we started � and the rigs we used were straight forward four inch long nylon bolt rigs with a short hair. We used doctored Drennan Super Specialist hooks, size 4 and the lead was usually a 3-ounce Zipp, which we thought of at the time as the absolute bees knees.

I should perhaps explain the �doctored� reference above. In my early years I had been a big fan of Au Lion d�Or spade end hooks. OK they weren�t the sharpest hooks in the business, but they worked. These became hard to obtain at one stage so I switched to the eyed versions, which were much thinner in the wire and to be honest not very good! Scratching around for an alternative we stumbled across and article in (I think) the first copy of carp Fisher in which the author was singing the praises of the Drennan Super Specialist hooks. Well, at first we hated them but then Steve came up with the idea of taking a pair of pliers to them. You see, straight out of the packet the SS are straight-shanked straight-point hooks, but we found that they were much more effective if you gave the point a tweak with the pliers so that it was offset; much like the Au Lion d�Ors. Steve also came up with the idea of making the eye down turned, again using pliers to achieve the desired effect. These next two pix show what I mean:

As for reel line, well, we were big Sylcast fans then and used the 11lb b.s. fished straight through to the running lead. We were already experimenting with trying to incite the carp�s natural curiosity so the stopper bead we used to protect the knot was 10mm and bright green luminous! This was one of Steve's ideas�he said it worked for flounder in the river so why not for carp? Steve was full of off-the-wall ideas like this and nine times out of ten they actually worked.

The line was fished bar taught in the new adjustable Gardner line clips that were just becoming available. These were whipped to the butt section just above the reel seat and then screwed down tight for maximum bolt effect.

Using these clips you could get the line so tight you could play tunes on it! And I am sure this had something to do with the blistering runs we would get. Of course, this crude state of affairs did not last long and we soon found it necessary to try a bit more subtlety in our approach.

We knew that the lakebed was soft so we assumed it was silt of mud but we had no idea about fishing in silt and the associated problems, nor did we know anything much about plumbing the depth or dragging a lead over the bottom, so it was more a matter of blind faith that saw us chucking those three ounce bullets as far as we could cast them.

In fact the silt in front of the Beach was up to a foot deep but we only found that out a year or so later when I went out for a midnight swim. Putting my feet down to find the bottom I felt my legs sink into the silt. It came up to my knees! This meant that at the time, when we were unaware of the silt, in all probability the lead, and most likely the hooklink, hook and hookbait, were all buried nicely in the soft silt. It didn�t seem to matter; we still got blistering takes, even though it was quite probable that the fish were sticking their heads deep into the silt to get at the hookbait!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#134 21 Feb 2017 at 4.06pm

In reply to Post #133
One of the most successful partnerships to fish the lake was Gary Thomas, Steve Beard and Mark England. These guys bailiffed the lake in the 90s and were heavily involved in trying to save College as a fishery when the threat of closure loomed. They caught a huge number of carp from the lake, and the photo shown here cannot even begin to tell the story of their successes.

Mark England (on the right) and Steve Beard, who with Gary Thomas formed a very successful group of College anglers in the 90s.

This shows Gary on the right on a French trip with his missus Alison on the left. With them is Dutch writer and photographer Cor de Man and his missus.

One time tackle shop (The Bait Bunker) owner Marcus Watts was one of the most successful anglers in the southwest and his catches on College were the stuff of legends. He holds the lake record with a mirror of 34lb and he added a 31lb mirror on the same overnighter, College�s first brace of thirties and a record that may even stand to this day (unless someone wants to tell me differently!). Marcus's other claim to fame is The Source, the Dynamite Baits base mix. Marcus developed the recipe specially for the Cornish Reservoirs - originally it was called The Reservoir Special. Marcus worked as product development manager for Dynamite for several years, allowing them to release the recipe as the Source. He now owns Future Baits and his company rolls several tonnes of bait a week from the new factory in Wadebridge�

Other anglers worthy of a mention on College�s roll of honour include Martin Cox, Dave Billet, and of course, the amazing Gert Louster. Roy Williams from Portsmouth was a regular visitor and it was Roy who made history at the lake by catching what was at the time the biggest common ever caught in Cornwall, a fish of 29lb + and this capture featured in an advert for Renmill Proteins. Alan White, Terry Smith, Mike Kavanagh, Paul Willis, Vic Cranfield, Nige Cobham and Ian Chilcott visited the lake, as did several of the north Devon Mafia, the Newton Abbot crowd and loads of guys from the Bristol area.

I should also mention the Premier boys, as College was one of the major field testing sites for the fledgling bait firm Premier Baits and all the firm�s field testers and directors came down to the lake during the late 1980s. In fact for a long while Prems ruled the roost on the lake, putting every other bait in the shade. Quite a few of the locals switched from what they were using at the time the Prems to ride the coat tails of the success shown by the early visitors from Kent and Essex. If you can recall an article I did for Carpworld back in the late 80s called 'It's a Nightmare' that was all about the first time I came up against the Kent boys and their fishmeals. Prems rule, OK!

For a time it was very hard competing with the overwhelming number of Prems going in and even though I had thought my own bait (the Tim Paisley/Nutrabaits recipe) was going to carry on as before, I was noticing a slow drop off in my catch rate. However, the good old milk HNV still put one or two on the bank, but it has to be said, the visitors from up country really showed us a clean pair of heels. It was time for Nutrabaits to bring out a fishmeal base mix so Bill and Dave Moore put together the mighty Big Fish Mix ands the rest is history! Meanwhile ! Tat and I had to grin and bear it through the frustrating months when Prems were all-conquering, but we still managed to put a few on the bank, even in the face of the onslaught by the Premier boys.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#133 21 Feb 2017 at 4.05pm

In reply to Post #132
This quartet of anglers really does deserve a special mention for some of their exploits. In particular Gra, Tony, Steve and Nige did very well after they switched to fishmeals working together with Steve W. to put together a very effective bait. (This was well before the Premier boys came down.) While Tat and I were still using Tim Paisley�s recipe with the prototype Addits, the Kids went off at a tangent to build on the recipe Steve had been using from Day 1. They had seen how a well-applied food bait could score, especially when it was heavily baited and the four of them quickly reaped the rewards of heavy and consistent baiting. They called their bait The 5-3-1 and even to this day I have no idea what was in it.

As you know if you have read this little tale from the beginning, Steve and Nige were the driving force in developing Treesmill as Roach AC's prime carp venue but they also spread their wings far and wide and caught more or less everywhere they went, jammy buggers. This is Nige with a gorgeous College linear on tigers from the Ponderosa.

And here's Steve with a French lump from the Chateau Lake, taken on one of our infamous Cornios trips.

Graham Orchard was a very successful angler and bailiff. It was Graham who showed us the effectiveness of high attract single hookbaits, in about 1988, when I don�t think anyone had mentioned the tactic in print before. I remember turning up in the Beach one day just as Gra was pulling off. He�d had something like 20 fish in his session on single hookbaits at extreme range. He told me what he�d been using and where but I poo-poo�d the tactics, claiming that big beds of bait would be much more successful. I followed him into the Beach and had two on big beds of bait and twelve on single hookbaits! Say no more. He was also a prodigious caster, able to chuck a bait at least thirty yards past any of the rest of us�perhaps this accounted for his successful development of ultra-high attract single hookbaits, now I think of it.

(Graham too passed away some time ago. He was a bailiff on College who stood for no nonsense, was Chairman of Roche AC for several years and did much to develop carp fishing in the local area. He would have found a fond welcome in the Official Longfield Drinking Team, had he ever been invited, as he had hollow legs. Gra was one of those larger-than-life characters, a rough diamond with a heart of gold. I can remember countless acts of truly outstanding generosity on his part. He was a real gent and fantastic company. R.I.P Graham.)

Nige Britton was amazingly successful on College taking the biggest fish in the lake quite a few times at big weights. Sadly Nige never caught a thirty out of College but his run of twenty pound plus carp from College is, I believe, unmatched by anyone who fished the lake. Nige, like myself and most of the other original College anglers have not and will not fish Argal. Nige and Steve Churchill now do their own thing and are consistently successful from Cornwall to Kent and also across the pond.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#132 21 Feb 2017 at 4.01pm

In reply to Post #131
The Brummie Lads arrived in force during the close season of �85 and the predominant accent around the lake was pure Birmingham. Rob Hales, in his pre Telly Tubbies days, was a frequent visitor and quite a few of the faces from the Midlands made College their close season home.

As you have probably gathered by now, while a close season was in force in the rest of the UK, Devon and Cornwall were unique in allowing coarse fishing for twelve months of the year and of course College, among other SW lakes, became a Mecca for up-country anglers. As a consequence the lake was plagued with visitors from 15th March till 15th June. I remember one Whitsun weekend when 54 anglers were on the lake, some queuing up behind anglers already fishing. �When are you leaving, mate?� became a commonly heard phrase!

This sudden influx of anglers (many of whom it has to be said, didn�t care two hoots about the fish; after all, they were on holiday in Cornwall FFS!) had quite a dramatic impact on the fish and the fishing. When we first started on College the fish were immaculate.

But soon after the invasion we started to see some horrendous mouth damage and other evidence of general mishandling and abuse. In fact, many of us started moving the most badly damaged fish out of College into Argal, many years before the official transfer of College�s stock of carp was moved to Argal. This sort of damage became more and more common�

As you can see the fish was in a shocking state so to give her a rest I took her up to Argal� I hope she managed to have a nice life after her move but with a mouth like that who knows.

We began to suffer fish losses and started to witness some gross looking fish coming out. At the time peanuts were all the range and many of the up-country anglers came down with sacks of the bloody things, which they piled in with gay abandon. Naturally the fish didn�t think it was so gay and they quickly lost condition and weight. The locals experienced several weeks of very poor fishing after the blitz finally finished and the �foreigners� went home. This bloated fish was one of the peanut-affected victims. You'll have seen the dreadful effects this had on College earlier in the thread when I talked about peanuts.

This poor old bugger, skinny as a rake after the close season invasion and the peanut blitz, is Two Scales�compare her to a previous pic a couple of posts back where she is being held by Steve Westbury. Not long after this capture the poor old girl was found dead...or so we were told. In fact the old girl regained all her lost weight and then added a bit more, bless her!

Many of the country�s great and good came to College in the 80s and early 90s but thankfully from a parochial point of view it was decided to abolish the UK close season on lakes in about 1990-ish and we no longer had such a barrage of visitors. That was manna from heaven I can tell you! Once the close season was abolished in the rest of the UK, College began to loose its popularity with up-country anglers. However, as their numbers dropped so more and more local anglers came in to take their place.

A group of four Cornish anglers from the St Austell area, Roche AC members Graham Orchard, Tony Chipman, Steve Churchill and Nige Britton started fishing the lake in about 1986/7. They were the first to use tigers properly on the water and they soon became known as the Tiger Nut Kids. Their technique was simplicity itself; using tigers very sparingly to catch a huge number of fish before eventually the tigers stopped working. They then switched to their own fishmeal recipe � the first people to use fishmeals on the lake � to carry on where the tigers had left off

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#131 21 Feb 2017 at 3.59pm

In reply to Post #130
At times it seemed just about every fish in the lake gathered off the Ponderosa, the prime time being between first light and mid-day. After that they seemed to drift across to the eastern side of the lake. However, if you didn't mind the quiet time in between, you could almost set your watch for the returning shoal just after dark. Steve had plotted the carps' movement from the back of the small island up the lake towards the Ponderosa and had even isolated a particular feeding area off the Swamp where the fish could be guaranteed to feed around mid morning (see story earlier about the eleven o'clock fish). Here I am returning a fish at dawn in the Ponderosa.

As 1985 arrived so we continued to reap the benefits of having such a sensational venue more or less to ourselves. Mick Thorncroft and Bill Allsbury were the only others fishing the lake at that time but all that was about to change, more of which in a minute.

As we expanded our knowledge of the lake so we began to reap the rewards. New feeding areas were discovered more or less every visit and while Tat and I did our share of exploring, I have to admit it was Steve who really put in the hard yards, pioneering the fishing along the length of the lake from the SE Point down to the Bench and the Gap swims..

As I said, things were about to change at College. Word was beginning to leak out from Cornwall and among the earliest visitors were the late Barry Griffiths and Greg Fletcher. Baz caught Tat and I bang to rights on the water one summer when he was down on holiday with the family. He didn�t have the rods with him at the time but it was very unfortunate that he chose a midweek day when Tat and I had the lake to ourselves to take a speculative walk around the reservoir. Baz couldn�t believe it when he saw a pair of carp anglers on the bank and when Tat caught a nice little double figure mirror his eyes lit up. Why did she have to go and catch when an up-country angler was walking past: And why did that person have to be Baz!

We were, of course, trying to keep the place quiet and we begged Baz not to say a word about the place. He swore he wouldn�t tell a soul, but remember, three people can keep a secret only if two of them are dead! Someone who will remain nameless told the world and its wife and in next to no time the word was out, big style. There was even a rumour going around that a someone had pinned a map of the lake to a notice board in a pub used by BAA members, giving full details of location, where to get tickets and so on. They had even marked the hot swims with bright red empty milk crates. How kind of them�NOT! Though the milk crates were plain to see, the map may have been apocryphal, but our first unwelcome 'visitors' were all Brummies. Was it a coincidence that Baz came from Birmingham! I think you know the answer! Here's Baz with a College lump.

(Baz has now been gone several years and I am sure he will be greatly missed by the carp anglers of Birmingham and the Midlands. He was a founder member of the Carp Society, a Regional Organiser, a stalwart of the junior fish-ins and a member of the Frampton Syndicate. He could talk for England mind you, but was a really nice guy, and an accomplished carp angler. R.I.P. Baz.)

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#130 21 Feb 2017 at 3.55pm

In reply to Post #128
In its early days some of the best anglers in the south west visited College and no mention of the ressie would be complete without mentioning the name Steve Westbury. Steve was one of the original pioneers of the lake and he fished with Tat and myself from 1982 �1985 before teaming up with Nige Britton. Steve now lives in Canada but he pops over to France occasionally to fish with his old mates from the College days. This is Steve with a proper French lump. To be honest he could catch carp from a puddle!

Before emigrating Steve enjoyed great success on College and several other southwest carp waters. I doubt if we would have done half as well in those first couple of years when Tat and I fished with Steve, as his ability to put himself in a carp's head was uncanny. Steve's watercraft was amazing and together we discovered so much about the lake and its inhabitants. Steve was also a hugely inventive carp angler and many of his ideas I still use today. He was a tremendous guy to fish with and his enthusiasm and skill helped unlock College�s secrets in the early days.

One of Steve�s many accomplishments occurred on Christmas Eve 1984 when he caught five twenties to over 29lb in an afternoon in the Beach. This was unheard of in those days and would have made headlines in the weeklies without a doubt. Steve, however, played his cards very close to his chest and apart from Tat and I nobody had an inkling of what he had accomplished that day. Steve�s biggest fish was one of the Italians, and would a few months later become the first Cornish thirty. Steve and I had some truly amazing sessions on College and in the weeks following my capture of the thirty Steve himself made his own bit of history by landing another amazing hit of twenties including dear old Two Scales and another amazing carp that would become known as Half Tail.

We had devoted most of our efforts into extending our knowledge of the west bank swims, of which there were only two initially, The Beach and The Swamp. However, we all spent time fishing other areas along that sun-kissed bank and the area in front of a swim we called Little Bench was very productive. Tat and I did very well in there as did Steve and Bill. Heading further northwards along the west bank took us into the North Bay and there were one or two features close in that became real hot spots in a big SW wind. Bill and Mick fished the north Bay a fair bit and their results were pretty special.

However, Steve's eye was caught by a seemingly featureless expanse of water to the left of the Swamp. There were no actual swims at all between the Swamp and The Beach but Steve decided to create one on a small corner of the path through the woods and his exploration of the lakebed from the swim eventually paid off in spades for all of us. This is Steve fishing in the swim he created, which we called the Ponderosa.

The swim itself seemed at first to be nothing special but it was clear that the fish loved to patrol all over the large area off the Swamp and leading northwards up the lake towards the Beach. Thus the Ponderosa became a perfect interception point as it gave access to the flatlands that dominated the south western end of the reservoir. This photo, looking down the lake from the corner of the North Bay shows the general area of the west bank. In the distance is the flat area in front of the Ponderosa during a drought year The pic particularly shows how apparently featureless the area between the Ponderosa and the Swamp was, yet the silt was alive with natural food and the fish would always get in there for a feed as long as there was enough water to cover their backs. The rocks on the right caused much mirth and jollity when we got swamped by up-country angler during the close season. First thing they invariably did was don the chesties and go out for a scout around. Looking on from the opposite bank we saw many a visitor go tits up on the rocks.

blackfield

Posts: 2449

#129 20 Feb 2017 at 8.43am

I hadn't popped in here for a while...... Great stuff Ken. I'm sure there's a bloody good book in there. Don't know if there's any prospect of that, but it would be nice to see one published.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#128 9 Feb 2017 at 3.47pm

In reply to Post #127
The two swims at the mouth of the Cut were also very productive at times. These were known, not surprisingly, the Southeast Point and the Northeast Point. In the right conditions these swims could be red hot.

Another superb swim was the Holly Bush. The area in front of the swim was just one giant field of silt, some of it two feet or more deep. However, it was so hugely rich in natural food that at times just about every fish in the lake would gather there to feed on naturals. If you happened to be there at the same time as they were, boy, could you fill your boots. This open water swim, situated close to the Southeast Point, is another swim that holds dear memories for Tat and myself. In April 1984 we caught 47 fish in 36 hours from the Holly Bush, a previously unheard of feat in Cornish carp fishing. The session was all the more memorable for producing Tat's first College twenty and for a manic fish that nearly took my rod in. Here is Tat's twenty a soon-to-be favourite called Two Scales.

Another from the same session.

Tat does the breakfast in the Holly Bush on that memorable weekend. I am surprised we found any time to actually eat!

Nice doubles...

And this is the manic fish, which later in life became one of College's first 30lb carp and also, after it went up the road into Argal one of Argal's biggest carp. Here is weighs a meagre (!) 18lb. As you can tell by the soaking clothing, I did a swan dive into the lake to grab the rod butt before it disappeared.

This pic looks across the lake at the sec tion leading down to the dam. The SE Point is on the right, the NE Point on the left.

For ages nobody fished in the Cut itself, preferring the shallow, richer water in the main body of the lake. It wasn�t until my mate Bill came down for his first visit that I even considered it. Bill and I were walking up the Cut for a look-see at the main part of the lake before choosing somewhere to fish. �Does anyone fish in here?� he said, pointing to the Cut. �Nah. Waste of time!� I replied. �Very much doubt that, mate,� said Bill, which was how we came to fish the Cut for the first time. If memory serves me well we had something like 30 fish out in two nights!

This is a nicely scaled mirror caught from the foot of the dam wall in the Cut.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#127 9 Feb 2017 at 3.40pm

In reply to Post #126
Perhaps the swim with the most history and personal significance was the Beach. It was from here that Steve, Tat and I became the first anglers to really bag up on College when we started fishing it in 1983. It was also the spot where Steve twice broke the then lake record in 1983 and early �84. At first when we first started on College there were no true swims and as we expanded our frontiers on the lake we opened up other areas of bank but it took us ages to drag ourselves away from the Beach simply because the fishing there was so extraordinarily good.

Initially we called the Beach, THE SWIM, simply because it was THE swim to fish back then. It later became known as the Beach, for obvious reasons. This is The Swim in about 1984

This is a fish-eye lens shot of the Beach taken in about 1988. It was almost a second home to us!

However, we realised that sooner rather than later we would have to spread our wings a bit more, and fish other spots on the lake. The thing was, at the time there were only about half a dozen what you might call �swims� on the whole lake and if you fancied fishing an area and there wasn�t a swim there, then you just had to make one. To give you an idea of the pressure College came under over the years take a look at these two photos.

In this first one you can just about see Tat set up in a swim that we cut out especially to cover the point of one of the islands. It didn�t have a name at the time, but it was a lovely swim to fish. Nice and dry, you could fish it in your everyday shoes!

A few years on and the place became a mud bath. Where Tat's feet are in the pic above became so downtrodden that the lake flooded the whole area and your everyday shoes would have been lost in a couple of feet of mud! Thus the swim soon became known as The Swamp.

The Swamp became arguably the lake's most popular swim as it covered a lot of water and was also one of the most remote. It was this very popularity that accounted for it becoming something of a wasteland! Swamp though it may have been, it was usually the hottest swim on the lake.

Swamp in about 1987.My drying sacks are a bit of a giveaway

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#126 9 Feb 2017 at 3.37pm

In reply to Post #125
The carp thrived and by the time the word got out about the lake it held several twenties to close to thirty pounds, predominantly the Italian fish. However, one or two of the Leneys also started pushing twenty and by the time carp fishing as we know it started in 1982/3 the lake held an estimated thirty to forty twenties.

I think I am right in saying that up until the time the reservoir was closed to fishing the lake record was 34lb, and this fish was caught by well-known local angler, Marcus Watts (creator of the Source recipe), who at the time owned a very popular tackle shop, the Bait Bunker in Wadebridge. In addition several other fish passed the thirty pound mark including a gorgeous silver common, which was only caught a few times at up to 36lb. This is Marcus with a lovely College thirty. Both Carole and I caught this fish at big weights but never at 30lb plus!

In the mid 80s the then fishery manager Del Mills stocked the lake with pike from a Midlands trout reservoir. These went in at over 30lb in weight but once the word got out and the bounty hunters descended on the place, the pike got hammered and most of them died due to over fishing.

There were plenty of other species in College including roach to 2lb, bream to 12lb and a few perch to over 4lb in weight. In addition the lake once held some massive eels and these became the target for quite a few specimen hunters in the mid 80s. The heaviest eel caught in 1998 was eight pounds in weight. For all I know they may still be in there and if so they must be massive by now.

The lake was closed to fishing in 1998 and a program of netting took place. About 150 carp were netted and transferred to Argal. The fish that were not netted remain in the lake, undisturbed now for the past twelve or so years. (UPDATE: College is once again open to fishing. I have not heard of any great catches and the fishing zones are restricted. Otters are rife on the two ressies.)

Like most water supply reservoirs, College always suffered from fluctuating water levels and when the water was down you could fish just about anywhere on the lake. However, for the majority of the year while the lake held its maximum level you could only fish from certain swims. Eventually these became spread around 80% of the bankside with only a small area behind the islands remaining unfishable, but when we first started there were very few actual 'swims' as such

The most famous swims were all awarded names and the Bench, the Gap, the Swamp, the Little Bench and the Ponderosa were legendary. Then there was Mick�s Swim the only swim ever to become properly established in the North Bay, and named after Mick Thorncroft, carp catcher extraordinaire and stroke-puller par excellence!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#125 9 Feb 2017 at 3.36pm

In reply to Post #124
For the most part College is fairly shallow, the deepest water being found near the dam at the end of the Cut. Here the lake plunges down to about twenty feet. Elsewhere in the main part of the lake, the depth varies between two to seven feet. College is a weedy water, and it was this weed that in part lead to its demise as a carp fishery. We�ll come to that later on. Water milfoil, some potomagetons and a thick stand of mares tails behind the island, are the dominant types of weed. From time to time Canadian Pondweed takes a hold, but as is usually the case with this species, it grows in cycles and while one year the Canadian Pondweed might be thick and almost unfishable, the next year it will practically disappear. The water milfoil holds a vast larder of natural food but when the Canadian Pondweed is bad the milfoil misses out and is choked off. However, it always makes a speedy recovery when it provides ample food and shelter for the carp.

The lakebed is very silty with up to 3ft of silt in places. Elsewhere the lake is dotted with slight contour differences of no more than a foot at the most. You could hardly call these bars as such but they were the key towards successful fishing at the lake. Gravelly areas are few and far between at College but if you could find the silt over gravel you would also find the fish. The silt itself is sweet and rich in food so the fish could get a feed just about anywhere on the lake. There is so much natural food in the lake that establishing a bait was pretty difficult but most of the top baits have held sway over the years, thanks to diligent application and presentation.

The lake has an excellent pH of between 7.5-7.8, which accounts for its richness. All the usual foodstuffs are present including freshwater snails and shrimps, mussels (swan, zebra and pea varieties), bloodworm, daphnia and other insects, as well as leeches and small crayfish.

College was not used as a fishery until after WW2 when the water board allowed limited access for coarse fishing. The lake was not actually stocked with coarse fish but over time natural stocking had occurred via the streams and rivers that enter the lake. However, in 1960 another reservoir was proposed higher upon the valley from College and as the dam took shape it was decided to take advantage of the situation by creating a brace of trout fisheries at College and the soon to be completed 65-acre Argal reservoir.

When Argal was finally commissioned in 1965 it and College were stocked with rainbows and a few brownies to provide put-and-take trout fishing. However, the nature of College with its thick forest and steep banks did not lend itself to fly fishing, and the fishery was not widely used. It was therefore decided to make Argal the trout fishery and turn College into a general coarse fishery.

The man who had the vision for these two lakes was Stuart Bray, Fishery manager for South West Water. In 1978 Stuart decided to stock carp and other coarse fish into College and the initial stocking comprised of twenty-five fish obtained from Thames Water�s fish hatchery. These were mainly large but plump Italian strain fish and though not the prettiest fish in the world they grew well in the flooded, silt-rich lakebed.

A year or so later a further stocking of approximately 190 English-bred, prettier carp between five and twelve pounds in weight took place and further stocks were introduced in 1979 and 1980 to bring the head of carp up to about 250.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#124 9 Feb 2017 at 3.35pm

In reply to Post #123
This pic is of College Reservoir looking down on the lake from the village of Mabe Burnthouse showing the east bank, the Cut, and a bit of the North Bay on the left. This photo was taken before the Penryn bypass, the Asda supermarket and the roundabouts below Mabe Burnthouse were built.

As well as the main lake, two smaller reservoirs were also constructed to hold reserves that were used to operate some of the machinery in the pump houses. These quickly fell into disrepair as the wonders of more modern forms of power took the place of water power! However, the small reservoir known as College 4 was also stocked with carp, primarily to be used as a stock pond to re-supply the main lake, and as far as I know the fish are still there. Tat and I were allowed to fish College 4 on rare occasions and we caught some very pretty carp, which were moved into the main lake. This is Tat fishing the only fishable bank on College 4, which meant fishing over the wall!

This is one of the fish we moved up the lane for College 4. It later made in past the 20lb mark�well past!

The lake runs roughly southwest to northeast. To the west of the lake lies a heavily wooded strip of trees with a winding footpath giving access to the lake. To the east the steep rolling hills of the nearby farms curve down towards the lake. It is roughly oblong in shape, with a narrow arm, known as the Cut, running down to the dam. At the southern end lie two islands while to the northern end of the lake you will find a large bay of about 18 acres.

