Tag Archives: 1980’s

My carp scene in the 1980’s part III – Shermanbury Place & Arcadia.

27 Thursday Feb 2014

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Considering my friend Dax and I were teenage boys, getting up early to fish was never a chore. Dax’s mother was more than happy to get up and drive us to Shermanbury Place (a distance of about twenty-five miles from home) looking back I think she wanted to encourage more wholesome activities like fishing rather than the more troubling pursuits that sixteen year old boys were attracted to, best to say no more on this issue but fags, girls and booze was high on the agenda.
Setting off at dawn to fish is an experience that I will never tire of and I can remember this particular trip so well. This was my first real experience of fishing a specimen carp lake, the excitement and anticipation while been driven through the beautiful Sussex countryside has stayed with me to this day. Although I was now obsessed with carp fishing this had not fogged my appreciation for nature and its landscape and that particular morning was a classic misty summers dawn with a chill in the air, the sun was very low in the sky and shrouded in heavy mist, the tones were mid-greys and yellows as we sat in the car, smoking roll ups.
When we arrived I found the lake and surroundings to be a vision of perfection, the mist was still heavy and we soon found a spot where reedmace surrounded the whole end of the lake apart from two small breaks, perfect for us to set up and fish.
Before I tackled up I threw in a few handfuls of my new bait, strawberry flavoured boillies, even the sound of the boillies dropping into the water gave a new and satisfying scatter-gun sequence of plops, punctuating the stillness of the morning. I set two rods up, one with a boillie close in to the far side by the reeds and a second float rod just to my left baited with sweetcorn.
Looking beyond the reeds I could see the outline of a trimmed hedge with a gap and beyond that a manicured lawn that dissolved into the mist, it was ghostly but for now my attention was focused on the emerald-green water and the occasional knocking reed signifying life below. This was a different type of angling experience, enhanced by the knowledge that some very large carp were present and because the lake was relatively small they were not far away from my bait, it made the whole experience electric.

As the morning progressed the sun started to burn off the mist and in front of me past the reed bed and through a break in the hedge I could see the silhouette of Shermanbury Place, I was experiencing Arcadia emerging from the greys,whites and oranges of a summers morning.

Shermanbury Place arcadia

Shermanbury Place

Back in my swim there were more signals from the monster below but nothing was taking the corn or the strawberry temptations so by mid-morning we decided to explore the rest of the lake. Walking around I was surprised to see there were other anglers already set up, these carp anglers were not like the wheelbarrow pushing types we get today more focused on comfort than watercraft, these men of the 1980’s were quiet, discrete, loners and armed with a bare minimum of gear, the only indication of their presence was the occasion ‘bleep’ . I set up with just one rod now partnered with my only Optonic and kept low and quiet like the others, foolishly I felt holding a float rod did not seem the correct thing to do amongst these men of specimen carp.

By late-afternoon I was really not convinced anything was going to happen and our lift home was due at around five. While sitting on the dusty bank in my ripped faded old jeans I smoked and thought about this magical place, catching was not on the agenda today but something more important had happened, I had become entranced by large carp. As I moved small piles of dust around on the bank with my fingers creating patterns on the bank my Optonic burst into action, a run! Line spilled off the Mitchell 300 spool and ran through the rings making the monkey hit the rod as hell let loose. Looking up I could see line shooting through the water towards the opposite bank, then it stopped. My chance had gone.

Since that day I have never returned to Shermanbury Place and I don’t want to as it was my Arcadia. Since 1986 a lot has happened in carp fishing and this lake could have become ‘commercialised’. On a positive note I can’t find anything on the Internet about this place, perhaps it has gone back into private ownership to one lucky individual?

My carp scene in the 1980′s Part II…the monkey climber years & the hair.

23 Thursday Jan 2014

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I have just finished reading Chris Yates new book The Lost Diaries, towards the end there is quite an entertaining chapter about fishing with a friend where he talks of ‘foul hooking a carp on a new fangled rig’ this being the hair rig. Chris Yates goes on to describe this rig as unethical to the extent of giving up fishing rather than using such a contraption. I on the other hand have to disagree about Chris Yates and the hair rig. Since I started using it in the 1980’s it has become an essential part to my angling success which leads me on to part II of my 1980’s carp fishing and my early years as a fisher of carp. The counter argument for the hair is that Mr Yates did hold the British Carp record unaided by any hair rig and I with my ‘new fangled hair rigs’ have not, but that’s for another debate on another day. Here is my second personal account on 1980’s carp fishing.

