23rd July 2020

FIRST NEW PAGE

Introduction page. (to be finished at some time in the future) 

This is my second attempt at writing out part two of my old fishing memoirs, this one about Fordwich  Lake and the fish that were swimming around it back in the very late 1970's and 1980's. I spent about a week setting the initial Bloggy thing out and by this time I had given it a rubbish title, uploaded many photos and provided that first said Blog with a rather overly elaborate explanation to both why I'd written yet another Blog and what it was meant to achieve both for me and for anyone that might want to read or peruse the images I had uploaded onto it. Anyhow, to cut a long story short, when it was finished I hated it, for many reasons to. For some rather mind boggling reason I settled on entitling the first attempt as 'A Frozen moment in time' too which was an awful title innit? I mean it's a Blog written by an ageing balding fat bloke about Carp fishing during a different age, it's not a spy novel or some nostalgic love story is it? Why I chose the original overly pretentious title is a complete mystery to the me sitting here at this moment in time less than a week later on? There were other reasons too, some of which I will touch upon later. Although better, this here Blog is far from being my own personal Magnum Opus ... that's not an ice cream by the way.

Anyway, taking this into account I felt impelled to re-write a lot of it out again. Some of the first attempt was deemed usable, so I ended up just cutting and pasting certain bits of it for that initial effort, but the problem is that when you do this sort of thing the text just doesn't flow as you would like and many of the newer thoughts are out of context with the old and this makes it harder to read back. Bear this in mind if you notice it during your read through, well, if you can bear reading it? I wouldn't advise getting your hopes up let's just say ... 

Photos

I hadn't looked at my photos for years. Some not for twenty odd years and some of the loose one's even longer. All were pre-digital day prints taken on film

3 large notepads - one was missing as well as various small pocket diaries written from schooldays onward. Photos set out in albums many random loose photos (still in cardboard jackets) cant find them all

Memories. Not everything I wrote was even accurate and probably still isn't. It will be better than it would have had I left it as it was as during the writing and reading process I did become aware of certain errors due to various slips in my memory much the same as I had with my first Carp fishing Blog.

Humour. Another thing that I would like to make clear here is If you do read the text then please try and keep in mind the method employed. I do use a rather bludgeoning type of humour from time to time, it is all meant to be taken in a light-hearted fashion, so if you do detect any sort of personal attack on anyone then please factor in that everyone made mention of were (or still are) good mates and this sort of banter was an enormous part of our old communication process. I am not putting anyone down, in fact mickey taking was always a warped sort of back-handed compliment in our world back then. In fact during the fourteen years or so that my fishing career lasted (eleven of them spent solid Carp fishing) none of us had a cross word and as I recall the entire period was spent as mates laughing from from its start to finish. As I say, some of us are still mates now and the only fact that we all aren't is due to us not seeing some of the old crowd for many years after we all drifted apart and went our own separate ways. I did feel the need to clarify this as we do live in a world where it appears that the human race has undergone some enormous sense of humour bypass and everyone takes themselves too seriously.

Another thing to bear in mind here is that although I use computers daily that I know very little about how to use them. I use my PC nowadays much like you used to use a TV, though of course it has the added bonus of being connected to the interweb meaning that you can watch what you want to watch when you want to watch it. This has caused me to be a YouTube addict in my later life. I also do lots of e-mailing, I also write quite a lot, keeping daily journals of my other hobbies (moths and bird migration etc) and have also started writing about places that I got to know, all precursors to me writing this and my previous Blog about my old fishing days. That aside, I know pretty much nothing about how to use a PC 'but' during the witting of this latest Blog (about Blog number twenty of my repertoire) I at last learned how to do a screenshot! Whoopee do eh?  Hence there will all sorts of nonsensical screenshot photos attached and woven into this, as the novelty about doing so was in full flow during the writing and setting out process. I was screen shotting everything, all of my old gear found on-line, all sorts. It all got out of hand to be honest, you'll see when you read the following pages how many inane though memory inducing items of gear I found on-line then screen shotted and uploaded onto the Blog.

So why another Blog? And why such a Blog about something you used to do over thirty years ago? I'm not really sure myself. It's perhaps along the lines of Descarte's quote 'I think therefore I am' sort of mentality? In my version this old line would be changed to 'I think therefore I write Blogs'? I was bored and at a loose end, deep into lockdown, very bored due to being stuck in the house and during such times, well I write as it justifies me as a human being, proves my very existence or at least sets out part of it. In June I'd usually be catching up on my early winter and spring bird migration records or setting out my moth catches or whatever but I fancied a change. Even the cancellation of Euro 2020 due to the Covid 19 wotsit didn't help, anyhow, one thing just led to another and here we are. Or at least I am? Last November (as in 2019) I dug out all of my old Carp photos after watching various Carp videos on YouTube which rather spontaneously led to me spending the next week sifting through the photos, scanning them into my PC and writing a long drawn out Blog dealing with the very start till the very end of my fishing adventure, something that I quite enjoyed doing at the time. This was to be a sequel to the first fishing Blog ... it just proved an awful lot harder to write out than I'd anticipated. When in the mood I can write quite easily but when not in the mood, well it can become a bit of a struggle.

I have many happy memories about my Carping days even though by the end of them I was shadow of my previous self. I'd lost all motivation and all my love of it. Don't get me wrong, I loved the atmosphere created by the fishing I just think by this time that my life was in such a mess that I'd made myself a bit ill? Even now, thirty years since I last cast a rod I still get the odd dream about Carping. Also, for years after I stopped, I'd go out for a walk at night when it rained. It was as if I missed being out of doors in the weather. It was all a bit odd. I enjoyed the whole thing about Carping, initially the fishing itself, the people you met and the solitude of it all. By the end of my time I was enjoying the partying too much, in fact it had taken over from the buzz of catching the Carp themselves. The actual fishing just meant less.

I'd fallen in love with Carping gradually, a story that I'll touch upon later. Once I'd caught a Carp, the world changed for me. It just wasn't to last as it worked out.

The blue van and the kid

The white van and the drumkit

the yellow van of certain death

Page 1 - an Introduction:

Introduction

Sorry about the title ... it's a bit naff isn't it? It's set in stone now, it's either leave it there or delete this Blog and write the whole lot out again with another title. So, a frozen moment in time it is. If I had my time over again then I'd entitle it something like 'Frank Zappa's yellow trousers'  or 'Fat Moose slips in pool of custard and falls off cliff into Canadian spongecake factory' y'know something obvious, something meaningful and descriptive? Quiet why I picked the title that I did is a complete mystery to me. It's awfully dull ... to quote the spoilt brat in Fawlty Towers complaining about the chips he'd just been served, the chosen title is 'the wrong shape and everything'. I did intend not to let this Blog get too Monty Python so already I've fallen short. 

To start, and for those of you who have read any (or perhaps many?) of my previous backlog of Blogs, well I know what you're thinking ... not another Blog? Surely not? What's the massive fool up to? Whilst for those of you who have been fortunate enough 'not' to have read any of my previous tripe, well to explain, in my latter years I've written many a Blog let's say, more than any human should write. I have Blogs, for this, Blogs for that, all sorts ... such as daily moth/bird migration based journals and so on and so forth.