The prevailing wind is a south westerly, and you�d be forgiven for thinking that the two swims at the mouth of the Cut and the whole of the North Bay would be the hot spots. Well to an extent they were, but regardless of the strength or direction of the wind there were always a hard core of unmoveable carp that always hung around the islands. Here you see a gale of wind from the south west hacking up the lake towards the NE Point swim.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#123 9 Feb 2017 at 3.32pm

In reply to Post #122
In the distance we could see the dam and slowly but surely we were making progress towards that distant feature, looking forward to getting back in the car and having a coffee, when we were shouted at (there is no other way to describe it) by a short, pugnacious older man who was waving his arms about like an idiot telling us to "stop right there!" Given the blokes belligerence we were not inclined to comply but as we were heading in his direction and had no desire to reverse our path all the way back to the car park, we carried on. At last we came up to him:

"What the flying f**k do you think you are doing?" he screamed at us, taking no notice of the fact that my missus was stood right next to me. We explained that we were not fishing but merely plumbing the lake bed ready for a future visit to fish for carp. "There're no f**king carp in here, you idiots," he ranted. "This is Argal Reservoir, a trout fishery, and what's more it's out of season." He insisted on checking the gear and finding no evidence of a hook or bait asked us what the hell were we doing! He was obviously unaware that carpers use only a rod and line with a lead when plumbing. He even made us turn out our pockets! Satisfied, eventually, that we were not poaching his precious trout, he eventually got around to telling us that we were on the wrong f**king reservoir and that we should be checking out College, the reservoir down the valley below the dam. This rather bumptious tw@ was apparently the lake warden, a man with whom I had one or two run ins over the course of the next few years! By now we were only a couple of hundred yards from the dam where the wind was really kicking up a storm.

The conditions looked so carpy�if only this had been the right reservoir we thought to ourselves, what a brilliant one it would make. Little did we know that Argal would indeed become just such a fishery some 18 years later. The rain was coming down in bucket loads by now and thoroughly disheartened we called it a day and left, not even bothering to look at the reservoir down the valley. It would be another twelve months or so before we did so!

We returned to the old familiar stamping grounds and carried on where we'd left off, catching a few here and a few there. It was all becoming almost too easy, what with the hair, boiled baits, Nectarblend and Robin Red and so on. I wrote back to Bill thanking him for the info and telling him about our run-in with the warden. I asked him to keep in touch, told him about the Carp Society (we had become the regional organisers for the Devon & Cornwall area) and put the thought of fishing such a huge water to the back of my mind. College, at 40+ acres was three times bigger than anywhere we had fished before; perhaps we weren't yet 'meant' to fish there�Who knows?

A year passed and a fellow RAC member, Steve Westbury, who I have mentioned previously asked us if we knew anything about College, as he had a mate at work, a non-angler, who had heard that there was supposed to be a reservoir down west that held carp. Knowing Steve was a carper he happened to mention the name College in passing. There was that name again. I told him about Bill's letter and our futile walk around Argal, and we looked at each other before kicking ourselves. How stupid could we get? Why had we not gone down there sooner, immediately after Bill's first letter? After all, the warden for the reservoirs had already told us that College held carp so why hadn't we listened? We told Steve about our encounter with the guy and so we made plans to visit the ressie in the coming autumn. Then another letter came from Bill telling us about another big fish. This was the kick up the arse we needed and so plans were made to get down there a.s.a.p.

College Reservoir lies in a quiet valley in the southwest of Cornwall, not far from Falmouth and is one of two large reservoirs that supply water to Falmouth and the surrounding area. It was created when the then South West Water Board decided to dam the river that ran down the valley thus flooding the flat farmlands that lay beside the river. Work started on the dam in 1901 and it was eventually finished in 1906. It was commissioned the same year when the pump house below the dam was finished and the sluices were closed to allow the reservoir to form.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#122 9 Feb 2017 at 3.26pm

In reply to Post #121
COLLEGE RESERVOIR - Nirvana Found.

This was the signpost to the kind of carp fishing we could only dream of prior to finding College Reservoir.

Over the next few years Tat and I plus our mates enjoyed success after success. Who'd have ever thought it was possible?

You might think that some tuppenny-ha'penny reservoir stuck way down in the depths of darkest Cornwall would play little or no part in carp fishing�s history, but you�d be wrong! In the 1980s and �90s the lake played host to many of the country�s top anglers and it was certainly a major breeding ground of carp fishing in the southwest with plenty of anglers turning to carp fishing for the first time as the news about the rewards in College spread. My own history as a carp angler and later as a writer is inescapably tied to the history of the lake, as it was here that I cut my teeth as a carp angler. In its day College Reservoir was probably one of the most significant day ticket carp waters in the country. Sadly the lake is now largely lost to angling thanks almost entirely to a group of sad sacks who could find nothing positive to say about the lake and who lived only to moan incessantly about trifles. You ruined what was probably one of the finest open-to-all carp waters in the country. Thanks a lot!

It's the early 80s and we are happily doing our thing on the RAC waters, Salamander and on the occasional holiday at Waveney Valley Lakes. Life was good! We had a county that was almost devoid of carp anglers yet one that had some nice venues for those that practised the gentle art. Then one day in 1981 a letter came from a guy called Bill Allsbury, a Carp Society member who lived down west in Falmouth. Bill wrote to share the news that he had just caught a 28lb mirror from "a very large lake nearby". How big! That would make the fish a country record. We had to know more.

A look on the OS map showed two large bits of blue close to Falmouth and another in the middle of the peninsula north west of the town. All three were water supply reservoirs belonging to the South West Water Authority. I wrote back to Bill asking or more details but didn't hear back, so we kept an eye on the local press and the angling weeklies thinking that Bill might have publicised his capture, but at the same time rather hoping he hadn't! We wanted to find this lake and quick!

A good starting point was one of the two big ressies that lay close to the coast and using a research method known as 'the blind leading the blind' Tat and I drove down west one wet November weekend with a plumbing rod each and a few leads in our pockets. As I recall it was a horrible day and as we pulled into the rough and ready parking area overlooking the lake, the sight of the wind-whipped white horses marching towards us from the south west almost persuaded us to return to the warmth of the fireside at home with our feet up and a nice bottle of red. However, undaunted we set off, making our way along a very slippery path that ran along the right hand (west) bank of the lake.

We walked right up to the far end of the lake - it seemed to take forever - scrambled through thick undergrowth, marsh and bog across the top of the lake, and then made our way down the opposite bank, all the time casting a lead to feel the bottom an judge the depths. It seemed like a very interesting lake bed and deep in places too. Unfortunately it seemed to be pretty snaggy as we lost several leads and quite a few yards of line where it had rubbed over rocks or boulders. The eastern bank featured small bays and promontories and again the bed of the lake seemed very 'carpy'. And all the time the wind hacked in from the south west blowing straight up the lake. Still, at least it stopped raining.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#121 27 Jan 2017 at 2.29pm

In reply to Post #120
At one time during its brief heyday there were probably a hundred or more carp in Treesmill when Steve, Nige, myself and two or three others were fishing it regularly. It was Steve and Nige who were primarily responsible for making the lake what it was by the careful introduction of new stockfish to compliment the old originals that once ghosted through the gin-clear depths; now most of their hard work was gone, destroyed by the otter plague. To be fair to the Club, they have at last taken steps to return the lake to its former glory by putting up an otter-proof fence. Only time will tell if the horse has already bolted.

To us - the rare few that fished it back in the halcyon days - the Treesmill fish were more than just carp, they were special gifts from the fishing gods. We named them, yes, like most carp fishermen do, but that seemed to make them all the more precious, so when we found any marks or tattered tail fins they were always carefully dressed and in some case stitched up�I kid you not!

There was this one fish that Steve caught, a good near leather of just over twenty pounds. It was in a very sad state when Steve caught it, as a cormorant had stabbed it and pierced a large wound in its flank. Through the wound you could see the fish�s gut, which was actually part protruding through the hole. Steve is no vet, and though tempted to put the poor creature out of its misery, he decided to poke the bits and pieces back into the hole and then stitch the gaping wound together using a needle and very fine sewing thread that at the time we used as hair material. Dressing the wound with anti septic Steve slipped the fish back with fingers firmly crossed. We never expected to see it again, at least, not alive, so it was greatly satisfying when I caught the fish four years later, almost completely healed with just a scar to show for its trouble. Here she is, the scar plain to see as a hole-shaped patch.

Before the otters arrived the lake was actually showing signs of becoming one of the finest lakes in the south west, and there was even evidence of natural stock recruitment in the shape of several small heavily scaled mirrors that had previously never been caught before. These were undoubtedly the progeny of those old stalwarts that had lived in the lake all their lives.

I would love to think that Pinky, Big Scale, Our Mate, the twin twenty pound commons, the Stitched-Up Leather and all the rest of those fantastic carp are still in there, but somehow I doubt it and because of this I will not return. Perhaps I need another kick up the arse like I needed all those years ago when I fled one lake that was suffering the sort of abuse you wouldn�t read about, only to find heaven at Treesmill.

Those few years of always-happy sessions at Treesmill with Nige, Steve and a few other reprobates remain to this day some of my most treasured memories, memories that the otters have slowly eroded with every bite they took out of our historic fish.

"Preserve your memories; they're all that's left you." Paul Simon.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#120 27 Jan 2017 at 2.20pm

In reply to Post #119
We were happy for the guy and happy for ourselves. Sometimes carp fishing just makes you feel that way. We did a load of photos and had a beer and generally celebrated the capture of what was possibly the oldest carp in the county.

The session wound its way to a close early Monday morning. We all had to be at work in a few hours but we left that lake with some great photos, some even better memories and top of the pile a fish that in all likelihood was older than I was at the time.

Treesmill held a very special place in our hearts and still does for some of us but things changed. None of us fish there any more; indeed we have not been back for several years. You might ask why? Well suddenly the lake became very famous when it produced a fish of close to 40lb - some say forty pounds plus. It was a known fish that we had all caught at mid to upper twenty pounds and I think Steve caught it for the first capture over thirty. It was a real bruiser of a mirror that I called Pinky for obvious reasons. Later to confuse the issue it became more widely known as Benny by the newcomers who descended on the lake following the capture. Don't ask me why Benny: for me she was Pinky so here she is in all her Pinky glory.

Trying to keep news of a fish like that is hard anywhere but down here it is downright impossible! The big mirror was huge news and the lake went from empty to packed out in seconds flat. Suddenly �our� swims were no longer ours. I suppose it had to happen some time or other but it kind off hurt when eventually the lake achieved the reputation it had always deserved.

For some time the lake hosted some of the Club's best carpers who all reaped the rewards that Treesmill had to offer. I found it hard to accept that my idyll was over, my �secret� discovered. I would love to put the clock back to recapture those days, but that�s only dreaming. The otters that had started to chew their way through virtually every carp lake in the county eventually found Treesmill.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#119 27 Jan 2017 at 2.12pm

In reply to Post #118
Can you imagine in this day and age going to a lake knowing that your favourite swim would be free, even if there were a few other anglers on the water? That's the kind of lake Treesmill was back then, and that's the sort of friendship and happy co-operation that can be built up between carpers.

Harry came down to join us one bright and sunny day. We had decided to make a weekend of it, have a bit of a barbie and a few tins. Steve offered his swim, Alcatraz, to our Clawford mate as the fish were used to seeing bait in that area and it could generally be relied upon for a take or two. Harry like the rest of us was using Trigga so in effect Steve had been baiting up for him�not that anybody saw it that way.

So we left Harry to settle into Alcatraz and went off to set up ourselves, myself in the Trellis and Nige and Steve sharing the two dugouts at the back of the islands. Treesmill can be a funny place. You get nothing for a couple of weeks, and then several fish come out at once in the space of a weekend session. Maybe this would be one such weekend!

The first few hours passed uneventfully enough so we adjourned to the local hostelry for a few beers and a curry before making our way back to the lake. The evening was almost upon us and the bats had come out to play, swapping places with the sand martins that played all day over the lake, their homes being a huge sand barrow beside the lake. Alcatraz looks along the barrow with deep water right in close. We sat with Harry for a while and had a final beer as he put this rods out. The baits landed spot on, so spot on that he had a take almost on the drop to the rod cast along the burrow. Sadly it chucked the hook after a few minutes but was pretty encouraging. However, that take was the only action for Harry and the rest of us that night and this continued for most of the following day.

So we enter the second day of the so far fishless session. It was late afternoon, the sun just kissing the tops of the trees on the eastern bank as it set in a fiery blaze behind the hills. We had prepared a barbecue in Alcatraz and were enjoying the social when Harry�s right hand rod was away. It was a blistering run that left him breathless as line sped from the reel. We hadn�t told him how hard the Treesmill fish could fight and he was visibly shaking as the run just kept going and going. At last the fish stopped running and a dour fight that lasted fifteen minutes got underway. Eventually the fish neared the bank where Nige waited with the net while I took loads of photos of the scrap. It was clear that the fish was one of the big ones. In the water it looked like it was a rarely caught ex-Billberry fish, one of the oldest fish in the lake, well over 40 years old, a long grey heavily scaled mirror. Here Harry plays the fish as it tries to pull his arms off.

Harry was beaming as the scales read close to 25lb. Yes, it was the old grey Billberry mirror, now his first Treesmill fish and one of the prize captures that we all aspired to. As far as we knew this was the oldest fish still alive in the pool, probably in the whole of the county. As Harry said when we told him we though it was at least forty years old, "Blimey, it's almost as old as I am!"

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#118 27 Jan 2017 at 2.05pm

In reply to Post #117
They were really most obliging fish and the two areas produced at least half of the fish I caught from Treesmill over the years. It was not uncommon to catch several in an afternoon - though I gather it is nothing like that now! Here's one from the Slope.

Another one from the Shallows that same afternoon.

.

One of the other lakes we had started to fish was Tanners Lake on the Clawford Vineyard estate, and it was here that we met Harry, the Vineyard�s fishery manager and a bloody good angler to boot, something he proved to me every time I went there and found myself blanking while taking photos of his bloody fish!

Harry was keen to have a try for the Treesmill carp so we managed to get him into the club. Though living not far away he had a family to bring up and his full time job at Clawford didn�t leave him much time for fishing so when he did manage to get down to Treesmill we went out of our way for the guy. After all, he had been so helpful towards us up at the Devon lake so it was only right that we repaid the favour when he came down to Cornwall.

At this time it was in effect just an handful of members fishing the lake, as nobody else fancied it, saying it was too hard and not worthy of a proper effort. We were not about to dispel that image and for two or three years we had the lake almost entirely to ourselves! In fact it was common for the three of us to fish our own swims and we would not jump into another�s swim even if it were free. For instance, one of the swims on the lake known as Alcatraz was regarded as Steve�s while other swims were similarly respected. This is Steve's swim in the far centre-left of the photo where it looks like a dark cave.

My swim was the Trellis which featured a hot area on a long chuck to the back of one of the islands.

Nige made his home in one of the two swims he and Steve had dug out for themselves that gave access to other areas of the island margins that could not previously be reached. Smart move on their part as the fish often patrolled the margins of the islands. Here's Nige with Our Mate from his swim.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#117 25 Jan 2017 at 3.59pm

In reply to Post #116
On the same trip I also had a twenty pound common (one of two in the lake), and my success continued in the same vein for several months. Where once I could buy a take, now they were crawling up the rods!

One of my favourite areas was called the Shallows and at times just about every fish in the lake could be found sunning themselves here. It was not popular at the time, but I kind of fancied it. One day I remember I shinned up a handy climbing tree and could not believe my eyes. Clouds of �smoke� billowing up from the bottom as the Treesmill carp tried to rip it to shreds. This was all the encouragement I needed and for the next few days I put plenty of bait in to make sure they came back each afternoon.

The fish seemed always to be in an obliging mood on the shallows and you could set your watch by them whenever the sun hit the water in that top corner. They would arrive by noon and stay there all afternoon as long as nothing came along to disturb them. There was no better spot on earth that summer that to be sat behind the rods fishing the shallows at Treesmill. Sheer bliss!

I recall the time I first took what would later become Trigga up there; I had eleven fish in an afternoon! This was previously unheard of and it seemed to confirm something I had been turning over in my mind for quite some time, namely that certain ingredients when incorporated into a carp bait and placed in a suitable area will have the uncanny knack of sorting out the better fish in the lake, often in an extraordinarily short period of time. So it was when I first put the prototype Trigga into Treesmill, experiencing action that was fast and furious.

Another area that I found very productive was a swim I called the Slope, which appeared to lie on the patrol route they took when heading for the Shallows. The first couple of meters out from the bank the depth was only 2-3m or so, but thereafter the depth plunged down to ten meters or more. However, when the carp came through at the top of the Slope you could see them clearly in the gin-clear water and watch as they fed. I caught quite a few fish by stalking them on both the Shallows and on the Slope, alternating between the two�Catch a fish from the Shallows; move up to the Slope. Catch a fish on the Slope; move back to the Shallows�and so on.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#116 25 Jan 2017 at 3.58pm

In reply to Post #115
Thankfully the relatively light angling pressure allowed the Treesmill inhabitants to grow slowly but surely to decent weights, which I will come to soon. Among the club�s other lakes was Billberry, a lake that supposedly held the oldest carp in the county, said by some to be over 40 years old. The lake was originally gin clear, so given their age and the clear water they too were as crafty as bog house rats. This is the old mirror known as Cod Dorsal at 18lb. I saw the fish under the trees that lined the west bank but she would have none of my clumsy attempts to fool her. Eventually I caught her on a freelined floating Mixer draping the reel line across a tree branch so that only the Mixer touched the surface...That fooled her, alright!

Then calamity�The lake became polluted by clay waste when a contractor started to excavate sand and clay using the lake water to wash the clay away leaving behind the valuable sand. The result was that the lake turned a horrible chalky white colour, and while it apparently did not cause any distress to the fish, the anglers hated it and stopped fishing it, so a few carp were removed and placed into Treesmill. These were venerable fish having been stocked many moons earlier.

Time passed�Now with the Rashleigh reaching its prime thanks to the de-stocking policy quite a few fish surpassed the twenty pound mark and a few topped thirty. Largely because of the regeneration of Rashleigh the Club's other waters were now almost totally ignored and interest in Treesmill, for instance, largely disappeared�apart that is from a handful of members who were fishing it more or less on their own and having a whale of a time! Though a few of the originals had reached old age and passed on plenty remained, battle scarred old warriors that had grown particularly crafty in the now gin clear water of the lake. Quite a few of the fish reached respectable weights in the low to mid twenties range with one or two going a tad bigger. But they were largely ignored, much to the delight of Nige and Steve who were quietly getting on with the business of having a few!

Initially my own track record at Treesmill was not so good and if truth be known I failed miserably at the lake when I first tried my hand there. In fact, I remained resolutely a blanker and even with Steve and Nige�s help I couldn�t even buy a fish there and felt totally defeated by the place. The underwater topography just blew me away and how the pair managed to catch was beyond me! I returned to other waters where I could catch a few and turned my back on Treesmill, joining the other members who though it was too hard.

Then came the day when suddenly I felt that carping was loosing its allure. Problems had started to occur with distressing regularity at Rashleigh and Waldon where idiots were giving the lake the sort of abuse you wouldn't want to read about. Salamander was now firmly on the 'circuit', even College had (temporarily) lost its appeal. I needed a new challenge so I went in search of pastures new and decided at last to join Steve and Nige on Treesmill in a more serious attempt at catching a few of those Treesmill biggies.

For some strange reason my second stint on Treesmill was met with almost instant success, and first trip up there I had two twenties out in 24 hours, a mirror and a common. The mirror it turned out was a bit of a mug � which accounts for why I caught it. Steve and Nige knew the fish as Our Mate�says it all really! �

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#115 25 Jan 2017 at 3.57pm

In reply to Post #114
Eventually the mining company decided they had no further use for the pit and Treesmill was closed down and allowed to flood. The area being a mass of springs it took no time to hide all the ugly evidence of the lakes former history under millions of gallons of fresh clear water.

Strangely enough the history of carp fishing in the south west is closely linked to the Walker era as quite a few lakes in Cornwall and Devon were stocked with fish from that time, including old farm ponds, quarries and pits that received Leney-strain fish. Our lake, Treesmill, was one such lake, and as the popularity of coarse fishing grew in the County, Treesmill was taken over by a local angling club. The lake was as bare as a badger�s arse to begin with but nature quickly took a hold and soon the scars of the lake�s industrial past were softened by Mother Nature�s richness. Dwarf Lilies appeared in the margins and small clumps of water milfoil grew on the shallows.

Treesmill is an interesting lake being very deep in places and relatively shallow in others, and the in-between areas are up and down like a yo-yo. There are islands and weed beds and sheer drop-offs and gentle slopes; you could say that as a carp lake it has everything not least some highly elusive carp. In fact back in the day the Club was instrumental in the development of carp fishing having stocked carp not just into Treesmill but into all their other lakes. Careful fishery management meant that no one lake was allowed to become the dominant carp fishery within the Club.

However, back in around 1970 an injudicious decision by the then committee resulted in a massive over stocking of carp into Rashleigh (some say upwards of 3,000 were introduced to the ten-acre lake). The few originals in there, all good sizes, began to suffer as competition for the available food dragged them down. Something had to be done so a subsequent committee took the obvious and sensible decision to dramatically de-stock the lake of the smaller carp, hoping that this would allow the big old originals to grow on properly. Consequently fish were moved from the out from that overstocked lake and into other lakes on the clubs books, Treesmill among them.

As I mentioned, Treesmill already had a few carp in it, but they were not in the full flush of youth and were consequently too damn clever and had a tendency to disappear into the myriad of features on the lakebed whenever anyone tried to fish for them. So it was hoped that by moving some of the smaller fish into Treesmill, sport for the carp anglers would improve. Sadly the lake lay almost completely ignored for many years, the fish being allowed to get on with their lives in peace and quiet.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#114 25 Jan 2017 at 3.56pm

In reply to Post #113
Foxes pass shy and unseen across the landscape, their earths scattered sparsely around the undulating farmland that surrounds the lake, while sand martins flit and dance overhead feeding on the insects hatching from the silt of the lake. Their nests are tunnelled out of the sandy slopes of a large sand burrow that dominates one side of the lake. Unfortunately the banks of the lake still bear the scars of its industrial heritage, but with the passage of time Mother Nature is gradually reclaiming her rightful place.

We start our story way back in the early days of carp fishing history when buzzers, bivvies and bedchairs were a thing of the distant future. Only a tiny handful of fanatical carp anglers fished for the species and of them only one, Denys Watkins-Pitchford, wrote about catching them with any authority. His book, �The Fisherman�s Bedside Book�, published in 1946 under his non de plume �BB�, was probably the forerunner of modern carp fishing literature. BB's descriptions of great encounters with this almost mythical fish stirred the blood of many anglers who, up until now had thought carp were uncatchable.

Then in 1951 came the dawn of carp fishing as we know it today, albeit in a much less sophisticated manner than the way we fish nowadays. That year Redmire Pool took the angling world by storm after Bob Richards caught a 31lb 4oz mirror from the pool. A year later Dick Walker broke the British record with his capture of a 44lb common from the Pool, and the rest, as they say, is history. Redmire was a place of legends to us back then populated by huge carp that could be seen hosting through the weeds or basking on the shallows. Then there were Redmire's own ghosts, tales of which were many. We were lucky to go up to the fabled pool just once, a five day session in 1989. They were right about the ghosts but they were very friendly ones! Tat caught one of the fabled Redmire commons but it was the only fish of our five day trip. Sadly I fear that for the most part we were no match for those elusive beasts.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#113 25 Jan 2017 at 3.55pm

In reply to Post #112
I'll be the first to admit that Treesmill did not appeal to me at first. I was concentrating more on College, Salamander and Waldon at the time, still experimenting with various products for Nutrabaits, so I was not really taken by the thought of switching to another, more unknown venue. I thought that lack of intimate knowledge of the lake and its inhabitants would have an adverse effect on my test results, so I left Steve and Nige to it while I concentrated my efforts elsewhere.

However, the pair kept on at me to give Treesmill a go so eventually I weakened. In addition to Steve and Nige, the two committee members, there were only two of three other members who went anywhere near the lake, that is how hard the majority of the RAC memberships thought of the place. Rock hard and not worth the effort because there was nothing worth catching in there. Oh the fools!

As it turned out Treesmill was by far the richest venue on the Club's books and the transferees really bunged on the weight. In addition there was around a dozen ancient originals, which, if you could find them, were well worth catching. This is a view of the lake showing some of its the small islands.

Having failed to get to grips with the lake at first, in time it became a firm favourite of mine. I was so glad that Nige and Steve kept twisting my arm to join them on the lake and am also most grateful that they let me in on their well kept secret, namely that the lake was a treasure. Since they had switched from Rashleigh and College and started fishing Treesmill they had kept quiet the fact that they were fishing Treesmill, along with the fact that they were having a few! The lake is now well known to any SW carper worth his salt but back then it was a real gem, the jewel in the crown of Cornish carp lakes.

I doubt that there is a single old school carper living in the south west who does not look back with the deepest affection on the early days of Cornish carp fishing. In a fishing life that spans over fifty years, one now filled with countless fish the size of which I could once only dream about, my fondest memories go back to those early days when I began to spread my wings as a carper and find my way around the mystery that was carp fishing in those days. Sadly, as far as I am concerned, most of the mystery is gone, at least in this county, but despite this, the memories remain etched deep in my fishing history. The story of Treesmill and its inhabitants is full of days of wonder, tales of excitement and pleasure-filled memories galore.

If you search hard enough, and with sufficient enthusiasm you may find, nestled at the end of a long, narrow, overgrown dirt track, a lake. It has a name, rather an ugly one I think, and anglers being anglers their penchant for renaming lakes was in force here...(thought this was also as a blind to keep the true identity of the lake quiet for a long as possible). The lake soon became known as Treesmill by the few club members who fished it after the name of a small Cornish stream that runs through the local countryside on its way down to the sea.

The lake is actually an flooded open cast mine where China clay was extracted right up to the late 60s. it isn�t the prettiest spot in the world but in the right light with dusk approaching it has its moments. There is wildlife galore, flora and fauna to please the eye. Gorse, or broom as it is called locally, dots the hedgerows heralding the arrival of spring and once the broom arrives the foxgloves are never far behind.

Dwarf lilies grow in on the shallower areas of the lake but these are few and far between; for the most part the lake is deep, dark and mysterious.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#112 25 Jan 2017 at 3.53pm

In reply to Post #111
As Wheal Rashleigh became seriously over stocked by the inopportune introduction of hundreds (some say thousands) of small carp in the early 80s, so the lake deteriorated in quality. The small carp caused many problems including the depletion of natural food, the loss of weight and condition of the original carp in the lake, the destruction of the weaker marginal weeds and the discolouration of the water from a nice semi-clear green to an opaque chocolate brown.

Rashleigh went downhill swiftly and a drastic rescue plan was augmented following a site visit and subsequent report by Bruno Broughton, a well respected expert in fishery management. Among other steps he recommended was to de-stock the lake and transfer as many as we could catch into Rashleigh's neighbour Waldon Pool. So commenced a lot of serious effort on the part of some (not all by any means!) of the Club's members to shift the small carp from one lake to another.

As previously mentioned, the transferees enjoyed life in Waldon and a few even made decent weights, as this pic of a nice plump mirror caught by Steve Churchill, RAC committee member, shows.