Part I which I wrote back in August, 2012 can be read here.

In the mid eighties carp fishing was becoming quite popular, carp anglers were still quite a secretive bunch, mainly due to the lack of good productive carp waters. Before I got into carp fishing I dabbled in most disciplines but dabbled was the operative word and most of my information came from general ‘how to’ books until the day I ventured into Burgess Hill Angling Centre in around 1987 and found Carp Fever by Kevin Maddocks. Burgess Hill Angling Centre had a different smell and look from my usual and more traditional tackle shops like Penfolds of Cuckfield. Here the smell was sweet and the walls were adorned with stainless steel bank sticks, bite alarms and monkey climbers, things were certainly moving away from displays of floats and the smell of gentles.
Carp Fever was not the most exciting of angling books to read but it was my first specialist book that delved into great detail about bait, rigs and hooks in such a way that it made catching a large carp a real possibility. This book introduced me to the hair rig which I thought was quite an audacious rig, mount the bait away from the hook but still have the confidence to hook a carp, crazy? It was cunning and clever, now your bait was behaving naturally with out the weight of the hook and the hook was completely exposed when a carp sucked in any bait that was attached to a hair. I started using new hook patterns and making up the hair loop, within weeks I was hooking and landing carp with confidence on my club water Haywards Heath & District Angling Society.
Nash Hooks old school
Now dressed in a camouflage jacket just like Jim Gibbinson I felt like a specimen hunter but in truth I was still only catching carp around the 3 lbs to 7 lbs mark but I was convinced bigger carp were soon to reside in my landing net.
My own carp career continued with a Marco glass carp rod, a Bob Church float rod, one Optonic, two Mitchell 300a reels, oh and of course two monkey climbers all set up on some rather smart stainless Gardener front and rear bank sticks. The matching pair of rods was still an age away but in a Heath Robinson kind of set up I was a carp angler and targeting the Sussex carp, day and night.
Ironically my first ‘double’ came soon after months of lugging all this gear around, I took a rod out one evening and followed a carp with a piece of floating crust just by a fallen tree. After a short battle a lump of a fish of 11 3/4 lbs came to my net, (this was 1 3/4lbs short of the club record set in the 1950’s) it was a milestone carp for me and I continued on to fish relatively small ponds in Sussex spending many nights under canvas in my fathers old World War II pup tent. My dream was to own two North Western carp rods with Cardinal 55’s and land a twenty, the image that I loved was from the Carp Catchers Book from 1984, it seemed a world away.
carp catchers
Then one day I was invited by a friend who knew about a ‘proper’ carp lake called Shermanberry.

My carp scene in the 1980’s…the spark.

29 Wednesday Aug 2012

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This was my era when I became a fanatical angler and an obsession for carp was born. It is considered that the era of the 1950’s to the 1970’s was the ‘golden age’ with the likes of Richard Walker and later on in the 70’s, anglers like Rod Hutchinson were developing new tackle and technique like multiple rods and electronic alarm to make the capture of carp more intentional and less of a freak occurrence . So without shocking those out there who think I am some old fuddy-duddy stuck in the 1950’s with an old wooden stick in my hand and an old tweed jacket slung over my back, here is my account of my own golden age of carp fishing that took place in the 1980’s, memories of early (almost) matching carbon rods, tutti-fruitti boilies, hair-rigs and monkey climbers.

Genesis.

Back in 1981 when I was eleven years old I had just started to fish, mainly with the help of some hand-me-down tackle and a small how-to fishing book, the journey was slow the results were insignificant but catching small gudgeon and the occasional chub on the Sussex Ouse ignited the spark that made me become a life long angler. For me it was spectacular in a unspectacular way, modest catches but most memorable.

Around that time an un-known face to me came onto the angling scene, wearing an old Barbour Jacket, floppy hat (looking not un-like a young Ian Anderson) he was pictured in all of the angling press cradling a 51 lbs 8 oz carp, his name was Chris Yates and in his arms was a creature of unimaginable size, especially to an eleven year old boy. It was caught by means considered unconventional by early 1980’s standards, using a cane rod, a knob of Plasticine and three grains of sweetcorn. In years to come Chris Yates would become one of the most influential anglers in Britain just by his use of simple back to basic techniques and of course his love of old fishing tackle.