Anyway, this here Blog will be a revisit to an old passion of mine, focusing primarily on my favourite place to practise it, namely Fordwich Lake near Sturry just outside of Canterbury in Kent, a place where I served my Carp fishing apprenticeship and for the most part loved almost every minute of it. I fished the lake throughout the period of 1979 till 1987 when I then moved on to pastures new. I did eventually fish other places too, fishing for Carp in Surrey, Essex, Cornwall, other lakes in north and east Kent, I even ended up doing a couple of nights on Redmire in 1999/2000 [though I didn't fish, it's a long story] but Fordwich would always be considered in my own mind as my spiritual home. Thirty years on, sitting here bored to death, contemplating the Universe, the leg length of your average Ant as well as wondering when on earth Liverpool were finally going to win the Premiership as I was at the time, I realised I needed something to do. I then got to wondering whether or not or any of those original Carp I fished for are still swimming around the Lake? My brain is like that, it jumps around from one thing to the next. Before I knew it it was back on Fordwich Carp, a second or two later it could be focused on the inner circumference of a can of beans, who knows? Anyway, I started to wonder again, Hmmm* surely there is a chance that some of those old fish might still be alive and perhaps still getting caught? I mean, do I remember correctly, wasn't one of the old Redmire fish over fifty years old? If so, some of those fish that I was fishing for and grew to know thirty odd years ago must still be alive, surely so? And if so, then perhaps some of my captures/photos may indeed give a timeline to those that fish there now, or perhaps this Blog might be a read for the like minded who might find this sort of nostalgic/historical old fart reminiscing stuff of interest? With this also latterly in mind, the Blog will also touch upon the old days, the Lake, the Fish, the people around at the time, hopefully giving a flavour of what it was like fishing back then at the exact time that Carp fishing exploded in popularity in the UK. It's odd for me looking back, as my Fordwich journey seemed like a longer one at the time when in duration it lasted just eight years which I find astonishing. Mind you in that time few put more effort and thought into their fishing the lake than I did, I was totally obsessed, a Carping madman ... well, perhaps just a madman, both perhaps, who knows? Carp fishing then became my job and to cut a long story short, my days with it as a hobby were numbered, I gave it up and got heavily into birding and moth trapping which isn't as much of a leap as you might think. There are many similarity's to fishing, catching a rare migrant moth or finding a rare migrant bird sort of gives you the same sort of buzz.

*the sound of me wondering. 

There were other reasons that this Blog came to be. One being overwhelming personal boredom! Well yeah, perhaps both that and it sort of suits my current circumstances? Not that it has too much to do with Covid 19 but it might paint a mental picture in your mind if you think about how a lockdown affects you? The current spate of lockdowns has had zero effect on me as my life is full of on and off lockdowns and almost all of of them are self imposed these days. I've been in on and off lockdowns for pretty much twenty odd years and these days I pretty much just break cover to view and record both the spring and autumn annual bird migrations locally, otherwise I am utterly tied to home. Don't worry, you can put your violins away, I'm not feeling sorry for myself in any way shape or form, I just thought an explanation might be in order for some of you who used to know me. With it now being June of 2020, I just sat down in front of the PC about fifteen/twenty minutes ago, sorted out setting up a new Blog, started pressing a few keys and hey presto within just a few minutes the above came out of my brain, moved down my arms to my fingers and the above few sentences appeared. This is how it goes with me, I find myself at a loose end, a writing mood comes along and I write. Some of you will know all of this anyway whereas some of you may not?

So as to carry on my rather overly elaborate explanation as to the why's and when's - in late 2019 I arrived at some weird mood even by my rather high Olympian level standards of weirdness, and I ended up having a manic week of digging out and going through my old fishing photos three decades past. I had lots of photos laying around the house, some in old shoe-boxes tied/taped shut in the 1990's and never opened till 2019 and some others in a large pile of old photos albums buried in our spare room. Initially this entailed just poking around this backlog of old images, as I say, some unseen for thirty years and this sparked off so many memories that to cut a very long story short, I ended up setting the whole sordid saga out into a long, semi badly written Blog, a predecessor to this one, which I wrote maniacally in one rather full on week in November of 2019 when I spent pretty much dawn till dusk and beyond sat behind the computer keypad.

Rather fortunately around this time we had also acquired a piece of technology known as a scanner. Now this meant that not only could I scan many old photos and transfer them onto (or into?) my P.C. to jazz up the Blog somewhat and making it look all pretty, but for the first time ever I was also able to see the photos enlarged onto my twenty inch computer screen showing off many minor or overlooked details easily missed on the original 6 x 4 inch prints. It was all a bit odd if I'm honest, there I was gawping at all these Carp photos and what jumped off the images and sparking the most interest for me was seeing silly stuff like seeing my old bivvies and gear. This led to me hunting around for all of my old notepads which sparked another plethora of deeply embedded memories. Pages of scribble of old doodles, old bait recipes found inside these notepads some of which had fallen to bits and were just loose pages, things otherwise unnoticed in the previous thirty/forty year period. As I continued to wade through these masses of old images and written content stored away in my notes it just took me back all those years and it snowballed and I ended up writing out many old tales, uploading many old photos and texts into the previous Blog. At the time I pretty much thought that that was that ... I'd done it, got it off my chest and it was time to move on. But was it wasn't. The spring of 2020 came then went, the spring bird migration was over and there's still been no Football seeing as Euro 2020 has been cancelled, so I needed something to do again. And well, this was it as it turned out. Don't ask me quite how? It all just sort of happened.

I found all sorts of scribble in my notepads. Imagine the scene ... me and Geoff are sitting there in my spare room and all of a sudden Geoff pipes up excitedly with "Here Phil!!" and I look up to see him holding these sorts of things. His doodling always had that cubist or abstract element, there are many scattered throughout the pages of my larger fishing notepads. 

Another one of Geoff's for the Premier Baits annual awards, Hammerer of the Year. It was a pet hate of ours, people showing up with stainless bank sticks and a mallet and beating the hell out of them for half an hour prior to setting up, ignorance, pure ignorance. His doodle looks a bit Predator perhaps? 

Amongst the 'all sorts' were lots of old bait recipes, notes, long boring lists of fish I'd caught and kept record of, that sort of stuff. The above has my old floater boilie mix which I had to cook in the oven. 

Back to today ... 

These days I have to admit I know very little about the current Carp scene as I am massively out of the loop. I have had a few natters with a few of the old crowd that I've run into in recent years, though very few in truth. I had once in a while had the odd time-wasting watch of various YouTube Videos about Carping and this in itself proved to be another catalyst to me digging out my old photos last year I suppose? The little that I do know or hear about the modern day Carping, well it sounds like a far worse sort of place than it once was and 'perhaps' because there is just no more mystery about it anymore as it was when I was fishing? It is now very easy to catch large Carp, the newby Carp angler has it all laid out for him, sophisticated baits and rigs, masses of books and videos, stuff it took us lot many years to learn. For certain it's no longer the pioneering thing it was back when I was a kid forty years ago and that in itself stifles any real mystery. I also saw some bloke net a Carp on some lake somewhere on some recent YouTube video or other and announce after looking at it "Oh, it's only a small one" and it was 25 lb Common!! A small one?? I'd have fallen into the lake in the late 70's had I netted a 25 lb Common! Anyway, what I'm trying to convey here is that back then that while we knew nothing we certainly appreciated things a whole lot more. In the late 1970's the mystery was tangible and addictive, it was just magical. There were many old wives tales about Carp being impossible to catch back then and for the most part this was right, though only because we were doing pretty much everything wrong. So, this here Blog will start by me reminiscing about how it was in the old days. Hopefully it wont come across as all Uncle Albert (y'know - During the War, Only Fools and Horses?) but will just paint a picture of what it once was like learning to fish for Carp in the south east of England in the late 1970's and 1980's and its effect on Fordwich and the local Angling fraternity.