Any carp that made the grade was put back into Rashleigh but this still left hundreds that failed to blossom in the same way as the others had done. So this still left the Club with the problem of what to do with these smaller carp in Waldon and the obvious solution was to (unofficially!) catch and transfer them to some of the Club's other lakes, mainly Treesmill and Billberry but quite a few were put into Glynn Valley. I say unofficially as there was no committee authority to do this as it was never brought up at the meetings, but considering the people doing the moving were also committee members, well, not a problem.

Billberry was never one of my favourite venues. I fished it only a few times and was lucky to catch one of the original residents a leather that was known as Cod Dorsal. Steve W. on the other hand fished it a lot and he caught well. Once again, if the fish did well they went back into Rashleigh but one or two smaller ones (and a few not so small!) found their way into Treesmill, the largest of the Clubs lakes and one that was at the time hardly fished. Nowadays Treesmill has become the Club's premier carp venue not least because it is the only one of its waters that can be otter-fenced.

The majority of RAC's lakes are impossible to fence but Treesmill is relatively flat and is much easier to fence. I therefore see it as the next flagship water in the Club�I just hope the committee sees it the same way. Treesmill was not popular with the majority of the membership back then as it was regarded as a hard water not simply because of its size (at 20+ acres it was the biggest lake on the Club's books) but also because it was believed to hold only a few decent carp. In addition the underwater contours resembled the dark side of the moon being a mess of gullies and toughs, plateaux and shallows. Because of its unpopularity and secluded nature the lake became prime target for the tiny few carp men in the Club that fancied a challenge and the two that really developed and brought the lake to its present glory were Steve Churchill and Nige Britton see below with a Treesmill common.

Dogchod

Posts: 400

#111 12 Jan 2017 at 6.29pm

I attended the carp society night with yourself bill and tim, really good nights, think that's the one where my cousin went for a slash when the raffle was being drawn,he asked us to look out for his number and it came out so he wandered up all happy until you told him the colour of the ticket was different

He didn't find that one funny, unlike me and our mate steve
Miss them days

Slash-2

Posts: 718

#110 12 Jan 2017 at 6.25pm

In reply to Post #109
Fantastic read ken, being an avid nutrabaits user i found your article very informative and forfilled my curiosity on a lot of thoughts I've had over the years, well done mate, by the way the blue one piece nige is wearing takes me back.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#109 12 Jan 2017 at 4.24pm

In reply to Post #108
The Broughton Report was really paying dividends by now as Rashleigh in particular started producing more and more big fish. The enrichment program Bruno had recommended - liming followed by horse manure + de-stocking and allowing more light onto the lake - had proved a real blessing and some really good fish were coming out. This is committee member Nige Britton with a superb Rashleigh stunner.

As if proof were needed that Rashleigh was turning not just a corner but a bloody great hairpin bend, we began to experience blooms of blue-green algae. This stuff only blooms on rich waters so while it was a bit of a pain at the time as long as it did not affect the fishing - which it didn't - the sight of the algae on the lake was a very positive sign.

Early winter shot of the bottom bay at Rashleigh. It shows the thin layer of blue-green and you can also see the horrible but oh-so-necessary rope preventing the catch at all costs merchants from casting into the snags in the bay.

I feel that the use of the essential oils and other products helped us a huge amount throughout the 80s and this lead to a much deeper involvement with Bill and Nutrabaits. As the range expanded over the years we worked our way though the catalogue of the firms EOs, base mixes, flavours and other attractors and while some were undoubtedly better than others, even the �bad� ones put carp on the bank.

I like to think that our long association with Nutrabaits helped promote the brand but it was always a two way thing, as we have been able to source a few products that have made it onto the Nutrabaits product list. The one that has really stood out is Cream Cajouser which I passed on to Bill as I knew it would be a winner for Nutrabaits. It was also a winner for Richworth where it was known as Birdfood Enhancer! This is the modern version. I don't know it it is the same product that I sourced back in the 80s.

Using EOs was a real eye opener for us. Once we had found the right level they added a new dimension to our carp fishing. Like many others we had been looking for something that little bit �different� in terms of attraction to act as a label for Tim�s HNV base. Tim�s concern over the use of commercial solvent-based flavours led in turn to a switch to natural attractors, which included essential oils and as far back as 1983/4 we experimented with EOs and other attractors, which we incorporated into Tim�s prototype HNV bait.

In the company's formative years we fished better and harder than at any time before or since, as proper field testing in the true sense of the word means testing the good and the bad and sometimes you spend many session basically wasting your time, which tends to reflect badly in the eyes of those who don't know the full story! Mind you, I wouldn't change a minute of it!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#108 12 Jan 2017 at 4.22pm

In reply to Post #107
Nutrabaits was officially launched in 1987 and Tim and Bill came down to do a slide show for the Devon and Cornwall region of the Carp Society. As far as I know this was their very first selling trip and my great friend Pete Amey bought from the stand they put on at the show the first products the company ever sold to the public, a couple of bags of Hi-Nu-Val and a couple of essential oils. Pete has remained a staunch Nutrabaits fan to this day, though sadly his age is catching up with him and his fishing days are limited. (Pete represented Britain at the 1960 Rome Olympics, by the way. Not a lot of people know that.) Bill was so grateful that he made Pete an honorary field tester/consultant and to be honest I think Pete was more chuffed with that than he was with the four fifties he later caught on Nutrabaits gear!

Tim and Bill were putting their own gear to good use too at the time, which was all the encouragement Tat and I needed to keep on testing.

What I did not take in fully at the time was the huge degree of preoccupation we could achieve using really small baits. Rod's early articles in Angling magazine outlined his thoughts on using mass baits such as groats and hemp to achieve preoccupation and these inspired a whole generation of carpers to try particles. Rod was way ahead of his time, of course, and I was just one of the hundreds that were caught up in the particle bait revolution. As most of you know if you have read my stuff for Haith's, I too have been a big believer in tiny baits and this belief was founded on Rod's writing and my own experiments with Nutrabaits products. As a result my love affair with mini and micro baits lead me to develop boilie crumb, boilie morsels, boilie soup and of course started me off experimenting with micro seeds and particles.

If you want to know if your bait is any good, offer it to your cat. If the cat likes it so will the carp - and no, I am not having a laugh with you. This is for real.

Boilie Soup is incredible if applied correctly.

I wrote about boilie crumb in an early Nutrabaits catalogue and by all accounts this was the first time the tactic had ever appeared in print. It didn't take long for the idea to catch on and I progressed from an old Spong mincer to a food processor. In the modern era the Korda Crusher is a convenient way of making crumb and Ridge Monkey have taken the whole thing a step further with their Boilie Crusher. What on earth did I start way back then when I first wrote about crumb?

Rashleigh, Waldon and Salamander provided us with three ideal venues on which to test bait. For a start the clarity of the water allowed us to look in on the fish and judge how they reacted to baits and baiting situations and this was vital in assessing optimum levels for the products we were testing. This little common was caught in one of our favourite swims on Waldon. The lake was being more or less ignored by most of the RAC membership.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#107 12 Jan 2017 at 4.20pm

In reply to Post #106
In addition to testing the oils, we also made up batches of bait using the recommended levels of the Addits and as Waldon was being saturated with our baits that were testing the EOs we took the Addit baits to other venues, namely College and Salamander. At the time we did not know what we were testing, only that it was a variety of weird and wonderful chemicals, but as results seemed pretty positive Tim finally identified the various component parts of the three Addits. The most interesting of the three was Addit digest, the enzyme based additive.

What we used was by no means the final recipe for the Addit Digest at launch. The product we were on was a trial blend of an enzyme compound containing Bromelain and Trypsin as well as other proven additives such as Citric Acid and Lactose. Tim told us about the very strict parameters that had to be followed while making up the baits and he also suggested that we use a more refined base comprising both acid and rennet casein as well as Calcium Caseinate, NZ Lactalbumin and Egg Albumin, the later in order to reduce the boiling to time just 45 seconds.

The finished baits were dried and then frozen, then taken to the lake either in Thermos flasks or, later, frozen for storage in the friendly nearby pub at Mabe Burnthouse. In the case of Salamander we lived so close by that we used our own freezer to store batches of bait. I'll go into more detail about the bait later, however, I can tell you that on both College and Salamander Tim's bait proved remarkably effective. For instance the biggest residents at the time in both College and Salamander fell to the bait within a very short time of it going in for the first time.

Initially we put the HNV/Addit bait into Salamander, rolling batches of 500g + the eggs using the smallest Gardner rolling table to create about 1,500 x 8mm baits per mix.

As you can imagine, this was hard bloody work but we found a short cut in the form of 'bricking'. This is a method of creating hundreds of tiny baits from a single brick of base mix, wrapped in cling film and then boiled. The method first found fame in an early Nutrabaits catalogue. Unfortunately the method produces square or cube-shaped baits, which kind of restricted their use at the time as spods had not yet hit the market and the only delivery method to hand was a catapult. However, the spread of bait out of the 'pult, coupled with the varying densities and buoyancies of the individual baits (the nearer to the crust of the 'brick' the more buoyant the bait) meant that bricking produced tiny baits that were ideal for creating a good spread of bait.

We first used the method at Waveney with pretty good results.

We also took the HNV in bricked form up to Redmire for our first (and only) visit to the fabled pool. We saw plenty of carp and on several occasions got them feeding well, so well at times that the lake bed became so stirred up with the famous red silt that we couldn't see the bottom. However, those Redmire carp proved to be more than a match for us. Sure we could see them (for a while) and yes, they were clearly taking bait, but they were too crafty for us and were obviously getting away with it on our rigs. We had only three chances in the five days we were there. I managed to make a total arse of myself with two of the takes; Tat managed to put one of the lovely Redmire commons on the bank. Bloody women!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#106 12 Jan 2017 at 4.19pm

In reply to Post #102
We continued to test on and off for Tim, Nick and Bill for the next three or four years before we got the news that the launch of Nutrabaits was due in 1987. It was then that Tim sent us what would be the final samples of the various essential oils we were testing. In some cases these were more refined than earlier test samples, in others the samples were from a different supplier. In all cases this mean going back to Waldon and retesting the newest arrivals. To be honest I think Tim and Bill had a pretty good idea of what the ideal inclusions rate for the oils was but they wanted independent confirmation, which Tat and I were happy to provide.

The essential oils we were asked to test were Geranium, Geranium Terpenes, Garlic, Black Pepper, Spanish Red Thyme, Cassia Terpenes, Nutmeg and Juniper Berry. Black Pepper was tested from 2 drops up to 50 drops per 500g. 2 drops did not seem to attract at all; 50 drops they came in, sniffed the bait (sorry for the human analogy) and pissed off again. Dropping down to 20-25 drops produced the most noticeable positive reaction.

In every case the base mix used was a fairly straight forward milk, soya and semo mix the milk being rennet casein comprising 40% of the mix with 30% semo and 30% full fat soya flour. Batches of bait were made up using minute quantities of the EO to start with, gradually increasing the amount until we reached a stage where it was clear they were more repelled than attracted by the inclusion rate. From there we gradually dropped the levels until they started taking again. A level between the lowest amount of EO and the highest was taken and this was used to continue testing to see if they would stop easting the bait after long term use. They didn't. We therefore arrived at a somewhat arbitrary amount, which Bill and Tim then used as a recommended level on the printed labels when Nutrabaits was launched.

Garlic oil was one of the hardest to test as the optimum levels seemed so low. We started off at what we though was the bare minimum, one drop of a blend of garlic EO and sunflower oil. We then upped the level to one drop of pure Garlic, which they loved, but at two drops they shied away from the baits like they'd received an electric shock!

These pix are from the very first Nutrabaits catalogue.

This is the very first Nutrabaits catalogue. The A5 24-page booklet marked the start of our thirty-five year long association with the company, which sadly now seems to have come to an end with the departure of Bill Cottam. The company cannot ever be the same without him.

Fame at last! My photo graced the inside front cover of the catalogue and shows me with Salamander's Big Daddy, caught on the prototype of Hi Nu Val with the Addits. The story and the same photo appeared in Tim's first book too. It was the summer of 1987 and Nutrabaits was off and running.

We put in a hell a lot of hours and effort testing the various EOs for Bill and Tim but we would be rewarded a hundredfold by the support given to us by Nutrabaits in the subsequent years. I shall never forget Bill for his kindness towards me and Tat, nor shall I forget the huge help Tim gave me personally to take my first stuttering step on the ladder of a career in carp fishing. I love this dedication he wrote for me in one of his books...I still don't know if he is taking the pith!

scozza

Posts: 17132

#105 9 Jan 2017 at 7.47pm

Just brilliant

Like mentioned, love the pics. Happy days

Daveperks

Posts: 267

#104 7 Jan 2017 at 9.27pm

In reply to Post #102
Awsome stuff again Ken

Great read & great photo's - keep the articles coming please!

Leeroyjenkins

Posts: 3630

#103 7 Jan 2017 at 5.47pm

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#102 7 Jan 2017 at 4.47pm

In reply to Post #101
This photo of the old pump wheel, taken after the lake was 'tidied', is evidence of Waldon's industrial past when, like Rashleigh, the lake was used for mining limestone. The wheel drove a large bore water pump that was used to pump out groundwater that constantly threatened to flood the pit. Once it was abandoned most of the work's heavy plant was left behind to be covered by the rising water. This made casting into the middle fraught with peril, which is why we liked to concentrate on the margins. Though the majority of the margins fell steeply into the dark depths of the lake, there were some lovely gravel areas to be found, some being close to the wheel, but not so close that you risked loosing a hooked fish. The wheel itself acted as a magnet to the carp but if you cast anywhere near it you would loose everything.

Another of our prime stalking spots was the Dodgy Slope marked in green. It lay on the east bank of Waldon up the sloping unmade road leading to the private house you can see on the right hand side of the overhead. We had to park in the Rashleigh car park and then walk down to Waldon and up the path, before risking life and limb sliding down the steep bank that lead down to the water's edge from the road, hence the swim's name. At the foot of the slope the terrain levelled out onto an overgrown area of shallows with a bright gravel lake bed visible through the undergrowth.
Here Tat plays a fish in the Slope swim. The gravel area is plain to see. Can you imagine the excitement as we watched carp swim right into the margins over the gravel to get at our test baits!.

The carp in Waldon must have lead a strange life! One day they are swimming around in Rashleigh at around four pounds in weight. Next they are moved into Waldon where they live relatively quiet lives for six or seven years, before some of them - those that made it to double figures - went back into Rashleigh when they were caught. Others were moved to a couple of other lakes on the clubs books, Treesmill and Billberry where they did very nicely thank you�but that's another story. Waldon carp gave us huge pleasure and while the carp were not huge they were tough as old boots and scrapped like crazy. Here's Tat with a chunky little mirror from the Slope swim.

Not all the carp that managed to make double figures were returned to Rashleigh, however. Some were returned to Waldon by naughty boys and girls who wanted to keep them quiet! This nice common came on a speculative trip we made back to the old Pool after an absence of four or five years. We had heard tales of some bigger fish being seen by pleasure anglers and lost by the match boys so we decided to have a little look! We caught several from our old haunts, like this common of 18lb and some even bigger. For all I know they may still be in there as we told nobody about them!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#101 7 Jan 2017 at 4.46pm

In reply to Post #100
Stalking on Rashleigh had been a great preparation for the smaller lake and there were quite a few places where baits could be seen on the lakebed and the carp's reaction to them assessed and noted. Thus we arrived at what seemed like optimum levels for the various EOs Tim and Bill sent down. By the end of the summer of (iirc) 1983 me and Tat had compiled a table showing the results we had observed to varying levels of inclusion of the oils and these were gratefully accepted by the pair as a good starting point for their yet-to-be-formed bait company. These tests were ongoing throughout the three years of testing prior to the official launch of Nutrabaits.

I was also sent the prototypes of the three Addits, Addit Attract (amino acid-based), Addit Taste (nucleotide taste enhancers-based) and Addit Digest (enzyme-based). At the time we got them they came in the form of unlabelled tubs of powder with instructions written on the tub in black felt tip; the labels came later when Nutrabaits was launched.

I'll go into more detail about our progression deeper and deeper into the murky world of carp bait later on but for the moment suffice it to say that not only were we very excited to be taken on by Tim and Bill C, we were also astonished! After all, what had we ever done to demonstrate our skills, or lack of, to them? Sure, Tim knew my thoughts on bait following our lengthy correspondence and my results on College and other venues, but to be honest they didn't know me from Adam and so I guess it was simply a matter of trust in me on their part to do the testing properly. I think it may have been partly due to our results on a venue they both knew well, though we didn't know it at the time. We had been travelling up to Waveney Valley Lakes with Speedy Bill for about three years prior and had caught a few. To be honest I think this was mainly down to Bill's bait knowledge but we coat-tailed him admirably! This is Speedy with a Waveney (E lake) mid twenty common from about 1981.

As I say, Waldon was the perfect venue to test baits, as we could actually see them feeding. Sadly it is to my lasting regret that we didn't do more photos of Waldon as it was back then, as it was once the most glorious little pool you can ever wish for. The banks were steep, heavily overgrown and there were only three or four actual swims on the whole lake. Sadly in the early 00s the Club in its wisdom decided on another of its infamous (IMO) 'tidies', tearing out the snags, removing most of the trees, plants and bushes, and building silly little platforms all around the lake that had now lost so much of its original character. This is Tat playing a small Waldon carp in the late 80s. Note the ironworks on the right a deadly snag that the carp knew all about!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#100 5 Jan 2017 at 3.19pm

Up until the early 80s I had no interest in bait other than what would catch carp and what would not. I'd been through all the old school trends; breadflake, floating crust, luncheon meat, even potatoes, but until my pal in Surrey got into carping in the Home Counties, which in turn got him more into bait, I was not at all well versed in the subject.

Then, as you'll know if you have followed these tales so far, I got into sea angling, which in turn lead me to getting to know Bill through the Hurst Deep Sea Angling Club. Initially he too was not interested in carping being, like me, well into sea angling. However, after we moved away from the London area and moved to Cornwall to work the wrecks with John, Bill and his mate Keith started fishing for carp and this soon became an obsession. Naturally an interest in bait followed and when I told Bill that I too was interested getting back into carp fishing he got me into the Ockenham Lakes Syndicate run by Peter Mohan.

Particle bait fishing was all the rage at the time and eventually my angling progressed along the lines of: General coarse fishing > so-called Specimen Hunting > Cut Mill 1968 > Bill 1974 > carp fishing > Ockenham 1978 > particles > Haith's of Cleethorpes 1978 >ingredients > boilies > SW carping > Robin Red > better baits > more knowledge > Carp Society 1981 > Devon & Cornwall ROs > regional meetings > Tim Paisley & Bill Cottam 1982 > Pre-Nutrabaits 1983 > my growing ability and growing success 1983 onwards > Formation of Nutrabaits > Bingo! Simple when you look at it like that!

Our association with the Carp Society gave me the confidence to write to Tim for advice on the more complex aspects of carp bait and to my surprise he not only replied to my, what must have seemed, highly na�ve questions, he also more or less took me under his wing as an apt pupil, as SK might say. At the time Tim was working on developing a more advanced carp bait and he had a team of testers working with him on Darenth and other venues down south, along with a few trusted friends based in Sheffield, one of them being Bill Cottam. Tim Paisley was a huge influence on my early thinking on bait, my guru, if you like.

Tim and Bill were also testing ingredients and mystical potions in conjunction with Nick Elliot, working out of his tackle shop in Sheffield called Bankside Tackle. Some of the attractors they were experimenting with were essential oils and for some strange reason I was invited to test some of these for Tim and Bill. I had no idea that they were thinking of starting Nutrabaits but when the company was eventually formed in 1987 I had been working with Tim and to a lesser extent Bill for four years, which put me onto some pretty useful secrets of the time.

By happy coincidence we had started fishing Waldon Pool for the carp that had been moved across from Rashleigh following the Broughton Report on how to develop the later as a good specimen carp fishery. While they were not exactly thriving in Waldon, they were pretty as a picture and more than willing to approach a carpet of test boilies scattered before them on the shallows of the four-acre pool.

stephens

Posts: 18

#99 24 Dec 2016 at 4.14pm

In reply to Post #97
Thanks for the "South West Memories" Ken. It must take a while to compile it all but it's much appreciated.

Hope you and the wife have a happy Christmas and all the best for the New Year.

Kind regards.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#97 19 Dec 2016 at 3.53pm

In reply to Post #96
The originals found a new lease of life and even dear old Busted Tail climbed to mid twenties, with others touching and even passing 30lb. This was the heyday of the Club when everything in the garden was rosy. De-stocking Rashleigh and creating a much improved water quality and getting more light onto the margins all helped increase productivity but no matter how hard we tried there were always a few of the Suicide Squad that evaded capture so we carried on plugging away, moving them when caught into Waldon or to other of the Club's lakes. They were pretty as a picture and many of these little beauties were retained to be grown on in a stock pond. This is committee member Tony Chipman (remember him from my very first cisit to WR?)with one of the prettier ones.

Overtures were made to local angling clubs and after Section 30 consent was granted we sold some of the Suicide Squad but not before they enjoyed a year or two of comparative peace and quiet in Waldon. During this time a few of the Squad showed their true potential by cracking on the weight and believe it or not, after a few years we were able to start moving fish back into Wheal Rashleigh and other Club venues. Here Steve Churchill returns a nice chunky ex-Suicide Squad mirror to Rashleigh after catching it in Waldon where it had at last started to realise its potential.

Not all the Waldon transferees did well. Some of them remained in single figures, but others really jumped ahead.

All in all, the Broughton Report did exactly what it said on the tin. The Club's finances thrived as more members joined, we extended the number of quality carp waters in the club and soon the program had proved so successful that we had to close the books on new membership for a while. By now Roche AC had probably half a dozen twenties and at least three thirties in Rashleigh plus a high thirty and back up twenties on the Club's other venues. Brilliant�

Too good to be true? Of course it is when the otters arrived...but that sad tale comes a bit later. In the meantime a lot of good fishing was enjoyed by one and all. Waldon especially became me and Tat's me's our new home from home as we discovered an almost totally unfished stalker's paradise that was filled with ex-Rashleigh carp that were small but very willing!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#96 19 Dec 2016 at 3.51pm

In reply to Post #95
While it lasted the stalking on Rashleigh was incredible and even as a steady stream of obstacles seemed to get put in the way of anybody who actually wanted to practice this wonderful form of fishing, we still managed to find a few new spots where we could drop the baits at our feet and then watch as they came in for a feed, and hopefully to make a mistake on a hookbait. The most productive were also the most inaccessible and a fair amount of jungle creeping was involved just to get a bait in the water. It was often hazardous, but always rewarding.

While we continued to enjoy Rashleigh it was clear that all was not well with the lake. We had expected the Suicide Squad to do well and gain weight, and while one or two did so, the majority remained at the 7-8lb mark. OK, that was double what they went in at, but nothing like what was hoped from them. Mind you, they still pulled your arms off and would always brighten up a dull day.

By now I had joined the Club Committee and other committee members were more sympathetic to the growing carp angling faction within the Club. The fact was that Rashleigh was in dire need of some expert loving care: the Suicide Squad was a pain in the arse, the water pH was low, natural food sparse and the water colour was getting worse with each passing season, so much so that stalking in the usual spots was nigh on impossible as you couldn't see if the fish were there or not. The root cause was the Suicide Squad that was eating every scrap of natural food, churning up the lake bed, discolouring the water and holding back the weight gains that should have been happening now that the lake was getting more heavily fished (more bait going in). The originals in particular were suffering.

We needed expert advice so the Club turned to Dr Bruno Broughton. I knew Bruno from NASA and it was decided to invite him down to prepare a report for us on what we could do to improve the lake. He identified the main problem more or less immediately, namely the sheer number of fish in there, which were directly responsible for all and any of the lake's other problems. He told us that we had to de-stock the lake of as many of the Suicide Squad as we could catch�Yes, catch! This would be a serious rod and line only effort as the topography of the lake bed, and the depth of the lake meant that netting was out of the question.

As for the banks, well the rhododendrons were talking over, growing out of control. It was these 'foreign' plants that were responsible for ruining the pH of the lake as they leech acidic substances into the soil which in turn is washed into the lake by heavy rain. At the time if I remember correctly the pH was in the low 6s so we needed to raise this considerably to at least pH 7.1 or higher. This would encourage natural food to thrive but first we needed to trim the bankside cover to allow more light to reach the shallower marginal areas of the lake. This in turn should allow the weed to grow which in turn would harbour yet more natural food. Finally the Club was advised to make the lake water more rich by adding well rotted horse manure in November followed by crushed limestone in the following March. This also would have the effect of encouraging natural life to thrive.

The lake next door also belonged to the Club, a gorgeous little four acre lake called Waldon Pond and this would make a great stock pond for the smaller carp until the Club decided what to do with them. This is the lake in all its glory.

The work was carried out by mainly the members of the committee, which by now was much more amenable towards the carp anglers and fellow committee members Steve Churchill, Tony Chipman and Nige Britton and myself were among those involved in getting this work off the pages of the Broughton report and making it a reality. Nothing happened overnight but in time Wheal Rashleigh thrived to such an extent that we had carp pushing on through the twenty and even the thirty pound barrier.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#95 19 Dec 2016 at 3.49pm

In reply to Post #94
As carping's popularity continued to grow the Club's membership soared and much of the new membership comprised of comparatively inexperienced anglers, many of whom had a very cavalier attitude towards fishing in the snags. They thought nothing of getting a dozen takes a day and losing every fish! Something had to be done so in a way the committee's hand was forced and as detailed previously much of the area around Rashleigh was made out of bounds. Unfortunately the knock on effect was that members with a bit of gumption about them who could be trusted to stalk fish responsibly also had to suffer. It was desperately sad to loose so much of the prime stalking but such is modern carp fishing these days, the majority have to suffer because of the actions of the idiotic minority.

One of the most abused areas was the snags at the far end of the lake in the southern bay. These could be fished from a couple of swims in the bay and the sad sacks were deliberately casting into the thicket of branches, knowing full well that there was no chance whatsoever of getting a hooked fish out of the snags. Following a particularly nasty open meeting at which the Club Secretary, an old boy in his seventies was offered outside by a younger idiot who was nevertheless old enough to know better, the committee decided enough was enough and strung a rope across the bay buoyed up so as to form a floating barrier roping off the snags once and for all. Get out of that!

While single rod stalking as we had enjoyed it previously was now more or less lost, we did manage to get back among the fish by fishing areas generally ignored by other members. This is a small area of Rashleigh at the opposite end of the lake to the snags, behind what we called the Top Island. Compared to the rest of the lake this area is shallow and silty and as you can see what little weed growth there was at Rashleigh could be found at the top end of the lake. If you were quiet and unobtrusive you could stalk the fish all the way along the dwarf lilies on the right of the picture, and in the small set of pads in the middle of the photo.

The tree line, as usual invariably attracted carp and so the small bay became a new stalking area for us, as did the margins of the Top Island which were dotted with small areas of pads and other weed growth. In addition the trees on the island provided good overhanging cover

This is the set of pads at the top end of the lake. The Top Island is on the extreme left of the photo. The pads acted like a magnet to many of the members who fished the lake back then and while the carp did get in there, it was by no means one of their favourite feeding areas, as it was close to the car park and thus easy to get to and easy to fish so it got a fair amount of pressure.

