Quest Baits Blog

by Shaun Harrison

Forgotten Carp

I enjoyed Russell Hall’s ‘Goldendale – The Forgotten Lake’. Those carp look like true old warriors and it goes to show there are still a fair few lakes out there which are temporarily forgotten. I think the longer you spend in this game the more it becomes apparent just how quickly some carp can appear to grow, but upon reflection they are often just slow ‘plodders’. Many lakes that I wrote off several years ago as not being worth the effort for the size of fish they held, have now produced some very big fish. You can easily forget how long it is since originally writing them off. Even with a relatively slow growth rate it is amazing how much the fish grow over a period of a few years. There are some real gems swimming around in waters overlooked for a long while.
The time to revisit these places for a look-see is in the middle of the day during the very hottest weather when fishing is generally a waste of time. Carp being carp, they can’t help themselves but pop onto the surface and bask in the sun, or to sit in the shade under overhanging branches. Even the most unproductive fishing times can become some of the most productive angling moments available. A couple of sightings on relatively unfished waters can turn a season around.

Carp Deaths

Keith Jenkins’ ‘Made in England’ started with the tragedy of the carp deaths that have occurred across a large part of the country. These past few weeks have been an absolute nightmare as regards fish rolling over and I am certain we haven’t seen the last of this. It would appear we were hit in this area first. I had posted a few things on the British Carp Study Group website about the carp, and about the carp turning up dead on many waters semi connected to the rivers Trent, Derwent, and Soar. The sheer fact that it has only seemingly affected the carp suggests, to my mind, the spread of carp diseases. The slightest problem with oxygen, pollution, or anything else usually sees the pike and perch belly up first! I do hope the truth comes out about this catastrophic event. We can’t turn the clocks back or repair the damage already done, but we can look at ways to prevent a repeat. After renting a small carp pool for the past 17 years or so, I can tell you it isn’t much fun visiting it every day waiting for your jewels to pop up dead on the surface. Carp were dying in waters all around the Inner Sanctum and all I could do was keep visiting to check. I was lucky, incredibly lucky, but the fear is still there.

Ian Chillcott’s ‘Carp Diary’ obviously spent time addressing the same issues and I found myself nodding in agreement with what he had written. All this about the carp suddenly finding themselves in an environment they were not capable of adjusting to is a complete load of (I’ll use Chilly’s words as they are much more reader-friendly than my own) – cobblers.

People keep carp (be it koi or any species) as pets because of their amazing tolerance to poor conditions and often rapidly changing conditions. Carp are incredibly hardy creatures, one of the toughest of the coarse fish species – FACT.

Now for someone to say they couldn’t cope with the sudden change in conditions brought on by floodwater, whilst the delicate perch and pike could, is nothing short of alarming that someone can be so blinkered. A great many people keep carp as pets in far from ideal conditions because they are so hardy. If everyone decided to start keeping other species of coarse fish I know there would be an awful lot of dead fish in garden ponds. I won’t carry on – I am getting myself wound up again. Rant over and back to Keith’s piece. I do enjoy his style of writing and definitely like to see other aspects of life coming into these pages. Again, I like to see what makes people tick and feel it is very important to show that there can be many things to enjoy in life as well as carp fishing, be it music, trikes, football, rugby, Land Rovers (sorry, had to get that one in), other types of angling, photography, or whatever else. You can be a very successful carp angler but still have other interests. Keep the sidelines coming – I, for one, enjoy them.

See you next time
Best Fishes
Shaun

Originally published in “Carpworld” - October 2007

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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

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 10:00 am and is filed under Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.