A philosophical couple of weeks for me, wondering which direction my fishing was going (two ways with a great split between them) and trying to work out where I was, where I was going, and where I wanted to go. It all started with a peaceful day’s fishing, on my local Dragonfly Pond, listening to the sheep in the next field, the birds in the trees behind me, and a one-sided conversation between two anglers on the next two pegs to me, the furthest angler being out of my hearing ability.
Waggler floats hit the water in two distinct places, followed by catapulted loads of unrecognisable loose bait, this seeming to be in the wrong order, but whatever. “I cannot get my head around it,” one shouted to his mate. “They don’t even have to strike. They are not fishing really, just setting a trap and then sitting about doing nothing to do with fishing, waiting for an alarm to go off to tell them that a carp has hooked itself.” One waggler hit the water again, the bait sank to the bottom, and the loose bait this time looked like small pellets or maybe casters.
It got me wondering. I was using two rods that day, both with Ronnie rigs, a complicated end setup with a pop-up on the mini-swivel, topped off with bait-flossed maggots, both rods set in my seat-box rests, no alarms, but if I’d been the paranoid type, I could have thought ‘they’re discussing me, in front of me.’ My idea of the day was that my ‘traps’ were for either a big carp, or nothing and the latter turned out to be the way it went.
Between that session and my next session, a Preston Innovations (no affiliation) hard case arrived to protect my ten-metre edge monster carp pole. I wanted to arrive at the next pond with that case on my back to possibly look more professional, hopefully, or at least look as if I knew what I was doing. On that next fishing day, I arrived, hard pole-case, seat-box, groundbait bucket and keepnet and it took a while to set up, but eventually, I was plumbed-up with three of my top-kits and fishing ten metres down each margin with twenty to twenty-two elastic and a fourteen hook, for any carp that might be around in early March, and one out in front of me, ten metres in front, on six to eight elastic and a size sixteen hook for silvers. I was also loose-feeding a swim, again in front of me, but at a distance of top-kit plus number three section.
With the stop watch set, I fished each margin and the (for me) long line of ten-metres, for fifteen minutes each, and it soon became apparent that all swims were full of silvers because I was catching in front and missing margin bites because the fish were taking the bait but not the fourteen hook. Before very long, I was concentrating on the long line, topping the keepnet up occasionally with skimmers, roach and tiny perch, and laughing to myself that my landing net was still dry because everything was so small it was swingable. Just like last week, the two adjoining pegs were occupied, this time by carp anglers, and this time I could hear both sides of the conversation because they both stood on the next peg to me.
This was crunch-time for my head. I was busy. I was swapping swims, loose feeding, catching or missing bites, and small-potting a mixture of groundbait, white maggots and sweetcorn into my swims. The two other anglers on the pond were chatting away, not even looking at the pond, and only responding to the fact that they were fishing if an alarm went off. I was beginning to see which way I wanted my angling to go.
I had experimented that day with white maggot, double white maggot, the same for pinkies, sweetcorn, double sweetcorn, and a combination of maggot and sweetcorn, and the winning combination seemed to be double pinkie, so that is what I used going forward. Towards three in the afternoon, the breeze dropped completely, the pond took on the characteristics of a mirror, and all three of my swims died as if someone had thrown a switch to say ‘the end.’ It was time to move to my top-kit plus number three section swim that I had been feeding all day with both types of maggots, sweet-corn but no groundbait.
The silvers started up again, and as I loose fed the area that was around the size of an average car roof, I started to whip the bait out to just past that fed area so that it (now double white maggot) drifted slowly into the area but at the rear of it, away from the bank. This produced a bream of around a pound which boosted my net of silvers and proved the point to me that small fish will fight for the loose feed while the bigger fish will sit just off the area and go for the odd bit of loose-feed that goes beyond the proposed area, knowing it to be a safer bet.
Keeping to that philosophy, my double whites were continually flicked just past the area that I was loose feeding and the margins were abandoned. The float shot down, the six-to-eight elastic shot out of the end of my top-kit, and I hooked into what I first thought was yet another bigger bream. Maybe I’m alone in this, but when I’m faced with a bigger fish, I start talking to myself. “You’re not a bream,” I told him as he darted to my left-hand margin, obliterating any semblance of feed that was left there. “You’re an angry carp,” I suggested to him as he did an equally good job of destroying my swim in front to me. I frantically pulled the elastic on the puller-stop, to try and get him under control as he became more and more frantic. “I think you are not huge,” I told him, “because you’re fighting like a young angry fish, but having said that, please do not come off, please, please, do not come off.”
We went through the usual procedure of keeping the top kit low until the fish eventually came to the surface, then he saw the landing net, and had one more go at escaping, but eventually he was netted, inspected, photographed, and weighed. Coming in at exactly five pounds, he doubled my day’s catch and I wondered how that would have felt if it had been a competition and I’d doubled my weight in the final hour.
The common-carp did not go into the keep-net as we (grandson Wil and I) have a rule that all carp are always catch and release. I thanked my carp, as usual, as he slipped out of the weighing sling and into the water, and then I sat back on my box to retrieve the breath in my seventy-two-year-old lungs. It was time then for contemplation. If I fished rods with Ronnie rigs, or even method feeders, either with rods next to me on my box or on alarms, I eventually get bored and have been known to get out my five-metre elasticated whip, just to have a float to look at. Things may change, I know that, but at the moment, I am thinking that my eighteen-month quest, for bigger and bigger carp, with a desire to top my fourteen-pound personal best, has been knocked on the head. My day of silver fishing with the slightly bigger bream and the five-pound carp, gave me back the thrill of fishing, and I want more of that.
Next Sunday, five days after this session, Hazel Court ponds will be open, as one of their winter, first weekend of the month, sessions. I will take my pole, walk past the speci-pond, and fish for silvers and hopefully a larger bream and carp in the pleasure pond. Watch this space.