This shows the rest of the island. The brickwork you can see is the old crib and equipment hut that dates back to the days when the lake was a working limestone open cast mine. The carp loved to get in there but it was impossible to fish as it was festooned with old equipment and the like. In addition the brickwork you can see is only a tiny part of what you cannot see below the water line. Snag city and no mistake.

The Top Island offered plenty of scope to anyone willing to stalk fish as there were sets of pads dotted all around its margin. The fish were not exactly shy of showing themselves, just shy of picking up a bait!

Funnily enough the track on the far side of the Top Island, while pretty slippery and muddy, was not one of the out of bounds areas so it was possibly to get right round the back to fish to the pads where the fish loved to patrol on sunny days. The most effective way of fishing the pads was with float gear but it was vital that you kept out of sight and avoided making the slightest sound. It was only a couple of rod lengths from the main bank to the pads and the fish were pretty twitchy. If they spotted you there were gone in a flash, same if your footfall was a tad too heavy. For this reason I used to fish with a couple of rods spread well apart, both on the float but also on front buzzers and rear rests. Then sit tight and pretend you are a rhododendron bush, resisting at all times to get off the chair to look at the floats.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#94 19 Dec 2016 at 3.48pm

We fished Long Chuck on and off for the best part of 25 years and I have to say, it was in its day the best swim on the lake. The swim gave me and Tat some wonderful memories to cherish. By now Long Chuck had become a very popular swim and it was not often that we found it free. However, when we did managed to get in there we knew that the cave and the far treeline was getting more pressured by the day. We still caught by casting tight, but one session when a botched chuck fell short and produced a fish almost on the drop, we found that fishing as much as ten yards off the trees produced more takes. Serendipity plays her part again! This is one of the old originals that fell to a bait dropped short, deliberately this time!

The east bay did not get a lot of attention once the path at the end of the bay was made out of bounds and stalking that area became impossible. However, we could still cast across to the stalking area, which often produced the goods if there was someone in Long Chuck. The swim there was called The Concrete after a broken concrete shelf that lay a few inches below the surface at your feet. I have no idea of its purpose but it did make a handy place to cast from if the big oak that dominated the swim decided it wanted to eat your rod tip!

One guy who fished there a lot was a nice old boy called Peter Rich who I have mentioned before. Pete would travel up from way down west from his home near Camborne and he nearly always fished The Concrete, and very accomplished at it he was. The cast required to hit the top of the shelf was tricky in the extreme, not a long cast but you needed to flick it underarm so as to get the lead and bait under the overhanging trees. If you missed the shelf the bait would either go straight to the bottom in about forty feet of water or end up in the brambles so accuracy and a strong nerve were prime requirements.

Pete fished locked up and thus stopped a hooked fish from reaching the snags, which took na strong nerve and strong gear. I enjoyed many long chats with Pete when he was fishing the concrete and he was one of the finest anglers I have ever met. He landed countless carp from the swim, casting with unerring accuracy to the shelf, never allowing a hooked fish to get up steam to reach the snags. Here's Pete in action playing a lively fish hooked on the shelf. Once the fish was clear of the bank and the snags he could take his time and play the fish out in the clear, deep water. In the background over Pete's shoulder you can probably make out some large coloured buoys, and I'll come back to these in a minute. Incidentally, if you know what you are looking for the stalking area we called Brackens is just about visible in the centre of this photograph, just to the right of the large bankside bush.

I had a lot of time for Pete. He was old school with a real pride in his carping, who respected the lake, the anglers on it and the fish it contained. I imagine he must have passed on by now as he was no spring chicken when I knew him. Pete was a member of the Carp Society (remember that?!) and I first met him at one of the regional meetings me and Tat held when we were ROs for the Devon and Cornwall region. He had a son, also called Peter and they often fished together at Horseshoe. Pete was a contemporary of Dick Walker, Fred J and others of that time. When he spoke you listened. I swear he was in league with the Devil for I never once saw him blank!

I last met Pete over twenty years ago and I had a huge respect for the guy. If he is still alive and anybody who reads this knows him, perhaps you could tell him about this blog. Here's Pete in a familiar pose!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#91 11 Dec 2016 at 2.51pm

In reply to Post #90
I had not been sitting there long when the Abu's clutch sang out. I grabbed the rod butt and forced the rest of it up through the bracken so I could play the fish over the top of it. I had cleared a very small landing area to the right of the swim so I could net a fish without too much difficulty and after a very angry confrontation I landed a nice near-leather of fifteen pounds. This is the first fish to come from the swim we later called the Brackens

it was one of countless carp Tat and I caught from that tucked away little spot and I cannot begin to describe the incredible excitement we felt when those grey shadows materialised out of the black depths to feed avidly on the bait we would provide for them. Even when the bracken died down in winter and the cover was sparse those fish still came in for a bite to eat before bedtime! This is a sight that will gladden any stalker's heart.

I shall never forget one hot summer's day when Tat and I were fishing conventionally in The Bar swim. She said that she fancied a go in the Brackens, which was only about 75 yards away, so she wandered off with a bucket of bait, a single rod and landing net. I fished on through the hot afternoon and must have dozed off for I awoke with a start to hear her calling me. I dashed down to the Brackens and there was Tat with the rod in its full fighting curve as a big fish gave her grief. She played it like the old hand she was and eventually she landed a lovely old original of just over 24lb, a PB for Rashleigh and a very worthy capture. It was made all the more worthy by the fact that rats the size of cats kept running backwards and forwards over her feet as she sat like a statue on the bait bucket. A lesser man or woman would have cleared out sharpish! Not my Tat! This fish came to be known as Big Vern...? Ask me one on films!

Unfortunately we were sussed by a couple of members who had seen the commotion. Soon the word was out about the Brackens and in no time at all some bright spark had cut it all down to make room for a battery of three rods! Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!

Undaunted we kept one step ahead of the stop-having-too-much-fun brigade which seemed determined to turn the lake into a sterile wasteland where all the secret stalking places were deemed out of bounds. On any lake you will always find a few spots where nobody has thought of fishing and our decade or more of experience stalking at Rashleigh lead us to new areas to try, some good others no so good, but the magic of Rashleigh kept calling us back for more. Tat in full on stalking mode, pretending to be part of the undergrowth, rod tip sticking out only a few inches, waiting for the reel to scream as carp feed on the gravel right under the tip.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#90 11 Dec 2016 at 2.44pm

In reply to Post #89
9. Before the new rules were imposed we caught more than our share from the far treeline, not just from Long Chuck but all the way along the main bank where more tempting caves could be found.

Sadly still more rules were introduced to make stalking ever more difficult and most of the far bank treeline was deemed out of bounds, not just no fishing but no walking either! Thus fully 40% of the previously available fishing was lost, along with some of the best stalking we have ever experienced. Here are just a couple of the old originals caught in Long Chuck, both stalking them from the far bank or casting across using the washing line method.

Crazed with power and a misplaced sense of their own competence, the committee then decided to make much of the area at the end of the small east bay out of bounds too! This was another of our favourite stalking spots, but it could also be fished conventionally from the swim called the Concrete. In a way this was understandable as the snags opposite the Concrete were long, thick and vicious but at the time nobody was stupid enough to cast into them as you would never get your gear back, let alone land a fish. This is a great angler and fantastic guy to talk to, Peter Rich. The Concrete was his favourite swim on Rashleigh and he knew it like the back of his hand and his casting accuracy meant he could put a bait in places nobody else would even consider, AND get them out every time.

One of our favourite stalking spots lay at the bottom of a long flight of steps that lead down from the top car park. 99.9% of the members continued walking when they came to the bottom of the steps. We didn't! The margin here was bright gravel, small stones and one of two larger rocks. The steep contours found elsewhere on the lake were nothing like so acute here and bait introduced right at your feet would stay put until the fish came along�which wasn't long! The bed of the swim was hidden from view by a long, thick stand of bracken growing at the water's edge. By gently parting the bracken the bright gravel lake bed was revealed. It clearly got frequent visits as there was no weed or silt to be seen. It was crying out for a hookbait!

You can just about make out the little orange boilies on the lakebed below my rod tip. These are early Richworth frozen Tuttis...I was getting into bait a little by now.

That swim was hugely productive for a time and each evening when I finished fishing I would pop a bit of hempseed and groats in along with a handful of boilies and hoped they would disappear overnight for my visit the following day.
Returning at first light I would creep into the swim and part the bracken (which I returned to its original state before leaving the previous evening so the swim didn't get clocked). I would bait up with a blend of hempseed, groats and a few Tuttis and sit down on my bait bucket with the Polaroids in place to see if the fish would put in an appearance. If anybody has spotted me sitting there I was rumbled but I had the lake to myself. Somebody could stand right next to the bracken and never know there was bait right at their feet, and not only bait, there were a few fish too. To see then go straight down on that bait carpet was a magical sight but I was in no hurry to disturb their meal. After about and hour they drifted out of the area and I felt it was safe now to put a hookbait there and some more free stuff.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#89 11 Dec 2016 at 2.43pm

In reply to Post #88
By huge coincidence the first two carp I caught from Long Chuck were also the first two I caught on my very first visit, namely Busted Tail and the Big Common. This is the common.

As the carping membership grew in the 80s and 90s work was done to 'tidy up' the far bank to try to prevent too many anglers from chucking baits and leads up the trees. The undergrowth was trimmed back making the cave a bit more accessible without totally removing the cover that the carp clearly liked so much. This worked up to a point but as advances in rod and reel design allowed heavier leads to be used and longer casts to be made there was always plenty of line left festooning the trees after a long summer! To give the Club its due, they did remove a lot of the line on a regular basis but still the lead-eating trees ate their share. This more modern photo shows the swim in its late-80s guise.

Sadly the swim suffered again when a work party decided it would be a great idea to remove much of the woodwork that formed the cave in Long Chuck. The result neutered the swim making it sterile and unchallenging, a far cry from its former overgrown beauty. While they were at it they also cut back the Corner to such an extent that the previously voracious tackle-grabbing silver birches now stood alone, bare and stripped of all dignity. Now you could cast to the far bank with your eyes closed as there was nothing to get hung up on over there. It's carp fishing, Jim, but not as we knew it! This photo from 2014 shows Long Chuck after it was 'tidied'.

By now the number of carp anglers joining the Club had increased a fair bit and pressure on Rashleigh and Waldon next door was increasing year on year. However, the call of the far end of the lake seemed hard to resist for many and they walked straight past LC and even The Bar. This left me free to indulge myself in the swims to my hearts content, as if there was nobody in them I now preferred to fish from the far bank rather than cast across.

Of course, this was clearly out of the question if there was anybody fishing the main bank, which happened with increasing frequency as the years went by. However, this did not stop me from having a whale of a time fishing single-rodded round the back, watching the carp as they fed, even seeing them pick up (and reject at times!) the hookbait. I fished like this when ever the opportunity presented itself, which was happening less and less now as carping became more popular with local anglers. Then the Club decided to make the far bank out of bounds and this left little alternative but to cast across....Mind you, there was nothing in the rules to say we couldn't walk the far bank so we came up with a little wheeze that we had seen in use at Waveney in the early 80s. The washing line method. This is the far bank up the lake from Long Chuck showing some of the features to which we fished.

The only drawback to the washing line trick was the Suicide Squad! The number of times we would get a take from one of these little blighters who would invariably get to the bait ahead of one of the originals was most frustrating, as it meant the whole process had to be repeated time and again only for a member of the Squad to frustrate one's ambitions.

We bumped into quite a few of Rashleigh's originals in Long Chuck. While no size at all, this is one of them, a near-perfect leather displaying all the distinctive genetic traits of its birthright, the curtailed, deformed dorsal with almost non-existent rays.

The Suicide Squad came from a weak strain of carp that found it hard to make ten pounds but they were pretty as a picture and could always be relied upon to get the pulse rate up on an otherwise quiet day and there was always a chance that one of the big originals might pop in for a bite.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#88 11 Dec 2016 at 2.41pm

In reply to Post #82
Meanwhile, back at Wheal Rashleigh...

We had not really given much thought to fishing elsewhere on Rashleigh, as we were catching so well in the Bar and the swim next to it, but we realised that sooner or later we would have to look at new areas on the lake. The first new area we fished was the swim that became known as Long Chuck. It acquired that name because even though the cast across was only some 30m longer at about 80m than the one we had been fishing previously, namely to the bar from the Bar Swim, that extra 30m was a long way given the rather limiting rods and reels we were using. The Google image shows Long Chuck as well as the other swims we had fished, the Bar, Next Door and the Beach. The red and blue dots are the areas we fished, namely the bar itself (red) and the snaggy corner (blue).

Though I did not appreciate it at the time, the whole of the far bank comprised much of the carps' patrol route and in later years we found out that as long as you could get the baits - freebies and hookbaits - to stay at the top of the steep underwater slope, you were in with a chance. Of course, if you were prepared to risk life and limb by going round the back and fishing at your feet, then you could more or less guarantee a) to keep the baits in the correct places, and b) to get at take. Unfortunately it could be a bit dodgy underfoot and if it had been raining and the bank was slippery it was lethal, but it was worth the risk.

This pic is of a couple of Roche AC members in action after hooking a fish on a bait cast across to the far trees. The single spindly birch tree on the extreme left of the picture marks the corner overlooking the Long Chuck casting area, with the treeline stretching away further to the left.

There was a lovely overhang across on the far bank and we had already discovered how much the Rashleigh carp liked to patrol the full length of that bank, passing between the 'caves' formed by the gaps in the treeline. Though there was a very small cave in Long Chuck it was pretty hard to get the cast right but to begin with getting right deep into the cave was not essential, though it certainly helped to get as close to the treeline as possible on the cast. However, in order to reach it meant dropping down to 8lb main line, which in turn meant risking a lead in the trees and lots of line left behind in the event that you had to pull for a break.

That said, anglers being anglers we tried ever harder to put a bait right into the cave if conditions allowed, though the trees on the corner to the right of the cave and those on the far bank behind it would eat a carelessly cast lead for breakfast! Risky? Yes, of course it was but bear in mind that tackle has advanced by leaps and bounds since those far off days when we first started fishing at Rashleigh and clipping up was unheard of as there were no line clips! In this photo taken from the Bar swim you can see the cut back from the corner to the tree line itself in Long Chuck.

The red dot on the right marks the far corner of the bank opposite the Long Chuck swim, while the left hand red dot shows the treeline to which we cast from the swim. I mentioned the far corner opposite the swim last time I wrote about Rashleigh and though at that time we did not even consider fishing there, later on, when we started fishing 'round the back', we cleared a small area of the undergrowth on this corner which allowed us to fish directly down the edge into the treeline previously fished from Long Chuck�But I am getting ahead of myself as all that jungle creeping came a bit later on.

Clearly the carp had become a bit wary of feeding on or behind the bar. Yes, it continued to produce and until we started fishing Long Chuck the Bar Swim was still the hottest we had so far fished on the lake. However, the prospect of fishing the far treeline from Long Chuck opened up further possibilities and to prove that point the first time I fished it I caught dear old Busted Tail at nearly 20lb in weight. Here's Busted Tail with the corner and the lead-eating trees and the far treeline clearly visible. You can also see the cave into which we attempted, and mainly failed, to cast the hookbaits.

wandle1

Posts: 7000

#87 30 Nov 2016 at 5.37pm

In reply to Post #86
Another major flood of the Valency also occurred in 1958,where upon the local schoolmaster lost his life,as you rightly said it was a miracle no one lost their life this time..My brother lives where all the flooding happened,opposite the Riverside hotel...he lost virtually everything...

He was also a coastguard,and it affected him and the village greatly...

It will happen again down there,as there's been three similar incidents in living memory.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#86 30 Nov 2016 at 5.01pm

In reply to Post #85
George Clooney...my arse!

Yes, Adam, the boat was named after the Boscastle river. Though that awful flooding took place over 12 years ago I can remember it as if it was yesterday. My mum was suffering full blown dementia at the time and she was convinced I had drowned in the floods, even though we lived on the south coat (Boscastle is on the north!) and there was no loss of life that day, a miracle in itself.

Chuffy

Posts: 6582

#85 29 Nov 2016 at 7.49pm

You really should bring a book out Ken, the ladies will love it with all those old photos with you looking like the thinking man's George Clooney

wandle1

Posts: 7000

#84 29 Nov 2016 at 7.40pm

Thanks for sharing all this Ken,especially of interest is the Royalty piece,it was a place where I spent a lot of time in the 70s with my father...he caught a huge ,for that period barbel from the Royalty well over the 11lb mark in the early seventies' on bacon rind,he was in the angling press for it...

I can still remember the anticipation of going into Davis's tackle shop nearby...Also.....back in the eighties my father left Cornwall...never to return just to fish the Avon at Christchurch,he used to fish there regulary ,weekly until his passing..

Also the Valency,was she named after the trout stream in Boscastle,the river that destroyed the lower part of Boscastle along with the Jordan and Paradise streams which form the catchment into the harbour..it flows under my mothers house...!!!!!

tinofmaggots

Posts: 5835

#83 27 Nov 2016 at 5.11am

A very fine finnese history, love the pics of you at Keston . Thank you Ken an Tat for sharing your amazing well documented adventure.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#82 25 Nov 2016 at 3.21pm

In reply to Post #81
Back in Fowey I had left John's boat and was now running a 32 foot crab boat called the Valency. Using the years of knowledge passed on by John I too started running angling trips but the call of carp fishing was persistent. I ran the boat for two seasons then went back with John as the money was better and I got more time off to go carping!

Meantime I enjoyed my free time fishing for carp at Rashleigh and Salamander, but John and I also spent time on the Rivers Fowey and Camel fishing for sea trout and salmon. This was then (and remains) my biggest salmon, a fish of 13lb from the Fowey at Lostwithiel.

John was never far away from a fishing rod and to relax after several days at sea he and I would often collect hard backed crabs and climb down to the end of Dodman Point to fish the deep gullies for ballan wrasse. This is a small ballan from one of our favourite (and secret!) marks.

Trev always liked to come fishing with John and me and when we went up to visit him and his missus in Hampshire he would always put us onto some good fishing. Sadly Trev died in the early 80s but his name lives on in the shape of his son Russell who is widely regarded as one of the finest big game crewmen in the world. Russ is as much in demand by marlin and sailfish hunters as any of the top skippers and I am sure he owes this to the part his dad played in his life, for Trev was a world champion marlin, shark and sailfish angler.

OK, this is not a huge tench but it came from a gorgeous lake in the grounds of a very exclusive golf club to which Trev had sole access.

I love bass fishing and while I am not been the greatest bass angler in history, I have had my share. I have never killed a bass, ever. They are far to precious a sport fish to kill. Though they are delicious to eat the farmed alternative is, for once, a perfectly acceptable substitute for the wild fish. Put them back!

I realise this must have been a crushing bore to some of you. If so, well done for getting to the end! However, I wanted to make the point that far from being a one dimensional, blinkered carp angler, in fact I have served my apprenticeship and cut my teeth on many other species and types of fishing. I hope therefore that reading this has done something to dispel the image you may have of me as some past-it old codger who doesn't know what he is talking about!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#81 25 Nov 2016 at 3.17pm

In reply to Post #80
Another big pollack comes aboard. John is checking the echo sounder to see if we are over the wreck. All our wrecking was done on the drift, which is what made it such hard work. We would drift over the wreck, catch what we could, then reel in from as much as 50 fathoms so as to motor upwind to start another drift. The tide was forever pushing the boat around with the wind so it was vital to check the sounder every minute or so to confirm we were still on the mark

One day John told me as we were steaming out that, "Trevor's coming down at the weekend. He wants to go wrecking." OK, I though to myself. Must be somebody a bit special for John to take him out on his own. Turned that this was Trevor Housby, a long time friend of John and at the time one of the best coarse, sea and game anglers around, a prolific writer of angling books and magazine articles, I guess he was as famous in his day as Matt Hayes is today.

Trevor was a larger than life character on the angling scene in the 70s and 80s and was particularly well known for introducing to the fluff chucking fraternity the Dog Nobbler fly. Among other skills he was a great writer with a dozen or more titles to his name. He was also a fantastic angling photographer, to whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude. Trev told me to widen my scope when out fishing. Trophy shots are all well and good, he told me, but the bread and butter ones are the shots that sell magazines and books. Anything to do with angling be it scenic, tactical, tackle, action shots, you name he said, and you shoot it. It was fantastic advice and it helped me tremendously in later years.

Knowing Trev opened many doors for me. He got me onto some of the best trout and salmon rivers in southern England where in the close season we could fish for the grayling and roach in rivers such as the Test and the Itchen. Trev took this photo of me fishing a small weir pool on a branch of the Test. Incidentally, the rod in these pix is the Milbro Match Enterprise, which later became The Device!

He also got me interested in barbel fishing which in turn got me more deeply into carping later on. This is another of Trev's pix, which he used in one of his books called The Specimen Hunter's Handbook.

And this is where it was caught, the famous Railway Bridge swim on the Royalty at Christchurch.

Bill and Keith were now well into both carping and barbel fishing. Keith had made the cover of Angling Times with a, then, stupendous carp of 43lb (Harrow). To my mind the comic usurped him rather by adding a caption saying "there's a bigger one inside!" for this was the week when Ritchie caught the North Lake fish at 45lb! Poor old Keith! Here's Bill and Keith on the Parlour Pool also on the Royalty.

Some of my finest barbel fishing was on The Compound, a very private swim at the very top of the Royalty. Through Trev I became friends with Fred Crouch, one of the most well known barbel anglers of that or any era and it was Fred I have to thank for getting me onto the exclusive Compound. Here I caught my biggest barbel and roach (11lb 1oz and 3lb 2oz) so I have a lot to thank him for.

This is the fishing hut in The Compound. You'll note several examples of the use of a centre pin reel in these photos, mainly Rapidex and Match Aerial. If you fished for barbel there was no other reel but a centre pin�oh, and studded green thigh waders were de rigueur too.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#80 25 Nov 2016 at 3.16pm

In reply to Post #79
Keith's motor, by complete contrast was filled with something entirely different; mucky books! Keith was a rep for the then rapidly expanding empire of the two Daves, Gold and Sullivan (aka the Dildo Brothers the name they are known by among West Ham's disillusioned fans, of which I am one). The self-promoting tart Karen Brady was also a part of their business, which was sexy lingerie and top shelf magazines of the more 'esoteric' type. Keith had a bright yellow Ford estate car and as he sold direct to the shops out of the back of the car, it was always crammed with these magazines.

I remember one day when we got weathered off we decided to go on the lash in the Fisherman's Arms in Golant. The river Fowey is still tidal there and the rise and fall can be pretty extreme on big springs, as they were this particular day, and bits of the lower part of the village flood on big spring tides. I neglected to tell Keith about this as I didn't think we'd be there all that long, however, one pint turned to several, Keith wisely decided not to drive us back to Fowey, and we all piled into a taxi, leaving Keith's car parked on Water Lane, the road below the pub's garden wall. Blissfully unaware that the tide would come up and flood not only the road but also his car�twice, Keith crashed out and was not seen until noon the following day. We all jumped into Bill's car and went back to Golant to pick up the motor. Naturally the tide was way out and it wasn't until Keith opened the driver's door and a load of salt water poured out that we realised what had happened.

Keith's stock was soaked through so we laid it all out on the elevated pavement to hopefully dry out, before moving the car up the hill and then going mullet fishing along the railway line. We spend four or five hours happily and futilely throwing bread at these most frustrating of all fish, before wandering back towards the pub for Keith to see if his mucky mags had dried out, only to find they had all disappeared! Golant thereafter gained something of a shady reputation for the more extreme forms of sexual behaviour previously totally unheard of and unknown in the sleepy Cornish village. The wall is plain to see on Google maps; what isn't shown is the hundreds of top shelf mags that disappeared like zephyrs of breeze into the cottages of beautiful downtown Golant! This is the elevated pavement at Water Lane, Golant.

Keith wondering where his top shelf mags went!

We spent interminable hours (trawling is the most boring occupation known to man) ploughing up an down the Channel off Devon and Cornwall fishing mainly for flat fish, but happy to catch whatever came along. In those days GPS was a hush-hush gizmo for the military's exclusive use so we had to depend on commercial fishing aids such as a Decca Navigator (on the right) and Chart Plotter (centre). Both were invaluable, as were the sounders we used. In those days these cost many hundreds of pounds, if not a thousand or two; nowadays you can buy the same technology with built in GPS for three or four hundred quid! By modern comparison this wheelhouse is as ancient as the Hills, but at the time it was state of the art!

Wrecking with Bill and Keith was good for us but pretty exhausting for them I reckon. We didn't charge them to fish but they fished 'for the boat'. This mean we sold what they caught and they got free wrecking of the finest quality to be found anywhere along the coasts of Devon and Cornwall, for John and I were perhaps the most well known wrecking crew within a 180 mile stretch of coastline. I can recall several days when the two of them were almost dead on their feet but we would not quit until the light went completely and the big shoals chased the bait fish right up in the water.

When fishing off the Channel Isles we would put into Alderney to land the catch and get a bit of kip before being up again at first light to get back out to the wrecks which lay mush closer to France than to the UK. Here's a dear old Midnight Moon alongside the quay at Braye on the Channel Island of Alderney.

This is a fairly typical size of pollack from back then. This is probably about 20lb in weight, but we had them to double that size. (Apologies for the gory photo.)

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#79 25 Nov 2016 at 3.16pm

In reply to Post #78
Here's Bill and Bob Reynolds talking about carp while sea fishing off the rock in Country Kerry.

Back in the UK trips with the HDSAG continued including some sharking sessions off the Isle of Wight and winter cod fishing off Newhaven, but it was the trips to Devon and Cornwall fishing the deep water mid-Channel wrecks that excited me most. At the time the wrecks off Brixham were producing some imense conger and I made several trips to Brixham to fish them from a commercial trawler.

I got really bitten by the wreck fishing bug and on a holiday to Cornwall with Tat in 1972 I met another guy who, like Bill, was to become a life long mate, John Affleck. John was running a 28 foot fishing boat called 'Rosa' taking anglers to the inshore reefs and on shark fishing trips. We got on well and I helped out on 'Rosa' whenever I could and after several trips with John after the sharks in he mentioned to me that he was looking for a crewman to help him go commercial wrecking (rod and line) through the winter. My job was boring the arse off me and Tat's likewise. We had nothing to loose so after thoughtful consideration of about a minute, we decided to chuck up the nine-to-five, the mortgage and the company cars and move to Cornwall. I have to admit that this is not a photo I am particularly proud off; today those sharks would all have gone back, but in the day they were numerous and were a sellable commodity on the fish markets).

We returned to Surrey to put the house up for rent (just in case things didn't work out) and set about moving our stuff and saying goodbye to our friends, who we knew we would see a great deal more of after they found out that we were moving to Cornwall and had two spare beds! When I mentioned to Bill and his mate and fellow sea angler Keith (the tooth) O'Connor that me and Tat were moving to Cornwall where I would be working on a commercial wreck fishing boat their eyes lit up. "Lot's of good wrecks down there," they said.

To a large extent I had more or less given up angling in 1974, finding it difficult to combine fun fishing and commercial fishing the wrecks. There was little that the weather could throw at us that kept us in port so days off were few and far between. Commercial wrecking with rod and line is very hard work and many's the day we came back with 150 stone or more of ling, cod, pollack and coalies, caught between the two of us on Redgills, Eddystone Eels and huge home made pirks.

