Another Angle
by Shaun Harrison
I must say that James Harrison’s ‘A Different Angle’ article in last month’s Carpworld was one of the most original, contumacious pieces of no-nonsense carp-related pieces of literature I have ever read! A sweeping statement perhaps, but nonetheless, very true. I find when I read carp fishing-related articles there are often one or two points which start to fire around in my head. The old grey matter starts to wobble and bits from some long-forgotten memory suddenly come back through to the present. I used to be so envious of Jim Gibbinson with his Carpworld column ‘Let Us Talk’.
For the benefit of the newer reader who possibly didn’t see any of these excellent pieces of work, Jim was allowed/able to absorb the work of others, then pass comment the following month. So many times after reading an article I have felt I would like to add a bit to someone else’s work or, indeed, see someone else add their comments. I have always enjoyed reading, as well as contributing, to rotary-style letters. Unfortunately these never seem to keep going for very long as there will always be the odd person involved who perhaps shouldn’t have been involved in the first place, who never gets around to getting their contribution completed. However, tonight I sat down and read James’ excellent thought provoking article and have ended up here in my office plugging away at the keyboard before me. I thoroughly enjoyed the piece and couldn’t help but think that so many other people out there would like to write a similar piece but possibly daren’t. There were so many things I found myself agreeing with, and so many things which, had he been sitting in front of me expressing his views, I would have interrupted. Let’s start with his opening section, ‘Carp Bibles’. The three men he mentioned are all exceptional anglers; Rod Hutchinson, Kevin Maddocks, and Rob Maylin. Each carved a massive notch for themselves in carp fishing history. To be fair, I found the mention of Rob Maylin a bit of a surprise as I always think of Rob as being part of the next generation, leading things on to the next stage of carp fishing development. Kevin Clifford’s name should have been on the list, Jim Gibbinson’s name should have been on the list, along with many others. Rob Maylin was, and still is, an exceptional carp angler, but his name didn’t really come to the fore until the release of Tiger Bay, which was in 1988. A minor quibble but, hey – there you have it. Hutchinson, Maddocks, Clifford, and Gibbinson, all came from a totally different era of carp angling. I have said it for a long while now and will continue to say it – had many of our current carp anglers started carp fishing in the ’70s (or earlier), before Bolt and Hair Rigs, then many of them would have packed it in years ago.
The world of carp angling was such a different world back then. I feel so proud to have been involved and to have been catching carp before the Hair Rig was invented and when you only used just enough lead to be able to reach the fish. The smaller the lead, the quicker and easier the strike, thus more carp hooked. Yes, we used to have to strike the hook home just as roach anglers do when roach fishing! Many of the carp anglers out there on the banks today started after the development of Hair/ Bolt Rigs. This, in my opinion, was the turning point in carp angling history, more so than the development of boilies, carbon, line, or anything else.
Suddenly carp were oh-so much- easier to catch. I agree with so much of what James wrote about the non advancement of rigs, rigs being developed for situations which don’t really exist, and rigs behaving very differently to how we imagine. But, I can’t get away from the fact that the simple Hair/ Bolt Rig totally revolutionised my fishing. Nothing since has come
anywhere close to making so much difference to my angling. I went from aiming to catch 20 carp in a season (because that was the maximum number I’d heard of any of our local anglers managing to catch) to successfully catching 20 in a season, then suddenly, the following season I caught over 70! I didn’t become a better angler overnight, I simply had a method that the carp didn’t know how to cope with and, probably more importantly, I didn’t miss any takes due to dozing off at the wrong moment. Suddenly, the carp were hooking themselves. Huge catches were being reported in the press and every Tom, Dick, and Harry realised that these mysterious fish, which the books of old had made out to be practically uncatchable, were, in fact, quite easy to catch.
Now step into the ’80s. Put the likes of Hutchinson and Maddocks and co., with their years of experience, onto waters which hadn’t seen an awful lot of pressure, armed with the new rigs which were making carp fishing so much easier, and it is little wonder they went on to achieve catches of almost biblical proportions. I will put my neck on the line and say that most carp anglers around in 1985 had only been carp fishing for a couple of years, then there was a massive upsurge in carp angling and suddenly anglers were able to buy what had always been ‘secret baits’. Everything was put on a plate. The better anglers would always stand out, but lots of anglers would catch much more than they would have done had they started their carp fishing career only a few years before. My carp bible was Quest for Carp. It is no accident that my bait company Quest Baits incorporates the Quest name. To me, Carp Fever and The Carp Strikes Back really modernised carp angling at the times they were published and made me realise just what was possible. Massive inspiration from two totally different types of angler. Carp Bible is a very good phrase for describing both pieces of work.
