Carp Fishing “Ramblings” - Part 2
by Shaun Harrison
Stalking Fun
This trip down memory lane ( see previous post) also triggered further thoughts. Due to my present circumstances (single with a dog and nowhere to fish where I can take her), I have spent most of this summer fishing very short stalking sessions. My beloved Free Spirit ‘S’ Range 10-footers have never had so much use, and some great fun has been had with proper eyeball-to-eyeball situations. Most of the carp I have caught this summer have fallen to hookbaits just a few feet out. In most of the cases I have actually watched the carp take the hookbait, which is all good heart pumping stuff, and I have really enjoyed doing this. From what started out as desperate measures in order to be able to actually wet a line, it has resulted in one of the most enjoyable summer’s fishing I have had for many years. I am positive the tackle I have used has heightened this pleasure. I love using short, soft rods and I get a big kick out of catching carp on centrepin reels.
I have never seen myself as a Golden Scale Club type (I’ve got a mate who’s a member though) because I like modern tackle too much, but it did start to get the old grey cells working again. Some of the carp I have been stalking haven’t been particularly big fish. Most have been big doubles with the odd 20 thrown in for good measure. The size has been more than compensated for by the sheer excitement of watching the carp feeding inches from the hookbait and, at times, inches from my eyes, knowing full well I am likely to be playing that same carp in the next few seconds. It has also proved to be incredibly useful for comparing slightly different versions of a new bait I have been playing around with. In fact I have been able to take massive strides in doing this rather than sitting behind the rods for weeks on end trying to judge a bait’s effectiveness by bobbin action alone.
As I’ve said, some of these fish have been smaller than a lot of the fish I have become used to catching in recent years, but it suddenly occurred to me that back in the days of fibreglass rods, big doubles would take me an absolute age to land, and 20s, although extremely rare beasts, would put up the fight of a lifetime. Nowadays, with most of the conventional rod and reel setups being used, if the fish takes a little bit of line during the fight it is almost certainly a big fish. How things have changed. We have ended up in the old beachcasting scenario where we choose tackle to deliver the rigs rather than choosing the tackle to match the size of fish we are catching. Sad really, a lot of fun can be had with medium-sized carp on sensible tackle.
An Almost Forgotten Era
Whilst my brain is in rod and fun mode, I want to raise the following issue. We are in very grave danger of forgetting about a very important era in carp angling – glass fibre rods and the like. We have the Golden Scale Club singing the praises of, and using wooden rods, but fibreglass rods have also been around for a long time. When I first started working in the tackle trade, the only two carbon carp rods that I was aware of were Hardy’s Graphite (American terminology for carbon) No.1 and Bruce and Walker’s Compound Taper Carp. Everything else was fibreglass, yet it is so rare these days to even read or hear mention of them. It is almost as if we skipped from cane to carbon. I purchased my first carbon carp rods in 1982 – the old Sportex Dual Taper 12ft 1¾lb (I’ve still got them as well). There were very few carbon rods on the bank back then; they looked ‘alien’, being so thin and having fewer guides than was the norm. I mention this fact because at the same time carp fishing was going through a massive change, a change we have never seen the likes of since. Hair and Bolt Rigs were just starting to be used by the majority and suddenly carp were quite easy to catch. This brought loads more anglers into carp fishing when suddenly carp fishing was considered a worthwhile pursuit by the average angler.
Since this time carp fishing has grown totally out of proportion, yet the tackle, or more to the point, the rods, which our pioneers were all using for the few years leading to this, are almost forgotten about. I would imagine if you talk to some of the ‘new on the scene’ carp anglers many of them probably think that carp rods evolved from split cane to carbon, there is never any mention at all in the magazines about fibreglass rods, yet there were many classics – The Gerry Savage Farstrikes, The Jim Gibbinson Cloopers, The Jack Hilton Particle Rods, the North Western SS4s in 10ft, SS6s in 10ft 10ins, the SS5s in 11ft, the Fibatube 132s, the Terry Eustace T24s (always wanted some but could never afford them) absolute classic rods with hundreds sold (there weren’t thousands of carp anglers back then). Oooh, those were the days.
I find it a shame it is all being forgotten. I know I’m a sad ***t and perhaps need to get a life, but I can still remember all the North Western codes for the glass rods, right through from the short spinning rods (from which I made several stalking rods), right through to the last of the glass rods, which were the AC7s. It may all seem irrelevant now but a big chunk of our history is in danger of being lost forever.
New Group?
Unfortunately I don’t have the time to organise it but I would love to see a ‘retro carp group’ start up, something between the Golden Scale Club and the present – possibly pre-1985? The anglers using this gear made massive inroads into making carp fishing what it is today.
From a personal point of view I love the comfort we now have but I think I could sacrifice a little bit of that to go back to the days when it was an event to bump into another angler fishing for carp. The biggest change, I think, is that in the late-’70s (sorry I can’t go back any further than that), you could judge a carp angler’s experience by their tackle. The better it looked, and the more home-made gadgets they had, the longer they had been at it. Nowadays the carp angler who has the worst and tattiest gear is generally the one who has been around a long time and knows it isn’t just the tackle that catches the fish.
Let’s not let the next generation of carp anglers come through not knowing about playing carp on glass rods when it’s pitch-black and not having the slightest clue where the fish is. I have actually had a few conversations about this retro-type thing since first chatting to Martin Ford about it at some antique tackle auction we attended. From the reaction I have had from the people I have spoken to (and I know Martin has had the odd chat elsewhere) there appears to be quite a few from the old school out there up for a bit of fun. I wonder if anyone will ever get around to trying to organise such a group?
