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January 27th. The Day It All Began.

It was 6 days after my 22nd birthday and after discussions about the “under estimated stretch” with a friend of a friend. I was all set to go and catch some of these mighty river carp. One problem it was the close season. So another meeting with this “friend of a friend” was called for, we talked for along time about his captures from the “under estimated stretch” and after seeing some of the many photo’s he had of Carp he had caught from the river I was even more enthusiastic about getting down there.

The Prebaiting. I didn’t have a clue as to where to start with this so I went over to the Best Carp Forum online for some advice. After talks, I was of to the local game feeds suppliers in search of some of the particles they had to offer. I came back with a car laden with particles of every description. I will not go into my chosen hook bait as I would like to keep this my secret.

Two days later I had a few kilo’s of every particle imaginable and two kilo’s of my chosen hook bait. I was all set to go down the river armed with a rod and a large bait dropper and a tube of PVA mesh, I was to make PVA sticks on the river bank. I arrived at the stretch and set-up my rod and bait-dropper, then proceeded to tie a few PVA sticks of my chosen hook bait. As I stood up to start casting the bait dropper over to the far margin I noticed a huge carp, I couldn’t believe my eye’s right there in front of me was a carp that must have been a high 30 or a low 40 it was massive. I stood and watched the carp for what must have been 15min’s I was running out of time so started to bait up the far margin, even with me splashing around - although I was trying to be very quiet as to not spook the carp- it just sat there. These carp are fearless! Or so I thought.
After work I was on the phone to the man who had pointed me in the direction of this swim to thank him and tell him about what I had seen, he was quite quiet and just muttered “I told you” as though he knew they were there all the time.
I continued to make my visits to the swim every three days to bait up with a bit of this and a bit of that, the carp sightings became less frequent and I became aware of the amount of chub that inhabited the swim, these I thought would be mopping up all the bait as they have a very greedy nature. Even so I continued with my campaign knowing that the carp would still be there when the open season began.
The magical 16th was drawing ever closer but yet I continued to pre bait, I had lowered the amount of food i was putting in and had not put it in the same places but had been scattering it around a lot more to try and get the carp to look for there food which hopefully might get them a bit more keen.

The 16th was here but I was unable to fish due to other commitments. This was extremely frustrating but I could wait I had waited long enough already hadn’t I?
The first session arrived I had a good feeling about it. I arrived at the swim in question at about 21:00hrs with my brother and his mate and his mates little brother. We were ready to cast out at about 21:30hrs after having baited the swim with many particles and pellet combo’s along with about a kilo of my secret hook bait. The rods were out in the water for about four hours without so much as a touch, this was slightly disheartening and I was beginning to wander if I was going to catch. This feeling changed about 10 minutes later when I started getting single bites this continued for quite along time and I was getting impatient, when all of a sudden beeeeeeeep and a huge run, I stumbled over to the rods and lifted into the fish and straight away there was solid resistance I couldn’t move this fish at all for about 3 minutes and was beginning to doubt it being a fish at all thinking that I had perhaps hooked a log. The fish all of a sudden ripped down stream the clutch was screaming and the rod was bent over to the handle, I thought I was going to loose it when it stopped I managed to turn it around and it came flying upstream with tremendous speed. The fight continued this way for about 10 minutes or so, when we were ready to net it. I could see the silvery/golden side of an extremely long fish cruising towards the net, the fish was netted and to every ones surprise it was a barbel and a bloody big one.
The fish was unhooked, weighed and an extremely poor attempt at photographing it was done (the camera only had enough battery for one photo) It weighed in at an impressive 12lb 4oz a new personal best barbel for an extremely happy me.


I had one more run in the evening which snapped my line this fight was completely different to the last myself and everyone else thought it was a carp but we will never know.
I didn’t get out again for a while as work commitments amongst other things got in the way.

July 03rd.
The second session and this one looked a lot more promising than the last. As we arrived at about 18:00hrs we could see huge bow waves as the fish soared up and down the river and hear the noise of some big fish crashing about although we couldn’t see where from.
We were ready to cast out at about 18:15hrs with the area baited again with the usual particles and pellets as well as the Secret Hook bait.
The first bit of action came from my right hand rod at about 19:30 with the alarms giving a consistent beep and the bait runner giving out a slow but definite click I struck into the fish trying to gain as much line as possible but I connected with nothing?
I recast and rebaited and with in a matter of minutes had another run but connected with absolutely nothing.
Now it was time for the boats, loads of them in convoy going all over the shop we had to bring in all the rods for those.
20:00 hrs and the rods were out again and a bit of bait fired around each. There was no action for another 2hrs, this time it was not from my rod but from my mates. A five minute scrap resulted in a nice little barbel of 6lbs he was happy as he had never caught a barbel before.

My left hand rod absolutely ripped off bite alarm screaming. Picked the rod up and straight away felt a solid resistance. This fish was incredibly powerful. It ran up the river keeping close to the bottom, i managed to turn it round, and it was heading towards me with incredible pace. This fight continued for about 15 minutes when it was ready to come for the net. We had the net in the water and the fish was gliding towards it. I could see what it was this time, and oh yes it was a carp and a bloody big one as well. The fish must have regained its strength and i let the line go slack, so of it shot again, you can imagine what happened TWANG bloody hell another carp lost and this one was big. My mate telling that i was extremely pissed off went and sat down not saying a word and rolled a joint, which he promptly brought over to me.
23:55 and some more action I was into a nice little barbel of 8lbs 6oz he gave a nice scrap and was quickly netted.

That was about it for the evening we had 8 bream to about 5lbs, but all was quiet except those.

The next session came around and I was looking forward to it. My friend and I had decided to get some snorkling masks and have a look in more detail at the river plateau we were fishing two of our rods on. The dive turned out to be very interesting. We needed an under water torch to be able to see clearly but what we saw would prove to be quite useful. The plateau we were fishing on was covered in a very light silt, under the silt was a platform which must have been there from a parking area for boats and that was the platform that had collapsed long ago. I would not advise anyone to swim in a fast flowing river.
We were able to position our rods in exactly the right position as I was swimming out to the area that we wanted them in and placing the whole rig as well as a few of the chosen hook baits.
The first run of the evening came to my friend after only half an hour of placing the lead in the area. A short fight ensued and a nice barbel of 6lbs 10oz was landed.

The second run was to me and yet again I was snapped off on 15lb big game!! I decided to use 20lb braid after this and was soon ready to recast and bait up the area again. It was now getting dark so we were unable to swim out to the swim as we thought it might be a bit dangerous.
The next run was my friends, and this time he connected with nothing, we were disappointed to say the least that the crafty river carp were giving us the run around
. Straight away afterwards my friends other rod leapt into life. And he was rewarded with a nice 10lb 2oz barbel a new PB for him.

The rest of the evening we were plagued by the dreaded bream of which we took 13 to about 6lbs. When will I land one of these crafty river carp?

To Be Continued……
JIMBO

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