Best fishes
Shaun Harrison

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

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