Everyone associates Kevin Maddocks with the Hair Rig, which he developed with Lenny Middleton, but another trick up his sleeve which is hardly ever mentioned, which would undoubtedly have made a massive difference to his catches when compared to others, was his use of much smaller boilies than were generally used in those days. In fact, many anglers were still on balls of paste. Those carp had to throw the bait back to their pharyngeal teeth in order to crunch them up. They weren’t scared or wary of boilies because boilies were a new bait on many waters back then. I used to regularly get bite-offs with Hair rigged boilies on free-running setups. When did you last get a bite-off ? Rod Hutchinson was born with two brains. One of a human and one of a carp. Heralding from the Lincolnshire area, he didn’t have a massive amount of competition from other carp anglers. He had Haith’s on his doorstep and an imaginative enough mind to take full advantage of this. Particle fishing was taken to new levels. His skills were honed and once the travelling Hutchinson hit the road, the carp were stacked up. Ironically, he ended up being probably best known for selling boilies. But hey, different generations…
Rob Maylin came to the fore with his angling mates, ‘The Famous Five’. Young anglers with drive and determination! Tackle development was moving on apace and suddenly they had rods at their disposal which could reach the fish, and tackle which was capable of landing them. Again, an absolutely massive edge over the fish and over other anglers, and one which was certainly fully exploited. Give an already brilliant angler a bit of an edge and he/she will exploit it to the full. So, where is this all taking us? Three very successful anglers seemingly taking apart every water they chose to fish, but all three with a massive advantage over others, both in terms of experience and being the first with something totally revolutionary. I see the first major advances in carp fishing after the glorious years of the Carp Catchers Club as the particle approach; finally, after so many years, carp anglers found themselves using bait which the carp actually wanted to eat. I mean really wanted to eat.
The next major step I see was the use of hard baits off the hook (Hair Rig) and when combined with a little resistance (Bolt Rigs), suddenly, you didn’t have to remain alert every hour of the day to try to hit that twitch. The old terminology of ‘butt ringer’ was soon replaced with ‘churner’ as anglers watched their reel handles churn around at speed on the take. Things started to level themselves out for a while until suddenly we had tackle that could reach the fish which we could never reach before, and with enough pulling power to keep the fish moving through weed and the like.
In my humble opinion these were the three major stages in carp fishing evolution, from the ’70s particles, through to the ’80s Hair Rigs and into the ’90s with more proficient rods and reels. No one rig has stood out, or changed the face of carp angling, as much as the original Hair Rig. We have seen many super rigs come and go. Some appeared to catch a lot of fish and it was easy to convince yourself that the capture was completely down to the rig, but nothing has caused me to dramatically alter my approach for years and, without wanting to sound big-headed, I have yet to suffer the humiliation of being totally outfished on the waters I fish. So, my no-nonsense straightforward ‘sensible rigs’ appear to be right. It’s all too easy to become paranoid that they can see the line that they have sussed the rig, or that everything is blown, yet we are often so wrong in our conclusions. One of the biggest problems with this rig lark is that most of the time, when we have a chance to watch a carp feeding with a rig in position, it is right in the edge. When the carp are in the edge they are very much on their guard; never is a carp more nervous than when feeding a couple of feet out from the bank. You will get away with an awful lot more with a rig in deeper water away from the bank than you will with the same rig dropped a couple of feet out. The carp are wary of so much more, of predators, and every other danger that comes from swimming close to the bank. Rig avoidance is often much more a case of them feeling totally uneasy in the position in which they have put themselves. I have proved it to myself a few times now. Rigs which catch fish as frequently for me as for anyone else look as though they are never going to trip up a carp in the edge, yet cast it a few yards out and he same fish, which was seemingly inspecting everything closely just a few feet out, slips up and gets caught. Nothing to do with rig mechanics at all; other aspects have been brought into the equation nd the carp has slipped up.
We all thought the carp could suss our lines when particle fishing with hooks buried in the bait. Same line in the water and very thing else, but suddenly we were catching them because we had got the hook out of the bait and were more proficient at tricking the fish. We all thought the line and everything had been sussed again, all the rigs had blown, then suddenly, same rigs, same lines placed a few yards further out into the lake and the fish were once again very catchable. As I say, it is so easy for us to convince ourselves that the carp have sussed our lines, leads and everything else. Don’t believe it. James wrote: believe that the capture of a carp is a unique moment in time; a time when the forces of the environment, such as air pressure, wind, temperature, time of day, and season, combine with the angler’s input f location, presentation, and chosen bait. his comes down purely to the angler’s experience and ability. There are no short cuts at all to this one. A mega bait and/or a mega rig won’t make one iota of difference if the angler hasn’t got one key part of the equation right. This is the major part that the likes of Hutchinson, Maddocks and Maylin had – experience! Experience will always outfish the best rig and bait. Again, from the pen of James: The Korda DVDs demonstrated to me how inaccurately carp feed sometimes – they can miss a bait by millimetres, but surely they must have known it was there? The larger the carp, the more of a problem this is. Watch carp taking floaters for example. The small- to medium-sized fish go around hoovering them up left, right, and centre. Watch a big carp eating floaters and they miss them, get them stuck on their heads and everything else, which can have the angler wanting to eat his rod butts. The problem here is their eyes and their sheer bulk moving through the water. The carp sees a bait and starts to home in on it. The bait momentarily goes out of sight as it gets inches away from it due to the position of the carp’s eyes (it hasn’t been designed to look boss-eyed at its own nose; its eyes are on the sides of its head). The carp edges forward to where it thought the bait was, but the bulk ofits body shifts the water and pushes the bait away, whereas smaller fish can see the bait right up to the final point before it is taken. There is another equation that comes into it under the surface, particularly when using buoyant or semi-buoyant critically-balanced baits. Again, the larger the fish, the bigger the problem. Mr. or Mrs. Carp come swimming along and see something they wouldn’t mind sampling. They drop down close to the bait and lose sight of it, they back-paddle their large pectoral fins to slow themselves down (they don’t have brakes) and suddenly that nicely balanced bait which looked so sexy in the margins has lifted up and moved from the position the fish thought it was, due to the movement of water created by the carp simply swimming and stopping. Enter ‘kiddie carp’, one of the offspring. It sees the same bait, drops down on it, hardly disturbs the water, and, amazingly, manages to eat what it had seen. Now Mr. or Mrs. Carp could quite easily be viewed as being incredibly clever fish. The fact of the matter is that they are simply swimming around, being carp, and our carefully balanced bait was a little too balanced for them. They tried to eat it but then it disappeared. Now I am not daft enough to believe this happens every time, but, looking at it as I have just done, we have a very logical reason why some carp appear very clued up when, in fact, it could quite easily be us making it difficult for it to actually eat the bait. I have merely tried to illustrate the logic behind James’ thinking, and hopefully what I have written in the last few sentences may have jogged a few memories.