That aside, the main purpose or main use of this Blog may help me to answer my initial question of 'What became of those Fish I used to catch?' Are any of them still swimming around the Lake three decades on? And if so, what might they weigh these days? So with this in mind but at the end, I will upload photos of all of the fish that I caught (or at least have photos of) and then ask for some feedback from those that perhaps are still fishing the lake or those that did so at some time during the intervening period after I stopped. Perhaps if we could get our heads together it will allow us to understand the history of some of the fish. I'm not sure how all will all pan out, all this has been down to a snap thought from my end. Who will I contact and how? I know that Arnie* is still fishing the lake, or at least he was till fairly recently, but apart from him I don't know of one other person who definitely still is? As I said before, I am so far out of the loop of Carp fishing having paid so little attention to it for decades that I just don't know. Some of the anglers currently fishing there possibly weren't even born when I was around? Anyway, if I want any of my questions answered then I'm going to need a bit of help and a few contacts. I do hope that this Blog might stimulate some interest? If not, then no harm done. Then, assuming anyone does read this and want a natter,  I'll have another problem as I'm not really into social media. If I keep the Blog public then there;s no way I'll put my phone number or e-mail address on it. I might have to break with personal tradition and re-set up my Facebook page? I can't see any other way round it as I write? 

*Our old name for him.

Also for the purpose of this particular Blog I am going to keep my name to myself as those that know me wont need to know and for those that don't, well you're not missing out on anything. I do like a bit of anonymity. If you require a mental picture then think of me as still being suave and debonair, well ripped with boyish good looks and a personality to die for. Quite why Cheryl Cole didn't hunt me down and snap me up a few years back is still beyond me. It's her loss of course. 

The above aside, I am still having a few problems my end. During my hunt around the house in November I soon realised that a chunk of my fishing memories were not to be found. Although I was an on/off avid record keeper back then and did my best to get photos of every capture which was essential for Fish recognition of course, I appear to have lost a whole year of my 1985 photos and some of the Carp I caught in 1983 too I think? I have also mislaid one of my larger notepads, though this isn't such of an issue as I can sort of piece much of what went together from what I did find, which was quite a lot to be honest. Writing two very long Blogs, reading many pages of scribble, gathering together and scanning hundreds of photos and documents and uploading them back on-line has been an awfully time consuming job. One thing I do have is time but from now on I will need help if this is to go anywhere close towards supplying me with the information that I am looking for. It might sound a touch silly, but I used to think of these fish as old friends and it's always nice to find out how old friends are getting along or what went on in their lives isn't it?

Fordwich in the 1980's.

As well as admitting to knowing very little about the modern Carp scene I also have to admit I don't know an awful lot about the exact history of Fordwich as a lake either? So why are you writing a Blog about Carp and Fordwich Lake then I hear you cry? I have my reasons. You know how it is when you're young, you only think about catching those darn fish, the rest is irrelevant. I have no clue when the Lake was dug or even when it was stocked? I'd assume the gravel pit was extracted pre war but I have never been able to find out for definite? If anyone does know then I'd be right up for finding out? Also how many fish were in the lake? In the early days we always assumed the density of fish per acreage was fairly low, whereas in time we found out that it was about medium if that makes sense? It was far from being shoulder to shoulder with Carp and I would hazard a guess that in the middle 1980's the head of fish would be somewhere around 150 - 180 double figure fish? Who knows, the information on offer as to the stocking of the lake was always contradictory and even just trying to get to the bottom of when the fish were stocked about how many or where they originated from was hard to fathom. One person would tell you one thing whereas another person would tell you something different? Not that it really matters but it was frustrating at times, especially with me being someone who wanted to know anything and everything eventually. I soon came to the conclusion that I'd never find out, and I was right too, as I never ever did!

Fordwich back then was a lovely place to fish, the atmosphere of seclusion was just serene to someone like me living on a Thanet housing estate. It's a thirty five acre pit with very few swims and being well off the beaten track then the seclusion always made you feel as if you didn't have a worry in the entire world. That said, the village was was within easy reach reach for supplies but was so tiny that you rarely saw too many people with it being hidden away from the two main roads headed in and out of Canterbury. Back then there was a small newsagents (long since gone, now a house opposite the George and Dragon Hotel, Black Holes was the name we gave the shop) and two pubs in the village itself, the Fordwich Arms at the bottom of the Drove and the Middle of the Road pub (was it called that in the 1980's?) on the outskirts. On occasion we also did have the occasional meet up and beer in the George and Dragon Hotel too but none too often. There was also a Bakery opposite the Middle of the Road that is no longer there plus a small supermarket sort of set up which eventually sprung up down along the main Canterbury road. This meant essential provisions were easy to obtain even on foot if need be.There was also a slightly more long range drinking hole (the Swan) on the opposite side of the main road but still within walking range. We used the Fordwich Arms most frequently, though being a rather stuffy place they only just about tolerated the angling fraternity. You could tell that we weren't really all that welcome let's say?

Anyway, back to the main purpose of this Blog before I go off on yet another dull and boring tangent, and that is that my hope for the following however many pages of tripe will be to discuss or at least set out what I found out about the lake and how it was back then. I also want to write about the people who were about at the time, the attitudes, the thinking and the general up's and down's. I may well need some help as it seems that every time I meet up with one of the old crowd that they remember things and people that in time that I have forgotten. Whereas I have many notes and diary entries about the fish I caught and the baits that I used, unfortunately many names and faces have faded in my memory. Given that I do want to make this Blog available to fellow lovers of the lake new and old, I would like to get as much into the content as is possible, giving dates and any sort of knowledge that I can pass on. I did find a couple of the old crowd on Facebook a couple of years back when I looked and seeing as I do bump into both Geoff Bowers and Craig Reynolds on occasion, then hopefully they might help me to fill a few gaps? I used to see my original Carp buddy Richard Stubbings but not for a while now. For whatever reason I haven't seen him for perhaps two or three years? Our paths would cross every now and again when he'd see me cycling down to Pegwell while he was driving the works van around. He'd often stop and we'd have a natter. I hope he's okay, I know he'd been very ill a few years ago after having a heart attack when only about fifty (or less?) but he was in fully good health when I last saw him.