See you next time
Best Fishes
Shaun
Originally published in “Carpworld” - October 2007
![[del.icio.us]](http://www.questbaits.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://www.questbaits.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Google]](http://www.questbaits.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.questbaits.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Windows Live]](http://www.questbaits.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/windowslive.png)
![[Yahoo!]](http://www.questbaits.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/yahoo.png)
![[Email]](http://www.questbaits.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
Related posts
Tags: angling, bait, boilies, carbon, carp, casting, centrepin, distance, dog, feeding, fish, fishing, hair, hook, hookbait, Jack Hilton, Jim Gibbinson, Line, mate, North Western, range, Rigs, rod, size, summer, tackle, technique, techniques, tips, Walker, yard
Hi Shaun,
Nice article Shaun. I would much sooner catch fish in the daytime if possible and find it far it much more enjoyable taking a limited amount of gear and trying to stalk / move onto fish. You take in your surroundings so much more and I feel that by watching the carp’s behaviour and movements etc you can learn things a hell of a lot quicker than you ever will tucked up in your sleeping bag at night.
I grew up using old fibreglass 1 ¼ lb Avons in conjunction with Mitchell 410’s with the dodgy bail arms. I had to use these for all my fishing and landed everything from 2lb roach to upper double figure carp and pike on them. I think I bought my first set of carbon carp rods around about 1987 and have to admit they felt a bit ‘dead’ compared to the old glass ones. The Mitchell’s were replaced by Shimano Baitrunners a year or so later. The Shimano’s ‘knocked spots off’ the Mitchell’s and are still going strong today even though they have never once been serviced.
You are right when you mention the comfort factor of today’s gear. It is a far cry from spending nights on a deck chair / sun lounger (with subsequent backache) under a 45” brolly with a piece of plastic sheet around it, listening for the ‘rustling’ of a silver foil indicator instead of being awoken by the scream of an electronic bite indicator.
Everything has advanced in carp fishing. The tackle is much better, much better comfort levels and by far and away a lot more venues containing good sized fish. However the one thing that I feel anglers relatively new to the sport miss out on, compared to the 70’s and 80’s, is the sense of mystery that existed back then. There was always the myth of uncaught whacker’s and the sense of trying something different. With today’s tackle, rigs and bait being far more efficient at carp catching and the added comfort levels promoting more long stay fishing. I believe that on all bar a few waters this ‘mystery factor’ has gone for good. On most waters nowadays the exact stock levels are known and worse still from my point of view the fish all have ‘names’. I think this is one of the reasons why I started doing a lot more river fishing, as on the bigger rivers there is still that sense of mystery and you never know what you are going to catch next.
You mention ‘The Golden Scale Club’. I bet there are a lot of younger / newer anglers who have never heard of this little club or of some of its’ members, such as Chris Yates. To me Chris Yates’ book ‘Casting at the Sun’ is the most atmospheric piece of angling literature ever written. I would encourage anybody who has never read this book too give it a go, although it may seem a little eccentric compared to today’s writing and you are not going to learn anything about the latest ‘all singing, all dancing rigs’ etc, it really does capture the essence of what Carp fishing was about. Also the chapters on Redmire when they were fishing for by far the biggest fish in the country were fascinating.
Cheers,
Pat
Now then Shaun mate, all these ramblings have really got the ‘old’ grey cells ticking. I too started carp fishing in the late 70’s before the hair rig existed and can well remember how it totally turned carp fishing on its head. I did my apprenticeship then by sitting up all night in a crap garden chair got out of the ‘green shield stamp’ catalogue, watching bobbins all night or floats with isotopes on the top. And yes, we had to stay awake and watch all night because we had to strike to set the hook.
To my mind, the hair rig was the single biggest advance in carp fishing of all time - as you say, in a short space of time and with tackle developing in general, carp went from being mysterious and difficult to catch to being relatively easy. My own fishing was transformed when I read about the hair rig and the bolt rig - as it was called then. My first attempts involved mounting my carefully prepared hand rolled boilies onto the hair with a short section of a matchstick pushed through it. I hadn’t even thought of a hair stop then!
I remember Duncan Kay came out with his Red Slyme magic bait that was commercially available. I made it into a floater cake and took my local lake apart on it fishing on the surface. See, now I’m beginning to sound like a sad old git too!
Now you know I have a fondness for fishing with cane, especially when stalking carp, but how I remember my first Gerry Savage fibreglass rods - I was SO excited at the time. I honestly thought they looked the business with my original metal Mitchell 300’s.
Pat - I couldn’t agree more with you about the mystery being gone. Back then every lake held a potential monster and there was a sense of the unknown, it was so much more magical then. I mourn the passing of some of that magic as I do the close season. But you know what, I love my bedchair and my buzzers and my bivvy and most of all I love being able to get some sleep! Is it just me or is the sleep you get when carp fishing the best - that’s not just coz I’m blanking either!
As for Chris Yates and his writing - I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been lucky enough to spend a lot of time with Chris over the years and lucky to count him as one of my closest mates. I would also urge a younger generation to read his books - of which there are many aside from his classic ‘Casting at the Sun’. Over recent years he’s become a passionate perch fisherman - and you can read all about that in his book ‘How to Fish’ that came out last year. And here’s an exclusive for you, his next book ‘Out of the Blue’ will be out later this year. Without giving too much away he writes about fishing much larger waters than you might expect him to. I reckon it is set to be another classic.
Thanks for jogging those silted up memory cells!
Elie G