By Jamie Simpson
I would be interested to read some of the other consultants and customers stories of their favourite sessions. It is always nice to reminisce about past results and moments on the bank that make you smile when you think back to them.
Setting the picture
I remember a session back in 1990 I think it was and I had been struggling in my early quests to catch Carp and hadn’t managed to catch a single double figure fish from my local pond.
Armed with a bag of ready made Richworth boilies and my 2 daiwa sensor rods I was off for a weekend sleeping on the floor in the back of my mates bivvy.
At this time I was only an apprentice toolmaker on about £40 a week so every penny counted and a bed chair and bivvy were way out of my price range.
It was either the last week in September or the first week in October if my memory is correct and it rained all weekend.
The session
My mate was set up in a peg known as the hut when I arrived and he even let me fish to the hot spot, which was a set of rushes around 25 yards out. My other rod was flicked into the channel between the bank and the rushes.
At around 3.30am (again if my memory is correct) I got a take on my rod to the point of the rushes.
Clambering over my mate and out into the cold wet night is something I certainly don’t remember, the euphoria of actually getting a run was all that I could recall. I do remember seeing my mokey climber bouncing up and down as the line peeled from my Mitchell 300A.
10 or so minutes later and a fish known as stubby dorsal was in my landing net. 14lb 8oz and a new pb, obviously only a small fish by most peoples standards, yet at the time it was gargantuan to a lad who had only caught a few small carp and plenty of roach, tench and perch up until this point.
Jason being a far more experienced carp angler assured me that we should move pegs for the saturday night to th ‘new end’. A little grudgingly I agreed, After all I wasn’t going to sleep out in the rain and I had caught a carp so I wasn’t that bothered.
Second night
We set our gear up in the new peg and this time Jason went in the hot spot area of the swim against the large reed bed to the right of the swim. I had to settle for an area out in front that was really weedy and a nightmare to present a bait (remember this was a time before pva).
I managed to get my rigs where I was happy they would have at least a chance of being picked up and we relaxed for the evening with me no doubt continuing to bore Jason with the story of the previous night’s capture.
3.30 am and unbelievably I got a take on my left hand rod. I connected into a fish and the next thing the Carp had managed to bury itself in a weed bed and I couldn’t shift it.
Using his experience Jason recommended I put the rod back on the rest and waited to see if the fish swam off again of it’s own accord. A few minutes later it duly did and I was back on the rod and doing battle with an angry Carp.
I remember looking down into my landing net to see a cracking looking mirror with hardly a scale on it. It weighed 16lb 2oz and was my new pb for a while.
No further action came to either of our rods and I went home a very happy lad.
I know these aren’t large fish but they gave me the passion to continue with my Carp fishing and I believe that weekend session is one of the reasons I continue to fish for Carp and don’t go back to general coarse fishing.
Unfortunately I don’t have digital photo’s from that period so I can’t add photography to this piece.
As I said earlier I would love to hear other people’s memorable moments
Cheers, Jamie
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