So, that's the gist of it, the end of the introduction. Now it's time for some old tales. On the last five pages I will upload the old Fish gallery, so if that's your bag then ignore the next couple of pages of inane waffle, do yourself a big favour and scroll down till you come to the Carp photos. You can navigate to the allotted pages by using the bit to the right of this ... um er 'bit' ... See the box on the right headed 'Pages and Titles' and underneath you'll see the individual pages. All of the Carp photos are uploaded there and set out as a gallery with a few notes. These start on page 4 and go though to page 8.

As for the rest of us I will resume with the olde worlde stuff again. 

The Start

An aerial view of the three gravel pits where I used to spend so much time. In the foreground Fordwich village with Fordwich Lake bottom right, Westbere Lake middle left and beyond, Stour and Trenley Lakes in the middle right and left respectively. Beyond those are the shallow tidal flood lake in top left, Collards Lake top middle and beyond those Stodmarsh lake. It took me by surprise to see how large the other pits are? None of these last three are gravel pits I don't think, just areas that were left to flood in the distant past. It looks a bit like an old pit top in places at Stodmarsh but I've heard that when they were digging at Chislet Colliery they were using parts of the marsh to dump the shale. The lakes there are fairly shallow and reedy anyway not like the pits further west along the valley, the closest three in the above drone image. 

The start as in 'my start' ... my initial footsteps into the Carp scene. Now we go back to 1979. I had only just left school, in fact I may have been in my last year as I stayed on for an extra year to do my exams. At the time I already had a few years of mainly coarse angling under my belt. Okay, the level wasn't very high, about one digit above Micky Mouse level by the end and perhaps eight digits below Micky Mouse level at its outset, but it was full of fun. My main fishing companion at the time was Richard Stubbings. Rich had been fishing for many years by this time, mainly as a jack of all trades course angler, but like me by this time had pretty much decided to be a full time Carp Angler in the summer and a Pike Angler during the winter months. We were pretty much a team till 1982 when Rich decided to hang his rods up and get married. He was never to return. We had some great fun, we were both big rock music fans and we used to go to lots of gigs and I mean lots. Even now if I ever hear Theme One by Van der Graff Generator it always takes me back to me and Rich siting in out bivvys, rods out listening to the Friday Night Rock show presented by (that moron) Tommy Vance on Radio 1. It used to be on from about 21.00hrs till midnight I think? Happy days they were, me and Rich giggling away taking in the atmosphere and catching the odd fish. Craig Reynolds was still around at this time as were my initial fishing pals including Steve Horne.

The really old days.

Earlier, in 1976 as a 14 year old kid picture the scene. Me and my mate Garry, one rod between us, no licence, fishing the gully's on the Wansom. Soon I'd be a spotty faced imbecile, mad keen on Football, Guitars and Rock Music, six feet five inches tall and 'about' twelve stone in weight and I had no clue. Initially I tried that bit of Roach and Breaming with Garry and was happy to catch anything at all, just going where my mates led me. At the time I was in my element spending half a day dangling a worm underneath the offset arm 'bit' leading to the sewage works at Minster, where in the shade of the concrete ledge of the sewage works you could see small Eels and even smaller Flounders sheltering out of harms reach. Occasionally a small platoon of four inch Roach might appear causing mass excitement or if you were REALLY lucky, a six inch Jack Pike. We all have to start off somewhere of course.

In 1977, by this time fishing with Steve Horne and co. I then discovered Piking (at Westbere) and thought that I'd found my lifelong passion. However, I soon found out that there were higher mountains to climb than bashing out a few Pike, even if some of them were of specimen size and weight as they were in Westbere. In 1978, by this time being utterly fishing mad, I'd became mates with a few more serious anglers who had access to Fordwich. Up till then I'd only ever fished at Westbere, Minster (river and Rudd Pond) the Wansom Marshes plus a light bit of sea fishing around the coast and harbour at Ramsgate. My new mates, mainly Rich and Craig but from time to time also Dave Beadle, Francis etc had tales of Carp and had even caught a few out of Fordwich but only tiddlers. All of their Carp weighed between 6 and 9 lb, the largest being just 9 lb 4 oz, I know as I have this all written down in one of my old journals. Now these were the days when the C&DAA record Carp had been caught in Westbere, it was about 21 lbs (I think caught by Turk?) a veritable leviathan at the time and a mythical creature to us. The fish was taken from a shallow part of the lake behind the canal on the river side of the lake but this had since pretty much silted up and grown over by my time, or that was the tale that I was told at the time. Now bear in mind that even though this fish had been caught a few years earlier, we never ever saw anyone or even heard of another Carp ever getting caught from Westbere back then. The Canterbury and District Angling Association (the C&DAA from hereon) did stock lots of small Carp into Westbere in the mid 1980's though ironically just a year or two before Bretts took the Lake over! My point here being is that the fact that I'd never laid eyes on a real actual Carp, well it all just added to the mystery. As I say my new found buddies  had tales of these large Carp from Fordwich and by this time, being a member of the C&DAA, (since 1977) I started having a look around Fordwich even though up till then I'd not once fished there. I'd seen a fair few Carp anglers doing their thing on the Lake and some of them like Colin Hurst were friendly beasts whereas some of them were not. There was a bit of snobbery around back in the day and Carping then was still full of secrecy at the time. It was pathetic really as in retrospect very few of the anglers were ever catching very many Carp, some if any at all from what I could see. By 1979 I decided to have my own try at catching a Carp. It proved quite a learning curve even though by this time I had put in lots of time and got quite experienced in quite a short period of time, mainly due to my manic style application. I was by this able to catch many Bream and a few Tench, and looking back, the baiting up style of sit and wait tactics of attracting a Bream shoal (usually from the Canal at Westbere) prepared me well for doing much the same thing with the Fordwich Carp later on. This was once we got our heads round how many Carp were in Fordwich 'and' being a few years later on of course. My tactics for Bream back then was to bait heavily with a couple of loaves of soaked bread in a bucket, lace it with worms, maggots and casters even Oats, chuck it out often in large handfuls mid Canal and then wait for them to find the baited area. The Bream action usually came at night and whereas some of my mates were just getting the odd Bream, I was getting periods where I caught lots, well by comparison. It was all due to the large baited area, not any angling skills on my behalf. Perhaps, just perhaps, I used to think a bit more about it than my original early day fishing companions such as Steve, Stewart and Jimmy Roberts my old schoolmates, did? That said, they all enjoyed the Pub more than the fishing, and whilst I liked a beer and a jolly back back then I never allowed it to interfere with my fishing, well not for those early manic years anyway. I did have problems with partying later on of course, as anyone that knows me will testify to and to my great shame as I sit here now. Anyway, by 1979, I felt up for it, experienced enough to try for one or two of those elusive Fordwich Carp.

I have no old fishing photos of Dave or Francis but here we have the three birding amigos in 2012, left to right Dave Beadle, a babe magnet and Franny the wonderhair or Francis Solly. Franny still lives locally though Dave lives in Toronto these days but still makes a visit to the vile Isle most years so as to catch up and do some local birding. None us fish these days. As the photo will testify to, I am by far the only sensible one of the trio. 

I started running into Richard Stubbings (or Butt as was his nickname) in 2012 when I took the above photo. I'd not seen him for years at this point but did see him on and off until a few years back when he disappeared yet again. He's another one of the original schoolboy fishing clan members who gave up Carping many moons ago. 