Cod, pollack, ling and coalies were commonplace on the wrecks in those days, and there was a lifetime's living to be made at that time with no risk to the stock. Then the gill netters arrived and in less than five years the wrecks were finished. Even today the remnants of those gill nets that were lost to the metalwork of the wrecks continue to catch fish...This is called Ghost Net and is is a blight on the UK's commercial fishing.

Seeing the writing on the wall we gave up commercial wrecking - though we still took the odd angling party to sea to wrecks off the Channel Islands where there is too much tide for the gill netters to operate - and John decided to put some holes on the deck (a trawl net) but keep our options open by also taking out fishing parties to the mid-Channel wrecks that the netters had not yet plundered.

Among our regulars on the wrecking trips were Bill and Keith who by now were confirmed and avid carpers. Though they enjoyed their wreck and general sea angling, for the most part when they came out with us all they could talk about was the carp fishing they were enjoying in Surrey.

II remember Bill's van was full of sacks of what he called 'particles' but looked just like a load of old beans to me. The name on the sacks was John E. Haith, a name with which I would become very familiar as time passed

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#78 25 Nov 2016 at 3.15pm

In reply to Post #77
Bill, Bruce, Monkey and me shared some really great times together and having that boat at our disposal really opened up avenues we had never explored before. For instance in summer 1971 we spent three weeks in Eire, staying in a B&B near Fenit on the Tralee Peninsula. Naturally the boat and the van came along too and we were like two kids let loose in a sweet shop. We did every kind of sea fishing you can imagine; pollack and bass fishing off the rocks in Bantry Bay, beach casting on Inch's Strand for bass, wrasse fishing with peelers and hardback crabs in the countless gullies to be found all around that area, inshore boat fishing from Monkey, offshore sea angling from Brian Smith's Fenit-based 33-foot angling boat for shark, tope, pollack and angler fish (nasty things when riled!), and also fishing for the elusive grey mullet that lived under Fenit Pier and close inshore near to the rocky shoreline of the Bay.

We walked for miles across Eire's green fields in order to get to the distant rock marks where pollack, bass and wrasse could be found in abundance. I don't know so much about the pollack, bass and mullet but we certainly found out pretty quickly about the angry bulls that took issue with us crossing their territory!

Most days if we were not booked on the big boat Bill and I would motor out into Fenit Bay in Monkey to fish for tope and angler fish in the sandy gullies and for pollack and small cod on the rocky areas. This is a nice inshore pollack hooked on a Redgill artificial sandeel on a rocky mark in the Bay.

Whenever there was room Brian would let us come out on the big boat either to fish the deep waters near the steep drop off leading to the continental shelf or closer inshore where tope, shark and rays were plentiful. Here's a good sized tope...Bill stands by to do the dentistry.

While Monkey was a pretty good sea boat for her size, the engine, a 10 h.p. petrol outboard, could be very pernickety, not to say recalcitrant. You could pull and pull on the lanyard until you were blue in the face but that old girl often refused to start. You can pull all you like but I won't start!

I guess we were taking a big chance going further than a few hundred yards offshore, but one day she really took a chunk out of our arses. The bloody thing simply would not restart, and it would have to be on the day that we had ventured the best part of three miles across the bay to what we were told was a 'skate mark'. We never caught any skate or any other fish and when the motor wouldn't start we had to paddle all the way back to Fenit in the fading light, the tide against us and a rising, choppy sea. It took us hours and we were very glad to see the inside of Jack Godley's bar that evening. This is the closest we came to a fish on that particular excursion.

A little bit later the relief really hits home!

On more sensible days we took the boat out only a couple of hundred yards off the pier where there were dozens of nice sandy gullies. There we caught ray, tope and monkfish (angler fish to UK anglers) but thankfully the giant skate for which the Bay was famous, gave us and our little boat a swerve. I did however, hook a baby skate of 70lb from Brian's boat, which took forever to get off the bottom and then up through the water to the boat.

Bill and I shared two trips to Eire and both were simply fantastic. On our second trip we met an older guy who was on a four-month long holiday in the area, fishing, and from time to time, running Brian's second angling boat taking trips out to the big fish marks off the headlands. Bill had got well into carp fishing and he recognised the guy as well-known carper Bob Reynolds who was famous for catching five twenty pound carp in a week long session at Billing Aquadrome. Sadly, though we did not know it at the time, Bob was a nasty piece of work who spend his latter years in prison for sexual assault on a woman and a young girl, and was also suspected of the murder of a woman in County Sligo. Be that as it may, talking to Bob about carp fishing and listening to him and Bill talking about carp waters in the UK tweaked my dormant interest in the subject and I would soon take it up in earnest.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#77 25 Nov 2016 at 3.15pm

In reply to Post #76
7. Tat started to accompany me while we were on holiday, fishing for anything we could catch off the rocks of south Devon, but it would be some time before I actually let her fish (just kidding!).

And this is how you tie on a hook...!

I soon realised that match fishing was not for me, but quite by chance I spotted an advert in a local newspaper for the newly formed Hurst Deep Sea Angling Club, which was recruiting new members. Further chance introduced me to Bill, another new applicant to join HDSAG who became and has remained a lifelong mate. We had some great (and some of not-so-great) trips out of Newhaven, Lymington, Poole, and Littlehampton fishing specifically for black bream on light tackle. Here's Bill light tackle fishing for black bream off Littlehampton in about 1968.

Here he contemplates his dinner.

Bill was already an accomplished angler who enjoyed all aspects of fishing and meeting him opened many doors for me, as he introduced me to the pleasures not only of sea angling but also to coarse fishing on the lakes and rivers of southern England. Bill owned a really wrecked old Ford van, which he called Bruce, for some reason. Despite the dilapidated condition Bruce took us on trips here there and everywhere, often carrying Bill's small dinghy on the roof. For an equally obscure reason Bill named the boat Monkey and this fantastic combo opened even more doors for me.
Here's Bruce the Van and Monkey the Boat.

For instance on public lakes and rivers we could simply turn up, chuck the boat in the water and take off to wherever took our fancy, mainly the River Thames and its locks and weir pools. We also fished lakes where one was allowed to use a boat and a particular lake that we really enjoyed was at Mytchett in Surrey. Mytchett Lake was a pads-strewn natural lake with a derelict (at the time) section of the Basingstoke Canal on one side and an army barracks (if I recall correctly) on the other. The lake was a tench, bream, roach and crucian carp angler's paradise and the advantages we gained from having the boat were substantial. Though the Basingstoke Canal has now been restored to its former glory and Mytchett now boasts a proper canal boat landing quay, at the time we fished there it looked like this.

You can just about see the pads on the far bank and the poles you can see marked the deeper channel that was once used by the canal boats. There were some big bream in the lake too and that umbrella is actually sheltering me as I often fished the towpath for the bream, casting a sliding float to the poles and beyond. I had bream to 8lb, which was pretty impressive for those days. However, by getting afloat we could get deep into the heart of the pads and we would rake a swim and bait it with a ghastly concoction comprising mashed bread, maggots, worms and dried blood. This evil powder is apparently hugely dangerous if inhaled being highly carcinogenic but at that time we neither knew nor cared; all we knew was it brought all types of coarse fish into the swim in droves. Here's the result of a short session boat trip to the pads of Mytchett Lake. Please forgive the lack of tender loving care. At the time we knew no better.

Most weekends we would drive to a different venue, but as Bill lived near Richmond more often than not we headed for any stretch of the Thames that had a boat slip. There we launched the boat, attached the engine and motored to the nearest weir pool, where we would fish for anything that came along. Trotting maggots and bread flake down the white water was brilliant sport and we caught big roach, chub, dace and bait fish. In those days the Thames was teeming with gudgeon and bleak, which we used as live bait for the pike and it was not unusual to catch half a dozen pike in a day from the turmoil below the weirs. Pike along with the odd perch or two provided the best sport of all. Trotted or ledgered worms in particular attracted the perch to I guess about 3lb while live gudgeon caught us dozens of pike, well into double figures.

Here's nice weir pool pike. The row of poplar trees in the background may be familiar to those of you who fish the west London pits. TH certainly will know very well one particular pit not far from this weir.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#76 25 Nov 2016 at 3.14pm

In reply to Post #75
For as long as specialist angling has existed there have also been 'instant' specimen hunters with all the gear but no idea and nowhere is this more common than in carp angling. More and more 'instant carpers are brought fully formed into the carp world every week thanks to the almost constant bombardment of vids, photos and comments on social media. Call me old fashioned but I am old school and my angling history encompasses all facets of the sport, coarse, game and sea, and I like to think I served my apprenticeship before becoming a full time carp angler. So before I return to carping memories I thought a little glimpse back into my angling history might help you get a better picture of where I am coming from if I sometimes sound a bit 'preachy'!

As I mentioned previously my first forays into angling proper were under the guidance (or otherwise) of my Grandfather, but even at a very young age I was always attracted to water, a bit like any five year-old boy. Mum was happy to take me to Keston at weekends where I whiled away countless hours either beside the pond...

...or in it. This was probably my first 'trip' to Keston Ponds, probably around 1951 or 2

Mum, while not an angler herself was brought up by a fishing mad parent and brother so in keeping with family traditions she encouraged me to fish whenever an opportunity presented itself, not necessarily with a rod and reel but with whatever came to hand, often a hand line baited for harbour crabs.

This was taken on the fish quay at Mallaig, Scotland somewhere around 1956. Note the school cap! What a doofus!

When I reached the age of ten Grandpa took over as my teacher. In hindsight I have come to realise that he was a pretty inept angler whose 'tuition' comprised kitting me out with wholly inadequate gear that was too heavy, too long and too unwieldy for my ten-year-old frame. Like him, I seldom caught a fish yet undaunted he continued to subject me to untold miseries, always (it seemed) in the most awful weather, in a vain attempt to catch a trout or a salmon for one or other of us. Despite all this somehow the seed was sown and even though he died before knowing that his efforts were not in vain, I am sure he would have been happy to know that the angling bug grew and grew like Topsy to the extent that it became the major factor in my life.

Tat and I got married in 1968 and moved to Ash Vale in Surrey. We spent a brief honeymoon in Betws-y-Coed, staying at the Royal Oak Hotel, ultra posh, three stars and way over our budget, but you only get married once�Well, we did!

An old stone bridge crosses the Afon Llugwy River, a tributary of the River Conway, still one of the finest salmon and sea trout rivers in the UK. By chance a party of anglers were staying at the hotel and they fished the pools above and below the stone bridge every day. Most days me and Tat would wander up the road to lean on the bridge and watch these guys working the pools, and some of the salmon they caught were, to my uneducated eyes, enormous. The spark lit in me by Grandpa flared up into a raging inferno, and the first thing I did when we got back to Surrey was join the local social club in Frimley Green that had a thriving angling section that fished matches. Before I knew it I was a fully-fledged match angler! Tat had also started to take an interest while we were on honeymoon, her thinking being 'if you can't beat them, join them' and though like Grandpa I was also a pretty useless teacher she soon picked up the basics.

scozza

Posts: 17132

#75 21 Nov 2016 at 8.39pm

In reply to Post #74
Echo what's being said. Just had a catch up, brilliant

Dogchod

Posts: 400

#74 15 Nov 2016 at 0.45am

Only just stumbled onto This, amazing pictures and writing.
Brings back some brilliant memories and faces on the Roche waters, happy days indeed.
Looking forward to Reading more ken,
Thank you

Daveperks

Posts: 267

#73 14 Nov 2016 at 5.58pm

In reply to Post #72
Same here!

These Rashliegh write ups are fantastic! Loving the pics of you,, Carole, Steve et al; & of course the lake!

Adam - there's been a few tincas out over the last couple of years, big ones & small ones,

wandle1

Posts: 7000

#72 13 Nov 2016 at 8.25pm

In reply to Post #71
fantastic...loving this

...

Ps...i caught a very nice tench from the cave area...the only tinca i saw from Wheal Rashleigh...

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#71 13 Nov 2016 at 3.08pm

In reply to Post #70
The main characteristic of the lake was its depth. The lakebed sloped down alarmingly fast and even in the margins you could find six to eight feet of water. The other characteristic was that Rashleigh at the time was gin-clear for much of the year and you could see down perhaps twelve feet before the bottom (the slope to be more precise) was lost to view. In the caves and all the way along that bank the water sloped extremely fast from about four or five feet down to twelve or fourteen feet in a matter of a meter of so.

One midweek morning when the lake was empty of anglers I took a couple of kilos of ready mades and crept through the tangle of thorns and other biting, stinging things until I got to the water�s edge at the back of the first cave. Through the Polaroids I could see the way the gravel shelved away quite gently for a yard or so but then it fell away quickly until the bottom became blurred and lost to view. I chucked a handful of baits right at me feet and was not surprised to see them trundle slowly down the initial slope but then gather speed to roll quickly down the steeper slope until I lost sight of them.

I popped next door to the neighbouring cave and did the same thing and sure enough, down went the baits until they were lost from sight. Along the bank a bit more and another handful of bait, and yet again the same thing happened. The baits would roll down the steep slope out of sight and for all I knew right to the bottom of the 45 - 50 feet deep lake!

I returned the next day and again carried out the tests in the caves. It was a much brighter day and visibility was perfect. As I trickled the baits in I noticed that about 50% of them were not as I thought, rolling out of sight to the bottom of the lake, but seemed to hang up on a tiny ledge, perhaps no more than eight or ten inches wide. Not all of them came to rest and those that didn�t carried on down the slope and were lost to view. But a good amount remained lying on this tiny ledge. You�d never have found it in a million years with a marker float and even a sounder would have been hard pushed to pick it up.

What followed next made my fishing at Rashleigh much easier! As I watched three of four dark shapes appeared up the slope from the deeper water. Whether they had eaten any of the baits that had trickled down I don�t know, but as soon as they got to the ledge they all started feeding on the baits that were lodged there. More mayhem and greed!

Needless to say, I spent many a happy hour stalking those carp on that little shelf, behind the bar and inside the 'caves'. At one stage I think we caught just about every big fish in the lake from those small areas and at times I watched them feed like crazy, knocking each other out of the way and disturbing the baits on the shelf. It was easy fishing and at times they seemed to be queuing up for the baits.

Then it all went pear shaped. (I knew it was all too good to be true) as the Club committee in their wisdom banned all access to the far bank. Yes, it was probably a bit on the dangerous side but I thought it was going too far to stop anyone going round the back to stalk them. So it was that for the first time the dark hand of the 'stop-having-fun' brigade was felt and thus we lost some of the best swims on the lake.

Steve being the contrary bugger he was took no notice and he found a rather precarious way to get behind the snags in the south bay. The fish patrolled back and forth along the sandy slope and getting them to pick up a bait was easy. We both had some terrific catches from there but eventually we were reported to the committee and told to stop our jungle warfare fishing. While this curtailed most of our stalking fun, there were a couple of spots along the far back that were not deemed out of bounds and we at least managed to renew our friendship with a few of the old originals. Here's Tat with one of the originals, the only pure leather carp in the lake.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#70 13 Nov 2016 at 3.06pm

In reply to Post #69
One day I managed to slip, fall, slide and crawl to the bank behind the bar. It was a true revelation. Everything we had assumed about the area was shown to be right. From my precarious perch I could see the bar just a few yards away, see it's contours left and right and also the relatively flat area behind the bar and the bank itself. The bottom was as polished as any gemstone, clearly kept clean by the feeding activity of the carp. Even as I sat and watched I saw about a dozen of the suicide squad come blasting through the swim like the hounds of hell were on their tail. There was no obvious sign that something was chasing them so I guessed they must be continuously tear arsing all over the lake trying to beat their brethren to a feed. In time their frantic activity would turn the gin clear water almost totally opaque but before that happened I had the chance to do what I love best, looking in on carp. This is Tat fishing in the swim round the back of the Bar.

It wasn't the comfiest of swims by any means but you could just about squeeze a couple of rods in. Mind you, great care was called for when hitting a take or landing the fish if you didn't want to end up sliding down the bank and into the lake. Stalking behind the bar was heart stopping stuff and it was amazing to watch those Rashleigh fish feed. The area from the corner down to the back of the bar was a stalker's paradise and we created several tiny swims where we could just about squeeze in a couple of rods.

Watching those carp feed at time left me speechless. I recall one day when I was not actually fishing but simply watching and saw two of the originals come to within touching distance under the overhang and eat a couple of kilos of boiled baits in about ten minutes. It was controlled mayhem and pure greed! They both just stuck their heads down and gulped three or four baits at a time into their mouths. Subtle it was not and for a while the fishing was dead easy.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#69 13 Nov 2016 at 3.05pm

In reply to Post #68
The Bar swim was the gift that kept on giving. This is one of the old originals. Sadly these ancient old ladies were going backwards.

By now the three of us were catching fairly regularly from the Bar though they were now predominantly smaller fish, as the Club in its 'wisdom' had decided to introduce hundreds of smaller carp to supplement the originals that had been in the lake since forever. These stocked fish averaged about four pounds in weight and while they fought like crazy we much preferred to catch the bigger originals, and who wouldn't.

The underwater terrain around the bar was all over the place, with depths ranging from 5 to 50 feet. At the time I guess that at least 50% of all the baits we put in ended up rolling down into the depth and it wasn't until we started using chopped baits that we twigged in full the issues caused by deep water and the steeps slopes leading down to the lake bed.

The far bank was almost impossible to plumb properly, even though Steve owned a Depth O'Plug depth finder (as much use as a chocolate fireguard!), as the lead would just roll down the slope whenever you tried to get an idea of the depth and composition of the lake bed. To be honest we wouldn't have known what to do with that info in any case! Oh! for a nice flat bit of lake bed! It was time to do a bit of jungle work. Steve was far more adventurous than me and Tat and he had already scouted out a few different areas to try and it seemed that wherever there was an overhang you would find carp, and if it was close to snags so much the better. I guess a lot of this must sound so predictable and na�ve to today's anglers but you have to remember that every day was a new step along the learning curve. Where there was an overhang, there you found carp, especially if there were snags nearby.

The far bank at Rashleigh is precipitously steep and few, if anybody ventured round there to fish. There was a path of sorts that ran part way along the west bank but after the corner near the caves in the swim that came to be known as Long Chuck (more of which in a minute), the path stopped and the undergrowth became almost impenetrable. On the other hand it made for some terrific stalking areas.

This is the jungle that was the far bank at Rashleigh showing the very obvious 'caves' in the undergrowth. With a pair of decent sunglasses we would invariably spot carp patrolling deep under the overhangs and if we could keep bait from rolling down the slope we could also see them feed and watch how they reacted to bait. The slope above the water line was a mass of tangled undergrowth and it must have been 1:1, very dodgy but a single rod stalking approach definitely worked way better than casting across, even if the 1:1 slope did continue under the water line which made for difficult baiting up in places.These are the 'caves' along the far bank.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#68 13 Nov 2016 at 3.01pm

In reply to Post #67
As we progressed along the learning curve we became a bit more adventurous by putting baits all over the area covered from the Bar Swim; in front of the bar, off to the sides, mid way across in the deep water, even in the near margins, where the depth fell away very quickly, giving 20 feet just a couple of rod lengths out. Clearly the fish loved to patrol all over the area in front of the swim and hot spots were not limited to the far side of the bar or under the tree canopy. Tat was the master at margin fishing that particular swim and she it was who began to use chopped bait on the lake in an attempt to prevent our round boiled baits from rolling down the slope. Not rocket science for sure, but at the time such a trick never occurred to me and Steve. You could bait up with chops by hand, so close in did the carp venture.

Using this tactic she landed a hell of a lot of carp including many of the lake's oldest and biggest inhabitants, including Busted Tail, the lake record (if it felt so inclined and the fish was something of a yo-yo weight wise).

The tree lined far bank behind and to the left of the bar was obviously an area to be explored so we cleared the branches and overgrown bank side in an area next to the Bar swim. This not only gave us overhead casting clearance but also a cleared area to put the rods and from which to play fish, though it was pretty precarious as this pic of Steve adjusting his rods shows. It was really deep right under you feet so falling in would not have been a great idea! We had lots of fish from just a rod length ot two out where the depth was twenty feet or so. The carp loved to creep along that margins but the swim was best fished from next door where you could keep quiet as a mouse. The slightest footfall and they would vacate the area at the gallop.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#67 13 Nov 2016 at 3.00pm

In reply to Post #66
My mind is jumping about all over the place; so many memories it's hard to know how best to get them into some sort of order. I think it's best if I just let my fingers wander and rely on my fading brain power to retrieve what is relevant. So forgive me if I return to the Roche AC venues for a while, concentrating on the lessons we leaned while fishing them. This shot is looking down the lake towards the far bay. You can clearly see the swim on the left; the bar is marked in red across the far side.

Rashleigh was our favourite Club venue at the time, simply because we were on a roll. Steve, Tat and myself had got the lake more or less sorted and having the hair and the Robin Red boiled bait was a massive advantage. If you have followed this account from the start you will know that by pure chance and the kindness of Tony Chipman, I had dropped onto arguably the hottest (at the time) swim on the lake, the Bar Swim.

For the most part the lake was characterised by its deep water. Being an old clay mine it had depths of up to fifty feet and in places the lake bed was dotted with steep slopes and contrasting shallow bars and plateaux. The deepest parts of the lake lay at the far (southern) end of the valley in which the lake lay. The south bay, particularly the western part, was also deep and tree lined with some really vicious snags in the far corner. The fish would congregate in these snags in numbers but fishing for them was truly perilous.

The swim that covered the bar had no name when we started fishing Rashleigh, we simply called it the Bar Swim, but as the lake became much more popular others began to name the swims and the Bar became the Lounge, or the Reception, or something equally silly. The cast to the top of the bar itself was some 50 yards. This side of the bar the depth quickly dropped away to 35-40 feet or so, while to the right as you looked at it, the slope was even steeper and the depth fell away to fifty feet or more.

However, it was the far side of the bar that was the most promising, as here the depth between the top of the bar and the far bank - a distance of no more than a dozen yards - was less than twenty feet. In addition the far bank was heavily tree lined, the overhanging branches creating a natural canopy under which the carp loved to patrol. As they did so they would often venture out onto the bar and at times you could even see them as dark shadows as they passed over the light, golden sand of the bar. The trees behind the bar and the bar itself formed a perfect ambush point to intercept patrolling carp and a bait positioned anywhere on top of or to the side of the bar would stand a chance. But the best chances came to baits cast just across to the back of the bar. I couldn't begin to tell you how many carp we caught from that swim. It must have been a hundred or more.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#66 8 Nov 2016 at 3.01pm

In reply to Post #65
The Beach swim more or less became our second home for most of 1984. This was before the lake became well known and the competition for swims - especially the 'going' swims - became intense. Prior to the arrival of the hordes we could fish just about anywhere we liked as we had the run of the place. The lake opened to night fishing in 1984 and invariably Tat and I would make a beeline for the Beach. There seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of eager carp off The Beach and when nights were allowed we filled our boots!

Being allowed to do the nights also meant that we were on the lake at dawn, which was invariably a time for a run of three.Here's Tat away at first light in an early morning fog that has drifted in from the coast.

The Little Bench swim was largely ignored for some strange reason even after the invaders arrived. I have no idea why as the bars that formed such a feature next door (the Beach) continued right through the Little Bench and if carp were not in front one of the swims there were usually in front of the other. The fishing could be fantastic but it was a tight swim, no room for a bivvy, but as a day session swim it was fantastic. If you could get a rod in there at first light you could almost guarantee a take or two�or three. Strange it was so unpopular. I guess it was because it was such a restricted swim in terms of bivvy room and overhead clearance for casting. That leaves all the more scope for those who liked stalking them close in.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#65 8 Nov 2016 at 2.59pm

In reply to Post #64
A group of Cornish mates, Graham Orchard, Tony Chipman, Steve Churchill and Nigel Britton started fishing College in about 1986/7. They were the first to use tigers properly on the water and they soon became known as the Tiger Nut Kids. Their technique was simplicity itself, using tigers very sparingly to catch a huge number of fish before eventually the tigers stopped working. They used no more than a pint of tigers for a long weekend session, placing them with great accuracy � often by hand - in holes in the weed, on the gravelly areas to the right and left of the Swamp, or on the shallow bars that could be found at the southern end of the lake. Tigers had an amazing run on the lake but did eventually stop working when a group of dickheads from up country filled the lake in with the stripeys. As anyone with any gumption will tell you, tigers, like peanuts should be used frugally. Without these idiots� intervention I am certain that the T.N.Kids would have enjoyed even greater success, so effectively did they position their hookbaits and free offerings. Here's my old mate from Rashleigh, Steve Westbury, fishing the Ponderosa with Nigel Britton, of whom much more later, and Nige's springer spaniel.

Talking of bars, when we first started on College we had no idea of the underwater contours or features that lay in front of us. For the first four of five months, through the winter of 1983/4 we concentrated on the three main swims in the middle of the west bank. In fact it wasn't until Steve did a session on the NE Point, and caught well, that we managed to drag ourselves away from the west bank. I guess we figured that we had dropped on the mother lode as we always seems to catch in the Ponderosa, the Beach and the Little Bench. The Ponderosa is on the extreme left almost out of the picture, in this photo taken from the NE Point, but the Beach (towards the left) and the Little Bench (centre) are clearly visible.

What we didn't know was exactly what we were actually fishing to. Yes, we knew it was predominantly silty but we had no real idea about feature finding so any other features out there were largely a guessed-at mystery until they were revealed during the drought years. It was pure serendipity that we plonked ourselves down in the Beach on the west bank that very first time we fished there. It was not until I made another midnight swim that I discovered the gravelly areas the location of which we then marked on our reel lines - seriously advanced stuff for 1984! How did we do this? Simple: I took three baited rigs out with me in the middle of the night and dropped one on the close in bar, the second on the medium range bar, and the third on the long chuck bar. Then Tat tied a marker on the lines and also on the rods, so that we knew which rod was marked for which bar. Funnily enough, we caught more off the middle and far bars but if it was blowing a hoolie and waves were marching up the lake on a strong south or south west wind, the close in bar really produced fantastically well. Here you can see the bars in front of those three swims. Not surprising the carp liked it!

The long bar with the seagulls sitting on it is actually more in font of the Little Bench than the Beach, but if nobody was in the Little Bench (unlikely as for some reason it was not a popular swim) you could reach it from the Beach with a decent right to left breeze (or a decent pair of swimming fins!). The other smaller bars are not as far out - about 35-40 yards.

This photo shows the two swims to the right (south) of the beach. The Ponderosa is on the right while the Swamp is on the left with the large leaning tree trunk. The large area between the two where the gulls are swimming was one huge weed bed during the summer months, which the carp loved. On a sunny day you could see them plain as anything as they cruised lazily below, through or over the weed. In fact, watching their movements it was easy to locate and isolate their patrol routes and also note areas where they fed as opposed to areas where they did not.