The same scenario used as an explanation for the actions of the larger carp must have been discussed on the bank so many times before, but from a different angle – the way we have been led to believe that these rather simple creatures have developed incredible brains. Let’s look at the other interpretation as you would probably see it written in an article: I was tucked away behind the tree desperately trying to melt myself into the background as the largest common in the lake drifted over my baited patch. I hardly dare breathe as she dropped down and started taking a few baits. She slowly inched closer and closer to my rig, the rig that had previously caught me so many fish from the lake. I knew the bait was perfectly balanced and the slightest suck from the fish would have it propelling down its throat and the fight would begin. Those last few seconds seemed to take an eternity. I saw her eyes swivel and look at the hookbait, her mouth extended and slowly, oh so slowly, she descended on the bait; a fraction of a second and she would be attached. Then, at the last minute she lifted and swam onto the next bait. Her lips must have touched the bait but she is one very wary carp. I’m going to have to scale everything down much finer to catch her out.
Mmmm? Now read the previous paragraph. She was going to eat the bait but it wasn’t there when she tried! Different story isn’t it? Since reading James’ piece I have found myself coming up with lots of similar bits like this. Don’t take anything as gospel even if it is written in the carp anglers’ Bible! Rigs sell magazines and books. Rigs give anglers a massive amount of confidence, which can only be a good thing, but think hard about the next rig you decide to try. Will it really help your fishing? It may have helped the fishing of the individual promoting the rig, but is the water you are fishing on the same scale as the writer’s water? By that I mean have all the rigs used on the writer’s water in the past been used on the water you are on? Are you finding a solution to a problem which doesn’t exist where you are fishing? Each and every water I have fished has been different. Be wary, you can waste a lot of time experimenting with the wrong things. I struggle the same as the next angler. We all have periods when we don’t appear to be able to get it right. I have been down the route myself so many times before. I start to tinker around with rigs, perhaps try a different pattern of hook, or a different size. I may try a different hooklength material and, nine times out of ten, I continue to struggle until eventually it all falls back into place and the bobbins start moving again on the one rod which has gone full circle, with the same rig and presentation, the rig and presentation that I originally convinced myself was working against me. If the weather, moon phase, and swim choice aren’t right, and perhaps you have followed another angler who, unbeknown to you, has piled in a load of bait just before he left, then the best rig and bait in the world isn’t going to help you much. Well, I seem to have taken an awful lot of time to basically say thanks, James. I really enjoyed your piece and it has triggered my brain cells into revisiting several different parts of angling. An awful lot of sense in so short a piece of writing. Perhaps an article a lot of us wanted to write but daren’t. Well done, and I look forward to seeing something else from your ‘opened mind’.
A break from the bait this month but I really felt I wanted to add a bit to that piece and I must confess to feeling quite excited at doing a bit of the mighty Jim Gibbinson’s ‘Let us Talk’ type article. I haven’t dared put pen to paper before (or more to the point fingers to keys – pen to paper does sound nicer though, doesn’t it?) to comment on others’ work, but now I have and I must say I really enjoyed writing it. Hopefully, if you are still with me and have got to this stage of the article, you will have perhaps gained a little from what I have written, or at least enjoyed what I have written. Until next month I will sign off as always, by wishing you the very best fishes.
Article first appeared in ‘Carpworld’
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Tags: advantage, angler, angling, approach, artificial, bait, boilies, carp, determination, development, edge, Experience, Famous, fish, fishing, hair, hook, part, Particle, particles, queries, Rigs, Rob Maylin, Rod Hutchinson, tackle, techniques, tips
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