The only old photo I can find with Rich actually in it is this one taken on Westbere Deeps in October 1979. You just might notice a Butt shaped face in the top right hand corner, we'd be 17 at the time. That's a nice Pike, my second twenty plus of the month at the time, I used to love my Pike fishing prior to the Carping obsession kick starting anyway. 

Another member the early gang of ex Conyngham School  'erberts, Craig Reynolds. They are my rods as Craig's would have been in the next swim. We were fishing on Westbere Deeps at the time, probably once again in October 1979? As for the pink and yellow hair, well these were the days of Punk ... 

And Steve Horne who I used to fish Westbere with in my very early years, from 1977/78 onward. Here we were fishing the Fordwich Deeps, probably in 1980, just after his bed chair collapsed. 

Chapter one ... an imbecile tries to catch his first Carp.

My Fordwich Carping started in 1979. I was a mere lad of 16 at the start of that season and though I had been a member of C&DAA since 1977 I had up till this time spent an awful lot more time fishing on Westbere than I ever had on Fordwich. In the previous three or so years since I'd first tried my hand at coarse fishing I'd been reading everything I could get my hands on about Carp fishing. The exact names of the magazines we had access to has long escaped my fifty seven year old memory but we used to hang on every word written by people such as Rod Hutchinson, Jack Hilton and Richard Walker amongst many others. By this time I was also getting both of the weekly fishing rags delivered in the post (The Angling Times and Angling Mail) and I'd also read BB's 'Confessions of a Carp Angler' and Jack Hilton's tales of Redmire in his book 'Quest for Carp' and was utterly enthralled by every paragraph, even though the tales they wrote about were by then from a bygone era. I assume I laid hands on these books via the library? I did buy a few Carp book back then, 'The Carp Strikes Back' by Rod Hutchinson and Maddock's 'Carp Fever' but I'm sure I never owned these older books?

Now bear in mind here that back in the late 1970's that Carp were at best considered tricky to catch. Some of the old crowd would tell you that some were impossible to catch, that the fish were too clever, they were scared of hooks and line and only the really dedicated had any success at all. This did little to put me off as I was nothing if not dedicated ... in fact I was utterly OBSESSED! By this time Fred Wilton had already written about HNV baits (as in high nutritional value) and though I had read about this phenomena in the dedicated Carp magazines around this time, all of it went totally over my head. Whilst Carp fishing had moved on in various places such as north Kent, down here in the south east we were still way behind where bait and rig knowledge was concerned. And if not that, then it was obviously apparent that if anyone had any useful information as to how to bag Carp regularly then they weren't telling me nor my mates. As I've already mentioned, Carp fishing at the time was shrouded by secrecy. Even in the late 1970's people were still using baits such as potatoes and if that doesn't paint a picture of what it was like at the time then I don't know what will, so even though we read articles about high protein baits by this time then none of us had ever seen them about used them! All of the tiddler Carp caught by my new mates out of Fordwich were all taken on bread [floating crust] and luncheon meat if memory serves correct? Perhaps Corn? The one Carp man (Colin) who was friendly towards us was the one who appeared to be catching the most fish and he was getting them by making his own small round loaves for want of a better word, which were threaded onto the large hook, injected with water to aid casting and lobbed out with a running lead as a sort of tethered floater or perhaps even free-lined. My memory is slightly vague about such things. Even then he wasn't getting very many fish by later standards, well not as I remember it anyway. It is very difficult to convey the attitude towards Carping back then and as always then my lack of writing skills do nothing if not frustrate me in trying to do so. Pretty much everything was different, the baits the methods, the old tackle you used, everything, but for me it's the attitude that's changed the most? Carp were elusive, ethereal and at times unimaginable in as much as catching them. How things have changed eh? They only acquired this mystique because we were doing pretty much everything wrong and there were less Carp around in those days, but it certainly added to the atmosphere and the elation if you were to see one banked even by another angler, about actually catching one for yourself! These fish were held in very high esteem let's say.

Quest for Carp, the best book about Carp Fishing that I ever read. 

For that season (1979) we (Rich, Craig and I) decided to use the scientifically cutting edge baits of the day such as Luncheon Meat, Sweetcorn and odd as it may now sound, Campbells Meatballs! Rich was messing around with paste baits too, but for the most part I think we used the three baits mentioned. The method of presenting a Meatball back then was to thread a large hook through it, poke a length of Twiglet under the bend of the hook to stop the hook pulling out, present the bait on a running leger and pelt it out into the lake!! All three baits came in a tin from the Supermarket which was handy but none of them were much cop due to the lake being filled with lots of small to medium sized Tench and Bream which outnumbered the Carp by a massive percentage and would munch at anything that you dropped into the water. By night the Eels often created Carp bait havoc too. That said, I was far from having my fill of catching Bream and Tench in 1979, so was quite happy to fill my boots with them if and when they came along. If a Carp got to the bait first, well so much the better but if not then I wasn't too bothered. I'm ashamed to say that this attitude didn't last too long.

Ah, the old Big M's ... the Carp just loved 'em. Unfortunately so did the Bream, Tench, Eels etc. Also if you got hungry you could eat them yourself, not that I'd actually recommend humans eating them but when push comes to shove etc ... I also have a question. How many Meatballs were there in a can? About twelve? I dunno? 

I'm unsure as to how much time I spent on Fordwich in 1979 as my note-keeping at this time wasn't up to scratch, either that or whatever records I did keep at the time have been lost. What I can deduce from a long list of Tench, Bream, Eels and Pike weights written out in the order that I caught them at the time, I can see that it took me till September to catch a Carp at all. I remember that by this time that I was using very large sweetcorn hookbaits, a long string of it masking both the exposed number 2 hook shank and extending two or three inches along the hook-link too on one rod and a Meatball on the other. Anyway, one weekend whilst fishing the Deeps in mid September 1979 I actually caught a Carp, a thin Galician type of 9 lb 11 oz on a Meatball. Then presumably the following weekend I caught two more, an 11 lb leather at night (02.00am) on sweetcorn then at midday a deep grey Italian strain fish weighing in at 11 lb 10 oz on a meatball. To say I was elated was an understatement of enormous proportions, life would never be the same again. Back then the Pike season started on October 1st and with the old wives tales still fresh in our gullible minds telling us that Carp were 'summer feeders' and didn't feed in the winter months, well that was pretty much it with the Carping for that season and soon I was back in Pike fishing mode till the following June. Although I didn't catch much I did learn an awful lot both about the lake plus the time spent there also allowed me to get to know some of the people who fished it a little better. In 1979 we became mates with a few new Carp lads from Whitstable (Chod, Gapson, Stewart Coly etc) and we also formed stronger ties with a couple of older lads who I knew from from school the the Pub (Tony Philips and Alex Stewart) and others who lived on the same housing estate. (Dave Stewart and Mick Wilkinson) At the time I was fishing still fishing solely with my mates from school, Craig Reynolds, Simon Konce, Richard Stubbings and Dave Beadle though by the following year we joined up with the rest.Dave and Simon no longer fish at all and I've not heard from Simon for thirty plus years. Craig is still around the Estate where we still live and I see him every now and again, Rich is a dedicated family man whereas Dave emigrated to Canada in the middle 1980's and we are still in touch. Of the older bunch mentioned, Alex, Dave an Tony are still fishing but I don't think that Mick is? I ran into Mick about two months back but forgot to ask.