All in all, the middle of the lake and the area within casting distance of the main swims on the west bank were a mass of features. It is small wonder that the carp loved to congregate in the middle, usually just out of our (then) casting range. It wasn't until the big chuckers like Gra Orchard and Gary Thomas showed us how to do proper long chucks that these previously 'safe' carp suddenly found they were not so safe after all.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#64 8 Nov 2016 at 2.55pm

In reply to Post #63
Decades later I would write a series for Carpworld called Spot Fishing and to a large extent it was my experiences on College that gave me the confidence to write such technical pieces without getting laughed at! All in all, the key to success was finding the hard patches on the so-called bars, even though these were not proper bars as you would probably know them. Ours came up six inches to a foot at most and some were only a few feet long and maybe a foot or so wide.

As if this wasn�t enough of a challenge, the fish definitely had favourite feeding areas, so not only did you need to find the general area they favoured but also the spot within a spot where they fed more confidently. Once such area was off the point of the smaller island that could only effectively be fished from the Swamp. For obvious reasons this was one of the most popular swims on the lake, not surprising when you consider the features in front of it.

The swim itself was not easy fishing as you had to wade out a fair bit to make the cast. The aim was to put the bait close to the tip of the island, though dropping short wasn't a disaster as there was a lovely little channel running down left to right along the island's margin. Another tactic was to wade out and drop the bait by hand at the foot of the abundant mares tails weed than grew along the margins to the right of the swim. By wading out and actually placing the bait by hand on the gravel in front of the mares tail you stood a very good chance of a pick up. The funny thing was that the bait had to be almost touching the weed stems. If it was say six inches away you would not get a pick up, even though it was clear that there were fish in the area by the way the mares tails used to sway and bump as the fish moved through them. That was why it was so important to place the bait by hand, as it were. Casting simply wasn�t accurate enough. A bait cast or placed in the channels also stood an excellent chance of being taken and the good thing about this area was that it was deep enough that the swans couldn�t reach the bait on the lakebed as it was just a foot or so too deep for them. This pretty fish fell to just such a tactic.

Of course the sneakiest way to fish the island was not in fact from the Swamp. No, the best swims was on the island itself. Though not allowed , if you put chesties on you could wade out with a bucket of bait and a net and a rob and fish right under your feet in the island's margins. Cheating, you may say, but if there was nobody around where's the harm.Here is am fishing the island opposite the Swamp. The channel we aimed to hit from there was a chuck of about 90 yards. Where I am fishing it was a chuck of two yards at most! You can see the mares tails across the lake and the weed clumps in the bay. If you were quiet and unobtrusive you could actually see the carp swimming by without a care in the world. It was magical fishing like no other I have ever experienced.

This gorgeous little common fell to a hookbait dropped in the edge while fishing the swim shown above. It is one of a dozen or more you could catch in a day if you kept quiet and didn't betray your presence, either to the fish or to the warden!

You will have heard how many anglers set great store in the strength and direction of the wind. Well let me tell you, those College fish were so set in their ways as far as feeding hot spots were concerned that even if it was blowing a hoolie from the south west with waves piling into the North Bay, the fish would hang resolutely around the islands at the tail of the wind, refusing to move however hard it blew. That was why so many visiting anglers came unstuck as they always assumed that the fish would follow the wind. They could never understand why we locals would be fishing the southern end of the lake when the wind was pushing hard up towards the other end.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#63 8 Nov 2016 at 2.53pm

In reply to Post #62
We were still using The Device (see Peanuts section) to get the baits out but when we first started fishing the two swims at the southern end of the lake, trying to reach the gap in the two islands, we found ourselves well short of the required distance. Home made botch-jobs of throwing sticks were too heavy and cumbersome, but The Device could just about reach given a following wind from the east. Even so, we still fell well short with both the casts and the freebies if there was any west in the wind.

Then someone had the bright idea of going around to the other side of the lake in front of the swim that would become known as the Swamp, where the islands lay only a matter of 50-60 yards away. Here with the west wind behind us whoever was doing the baiting would stick them out �blind� firing them over the top of the island�s trees and hopefully landing near or near about to the Gap. In this photo the rods are pointing at the Gap, though at this distance the actual gap itself is not really noticeable unless you know what you are looking for.

Later, as we got more effective at long-range casting using our updated rods and reels, we began to hit the Gap even with a westerly blowing. Mind you, the real casters at the time were Gary and Mark who could put their baits up the trees on the islands if they felt so inclined and even though such a cast was in reality a cock-up, when they hit the trees they did so with annoying smugness! Good technique and Armalite 3.0lb 13-footers doing the business for the guys.

I mentioned earlier how inept we actually were when we started serious carping on Ockenham, the Roche AC waters, Salamander Lake, and the SW ressies but necessity is the mother of invention and somehow we muddled by!

Even on College we really did not have much of a clue as to how to use a lead for �feeling� the bottom. As for marker floats, what are they? How we managed to catch anything is beyond me. Just goes to show how huge an edge it was having the hair and Robin Red boiled baits in our, at the time, rather limited armoury.

I can recall when we first fished what later became the Swamp at College. At the time there wasn�t an actual swim there and so Steve and I created one, just a small area where you could squeeze in, hidden from the path, and chuck a couple of rods out towards the point of the island and to the channel that ran tight to the island margins. We had a clear idea in our heads as to why we were casting where we were casting, but to be honest, mostly it was guesswork. It was only after a few sessions (and a few years) that we actually managed to get a better idea of the lakebed that lay off the point of the island and the general area in front of the Swamp.

I had taken to doing the odd midnight swim, not to put bait out or to place baited hooks (that would come later!), but solely to try to get a better idea of what we were actually fishing on/to. As we had long suspected there was indeed a significant channel running close to the facing margins of the island. In addition there were loads of tiny gravel bars off the point while in between these little strips of gravel, that came up no more than a foot, the silt was deep and sweet-smelling. You can see some of the features and the channels in this photo, which was taken during 1991, one of the drought years. The scene looks out from the Clearing. The Swamp is in the middle of the photo on the opposite side of the lake.

The area from the Ponderosa down to the Swamp was often clogged with water milfoil, and it was clear that the carp just loved it in there; we knew they did coz we could see them! Though wading was supposedly strictly forbidden nobody said anything if you wanted to wade out to cast or bait up at longer range, or even if you wanted to drop a hookbait on a clear area. There used to be several tiny gravelly hot spots in the weed between the two swims and a bait and a few freebies carefully placed on one was almost certain to get a take. It was fishing these two swims that actually rammed home to me the importance of finding hot spots where the fish seemed to feel more relaxed and therefore more likely to feed and to get caught!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#62 8 Nov 2016 at 12.14pm

In reply to Post #61
Fishing at College back in the early 80s put you on a very steep learning curve. When I think of how crudely we used to fish, it amazes me we ever caught a thing! The tackle we used, though ostensibly supposed to be top notch, was in reality a far cry from the carp tackle of today. Back then before the days of Nash, Fox, and Korda, we made most of our own tackle. Luckily Gardner had begun to offer decent bank side gear in the shape of tough ally banksticks and buzz bars, and reels were now coming out that were much more suitable for carping. However, eleven-foot so-called �casting� rods, were actually nothing of the sort and while the Mitchell 300 was decent enough reel, it was not big enough to allow really big casts unless you compromised on the strength of your main line. We had a pair of 300s and the auto-flick bale arm Mitchell 330 but that was it, nothing else compared, unless you counted the old Intrepids, which were terrible.

Eventually we added a pair of Abu 155 reels to the mix � we couldn�t afford the much better 55 models � and these allowed us to cast a lot further. To be honest and with hindsight I am far from convinced it was necessary for the long chucks, but remember, this was our first big water and it never occurred to us to fish the margins in such a �huge� expanse of water.

The rods we used we built ourselves on 11 foot Sportex fibreglass blanks bought in 1978 from Going Bros in Southend, who also supplied all the rings, reel seats, whipping thread and so on. We also had two 1.75lb test Jim Gibbinson �Clooper� long range (I wish) rods, and two 1.5lb test general-purpose carp rods. The Clooper had a very stiff action, whereas the lighter rod was a joy to play fish on.

A few years later when carbon fibre rods were becoming all the range with the early Sportex KM1 selling like hot cakes out of Simpson�s of Turnford�s shop, we changed over to carbons. What a difference! We were not taken by the KM1 and went instead for a pair of the 2lb test through action eleven footers. (I think these were the Sportex 3332 blanks but I am not sure.) Again we built the rods up from scratch using full cork handles for the first time. These were lovely rods with a nice through action but with power to spare in the butt. Tat loves them and we and we still have them to this day.

By 1986 we had realised the severe limitations of the gear we were using and had splashed out on a set of decent distance casting rods, I believe they were also Sportex blanks, but this time we bought them ready built from Jack Simpson. Later we augmented the first carbons with a set of Geoff Kemp rods, built by Vic Gillings if I remember rightly.

Thinking back to the way we were, it is astonishing to think of how far the tackle trade has come in just a few short years. For instance, carp sacks were none existent when I first started and we used Hessian sacks instead. Ghastly horrible things they were, and I am sure they didn�t do the carp much good. Mind you, I guess my old mate Big Daddy didn�t suffer any ill effects of his incarceration as he was still coming out of Salamander some 15 years later! Unhooking mats were also yet to be born. I used an old sack or the top of whatever waterproofs I had with me at the time. Still, at least they were better than this dreadful; horror story, a match angler's weighing basket. (Not mine by the way)

Rigs too were largely pretty crude, being mostly short nylon bolt rigs with a big hook (size 4, sometimes even a size 2) and a short hair tied with sewing cotton. I have already described our baits earlier in the thread, but in time we began to experiment with nuts and particles.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#61 8 Nov 2016 at 12.05pm

In reply to Post #60
No doubt there will be sceptics who say that peanuts do no harm, and they are correct, provided they are used responsibly and also provided that not everybody on the lake is using them�and thereby comes the problem.

On a busy water it soon becomes apparent if one man is catching more than another and it doesn�t take long for the successful bait to be identified. Even though the original angler may only have been using a very conservative amount of peanuts, there is no guarantee that those who would emulate him will do the same. This soon has a knock-on and in next to no time the lake is being bombarded with peanuts.

So good though they may be, and though they do no harm if used in moderation, I still believe peanuts should be used very lightly. They should most definitely not be piled in, as can be the case with other pulses, beans or seeds. It is not rocket science: when used to excess peanuts cause serious problems and if you are looking for proof here are some sorry tales from College. The most tragic case involved the lake�s first thirty which I caught at a weight of 31lb 3oz in March 1985.

The late Baz Griffiths caught it in June 1985 at 26lb.

It came out again at 17lb in August and was never seen on the bank again. We are all certain that it died.

Next consider this most friendly of College carp, a fish we called Two Scales. This fish came out often and was everybody�s friend. Indeed, it was the second fish Tat and I caught on peanuts in the summer of �84. It came out in the spring of 1985 to my mate Steve at 24lb 12oz.

I caught it in July of the same year at 23lb 4oz.

Now look at the poor old girl. This is the final photo ever taken of her when she weighed less than fifteen pounds. Soon after this pic was taken she was found dead.

Finally I ask you to look at this gorgeous fish. In its day this fish was known as Wembley because she was a real trophy of a fish.

Now look at her; riddled with disease and bloated beyond belief. Were peanuts the cause? Almost certainly.

Before I close I want to quote Tim Paisley again as he makes a point against those who would point at peanuts and say that the problems caused by their over-use contradicts the principle of nutritional recognition.

Tim wrote: "One final point on peanuts. As a rule a carp will stop feeding on a food source that is of little use to it, or which makes it ill - as with baits containing excessive flavour levels. But the metabolic processes involved in the vitamin E deficiency syndrome (caused by excessive consumption of peanuts) are apparently too complex for the carp�s system to cope with. Peanuts are not a natural part of the carp�s diet and their effect is unique. Mother Nature cannot have envisaged their availability, and She provided no defence mechanism in the carp�s system.�

Right or wrong, whatever the argument, the fact is that carp cannot take, and should never be given, an excessive amount of peanuts.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#60 8 Nov 2016 at 12.04pm

In reply to Post #59
We should always examine the results of our actions. It may be that we think we are using the safest rig ever and that our baits do the fish nothing but good: certainly that they don't do them any harm. But do they? Having looked at the success Tat and I enjoyed using peanuts in the summer of 1984 we must also consider the other side of the coin and look at the repercussions of over use of any peanuts.

When Rod Hutchinson first made popular the use of what are now generally termed particle baits, anglers were then, as they are now, forever searching for a particular bait that would give them an �edge�. By the early 80s the secret bait was peanuts. Sadly it was not to remain secret for long and soon the world and his wife were piling peanuts into lakes all over the country, and with no consideration whatsoever about the long and short term consequences of such an oil-rich diet.

When the scare stories began: fish were going back in weight and some fish were actually dying, the finger of suspicion pointed at peanuts. The weeklies picked up on this and a few lurid exposes hit the streets, but they were ill informed and inconclusive. It wasn�t until first Fred Wilton and then Tim Paisley wrote in detail about the damage that peanuts could cause that carp anglers began to sit up and take notice. Tim and Fred pointed out that peanuts intended for use a bird food contains aflatoxins that were carcinogenic (cancer causing) and nobody in their right mind should be using them for carp fishing.

While at the time they were quite right, things have changed since then. These days the cancer-causing aflatoxins have been largely eradicated from peanuts intended for both human consumption and for birdfood thanks to a rigorous screening program. Nonetheless, I agree with Tim�s assertion that peanuts, regardless of whether they are intended for birds or humans, are dangerous if they become the sole source of food in a lake. When Tim wrote of his concerns back in 1990 I doubt even he could have imagined just how huge carp angling was to become, so nowadays the potential for these peanut-related problems to arise is even greater, as there are simply more carp anglers around than there was in 1990.

As Tim detailed, peanuts become a problem when they are the primary source of food whereby carp eat them almost to the exclusion of all other foods. Imagine what YOU would feel and look like if you ate peanuts for breakfast, lunch and super. Excess of any kind can be life threatening and in the case of peanuts the dangers are, as Tim pointed out, from vitamin E deficiency and excess fat build up, especially in the liver, kidneys, in the blood and in other vital organs (A similar situation arises when excess fish oils are used in boiled baits.)

Any food that is eaten to excess will cause problems as carp are simply not equipped with the mechanism to stop eating peanuts. In fact, there could even be a repeat of the oft-quoted human analogy whereby one asks oneself, �Could I eat a single peanut?� Answer is, �most definitely not�. (Apologies to those with nut allergies for bringing up temptation!).

Returning now to College. In the spring of 1985 we saw the first mass invasion of carp-starved anglers suffering withdrawal symptoms imposed by the then existing close season on lakes in the rest of England and Wales. Devon and Cornwall had no such restriction and so the invasion of College and other south west reservoirs and lakes was inevitable after the info about the carp in them first leaked onto the grapevine. We were invaded by hundreds of carpers all in search of their fishing 'fix' and with them came the first widespread use of peanuts.

I witnessed anglers introducing hundreds of kilos of peanuts, both cooked and uncooked, into a 40 acre lake. Our visitors had no idea of what the previous week�s anglers had introduced � invariably peanuts � and so a situation arose whereby the lakebed was covered in a blanket of nuts. Inevitably the carp ate their fill; many were captured, but worse, many subsequently lost weight and a few even died. Of course these problems only raised their ugly heads after the visitors had gone home, no doubt to repeat similar atrocities on their home waters after the close season ended.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#59 8 Nov 2016 at 11.56am

In reply to Post #58
Anyway, that�s the story of a fantastic College summer of 1984. We concluded afterwards that we had over-baited with peanuts, hence the very noticeable slow down and eventual stop. Yes, they can be a great bait, as we discovered initially, but go in to heavy with them and they will stop dead. Peanuts in quantity can not only damage carp, they can kill them, so to temper this tale, read what followed at College 12 months later, after I tell you a strange but true story, the tale of the eleven o'clock carp.

In the early days, everything we experienced at College took us further along the learning curve. In particular we took great pains to try and establish the carp�s patrol routes. Steve was especially adept at this, as he seemed to possess a sixth sense that kept him totally clued in on where the carp were at any given point in the day. Tat and I, not as gifted as Steve, merely coat-tailed the guy and took his word as gospel. However, in time we too began to learn the tell tale signs of fish movement and began to establish their patrol routes. So good did we become that in time were actually able to anticipate with near-on perfect accuracy where the carp would be at any given time and weather conditions.

One trick we had put into practice very well was to leap-frog each other until one of us got a run � and yes, it was that kind of situation at that time; if you didn�t get a run you weren�t on fish. Don't forget, at the time I am talking about there was no night fishing so we were fishing days only.

After choosing a starting point we would set up in three different swims along the bank and after an hour or so the guy at one end would move past the other two and set up further along the bank�and so on and so on. I am sure you get the picture. Well, anyway, we had become so adept at following the fish around, especially along the west bank of the reservoir that we could virtually predict when a run might occur.

So one rather bleak early spring day, Tat and I went down for a day session. I fished in the Beach while Tat went down to the southern end of the lake some 600 yards or so to fish the Swamp, casting to the back of the island. All our previous experiences had lead us to believe that the fish would be off the Beach early on but would move down the lake to the right, gathering behind the island mid-morning, not moving out again until the afternoon, when they would make their way along the west bank, arriving in front of the Beach again around three in the afternoon.

So I am sitting there watching the world go by when along comes a mate of Steve�s who had been popping down to College for a look-see every now and again. His name was Stuart and being a sociable sort of guy I put the kettle on and made the tea and we talked about this and that. After a while I looked at my watch and then started winding my rods in.

�Going to put fresh baits on, then?� asked Stuart.

�No, mate,� I replied. �Just going down to help Tat in the Swamp.�

Stuart looked rather puzzled. �I didn�t hear a buzzer,� he said.

�No, nor did I,� I replied, �but the eleven o�clock fish will be along any moment and I want to get down there to give her a hand and do the photos."

Stuart gave me a look usually reserved for the sad, deluded or insane!

�Seriously� I said. �She�ll have a fish on by the time we get there.�

It was by now just coming up to the top of the hour and as we started the long walk down towards the Swamp the faint trill of an alarm could be heard. We both broke into a run and arrived in the Swamp to find Tat bent into a lively fish.

�Look your watch, � I said to Stuart.

�Bugger me! He replied. �Bang on eleven o�clock!�

A strange story, but true!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#58 8 Nov 2016 at 11.55am

In reply to Post #57
Now I often look back on that early summer and wonder if our experiences with using peanuts didn�t colour our vision when it came to boiled baits, HNVs and all that sort of stuff. We were not yet under fully TP�s wing as far as the bait was concerned but what happened next with the �nuts may well have given us a shove in the right direction as regarding the importance of nutritional baits

Basically what happened was the we enjoyed three trips on peanuts catching over seventy carp between us including ten twenties on just two rods sharing the runs. However, with each trip it became noticeable that our results were slowing down markedly � just eight fish on the third trip. The fourth trip we never had a sniff, even though the fish were still in evidence off the two point swims at the mouth of the cut and despite doubling up on the number of rods. It seemed that as quickly as the peanuts started working for us, they stopped dead! In fact, for a time nothing worked, not boilies or particles, and the only thing we could get takes on were hair-rigged slugs! The action on the peanuts was slowing down noticeably but we still managed a few.

However, the bigger carp were getting few and far between and the catch rate was noticeably slower. Eventually we gave up on the nuts and reverted to boiled bait. This was our last peanut-caught carp.

I later related this to Tim Paisley who was at the time seriously concerned at the use and abuse of peanuts by carp men, and in the light of what was to happen to College later, during the close season of 1985, I became convinced that while carp adored them, they were not going to do them any good in the long run.

I am sure most of you will be able to draw lessons from this little tale. Basically it is this: Don�t go mad with the nuts like we did, or they�ll blow quicker than a Plymouth tom at the sight of a fifty pound note!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#57 8 Nov 2016 at 11.53am

In reply to Post #56
So we laid down a fairly light carpet of nuts out of the caty, say 30 pouch loads as far as they would go...which was about 30-35 yards. We also laid down another bait area comprising boilies only using the Device at between 70 and 100 yards. This are was covered by a pair of Gibbinson Cloopers while the short range peanut carpet was fished using a pair of fibreglass 1.5lb test Sportex rods covered the peanut-baited area. Rigs were kept on the simple side (let's face it, we didn't actually know and complex ones. This more modern pic near enough shows the rig we used.

I put the kettle on and then we set about putting up the tent, but we had no sooner started than a fish took one of the peanut rods. Tat grabbed the rod and played in a lively little mirror of 12lb, and while she was doing that the other peanut rod went off. My turn! The luck must have been with me for it was the first of several twenties we had over the course of the next few weeks. The fish was just over 20lb a fat Italian strain mirror that became a frequent visitor to the bank...it liked eating bait too much. In time it became widely known as Two Scales.This is our first fish on the nuts.

And this is Two Scales.

Tat and I topped up the peanuts carpet with three or four caty loads then we both recast into the ripples formed by the nuts entering the water. The rods were no sooner back in the rests when they both went off more or less at the same time, Tat landing a nice little mirror and me a similar sized common.

To cut a long story short we carried on catching throughout the day and the night and into the next day when we ran out of nuts. And the boiled baits�? Produced absolutely nothing! For me the highlight of the trip was a new PB common, a bionic bruiser that took me 150 yards down the bank before I could get it under any semblance of control.

We ended the weekend with over three dozen carp on the bank in 48 hours to just two rods! We returned home happy but exhausted but nothing was going to stop us now that we were on a roll. So it was that the following weekend we were back at College and this time we took two full buckets of prepared nuts.

There was a guy on the NE Point (who's he? we wondered�the first �foreign� face we�d seen on the lake) so we switched out attentions to the swim opposite on the SE Point. Once again we had a big hit catching another 30 fish including no less than five twenties between us! Pinch me. I�m dreaming. Incidentally, this fish won me a KM Bedchair in the Angler's Mail photo competition courtesy of Andy Little. About 25 years later when we both worked for Fox I said thank you!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#56 8 Nov 2016 at 11.52am

I shall retgurn to Salamander on and off throught this thread but for the moment I want to move on to look again at College Reservoir and inparticular at peanuts...On their day peanuts can be a fantastic bait if used responsibly. However, they can also cause serious health issues to carp if they are abused by being used excessively, as this will show towards the end.

I shall never forget those few incredible College reservoir sessions in the summer of 1984. The first was in July of that year. It had been a blistering summer and the visitors had arrived in force. As a result the reservoirs were dropping daily to supply water to the tourist areas. Tat and I went down for a weekender and as the level was down a few feet we decided to bivvy up on the gravel below the wall on the NE Point. This wall was built to protect the banks preventing wave action from eroding the shoreline. You can just about see the wall in this shot. The NE Points is on the left in this pic, the SE Point on the right.

Though we are catching OK on boilies we had decided to give peanuts a try, having read about their use and abuse in Carp Fisher. Though Tim Paisley was dead set against them we wanted to see what the fuss was about. Were they the wonder bait everyone we�d talked to was raving about�would they have a good catching life at the lake? Remember, we weren�t yet privy to the bait secrets that were prevalent up-country at the time so we were casting around for an effective alternative bait.

It was the first time we had used peanuts, but we made sure that we were preparing them correctly by reading up everything we could find out about them, mainly from Rod�s book, which also includes a chapter by Dick Caldwell. In it Dick comments that nuts could fill carp up very quickly and should thus be used sparingly. Rod on the other hand, likens peanuts to sweetcorn in effectiveness and also states that they need to be baited heavily, both cooked or uncooked, flavoured or unflavoured. Confused? You will be�Do we follow Rod or do we follow Dick? Two widely differing opinions in the same book, our bible at the time, in the same chapter no less!

So there we are, set up on the nice flat gravel below the wall with half a bucket of prepared nuts that are steaming quietly and attracting flies! What next? Well, get some out there seems like a plan�

Now maybe spods were around in those days in the �developed� carp world but Cornwall was basically a 3rd world country as far as carping was concerned. Yes, we had catys, but spods? Not a clue! This basically meant that we were restricted to firing the nuts out with a caty, at best maybe 30 yards? Luckily the water dips down quite quickly off the NE Point so we found ourselves with about six feet of water in front of us at 25-30 yards. Now I wouldn�t say we were brimming with confidence about the nuts so hedging our bets somewhat we also took down some boiled baits that we could put out a far way using what we called �The Device�.

Let me tell you about this fiendishly clever bit of gear. I had been a bit of a match angler way back in the late 60s and among the rods was a 4-piece rod called, if memory serves me right, a Match Enterprise. This fiberglass 13 footer had a stiff bottom three sections but a very whippy tip, and as we now seeing carp well out of range we wanted to extend our distance by using a throwing stick. Again you had to make your own out of a thick glass or early carbon butt section, but we also come up a much more effective idea, The Device!

Stripping the rod rings off the Enterprise, including the tip ring, left a long very fast action extended throwing stick. How it worked was like this: I would stand at the water�s edge holding the stripped down rod. Behind me Tat stood with a bag of boiled baits. I would lower the rod behind me and Carole would push a bait onto the tip. The blank at the tip was pretty thin so pushing on the bait didn�t damage it or cause it to split, but allowed it to lodge nicely in place. I would then �cast� the rod and at the top of the cast the bait would fly off the tip and be thrown huge distances (comparatively at the time) out into the lake. Using �The Device� we could bait up at previously unreachable distances and once again we got back among the fish thanks to the freebies going so far out into the lake.

Of course, we couldn�t actually cast anything like so far but we also supplemented the Device-launched baits with plenty of throwing stick and catapult fodder that ended up a lot closer in. Then, by casting as near as we could to the long-range freebies � probably about 30 yards short � and onto the medium-range bed of bait we encouraged the carp to come in to sample the hookbaits.

wandle1

Posts: 7000

#54 7 Nov 2016 at 6.09pm

In reply to Post #51
Very sorry to learn of Carole's bad luck...hope its on the mend...

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#53 5 Nov 2016 at 10.04am

In reply to Post #52
Third times in ten years now, Brian. I call it clumsy; she says it's bad luck!

Edit: It's 4 times in 14 years. I forgot 2002. Poor lass!

WATERWOLF

Posts: 13016

#52 5 Nov 2016 at 9.33am

In reply to Post #51
The missus broke her foot and ankle again on Thursday

she will have to stop kicking your Butt mate

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#51 5 Nov 2016 at 9.25am

Please be patient, guys. The missus broke her foot and ankle again on Thursday and I have turned into t full time house husband. Got 00s of photos to upload too. Bear with me. I will get this thread back on track directly!

stephens

Posts: 18

#50 31 Oct 2016 at 0.20am

In reply to Post #49
Wandle1 - All too true when you say "Not much compares to the peace and solitude we used to have."

I now, looking back, realize just how lucky we were in Cornwall at that time and that it is mostly gone, for one reason or another. Just the memories left.

You'd need a friendly landowner, plenty of money and lots of fencing (if geographically possible, which it often isn't) to recreate and secure the low pressured gems we used to be lucky to fish.

wandle1

Posts: 7000

#49 30 Oct 2016 at 11.44pm

In reply to Post #48
Wow,again a fantastic photo of what looks a very nice place......your most probably right about the lutra as well..

When i was on Rashleigh ,i heard guarded whispers about the place ,eventually a couple of lads who spoke about the place realised i wasn`t too bad a lad and could be trusted to keep mum,....even today i know of one or three ! special places that i have kept quiet about and would NOT tell anyone about........and thats over 32 years ago...