Up until the capture of the Bishop I perceived carp fisherman to be a secretive bunch and generally shy of any publicity especially in the angling press, perhaps they feared that their exposure would reveal the waters they fished and more importantly the carp that swam in those waters. Richard Walker who was officially* the carp record holder at that time, came from the old school set of the 1950’s, mystery men with access to private pools like Redmire, these carp and waters were too far away from reality to a teenager like myself living in Mid Sussex in the 80’s.

On various bicycle reconnoissance trips to lakes around Sussex I came across the odd lone angler, normally dressed in camouflage and more often than not lying low between small breaks in the reeds or hidden behind large expanses of Himalayan Balsam. They stood apart from everyday anglers, their kit was different, no keep-nets, no seat boxes to perch on and normally two matching rods, on one occasion I saw three! If approached they would give you a look that made you feel un-comfartable…these fishermen wanted to be alone, nine times out of ten I did just that, but I was intrigued by them, their tackle and their quarry.

Around the same time Pete Mohans’ Cypry the Carp was serialised in the Anglers Mail. He told a tale of a young lad called Andy who grew up in search of a particular carp called Cypry, reading this at the back of the classroom during double chemistry on a Wednesday morning is still a very vivid memory of my teenage years and fired my desire even further to pursue and catch a carp, at this point it seemed a far off goal, no commercials to get on the specimen carp ladder, just old farm ponds to seek out and fish or take an even bigger step and financial investment…join a local club.

It was hard finding waters that held carp that I could fish so I finally decided to join the Haywards Heath & District Angling Society the local club to where I was living. At the same time I also had access to a little pond that lay in an old ladies garden in Horsted Keynes through a school friend of mine, Mark (one of the Horsted Lads). He had managed to get permission to fish it whenever we wanted including at night and I knew that he had already caught some carp from this little half-acre pond but I now had concerns about my kit not being up to the huge battle one had heard about in double chemistry or read about in the Anglers Mail. At that time my basic kit consisted of a Shakespeare Strike match rod and an Intrepid Black Prince reel, both horrible bits of kit. So with a little nagging, a paper round and an early birthday present I became the owner of a Marco 10′ fibreglass carp rod and a Mitchell 3330z reel, the Mitchell 300A or the Abu Cardinal 55 was the carp fisherman’s reel of choice but they were out of my financial reach for now.

One of the first ponds I started to fish in the guise of a ‘specimen hunter’ was a HHDAS water set just outside of a village called Ansty. It was a good forty minutes bike ride which when laden down with fishing gear was quite a trek but soon became a regular haunt as I could see evidence of carp cruising up one end of the pond by a reed bed. After a few visits I finally hooked my first carp a strong fighting 2 lb beauty, elated but committed to catching a bigger one I continued to fish for carp over the summer of 1982 through to 1983. While catching these smaller carp I noticed that as I was leaving at dusk the bigger residents would arrive, unfortunately I had to leave and under-go my forty minute bike ride before darkness set in. I had to fish a night session, it was time to put the finishing touches to my specimen hunters kit so that I could do a night on the pond.

Night fishing introduced two problems, bite indication and staying warm and dry. The first problem was solved by attaching a swing tip to my carp rod with a Starlight taped to the end making sure that the swing tip didn’t enter the water or the tape would un-ravel and the Starlight would drift away causing panic and a potential fish-less night. The second problem was solved by using my fathers old World War II army pup tent which had the added advantage of being open all along the length for more milder nights and allowing easy access to the rods. With a few added extras like a camping stove and an Army surplus jacket I was feeling  pretty much like a ‘proper’ specimen hunter rather than a run-of-the-mill ‘pleasure’ angler.

Next time the monkey climber years and my first ‘double’…

* Richard Walker was the British Carp record holder from 1952 to 1995 when Roddy Porter caught a 53lb 15oz specimen . Chris Yates 51 lb 8 oz carp was never recognised as an official British record although most specimen groups including NASA did recognise Chris Yates record carp.