As to the gear and rigs from this era we were using, well I can't remember exactly. The lines used would have been about 10 lbs strain, the leads small (1 oz?) so this all added up to us not being able to cast very far. I can see in one of the photos I found, a rod that I recognise, a 3 lb test curve brown Pike rod. As for the other, well it wasn't even matching, initially it was a blue fibre glass jobby that I have little recollection of, but mid season in '79 I did make a Carp rod from a black 11 foot fibreglass blank I picked up from a local shop. They were all soon relegated to the bin anyway and deservedly so, after I bought a matching set of dedicated Carp rods of about 2 lb test curve bought as blanks and fitted with ceramic green Fuji rings plus I also bought another matching pair as back up, a second hand set of one and three quarter test curve rods which I got off of Mick Wilkinson, bought by Mick as blanks and probably built by Dave Stewart. They were mustard colour and much like the other set, not much cop for long range fishing at Fordwich. More about the rods we used later on.

As I've touched upon, we were know absolute know nothings, numpties. I wonder if you'd asked me back then how many fish were in Fordwich I'd have been unable to hazard even a guess as it wouldn't have even crossed my mind. Such things didn't matter to me then. We saw so few Carp caught in 1979 that we had nothing to go on. I also think that in my first couple of years fishing at Fordwich we saw a changing of the guard and most of the older Carp Anglers moved on to pastures new, taking all of this sort of information with them. I also thinks there's a fair chance that us newcomers kept ourselves to ourselves to some degree and I only remember seeing only about ten or twelve Carp banked all year long and none of them were very large, perhaps mid double figures being the largest? We did hear of others being caught however, we just didn't see them. I did write a tale in my previous Carp Blog about when my mate Richard Stubbings caught a record 21 lb Common off of the Barnes swim and dated that as being in 1979. I now think that this was in error and he in fact caught that fish in 1980 or perhaps even 1981?* I think he took this fish early on in the 1980 or '81 season and soon-after gave up Carping as he wanted to get married. I have all the weights and dates of my own fish written down but not always everyone else's?

*as it turned out, Rich caught that Carp in June or July of 1982. I also found out it weighed not 21 lb but 20 lb 12 oz. 

Anyway, by the start of the 1980's I was in full on Carp angler mode, so the above marks the end of my apprenticeship period. I was no longer interested in Tench or Bream and only Pike and Eel fishing from October onward held any interest to me thereafter. By far the main quarry however were those darn varmit Carps.

Fordwich People 1979 - '87.

As in 'mostly' the anglers. Back in 1979 when I first started fishing at Fordwich there were very few hardcore Carp anglers. Some of the names escape me but people who spring to mind included Barry Gardner, Fred Brown, Ron Mears, Burt Thatcher, Paul Sharpe and Colin Hurst amongst various others. Some of my mates also fished there, Dave and Alex Stewart, Mick Wilkinson, Tony Philips, Turk, Richard Stubbings, Craig Reynolds etc etc. The 1980's marked a bit of a changing of the guard and it wouldn't be too long before we would take on the mantle of being the Fordwich carp mob. By this time we were joined by a fair crew of Whitstable Carpers such as Chod, Gapson, Stewart Coly, Tim ??, Metal Mickie (he had a tooth brace) plus a few others, as well as a handful of other new anglers such as John Baldry, Veggie Mick, Dave Locke, Phil Latter, Les Fright, Geoff Hobbs, Brian Gaymer, Fireman Ian, Spike, Darren Grimstead, Dave Crittenden, James Dean (Not 'that' James Dean) and later as the years wore on, Mark Dean, Andy Wilkes, Roger Stanger, Andy Clarke, Baboon, Paul Lehane, Wing-nut, Mark 'Plonker' Plank, Kipper, Mark Sturge, Ian Brown, Clive Whitlock, Brian 'dyes his hair' Allen, Weird Kev, Malcolm Berry, Jock White, Martin Daley, Andy Maple, Kevin 'Arnie' Harding, Tony 'Bamber' Smitherman etc. If I've forgotten anyone here then please forgive me, I can be a forgetful dimwit quite often. We all really got along and never had a cross word. We all became a weird sort of extended gang and often use to meet up, go to the boozer or for a curry ... or both?  Okay, my closest Carp fishing companions from 1981 onward were always Geoff Bowers and Locky, but I considered all of the above as proper mates. It was all very nice, if only for a while. 

By the middle of the 1980's a few twenty pound plus Carp were showing up regularly, word got out and others started to show up. A few undesirables started to appear, people were getting their gear stolen and things got a bit back bitey. People were whinging about not being able to get their preferred swim and much of the camaraderie of old was lost, to my mind purely out of jealousy. Okay, we usually got the best swims but to be honest we worked hard to to get them as we were running our entire lives around our fishing, we thought of nothing else. Quite how others just expected to turn up on a Friday evening and think they had the divine right to acquire the prime spots is beyond me? Anyway, things were never the same again. After this I started keeping myself more and more to myself and was no longer anywhere near as open, only mixing with the old crowd already mentioned in the above. Steve and his brother Tim Attwood were also a regular sight back then and whilst I never got to know them that well we always got on. Steve was a lovely bloke and had one of the worst stutters imaginable. It used to drive him potty not being able to get his words out. We always thought you were cracking lad anyway Steve if you ever read this? Tim always used to make me laugh as no matter how muddy the lake margins become he never used to get a grain of dirt on him? It was unreal. There were we in the often swampy lakeside conditions, covered from head to foot in mud and a pair of immaculate camouflaged trouser legs would appear at you bivvy door and there was Tim, clean as a whistle. No one else springs to mind from the 1980 - '85 period but there would have been others.

One of my other good mates back then was Tony Philips, though oddly we didn't fish for Carp at Fordwich together too often. We did lots of Pike fishing together, fished together for Carp on the Crusher at Hythe and often met up socially for a drink. In the later years both Jock White and Martin Daley got into Carping and I did a fair bit of fishing with them too, albeit mainly with Martin. They got involved in the Carp game as we knew them from our local Pub (the old Aussie, or the Australian Arms) Come to think of it another name just sprung to mind, John Elseworth, he used to drink in the Aussie and he took up Carping in the mid 80's, I bet it was him that introduced Martin and Jock to Carping?  Geoff, Jock, Martin, Terry Pethybridge and I all did lots of time fishing at Yateley after 1987, and seeing as I couldn't drive back then (I still can't as it happens, I am a useless lump of lard) they all used to ferry me about as walking with all of your gear to Surrey doesn't come recommended. During this period I also took trips down to Cornwall (College reservoir) with Terry Pethrybridge, Mark Sturge and Clive Whitlcock also other places with Lockey, Geoff, Malcolm Berry, Tony and Al Stewart plus Tony 'Bamber' Smitherman. I once made the enormous mistake with cadging a lift from Yateley to Crystal Palace then onto north Kent to meet up for a party, with Hippy Paul at the wheel. This was an ordeal of enormous proportions as he was off his face, angry beyond control and best of all couldn't drive!! It turned out he'd only just decided to try driving for the first time on his way to the lake, and you think about this, driving from Crystal Palace in South London to Yateley in Surrey, on your own when you've ever ever driven before? Now that is just mad. Anyway as we juddered and sputtered out of Yateley with him shouting out the open yellow Van window at seemingly everybody, I thought that death wasn't too far away. Either that or imminent arrest? Anyway, I'm still here as somehow I survived to tell some of story. The rest is not for here though, it's a longer tale for another day perhaps.