I know Gary Thomas ,he was great to me when he ran his bait firm ,gosh what was that bait called pink exstacy or similar,i used that on Lower Tamar...[cypro baits]...

Thing is a lot of carpers in the UK don`t realise just how fantastic Kernow used to be before the coming of the Lutra and,overt second home,lodge disease etc.....ie locals used to fishing lovely quiet places for many years kicked off when a rich so and so bought the place and so on............

We didnt have the biggest fish thats for sure ,but the one thing that was in evidence was the camaraderie thought the county ,the friendliness and the feeling that we were fishing for the unknown...

i loved it,and wish it was still the same......

stephens

Posts: 18

#48 30 Oct 2016 at 11.16pm

In reply to Post #45
Wandle1 - The last I heard (online, as I am "up country" now) the property had changed hands and the new owner did not want anglers coming and going so it is now out of bounds.

It had Commons mainly, to around mid twenties in the early 1990's and was a splendid secluded location. More often than not I, or we if I went with a friend, had the place to ourselves, mid-week.

Nigel Britton's friend Steve Westbury (now in Canada) did a good write-up called "Tales of Trencrom" under the pseudonym "Carpsava."
If you paste: http://webspace.webring.com/people/kw/waterwize/carpstories.html into your browser you can read it together with stories of College Reservoir and Bilberry Pool.

I have seen it described by another Cornish exile as: "a real gem hidden away in a little valley in the Cornish moorland. It's actually two small ponds, about an acre and a half apiece......... Trencrom was a magical little place, a rare piece of seclusion in a very overpopulated little island."

According to Steve and Nigel they loved sweet baits especially Tutti's, I used Tropicanos and did OK. I remember Gary Thomas (who fished College at the time) saying fondness of sweet baits was a particular trait of Commons.

Unfortunately a stream runs through and Otters may have found and cleared it out now?

The photo below is from the first day I ever fished the place (29/06/90.) They were crashing all over when we arrived, a "cannot go wrong" type of day though not often repeated!

wandle1

Posts: 7000

#47 30 Oct 2016 at 8.21pm

In reply to Post #46
Ahh not another special place lost to Cornish carping..👎

I had this long list of waters,literally that i intended to fish one by one..all of them in Cornwall ,this was my plan ..
One night,last winter during a howling storm I once again revisited my list,after a short while I realised most of these places were lost to angling,so I screwed up this list and threw it into my open fire..

My problem is I don't wish to fish up country and Im only interested in Cornwall carping and over the border into Devon..

Not much compares to the peace and solitude we used to have..

Daveperks

Posts: 267

#46 30 Oct 2016 at 7.54pm

In reply to Post #45
Adam - I had a quick look at the "crom" whilst passing by back in the summer,

The top lake was totally weed choked - bank to bank/ top to bottom,, however the surrounding area & bankside is totally manicured with bbq areas, a summer house complete with decking & gazeebos!! Looks like the owners use the area for socialising in the summer......

Also there were loads of duck boxes, islands & feeders along with a few ornamental/ non indigenous ducks swimming around,

No obvious signs that angling had occurred recently........

It's quiet up there & with a stream running through the pools & an estuary nearby - I can't believe that old lutra hasn't popped by for a visit or two - & in a small shallow pool there's only going to be one winner.

wandle1

Posts: 7000

#45 30 Oct 2016 at 6.56pm

In reply to Post #44
Great post and photo...Trencrom,I used to hear a lot about this place,wonder what happened? Probably ottered,shut to the locals...or turned into a soulless place like Shillamill...aka Stonerush...

Daveperks

Posts: 267

#43 30 Oct 2016 at 1.42pm

In reply to Post #42
Yeah - great stuff Ken, loving these write ups; especially the salamander & Roche stuff & it's great to see pics of of some "old friends"

wandle1

Posts: 7000

#42 29 Oct 2016 at 10.38pm

In reply to Post #41
Agreed,its fantastic ,proper Cornish carp fishing history ..

I have seen these fish in their rightful place,i used to go to college not a million miles away from the lake..Although i could not drive back then i had a clay country mate who could and we used to go down and watch these submarines cruising around ....nice chap he was ,as he showed some other places locally as well...break times have never been the same since....

............

also....now i`m remembering a few things.Ken wrote a really good article called `Rejuvenation at Rashleigh`or similar..well of course this fired me up and i especially wanted to catch `Busted tail`so i joined for the year Roche AC..

Anyway,i used to fish three rods ..long story short middle rod went off in the `long chuck`as it was known ,i got into a right ol mess ,chap up the bank came down to see what was happening and offered to land this carp for me plus all the other tangled rods etc.It went like this `think you`ve got ol busted tail on mate`....at this point what ever it was fell off..i still have bad dreams...and hence why i hate fishing three rods in tandem....always two plus one....

tinofmaggots

Posts: 5835

#41 29 Oct 2016 at 6.35pm

Ken this thread has lot of feelings , your history of fishing is immense well documented and to share it with us is outstanding and very generous.

Of course Carol your companion equally qualifys for the good angler award. As i doubt there were many ladies fishing for Carp back in the day **** bed chair or not 😒

I love these stories of yesteryear,

Thank you Ken

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#40 29 Oct 2016 at 12.41pm

In reply to Post #39
What followed piled disaster upon disaster. In 1993 the local council decided to de-silt the lake using heavy plant. The fish were netted and kept in the council's own pond while the diggers and bucket dredgers did their worst. Most of the swims were destroyed, the trees cut down, a stupid artificial island constructed. When they brought the fish back, with them came thousands of small roach and rudd to compete with the thirty 30 carp that were restocked (yes, I counted them all back again!).

The soul of the lake was lost completely, but as if this desecration was not enough, a well organised gang of thieves came down and netted the lake again only this time it wasn't for the council it was to line their own pockets. Saddest of all was the fact that the albeit rare offspring of those Salamander carp were as robust and eager to feed as their parents growing very quickly in the richness of the lake. Given the way their parents had thrived I am sure several of their kids would have gone on to make thirty. I watched this little beauty grow from 11lb to 19lb in just four years. Just imagine what a water Salamander could have become.

This is the last Salamander fish I caught. It weighs 17lb and as far as I know this was the only time it was ever landed. It too disappeared in the back of the thieves' lorry.

Daddy achieved a maximum weight just prior to the theft, caught by young Andrew, a very accomplished angler who in now an angling coach. Twenty years ago he was a mere slip of a lad, but he knew how to catch carp. Sadly Daddy had been damaged again, this time loosing the top lobe of his tail Poor old soul.

So that is the story of the jewel in Cornwall's crown, now merely a fading memory, a sad loss to the county's carping history. I like to dream that Daddy is alive and well and enjoying a well earned retirement. Sadly I know this not to be true, for I know he has lost loads of weight, most of his tail and he looks like he'd been dropped from a plane without a parachute. I also know who nicked him and where he lives and it's a turgid bog of a place with as much atmosphere as a the inside of a dustbin, a sad ending for such a magnificent fish.

I have so many happy memories of the lake and it's carp, as I am certain do others who have pioneered a lake, like Ian J. and I did back in the day when Salamander was such a precious gem. Big Daddy meant a lot to me so I am glad I caught him when he was whole again, full tail, lovely big body and the power of the man after whom he is named.

Finally: Throughout this I have referred to Big Daddy in the masculine when in fact he was a she as Lou Reed would say!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#39 29 Oct 2016 at 12.35pm

In reply to Post #38
News about the little Cornish lake was gradually seeping out, and Big Daddy had acquired a rather unwanted status as a target for anglers in southern counties but we could hardly say we were overrun. Nevertheless, angling pressure took its toll and the fish were becoming spookier by the week. There were now three or four twenties in the lake as well as a very distinctive black mirror, which both Tat and I had seen but never caught. It looked like a coal barge in the water when swimming with the others, as black as your hat. I really wanted that fish, so was chuffed to bits when I finally caught it. Though not as (in)famous as the other Black Mirror of Colne Valley fame our lovely Cornish double was a real prize for us guys in Cornwall.

It was small wonder that up-country guys were appearing on the lake. We had some real beauties coming through, now that they were getting fed a decent diet. Here are a few of the other twenties that were in the lake in the mid-to late-80s. First a lovely sleek mirror that was something of a mystery. Neither me nor Tat recognised it when Ken Jones (pictured) caught it and to the best of my knowledge nobody else claimed it during that period either. I did catch what I thought was The Mystery a few years later but my pix were rubbish, taken, as they were by a passer-by, badly framed and out of focus, so I'll never be sure. Here's KJ with the lovely creature.

This is one of two twenties I caught in half an hour one summer's morning in about 1986.

This is the other:

And this is one I caught the following day. Three twenties in 24 hours was something very special in our parochial little world but your couldn't keep a capture like that quiet for very long and word was spreading on the grapevine like wildfire.

Early visitors came down from Pompey and Paul Hunt, later to become famously associated with Rainbow Lake, caught the prize fish at over thirty. By huge misfortune a journalist was there that day, a guy who did a short weekly angling column for the Cornish Guardian newspaper. His name was Gerry Savage, once a famous (some might say infamous) Kent carper, now sticking his nose in where it was not required in Cornwall. Gerry took some pix which he published in the Cornish Guardian. Worse still he named the venue. Floodgates opened and every Tom, Dick and Harry and their dogs came flocking to the lake in search of Cornwall's largest carp. (Unfortunately Mr Savage had a penchant for naming venues we were trying to keep secret. Thanks a bundle, Gerry.)

Sadly we had plenty of real numpty's join in the free for all too. I knew it was only a matter of time before all this was lost so I decided to have one last go for Big Daddy to try and catch him at thirty plus before I got crowded off the water once and for all. I succeeded and he weighed 33lb 8oz and do you know what? It was such an anti-climax, almost an insult to the old boy, that I didn't even take a trophy shot, just one on the mat. Somehow it didn't seem right.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#38 29 Oct 2016 at 12.18pm

In reply to Post #37
So to the nub�

It's late May 1987 and I was at the lake looking for fish. I spotted a small group not far from the diner plate tight into the bank under one of the willows. Creeping into the shade I lowered the bait with a three-bait stringer tied to the hook down the edge with the float almost touching the bank. The fish were so close in I could have touched them with my rod tip. I kept my eyes glued on the hookbait and out of the corner of my eye saw Daddy waddling along so closet I swear he was rubbing his left flank along the bank. I saw his mouth open, he turned and bolted and that was when I realised he had picked up the bait. All hell broke loose. Line poured off the reel but then stopped. I pulled back but all was solid; he had weeded me up and in addition to that the line was also entangled in the overhanging branches of the willow!

By pure good fortune a guy who has just started fishing Salamander that year was walking the lake. I thrust the rod into his hand and started to strip off. I was down to my pants when Paul said that the fish was free again so I grabbed the rod off him and started playing the fish only for the line to catch in the branches of the willow again. I was shaking like one of the leaves on that bloody willow by now, convinced that I was going to loose the fish. In desperation I prepared to go in for him but then by pure luck the line pulled free and the fish wallowed on the surface. I reached out with the net and my heart stopped as this big lump slid over the cord. Phew! We laid the fish down in the long grass and I got out the scales, zeroed them with the wet sling on the hook and then hoisted Daddy up. It watched in amazement as the needle swung round into the purple sector, finally settling on 26lb 14oz at the time my second heaviest fish. I was chuffed to bits and chucked my weigh sling into the air�where it got caught in the same sodding willow. Did I care? Not care one jot!

By now there were several twenties in the lake as well as a thirty and Salamander was fast acquiring a country wide reputation and for the first time we began seeing 'strangers' on the lake. This was worrying! We are (still are) pretty hard done by for decent lakes with big fish in them and for one of our own to become known up-country was a concern.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#37 29 Oct 2016 at 12.12pm

In reply to Post #36
The dinner plate was turning into a real hot spot for me that summer and I caught a fair few Salamander beauties from it. The tiny yellow baits seemed to blend in very well with the lake bed so possibly the carp were less suspicious of them. One thing is for sure; they clearly found something much to their linking in that spot.

Another area that Daddy liked to frequent was under Quasimodo's Bush. Quasimodo was my nickname for a most peculiar shaped carp with a very deformed spine, so much so that it only seemed able to swim in left-turning circles. This fish was in almost permanent residence under a set of bushes at the far and of the lake and the other fish seemed almost as if they were scared of the poor old creature as it was a real loner. The only fish I ever saw Quasi in company with was Big Daddy. Most odd. Odder still was the fact that no matter how often I fished to that area I never caught either fish from the bush, though both were was happy to oblige in other areas of the lake! This is Quasimodo's Bush.

Though we did more nights together now than was previously the case, when I fished on my own I still preferred stalking. After all stalking them and float fishing for them outnumbered those caught on the carp fishing method by 3:1.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#36 29 Oct 2016 at 11.22am

In reply to Post #35
I guess some folk on here may wonder about what seem to be repeat captures of a mug fish, but let me tell you, that carp was no mug. We were then, still are, starved of real target fish in Cornwall, so think of Big Daddy as our Black Mirror if you like, maybe that will put things in perspective for you. At the time I am writing about there was only one�yes ONE thirty in the whole of Cornwall. Though it may appear from these reminiscences that Daddy was a bit of a mug, but that is far from the truth. I would not even guess at the number of hours and days that I spent chasing that fish!

One peculiarity about the bait was that it seemed much better after it had been frozen. It was almost as if freezing was part of the process that kicked off a reaction. Personally I have no idea and only tripped over the freezing aspect by accident. All I can tell you is that I would always freeze the bait after cooling even if I wanted to use it the next day.

I knew that the fish were eating at least some of the bait, though the swans and ducks were stiff competition for it, so I was sure I could catch a few on it with only minimal pre-baiting. One particular area seemed to be receiving a lot of attention from the carp, so much so that they established a very distinctive 'dinner plate' in among the weed. The dinner plate was plain to see even in low light and I often saw fish feeding on it from the spotting tree.

Daddy was a regular at the 'restaurant' and could often be seen scoffing on the dinner plate. Here he takes a siesta with one of his mates after a particularly heavy meal!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#35 29 Oct 2016 at 11.13am

In reply to Post #34
I had one more close encounter with Big Daddy but lost him at the net. He lay there on the surface long enough for me to get a good look at him and even though I had caught him not that long before, he looked to have put on a bit of weight�He looked mid twenty at least, I thought. then I heard on the grapevine that someone had caught Daddy at nearly 25lb, so my guesstimate had not been far out.

The season opened up-country, and as we'd hoped the hordes departed Cornwall leaving behind a nasty legacy, which I'll touch on later, however, this meant we could reclaim our ressies so Salamander was put on the back burner till the following year. However, I heard on the grapevine that Big Daddy was up in weight at twenty-five pound plus.

The following year I decided to have another spell at Salamander as I felt I needed to catch Daddy one more time. Our love afir with the pool was cooling gradually but one futher encounter with the legendary (for Cornwall) carp was called for, if possible. Then, I promised him, I will leave you alone for good. So I started to bait the lake regularly with the frozen milk HNVs chopped into tiny pieces. I did this mainly after dark to defeat the ducks.

Tim's bait was the one he was writing about in Carp Fisher and Coarse Fisherman (if I recall) and he called it his HERVE or higher HNV. It contained a couple of ingredients that carried the protein-specific enzymes Bromelain and Trypsin and it was heavily reliant on rennet casein and NZ Lactalbumin with egg albumin to keep the boiling time to a minimum (no more than 50 seconds). This bait had already accounted for a whack of fish from College including my first thirty, which I'll tell you about later, so I was brim-full of confidence in it.

Initially we used Richworth Blue Cheese flavour but when we found a source of n-butyric acid this was used instead. To be honest I am sure the Richworth product contained a fair amount of N-BA anyway so perhaps there wasn't much point, other than it was a hell of a lot cheaper! Another attractor was Cajoler, then sold out of Bankside Tackle in Sheffield but later to join the Nutrabaits stable. This is a fantastic powdered sweetener and flavour that is still used to add attraction to calf milk supplements to make them more palatable.

One peculiarity about the bait was that it seemed much better after it had been frozen. It was almost as if freezing was part of the process that kicked off a reaction. Personally I have no idea but Tim seemed to think that freezing the bait helped no end, and it was his 'baby' after all: Who am I to quibble! All I can tell you is that I would always freeze the bait even if I wanted to use it the next day.Fifteen ml of both Minamino and Liquid Liver added yet more attraction and the way the carp wolfed this bait down it was clearly a winner. It was just a matter of getting Daddy to trip up on it�again!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#34 29 Oct 2016 at 10.52am

In reply to Post #33
I fished whenever I had the opportunity - which was usually when it was blowing a gale, but Tat was limited to doing weekends by her job. To be honest weekdays or weekend, it made not a scrap of difference as the park was busy for all the daylight hours with people feeding the ducks and the swans or just out for a stroll with the dog or the kids. The local school even brought classes of screaming kids down to go pond dipping. Such fun.

One thing I did notice, though. When the ducks were going ape on the surface, tiny bits of bread would get broken off and drift slowly downwards and in time the carp would cruise below the birds picking up bits of bread. In fact this became quite a popular method for a few years before the carp wised up to the fact that it wasn't always a good idea to eat the bread meant for the ducks. However it did not need to be bread; if it was edible they ate it when the ducks were churning the surface to foam and one day I picked up BD on a Robin Red boilie fished right underneath the ducks in all that commotion, slightly up in weight at 22lb.

Ever since those Ockenham days with Bill, I have always loved watching carp feed. Observing them in their natural environment, seeing how they react to various angling situations and to baits and rigs can be a real eye opener and you can learn more in an hour of watching than you can in a month of grinding it out at 100 yards plus behind a battery of rods. Salamander provided the perfect opportunity not only to watch them but to catch them too, for the carp would venture right into the edge a foot or so off the bank. Can you spot the tiny dot in the middle of this photo? That's my float, fishing for carp feeding right in the margins.

I caught the majority of the Salamander carp on the float, fishing for feeding fish just a yards at most from my feet. It was a tremendous experience, one I would not swap for the world. Here I am stalking at Salamander.

While limited in the amount of time she could spend by the water Tat was also catching a few and one particular fish, her first from the lake, was to become known as Carole's Pet, for it seemed that nearly every time she fished there she caught this fish (slight exaggeration but you get my drift). The fact that it took me several more years to catch the Pet made it all the more galling when she landed it yet again. This is Tat with her Pet first time of asking, a lovely black backed 18lber.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#33 29 Oct 2016 at 10.43am

In reply to Post #26
The next four years we spent chasing the Rashleigh fish again until we got lucky and tripped over College Reservoir down west in 1982. The story of College deserves a serious mention, as it played a very significant part in my angling and working life, but I'll come to that later.

Meanwhile, back at Salamander in 1985, the fish were getting on with life, largely untroubled by other carpers. Ian J. continued to fish there and so did one or two others, but considering there was at least one twenty in there - a rare thing for Cornwall - it was surprising that the lake was paid such scant attention, not that the few in the know were complaining!

The main reason I started fishing Salamander again was not down to Daddy, though obviously he was still a significant prize in the Cornish carp scene. However, by then College and the other reservoirs were loosing a bit of their glitter for us, mainly due to the influx of visitors from other parts of the UK that still had a Close Season. The region covered by South West Water allowed 12 month a year fishing on it's coarse fisheries, and with the growth in carping more and more evident, up country anglers were looking to Devon and Cornwall as places where they could get their carp fishing 'fix' during the shutdown on their local lakes. Our main carping reservoirs began to attract considerable interest, and at times it was impossible to get a swim on College. We guessed that the visitors would clear off once the close season ended and we could return to the ressies but in the meantime there was always Salamander. Luckily our visitors did not know about Salamander then.

Tat and I had done quite a few nights at College together an so it was natural that we started doing the same on Salamander. Though far from the peace and calm of College, being a busy park lake, after dark the locals left it to the rats and me and the missus. Naturally she got the cheapo-cheapo supermarket bedchair while I had the Rolls Royce of bedchair, the Lafuma 8-Leg!

We both thought that the lake, at a tad over two acres, was too small for six rods, though SWW actually allowed four per angler at the time, so we decided to fish just three between us. I think this worked to our advantage, as by now the carp in the lake knew what lines were and what they meant, so night fishing became much more productive.

Both of had been using a milk protein base mix on College that Tim had passed on to us. In effect this was the prototype of what would become Nutrabaits Hi-Nu-Val and the Addits, and a darn good bait it was (more later) so there was no reason not to carry on with it on Salamander. We'd had considerable success using really small baits so this is what we went in with on our return to Salamander. These are the 8mm baits we rolled using the then brand new Gardner Rolling Table. It took us half a lifetime!

Though the mini boilies worked well initially there was no sign of Daddy. However, I did catch a new fish and a twenty to boot that Tat rather un-glamorously named Gutbucket�Every lake has got one.

vinniecole

Posts: 4810

#27 23 Oct 2016 at 12.05pm

In reply to Post #19
Great read, really enjoyed that. Thanks for sharing

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#26 22 Oct 2016 at 4.45pm

In reply to Post #9
I should perhaps make mention of the lack of an unhooking mat and the hessian sack that I used to sack the fish while I ran back home to get Tat to take a look and do the photos. I would never use such a horribly coarse sack these days, but you will have to forgive me; at the time I knew no better. Modern carpers don't know they are born, what with proper mats, slings and the like! As for proper scales�Try convincing others that you have had a thirty, or even a twenty and the first thing they'll do is question what colour the needle showed on the dial. Yes, there were a few anglers around - we called them 'ultra-cult' carpers! - with all the latest gear, but I wasn't one of them. Ultra cult my arse!

Some of you may not get the relevance of that, but back then the best scales were Avon 32lb that weighed in increments of eight pounds at a time. Each increment was indicated by a different colour on the dial, as the needle could go around the dial up to four times (4 x 8lb = 32lb). If the needle ever went round into the purple section that meant it was a possible thirty...a what? Unheard off down this way at the time.

Daddy was not the only fish I caught from Salamander the winter but following that November capture I did not see the fish for quite a while. However, I got to grips with Salamander more and more as the months passed and though I am not fond of this Billingsgate shot, I does show that my so-called skills were improving. Three on the bank in half an hour.Was I keen? Well the photo below was takena bout 5 hours after I came home from hospital, stitches still in my balls after my vasectomy!

The intermittent nature of my day job interfered seriously with my carping, as I know it does for most of you, and I even started throwing the odd sickie so I could pop down to Salamander for an hour or two. Sadly my mate John who was also my skipper knew full well the hold that carp fishing could take on a person and he soon found out where I was doing all the skiving! Mind you, as soon as he saw how avidly the fish were feeding on the 'new improved' boiled bait he couldn't wait to beg a rod off me. John was a carper of many years experience but he had drifted away from the sport in the early 60s to take up the banjo and guitar, playing in the London folk clubs with some of the best names in the business at the time. His work name then was Johnny Orange. It's unlikely you will have heard of him but you never know. John fished a lot around the Staines area and probably fished lakes that are well renowned nowadays but where unknown and unfished back then. I think Moor Lane was one of them

Once John had seen the size of some of the fish in Salamander he soon rediscovered the bug!

Later that year I saw Daddy looking decidedly the worse for wear. As far as I knew I was still only one of two or three anglers fishing Salamander and I knew Ian, the other guy on there, had not been down for a while. I wondered if the fish was ailing. The fish were pretty obvious to anyone who had eyes to see and really look for them (as opposed to look but not see, as was the case with the rest of the park users). Then one day I saw one of the local kids down there with, believe it or not, a bow and arrows and he seemed to be taking pot shots at the carp. I 'had a word' with him and though he said he had not even hit one, I couldn't help wondering if he hadn't wounded BD. I couldn't see any obvious signs of damage and when I tried to net the fish to take a closer look he shot off like a scalded cat. I guess he was OK. As turned out to be the case when that summer I landed the big bruiser at just over twenty one pounds. It would be the last time I saw the fish on the bank for four years! The reason for this was the call of Rashleigh returned as Steve, Tat and myself started fishing together again. Then a year later we discovered the reservoir 'down west' and things were about to change dramatically. Much larger carp were about to come our way!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#25 22 Oct 2016 at 4.44pm

In reply to Post #9
Chatting to Tat later she wanted to know all about the capture and as I described the fatness of the carp she said that it sounded, "as big as Big Daddy", a well-known figure in wresting that was hugely popular on ITV on Saturday afternoons, and thus was the fish named.

Though I had vowed to return to the lake more often I still had to make a living and while the weather lasted and the sea remained relatively calm we spent as much time as possible doing the other kind of fishing, commercial fishing so it wasn't until the late autumn that I returned to the lake. By now thanks again to Bill I was privy to 'the great secret' of the Robin Red based boiled bait. The recipe was simplicity itself; eight ounces of Nectarblend and two of Robin Red with four ounces of muscovado sugar dissolved in the minimum of hot water and then added to the eggs. Flavour was one of young Mr Kemp's finest that Bill had been using up-country, the flowery Perfume Spray. This was another of the big secrets in carp fishing in those days as Kemp and SBS were the prime purveyors of quality essences to the carp fishing fraternity and the Perfume Spray was one of the best thanks, I was later informed, to the inclusion of the essential oil of geranium (needs confirmation! as wiki would say).

I was still not a fully fledged carper in the accepted sense of the word. No bivvy, bedchair or buzzers for me. I was strictly a stalking man using a float rather than a buzzer and a side hooked boilie to tempt them into the weed that had appeared in the time I had been away. From up the tree I could see the bright gravel of the lakebed in the holes in the weed and a few crumbled up boiled baits with pinches of break flake chucked around the float provided the additional temptation that I hoped would draw the carp into the swim. The tiny dot just off to the left of my rod tip is my float, under which is a boiled bait lowered into the hole in the weed that is clearly visible.

One such area I found at the northern end of the lake, where the weed was not quite a thick. I baited up most evenings and fished though till dark but had nothing. The lake seemed dead and lifeless, as if the falling temperatures had made the carp lethargic and unwilling to feed. But despite this I kept putting a few bait in when possible, and Tat did the same for me while I was away. Finally, come November of that year I actually saw the fish again. They were nosing around in the weed and appeared quite lively and my hearts skipped a beat when I saw Big Daddy scoffing the Robin Red boiled bait.

This was proper margin fishing. Rod on the deck, float dotted right down, with me standing back pretending to be a tree! It was great stuff and when I saw the weedbed quiver slightly as a fish nosed through, I thought my heart was going to explode.

Suddenly the float shot under and the line poured off the reel. Fish on! I grabbed onto the butt of my home made SS5 (a rod that had so much bend in it I am sure you could have put the tip to the butt had you tried hard enough without it breaking!) as the fish made off through the weed. Like most fights in weed, the fish soon got bogged down in the stuff and with its eyes covered gave up the fight. I eventually netted a great big bundle of weed and (hopefully) fish.

Laying the net on the grass (there were no unhooking mats in those days) I peeled back the weed to reveal an enormous fish. At the time I did not recognised Big Daddy (for it was he) and it was only when I had the photos developed that I compared the scale patterns and then all was revealed. Incidentally, you may wonder about the black and white photos? I can explain�I was taking a college course in photography part time through the winter - weather permitting - and it was considered very arty to be shooting in black and white. Hmmmm!

Up on the Avons in my rudimentary weigh sling that Tat had made for me and the needle went further into the green than I had ever seen it go before: twenty pounds twelve ounces. My first twenty! The pub beckoned!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#24 22 Oct 2016 at 4.42pm

In reply to Post #9
As mentioned previously Bill and I were both fishing side hooked black eyed beans at Ockenham, and having great success with them so it seemed like an obvious starting point for the start of my attempts to catch the Salamander Lake fish. I have touched on my initial days on the lake in a previous post but I hope you don't mind if I go into a bit more detail now.

One day in early autumn of 1978. I wandered down to the lake with a stalking rod and my trusty centrepin reel loaded with 8lb line and a bag of blackies. I walked around the lake and spotted a few fish here and there, but they seemed to be interested only in basking in the sunlight. Then on my second tour around I found a group of four fish really close to the bank. Despite this I decided to have a chuck and using a swan shot link ledger I cast a single blackie side hooked mounted on a size 4 Au Lion d'Or hook towards the area where the group was mooching about rather aimlessly, I thought. Still, you never know�

I dropped a bait in a few feet away from the group, not wishing to spook them with the splash, and then chucked a few freebies in on top of the hookbait. I crouched down, hoping to hide myself from the fish.

(I fished that lake on and off for nearly twenty years and would always try to keep myself as unobtrusive as possible. I don't know why. Often a dog walker, pedestrian or mum with a pram would stand right next to me and talk in a loud voice that I felt sure would spook the fish. It never did, not even when a council worker in a bright orange boiler suit came and stood right next to me as I stalked a huge humpy-backed fish only a foot or so from the bank. "Caught anything me 'ansome?" he asked in a loud Cornish brogue. Willing him to please go away (or words to that effect) I whispered that I'd had nothing so far and was unlikely to do so while he stood there in his garish garb and with his booming voice. The fish meanwhile took no notice but it was clearly not in a feeding mood as eventually it waddled off and I did not see it again for weeks.)

Meanwhile, back at the lake...

I was still trying to disguise myself as a bush when the rod hooped over and the reel screeched as a fish grabbed the bait and legged it. A brief scrap followed and eventually a perfect leather carp came to the net. Leather, pure leathers I mean, are as rare as hen's teeth in the UK so this was doubly rewarding. The fish weighed eight pounds, and I was delighted! It was my very first fish from Salamander.

The fight had spooked the rest of the group from the area and as they fled a huge swirl showed just a yard or so out, not where the group had been showing. Was this the biggie and I hadn't noticed it in the edge? Had I blown my chance for good?

I had no more chances that day but returned a day later. As before there was a group of four fish in virtually the same place as before. Searching a bit more closely I noticed a large indistinct shadow a few feet closer in, lying in the shadow of a small bush. Again the side hooked blackies were lowered in, followed by a dozen or so freebies and I saw the shadow slowly move off. I left the bait in place in the hope that one of the group might move further in towards the bank and take it, but they seemed oblivious to its allure!

Suddenly the rod was almost wrenched from my hands and the handles of the 'pin nearly broke my knuckles! A big bow wave showed on the surface as a good fish bolted from the margins where the bait had been lying. Was it the biggie? Damn right it was! The scales went round once, twice and then well into the green to settle on 18lb 8oz, my biggest carp to date!

I was so chuffed I packed up immediately and headed back across the bridge and up the hill to the local pub where one pint followed another and I meandered home in a beer fuelled haze. I would be back!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#23 22 Oct 2016 at 4.42pm

This is the story of Salamander Lake and of Big Daddy , the Pride of Cornwall, and this is the road to paradise!

I had been fishing at Ockenham in the late 70s and had enjoyed wonderful fishing, and quite a few great socials with Bill, and had leaned the secrets of particle bait fishing using pulses such as black eyed beans, kidney beans and so on. Bill was a fantastic guy to share ideas with and in the many years I have known him he has put me onto a wealth of good ideas, venues, baits and tactics. I owe the guy a lot!

It was coming towards the end of the 70s when heard about a tiny park lake less than a mile of my home that was rumoured to hold carp. At first sight the two-acre lake was not all that inspiring and though there was a guy who fished there from time to time, when I tried to chat him up about the carp he wasn't very forthcoming about the place (and in hindsight I didn't blame him!).

One day I was walking around the lake, idly watching the world go by and not really taking a lot of interest in the lake, when some gulls came sweeping down to scoff some of the bread that was being thrown in by dog walkers, mums with kids in gaudy prams, always it seemed with at least one wheel that squeaked abominably, old folk on zimmer frames and in wheelchairs; you name it, they were there!

They were there to feed the hundreds of ducks that lived on the lake and in the surrounding marshland, and believe me, those ducks got thrown so much bread that they would even stop eating it at times. This left quite a bit to float on the surface or drift down through to the lake bed and the floating stuff attracted the gulls. As they shrieked and screamed at each other in aggression over the bits of bread, they swooped down on the surface and as they did so they spooked several large fish that were also showing a interest in the floating food. So there were carp in there after all!

I was too busy fishing Rashleigh and Ockenham at the time but I filed the nearby lake away for a rainy day, knowing that at least it held carp and judging by the swirls of the spooked fish, pretty big ones too. Even while I was fishing other venues my curiosity kept drawing me back to the park lake and further investigation seemed warranted.

Chatting to an old boy who walked his dog round the lake each day, the story was that a local collector of exotic amphibious creatures had released his pet salamanders into the lake when he could no longer look after them - don't ask me why�it could all be rubbish. Whatever, I called the venue Salamander Lake, a name that stuck with the place for many years. That little lake became a major part of my early angling life and just walking over the bridge over the stream that feeds Salamander was enough to get my pulse racing in the years to come. Later it became a hotspot for anglers from all over the county, then the south west and finally even up country, more of which later. This is a view of the lake from about 1977 or '78

Fishing Ockenham with Bill had shown me the benefits of getting up a tree for a better view of the lake and one day I was perched in the branches of a rather flimsy willow when three or four shadows ghosted across my field of vision. They were lead by a fish that looked to my inexperienced eye to be enormous, and it was not alone! There were several others that while slightly smaller that their leader were still pretty impressive. It was all the encouragement I needed to start fishing there.

Bluepanido

Posts: 2944

#22 21 Oct 2016 at 2.36pm

In reply to Post #19
Can you re-post the old articles from the old South West Memories thread of a few years ago? I loved reading about College Lake and could read through all that again.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#19 20 Oct 2016 at 1.34pm

Lots more to come. Just writing the material and scanning some more old pix for this thread. Be patient and I'll be back a.s.a.p.

Andy__C

Posts: 1683

#18 18 Oct 2016 at 9.29am

In reply to Post #2

That was a great read Ken, thanks.

Like a few others of late it seems, I haven't been present on these forums for a couple of years (or the bank for that matter, no matter how much you say that you'll still go fishing through having young children! )

Anyway, it's great to see a couple of years on that you are as always adding great content to the forum. Please keep it going.

luckyjim

Posts: 3616

#17 16 Oct 2016 at 11.36am

a great read Ken, brought back many memories of the early years, how it got from what we did then to what it is now is truly amazing, BTW I spotted the ABU 155 the same as I use to use, they were the dogs.... then, look forward to more of the same

scozza

Posts: 17132

#16 15 Oct 2016 at 6.41pm

In reply to Post #9
Just had the pleasure of reading this. Absolutley brilliant

Pioneering angling

So many people at it nowadays I'm sure when we look back it just won't have the nostalgia as you have captured here Ken. Brilliant

So many happy times I guess

The old ones are the best

Daveperks

Posts: 267

#15 15 Oct 2016 at 12.39pm

In reply to Post #10
Cracking stuff Ken - great read & I'm loving the nostalgic pics - especially of the Roche waters,

& talking of Tony C - I'm fishing with him tomorrow!!

tinofmaggots

Posts: 5835

#14 15 Oct 2016 at 8.41am

, Miss pete pembertons storys. Different character ! enjoyed reading yours , thanks Ken

Mr-Bean-Laden

Posts: 2196

#13 14 Oct 2016 at 8.44pm

Great read Ken, keep it up.

j20nyh

Posts: 948

#12 14 Oct 2016 at 12.34pm

In reply to Post #9
Good read.

Carphunterwill

Posts: 400

#11 14 Oct 2016 at 8.46am

In reply to Post #10
Awesome read Ken

wandle1

Posts: 7000

#10 13 Oct 2016 at 9.21pm

Ken ,this is awesome reading,keep it up...I can remember Tony Chipman very well and i also recall Bodmin sports trophy shop which i believe was owned by Tonys dad...

I wonder if Peter Mohan was integral to the stocking of Alder quarry and Stone farm both on the old A30...There is of course Stowford Grange another quarry nearby with an interesting back story...

And Beechmere ....well,thats the `Pinnacle`for me,nothing will ever come close except for Tredidon Barton manor and the feral commons.........

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#9 13 Oct 2016 at 2.00pm

In reply to Post #8
Now come on, Pete! Kick me out for either one thing or the other but not both. How can I nick fish when my motor is a rusting Renault 4, that is also my bed? And how can I be nicking fish when I live in a flat and don�t have a garden? Simple reason was, we caught too bloody many, and that�s the kiss of death on many syndicates even today. It was a sad ending to a great bit of fishing. Those few months at Ockenham set alight the carp fishing bug in a big way. Simply pulling into the car park was enough to get the pulse racing for we knew full well that a grand day's fishing lay ahead as during the summer months those carp were suckers for a floater or two. Purina Dairy Dinner was deadly.

I shall always be grateful to Bill for a great many things, not least the hair and Robin Red, but also for giving me a chance to fish Ockenham, where I learnt so much that would stand me in good stead for the lifetime of carp fishing that lay ahead. Bill's old van was feeling its age after many trips down the M4/M5/A30 and he chopped it in for a 'modern' Ford Estate. Here's he is getting booted and suited ready for a day's stalking at Ockenham.

I have no idea of the history of the fish in Ockenham. We met Roger Bowskill, an old Redmire hand on the lake one day. He wasn't fishing but he seemed to know a lot about the lake. He told us that it had once belonged to Exeter AC but that Peter had managed to get the lease for the three lakes, which he then made syndicate. He also told us that the lake was actually BB's Beachmere or Bradmere Pool as it was also known. It certainly held the kind of stock for which Beachmere was known, and it was also in Devon, as is Beachmere, however, we were not impressed with Mr Bowskill and took what he told us with a tablespoonful of salt.

I don't think Ockenham was rich enough to grow on really big carp (by today's standards) but don't forget, at the time a double was considered big and a twenty would make headlines. Indeed, at the time a double from Ockenham was a big fish.

My memories of fishing at Ockenham are still among the dearest I hold. True there were no monsters in there, at least, none that we caught, but it was perhaps the purest way to go carp fishing; relaxed, simple, rewarding. How I wish I could return to those roots I loved so much, but time is now against me and the expansion of carp fishing means that there are few, if any truly unknown lakes around, though I know my mate Adam will disagree with me!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#8 13 Oct 2016 at 1.57pm

In reply to Post #7
Then one weekend Bill came down to join me with a couple of very interesting secrets up his sleeve, secrets that he very decently shared with me. Our fishing was about to get even easier! The secrets in questions were the very first version of the hair rig, and a boiled bait that incorporated Robin Red. I shall never forget when Bill first brought up the hair rig.

We were enjoying a lazy lunch at the Seven Stars when Bill brought from his wallet the result of his very first encounter with the hair. He had been fishing one of his local lakes, where the great and the good of the era were also fishing. By chance, one day he reeled in some lost gear, and very curious lost gear it was. The nylon hooklink was tied directly to the hook but there was also a section of very fine line attached to the bend of the hook. It was this that he dug out of his wallet with the comment, �what do your reckon this is all about, then?� To be honest with you neither of us had a clue but we speculated that is was perhaps an alternative method of attaching bait. To our shame we then ignored this glimpse of the future completely, relying on our standard side-hooking rig.

Weeks later, however, Bill rang me to say that he had found out more, revealing that it was indeed a very special way of attaching a boiled bait specifically. This emphasis on using a boiled bait with the hair was thought to be important at the time, the belief being that the rig would not work so well with particles for fear of bite-offs. Bill told me the mechanics of the rig, explaining how to set it up and everything, and saying that the Robin Red birdfood baits we had started using at Ockenham were really working well with this hair rig.

Many of the carp were small and we though of them as true wildies because of their very short almost non-existent barbules. Whether they were or not is anybody's guess, but all I know is that they fought like crazy on the gear we were using at the time. This comprised home-made fibreglass rods built on North Western SS5 blanks or Sportex 1.5lb test that Jim Gibbinson was using and writing about at the time. Reels were Mitchell 300s or 330s, or when real excitement was the order of the day, a Match Aerial or Rapidex centerpin. Line was 8lb Maxima. You can imagine the fight a true wildie can give on that sort of tackle. Heart-stopping to say the least.

At the time I am almost 100% certain I was the only carper in Cornwall that knew about the hair rig so you can imagine the edge it gave me, never mind the additional edge that the Robin Red boiled baits gave me.

Now that we were both using the hair and the Robin Red bait we really began to catch well, and I would often pop up by myself just to keep the bait going in and catch a few more carp. We fished single rods and each of used the same stalking tactics, which were amazingly successful, so much so that we (myself in particular) attracted the wrath of Peter Mohan, with the result that I was kicked out of the syndicate after my first full year. Reason? Ostensibly because I was, �stealing carp to put in my own lake in my garden!� It was also considered bad form to sleep in the car so I was also kicked out for that! Sleeping in the car! When was that ever illegal?

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#7 13 Oct 2016 at 1.56pm

In reply to Post #4
If I go back far enough in my carping history � not an easy thing to do at my age � I will find in its dusty recesses the fond memories of a several highly cherished moments in my carp fishing life. They concern a Devon lake I called Ockenham that lies in thick woodland not far from the A30 in the village of South Tawton.

In fact there used to be three lakes hidden deep in the woods; Ockenham, The Spit Lake and the Cliff Lake. Sadly when they turned the A30 into a dual carriageway to bypass Okehampton, the route kicked seven bells out of the Lakes and now lakes at Ockenham are is no longer worth fishing.

I wrote about Ockenham in Tim�s second book in a chapter called Looking in on Carp, which was well named as it was on the Devon lake that I learnt more about carping in a few day sessions that I could have done in several seasons spent behind a battery of rods. Watching the way those fish behaved was a real eye opener to me and not only did I learn how carp feed in different baiting situations, I also learnt how to stalk fish in the margins. From that moment I became a stalking addict. It was here too that I first came to terms with proper boiled baits, and also got into particle bait fishing, Rod Hutchinson�s articles in Angling magazine having sparked my interest.

My mate Bill got me into the lakes in 1978, which were run at the time as a syndicate controlled by Pete Mohan. We would usually meet up at the Seven Stars pub late of a Friday evening, Bill having driven down from Surrey after work, me up from Cornwall. There was no night fishing but that was no problem as we would either stay B&B at the pub, or when the landlord was feeling kind and we had bought copious pints and a meal each, in the car in the pub�s car park.

I drove a really dilapidated old Renault 4 at the time, and I stripped all the seats out bar the driver's seat and shoved a single bed mattress in through the tailgate. Sleeping bag and a pillow on top, a few beers in the pub, and I slept like a baby! Here are our carping chariots at that time, sitting in the lane leading down to the lakes.

...and here's my living accommodation!

Bill and I would then spend the whole weekend stalking the carp all around the lake, fishing single rod tactics, either fishing straight down the edge or free lining. We caught upwards of two dozen a day, and this on a lake that was supposed to be rock hard!

Ockenham lakes are deep and gin clear and the best tactic was to bait up right in the margins in 12-14 feet of water, using a carpet of any brightly coloured bait � sweetcorn or for preference black eyed beans � with the hookbait of two black-eyed beans side hooked and placed just off the carpet. Then you kept your eyes glued to the hookbait until it disappeared. This meant that a carp had snaffled it! This was pre-hair fishing at it�s most difficult, or so we were told, but we found them deliciously easy and obliging. Here's Bill in stalking mode.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#6 13 Oct 2016 at 11.58am

In reply to Post #5
One of the first changes to the original hair rig was a shift in the position of the hair itself. I think Lenny had already figured that having the hair coming off the bend of the hook was not the most effective way to fish the rig and in an article in Carp Fisher 4 he revealed that the up-through-the-eye hair rig was proving a lot more effective. Steve, Carole and myself switched to the new set up and it was immediately obvious that Lenny as usual, was right!

We also started fishing with a small plastic ledger stop positioned some 12 inches up the line from the lead with a rig bead behind the lead, the idea being that the lead would hit the stop and help pr1ck the fish on the take. (I believe the modern day name for this rig is the Shocker Rig! Just goes to show that there is very little that is �new� in carp fishing).

The back stop proved so effective that we secret squirrels took every precaution to stop the cat escaping from the bag, and once again the pub rigs were dug out. In effect the only change we made was to put the old hairs back on, as this was well known by now, and remove the ledger stop completely, but with the bead behind the lead remaining on place. Once again I had the satisfaction of seeing a guy cast out, watching as his back bead flew up the line totally unhindered by the back stop!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#5 13 Oct 2016 at 11.54am

In reply to Post #4
You couldn�t keep me away from Rashleigh that year and the bailiff at the time, a grumpy bugger known as Smithy, became more and more intrigued to find out how I was getting all those chances. He knew about my �little red balls� but he didn�t know about the hair, a secret I was determined to keep to myself for as long as possible!

By now I had made friends with a few other carpers including a guy called Steve Westbury. Steve was a passionate carper and was making his own boiled baits. We kind of teamed up, but not in the share-everything sort of way that is common in this day and age. However we did share info about bait and I put him onto Haith's and the Robin Red/Nectarblend recipe that was being so successful for me. Mind you, I still kept the hair under wraps!

At the time Steve was fishing for twitchers using washing up bottle tops as indicators. To see him sitting over his rods, tensed like a coiled spring, ready to strike the head off the first carp to lift the bobbin more than an inch, had me itching to reveal all but I let him suffer for a while. Eventually I took pity on him and showed him the hair, but once a twitcher-hitter, always a twitcher-hitter. The first time Steve�s indicators leapt up the needle and smacked seven bells out of his rod Steve whacked at it as if he was still hitting twitches�His line parted with an almighty �snap�! �Are all the takes like that?� he asked me. �Yep,� I said. �Your days of sitting hunched over your rods hitting tiny twitches are over!� Here's Steve striking the head off a Rashleigh carp in a downpour. This was before I showed him the hair!

Steve and I formed a great team and our success at Rashleigh was very enjoyable. In fact we caught virtually all the bigger carp in there several times over, and when my lass Carole joined the team we had some great times on the banks of the Club�s lakes and later on College Reservoir. It didn�t take long for Carole to catch either but then again, she did have the hair and Robin Red! (This photo appeared in an article I wrote for Issue One of Carpworld. A letter was published in Issue Two from a reader claiming that Our Lass's cleavage had inspired him to keep buying future issues for some time!)

I shall always recall those days with great fondness as our little team became almost a fixture on Rashleigh. In fact, when we discovered another lake down west, College, and began catching even bigger fish, we told anyone who asked that we had packed up carping. The fact was that the secret squirrel attitude had us in its grip and we didn�t want anyone to know that we had landed on College. Can you blame us! This pic looks SW down the length of College Reservoir.

In fact a couple of club members had fished the ressy the weekend before our first trip, but the weather had been so awful that they couldn�t hold bottom with 3oz leads and it had put them off going again anytime soon. How different it would have been if they had decided to come down with us the following weekend, when the weather was balmy and the fish went crazy. But that�s another story.

Of course, we still kept in touch with the Club�s waters and Steve went prospecting on Bilberry, where he enjoyed great success. Meanwhile we alternated between College and the Club�s lakes, still with the bait and the rig still, by a miracle, a closely guarded secret. I guess a few other guys had the rig now, but thinking they were the only ones in on the secret they too kept it close. There was a lot of sneaky stuff going on in those days!

I have always been a social angler and would often pull off the lake, even on a day session, to go to the pub for lunch. Being a nasty little secret squirrel I would always change my rigs before leaving, substituting the short, hair-rigged bolt rigs for long mono hooklinks with a tiny hook on the end � NO HAIR! I knew my devious pub rig ploy had worked when I saw a member cast out his own version of this ludicrous set up, a look of great smugness written all over his face. Oh how we laughed!

Of course once the full info about the hair was out we gradually found the going a bit tougher, but the Suicide Squad (our name for the hordes of 6-8lb carp that abounded in Rashleigh) could generally be relied upon to provide good sport. Here I am happily netting one of the Suicide Squad.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#4 13 Oct 2016 at 11.51am

In reply to Post #3
My skipper at the time was a guy called John Affleck, an old school carper from up country, asked me if I knew anything about the Roche AC waters �up the Luxulyan road�. He told me that one particular lake was �living with carp� Yeah! Right! This is lake �up the Luxulyan road�

The lake, of course, was Wheal Rashleigh, and he wasn�t kidding about it being stuffed! There were carp everywhere you looked and some were clearly pretty big. Derrick was then working at the tackle shop in St Austell and he signed me up as a member right away. Next thing I knew I was preparing for my first session. John was right. It WAS living with them.

I had done a fair bit of a recce the previous weekend and had spotted a very distinctive bar in a swim down at the end of the lake, and I decided to make a start there. However, the best laid plans and all that�There was a guy in the swim when I arrived and he had caught a fish, a big fish for those days, a common of 15lb or so. The guy then told me that he was packing up and that I should jump into the swim immediately. Can you see that happening to a total stranger walking onto a modern carp water!

The guy in question was Tony Chipman a Club committee member and keen carper. As if allowing me to jump right into his swim was not enough, he also gave me some of the trout pellet paste he was using. Nice guy!

I fired out about 50 Robin Red freebies to the bar and cast my two rods out spaced about 20m apart, one at the back of the bar, the other on the top of it. As before at the pond when I had caught Big Daddy the response was almost instant and after a dogged fight I slipped the net under a right bruiser of a fish with a very distinctive tail. It was the fish that came to be known as Busted Tail! I later found out that this old mirror was the largest carp in the lake. So, within a few minutes of casting out on two different venues, I had landed the biggest carp in each one! Thank you Robin Red: Thank you hair rig!

As if that wasn�t enough, while I was weighing the first fish the other rod went off resulting an a common of 17lb +. Though I did not know it at the time, this was the biggest common in the lake! I was alone, as Tony was driving out of the car park as the first take happened so I did a quick photo of the two fish on the ground. It was only later that I became aware of what I had achieved that day!

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#3 13 Oct 2016 at 11.49am

In reply to Post #2
We were enjoying a lazy lunch at the Seven Stars in South Tawton when Bill brought from his wallet my very first encounter with the hair. He had been fishing at Cut Mill when one of the regulars took him into his confidence and showed him the hair rig, and it was this Holy Grail that Bill showed me in the pub. Naturally I thought he was taking the pee and to my lasting shame I ignored this glimpse of the future completely. What a moron!

It was a few weeks later, when I again fished with Bill that I told him I had not been using the hair. He called me several choice names and kicked me up the arse, (metaphorically I hasten to add) and when we got back to the lake after another pub lunch, Bill showed me exactly how to set it up. This was the original tying of the hair.

Naturally, in conjunction with the RR boilies AND the hair, we now enjoyed phenomenal sport at Ockenham, so much so that Peter Mohan dreamt up a stupid excuse to kick me out of the syndicate. I brought the two secrets back home to Cornwall with me and I am almost 100% certain I was the only carp angler in the county that knew about the rig, or about Robin Red come to that.

The downside was trying to keep the rig and the bait secret! For instance, if another angler came over to chat and you had a flyer, this was bound to increase the guy�s suspicion. Flyers simply did not happen pre-hair! As if that wasn�t bad enough, if the guy the offered to net the fish for you, it was only right and proper that you told him to F*** off as the last thing you wanted was him spotting the rig! However, some guys can be very thick skinned and even after ripping the net out off his hand and landing the fish yourself, you had to be pretty quick to tear off the hair and the hookbait before he clocked it.

Meanwhile, back in Cornwall I set about finding some decent carp fishing locally. A local guy was fishing a small lake I had heard contained a few carp. I went down to this lake to meet him and was astonished at how small it was. Ian then set about trying to blind me off the place, but I wasn�t fooled for long. A flock of seagulls flew in, screaming for some bread that had been thrown onto the surface of the pond, and as they did so they spooked several carp.

Later I went down for a look around with a stalking rod and a bag or RR boilies. It was a bright sunny day and the fish were plain to see. I put and handful of bait in the margins by the lifebelt, popped a hookbait on the hair and cast out just off to the side of the freebies. Almost immediately a fish swam up to the baits and began wolfing them down. Suddenly the tip pulled round as a frantic carp made off with the bait. Soon it was in the net, no size but it was my first carp from what came to be known as Salamander Lake.

Next day I was back in the same swim with the same bait and again I saw carp move onto the bait almost at once. Next thing I knew there was a huge swirl, the rod tip jerked around and the reel screamed and a few minutes later I had a large carp in the net, a fish that was later to claim fame throughout the country as the fabled �Big Daddy�.

KenTownley

Posts: 30589

#2 13 Oct 2016 at 11.46am

In reply to Post #1
I started fishing at a very early age under the watchful eye of my Grandpa, a pretty inept teacher if the truth be known. However I will always be grateful to him for igniting the spark that turned me into an angler.

I first cast a line for carp in 1965, at Keston Ponds in Kent. Needless to say, I was hopelessly inexperienced for those Leney warriors and failed miserably. But that didn�t stop me trying and after getting married we moved to Ash Vale in Surrey, not far from the famous Cut Mill, a lake that belonged to Farnham AS. It was here that I really got into carp fishing in a big way, catching my first double on anchored floating crust, the upside down set up as it was called.

Oh to be thin again!

Then in 1971 we moved down to Fowey and I started work on a commercial fishing boat and carp fishing was shoved aside for several years. At weekends we took out parties to fish the wrecks and one of our regular groups was a bunch of mates I used to carp fish with in Surrey. Their chat about the goings on in the carp world �up country� rekindled my interest in carping and in 1977 my mate Bill got me into the Ockenham Lakes syndicate in Devon that was run by Peter Mohan. It was here that I first came to terms with proper boiled baits, and also got into particle bait fishing, Rod Hutchinson�s articles in Angling magazine having sparked my interest.My mates called the trips down west wrecking with the hippy guy!

Ockenham lakes are deep and gin clear and the best tactic was to bait up right in the margins in 12-14 feet of water, using a carpet of any brightly coloured bait � sweetcorn or black eyed beans � with the hookbait of two black-eyed beans side hooked and placed just off the carpet. Then you kept your eyes glued to the hookbait until it disappeared. This meant that a carp had snaffled it! This was pre-hair fishing at it�s most difficult, for if you didn�t strike the moment the hookbait disappeared you missed the take. This is Speedy Bill at Ockenham. This is how we always fished it.

Then in 1978 Bill came down to join me on the Lakes with a couple of very interesting �secrets� up his sleeve, secrets that he very decently shared with me. These were the very first version of the hair rig and a boiled bait that incorporated Robin Red. I shall never forget when Bill first brought up the hair rig�


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