A few old random people, here we have old Chod ...  a great laugh was Chod. He was a big old lad, that Carp's about 150 lbs. He doesn't look too happy does he?

Ah, that's more like it, that's more like the Chod I remember. Here soaking up the rays on the Ritchies playing my landing net with a throwing stick like a Cello. 

Geoff in his usual spot, nailed to his chair in my music room. One of those guitars in the cases over his shoulder would be worth many, many thousands of quid if I still owned it.

Geoff in his later Disco stage. Here resplendent in the same clothes he went out on the previous Saturday night, went fishing in and wore for the next week or so by the looks of it. Images like this are awe inspiring. I mean Geoff's an internationally famous man these days, this image could be worth millions? If not then perhaps I could use it to blackmail him? Hmmm?? It has to be the best I've ever seen of him and possibly the best photo that I even took? Look at those horrid, cheap and nasty reels he was using ... eghhrr! 

Tony Phillips with Al Stewart in hiding. A right couple of urchins they were when together, there was never a dull moment. 

A very young Roger Stanger swinging in another on those Titans. Roger was a good lad and went on to acquire some impeccable music taste in time. 

And lastly our old mate Mark Sturge, here before he went for the full on splaphead look. 

Page 2 - Gear, Weather, Baits etc.

Gear

The following section may well be very, very, very boring. Don't say that you weren't warned. Of course you'd already be aware of the boredom aspect anyway if you were silly enough to wade through what I wrote on the previous page? 

Rods:

In 1979 all of our Carp rods were made from floppy fibreglass. They were often quite heavy and unresponsive too. Those early Carp rods were no longer than 11 feet long, long Carp rods were a thing yet for the future. Most of the were about ten to eleven feet long in the fibreglass era. Then in the late 1970's carbon fibre came into play ... then boron ... then moron, but enough about me. Stuff like chemically sharpened hooks and decent bite alarms were still well in the future, well just around the corner perhaps when looking back from the modern day? In truth the gear we used when I stopped fishing in 1990 still looks to my eye pretty much the same as now as it had come on leaps and bounds in that one single decade. It wasn't like that when I first started and to illustrate the point, you'd still see the occasional older dude using Split Cane rods back then now and again. In fact I remember going to fish a lake in Cornwall in the late 1990's and saw some old boy still using a spilt cane rod even then. 

We used to have many rows about gear, the main cause of them being rods. The early years marked the oncoming of Carbon Fibre rod technology, so anything made out of floppy old fibreglass was either given away or just thrown out. In 1982 (I think) Geoff and I, drove to Hertfordshire (was it Simpsons of Turnford or was the shop in Hitchin?) to pick up our rods of choice, namely a pair each of hand built 2 lb 10 oz test curve compound taper Rod Hutchinson's. Now these were long rods, I think they were 12 feet long, very long for Carp rods back then anyway, and were a vast improvement of what we'd been using previously. They were also beautifully built being made from Bruce and Walker blanks. They cast a reasonable distance being able to handle a two and a half ounce lead but were still very pliable and therefore nice to play fish on. Anyway, at some time during the early 1980's another carbon fibre Carp rod hit the market, namely the Titan. They were horrible fast taper things, stiff as a broom-handle, they were cheap both monetarily and in quality by comparison with the feel of the hand made Rod Hutchinson rods and these vile Carp poles were the bane of Geoff's life ... he hated them! The ongoing banter often turned to out and out rows, it could be hilarious at times mind you. After using Rod Hutchinsons rods I then bought another pair of long range Carp rods, both twelve footers bought from the same place in Hitchen or Turnford where we got the RH's from. I think these too were endorsed by Rod? They were still compound tapers designs but these were slightly stiffer but lighter and with them I could cast miles. Eventually, at the end of my fishing days, I bought a pair of Kevin Maddocks endorsed 12.5 foot 2 pound 12 oz test curve rods built by Simpsons of Turnford, and these were absolute beasts. They were still compound taper, quite soft and powerful in the mid range and wow would they chuck a bait out if you gave them a bit of welly. I also used various other Carp rods for shorter ranges or smaller pits, but the three types mentioned were the main ones that I used for the long range fishing on Fordwich.

Reels:

My personal pet hate were some of the reels available in the late 1970's. At this time in history the main specimen hunter type reels were ether made by Mitchell or Abu and only the ABU's were without fault. There were others available but they were awful, the line laying was all skew whiff, the bail arms would snap shut when you cast out, they often felt cheap and not very smooth on the retrieve and often the bail arms felt as if they were hewn from rolling up a couple of Kit Kat tin foil wrappers. Mitchell reels were not too bad, but only for general fishing. They were well designed, had a nice edge on the spool, allowing smooth casting but were let down for long range Carp fishing as if you gave a large lead a good whack out then the bail arms were trustworthy and could snap shut. The Abu's were of a far higher quality, the brass gearing being utterly magnificent as was the clutch and drag mechanism. The rear drag could be useful when self hooking rigs were used, and I always used mine in bait-runner style, casting out, loosening off the drag and just applying pressure to the spool with your hand, clicking off the clutch and tightening the rear drag when you had a take. It was a fail proof method. The Abu reels were indestructible too, built like a tank they were. I had lots of these reels, mostly Mitchells initially (300's, 410's and an 810) also later on my favourites, Abu Cardinal 55's and later on 3 Abu Cardinal 57's. At some time during the middle 1980's a company started selling Baitrunner reels designed specifically for Carp fishing and of course everyone started to buy them, but they were cheap and nasty. It's like anything, they see a gap in the market and get the things to look nice but build them out of cheaper, softer metals and plastic, it was this cutting of the corners that ruined the product. As soon as you saw the way the original Baitrunners laid the line on the spool you could see they weren't very good, but that aside the actual baitrunner facility was a very good idea and it did work but I'd apply the analogy that an old banger will drive you to the shops but it's far better to drive there in an Aston Martin isn't it? That just about sums it up I think? I might come across a bit of a gear snob here, and perhaps I was, but I still stand by what I just wrote. I got taken in one time. I walked into this shop and saw there a pair of reels with enormous deep spools, perhaps the only thing lacking with my Cardinal 57's? The larger and deeper the spool the better they would be for long range casting due to less drag as less spool lip gets exposed once you've hit the 80 - 100+ yard mark during a cast. Anyway, I bought a pair and within just a few months they already felt like I'd had then for a decade or more. They were just cheap and nasty. I wonder how many of those first generation bait-runners gave twenty years of faultless service? None I'd wager, they just weren't built to last. I do admit to being a bit anal about my gear even though I didn't treat it as precious. To my mind what's the point of using a tool that threatens to let you down? If it loses you just one fish then for me that's one fish too many. I used to see so many anglers using old line, blunt hooks etc and just couldn't get my head around it.

Two very old Mitchell 300's. Mine were newer versions than these with red on them somewhere? The one good thing about these reels were that you could let them churn and they wouldn't overrun and get in a tangle. Otherwise they were best left alone. I used four types of Mitchell reels, one with flick type automatic bail arm for float fishing, a blue reel called a 440a, two 410's and one called an 810 which was expensive. This was brown and had a gear ratio of 6:1 for quick retrieving. You felt like a king when using an 810, it looked a rather classy object  ... hee hee.

I later found my exact reels. Was it worth the effort? Possibly not, but I was having fun at the time and that's all that really matters innit? The fact that it's boring the pants off you readers is inconsequential. I've just watched a Tubeface video about how to take a screenshot, a big things for a computer idiot like me is that. I am now having a wail of a time ... screenshoting this ... screenshoting that ... 

Ah the good old 55, magic things. I initially started my Carping using ABU Cardinal 55's but soon wanted some of the larger 57's which were better for long range stuff. Anyhow, this just came to me, by the middle 1980's 57's were hard to get hold of but then Geoff came up trumps and located the three I needed. I might even have had to buy them second hand though he might have found someone who knew someone etc who knew a shop where they had them in stock new? If  they were secondhand then mine were mint when I finally got them. Getting hold of gear was far more difficult in those pre interweb days. You'd see gear for sale via an advert in a fishing magazine and have to send off a cheque after phoning to see if what you wanted was in stock. The locals shops were okay for the smaller tackle items but awfully limited gear wise where rods and reels were concerned meaning that anything niche needed sending away for. It was all quite a palava. 

The 57's were larger reels with longer more easy to grip handles. They were however a pig to get hold of back then.

Line and other bits and pieces: 

In the early years we used either 8 lb or 10 lb lines but once we learned to fish at longer ranges we then started using very light main line with a heavy shock leader. In some of the swims it was essential to be able to cast 130 yards or more to where many of the fish were. We used to go down as light as using a 6 lb main line using 18 lb shock leaders for the long range stuff in years when the weed wasn't too bad (or else we'd use 7 lb mainline) and never encountered any problems as we, unlike some, learned to tie proper knots and keep an eye out for line wear. I used Sylcast monofilament almost exclusively back then, mainly as you could buy it in 1000 yard spools and though slightly wiry, it did come off the spool nicely for long range casting and the wiriness meant it didn't chaff too much and wear on the gravel bars or whatever. It was just a very high quality and affordable line, it had to be, or else we'd have used something else. I also had many spare spools fitted with heavier line for the mid range stuff but you'd never need anything any heavier than 10 lb strain on Fordwich in any of the swims. There was no proper snag fishing. I'd always like to stretch my line and would also always put a light solution of washing up liquid treated water on it so as to help it sink and remove the drag. It was quite possible with a two and three quarter ounce leads to cast over 150 yards in favourable or even flat calm conditions and whilst some people might scoff at this I know it's right as we used to go practise casting at our local playing fields and measure the casts out. There were very few people at the time who could cast properly, and for the most part it was a would be a waste of time even if they could as very few people ever used a catapult to anywhere near its full potential. Baiting up was always a problem when you fished the Ritchies or the Mound swim. The lake is 200+ yards wide there and it was often the case that the further you could chuck it the more fish you'd catch. My method was to practise, practise and practise some more. We have two lots of huge playing fields nearby, so it was always easy to get a bit of casting practise in during those early years. There were inevitably days when you could cast further than you could bait up due to headwinds and on such occasions I'd drop one rod short amongst my freebie baits and the other as a single offering as far past them as I could get it. Common sense had to be applied and if at some point of the session the wind was favourable for long range baiting up then I'd pile in as much bait as I dared. If it wasn't, then I didn't ... it's not exactly rocket science is it, but I used to wince when I saw people dropping most of their free baits miles short or in a different postal code of where they were casting their hook baits. I used to like baiting an area as early as was possible after arrival, trying to keep the baits on rough lines, well as best as I could anyway? I used to envision a largish area of the lake bed being scattered loosely with baits and hoped that the Carp would just following these baited gravel bar lines up or down until they noticed your hook bait. The gravel bars were easy to find as the islands alongside the open water were just shallower gravel bars on top of which trees and bushes grew which showed the direction of the bats and were used as alignment.

Boats were not allowed on C&DAA waters at the time, so all you had to get any free baits out at range were those high pressure black window hunting style catapults which could propel a large hard boilie in excess of 130 yards in good conditions for such things. Any new catapult elastics had to be prepared before use by stretching the elastics and working on the leather slings to soften them up and get them pliable. This could be achieved by just playing around with them by hand or should you get a really thick type of leather even by biting it. The quality of every batch varied and cheap elastic had to be avoided like the plague. I was really hot on my catapult elastics (does it show?) and often worked on them till they were dead right but even then you'd need at least two or three catapults on the go at one time just to have one or two that were in peak condition when one inevitably snapped. Most people didn't understand all of this and suffered because of it. The baiting was never properly accurate even by applying my overly anal standards to the procedure and I was quite happy to get the baits within a thirty yard radius or line, chuck lots of boilies out there and get them scurrying around looking for them. Often was the time you'd catch a fish and see it pooping out your bait so it obviously worked.

These high powered Black Widow catapults were able to fire out medium/large sized boilies out to vast ranges once you got the knack of them and made your baits hard and heavy enough to fly out properly. It was important to keep them going in a straight line on the follow through after firing out a bait not only to aid with the accuracy but also to stop the pouch clattering your fingers which could hurt. After a while you'd never hit your hand, it just became second nature.  

The new anglers just don't know they are born where gear is concerned. When I first started fishing even things like torches were absolute rubbish and could never be trusted until the invent of the maglight and even they were utter pants by comparison with some of these new fangled L.E.D. lights available today. The batteries back in the day were beyond your wildest dream for awfulness, often you could see even newly fitted Ever Ready's dying within minutes of switching them on. Even once Duracell's hit the market the battery life wasn't enough for the power that the bulbs sucked out if them. They needed changing so often that a modern day angler would just not believe it at all. The early bivouacs were nasty, heavy, wax cotton jobs and we had a certain Mr Dave Barnes to thank when he designed the first ever (as far as I'm aware?) lightweight nylon bivvy's. There was no Kevin Nash stuff around back then, at least not in our part of planet earth. Barnes' bivvys folded up to half the size or less of the wax cotton things, weighed virtually nothing and also never leaked. They weren't as stable when used in gales but on every other count they were from a another planet by comparison.

Cameras:

Then we come to cameras and photos. Photography was a fairly expensive pastime back then compared with now and pretty much every photo you took was precious. The inbuilt camera light meters were often suspect and only those who knew what they were doing ever got any half reasonable photos. You'd have your heart in your mouth if you had to hand your camera to a stranger as inevitably the photo would be crooked or blurry with you in one corner with the fishes tail out of shot or something. These early cameras were also not self focusing, so you were at the mercy of the person behind the camera if he even knew how to focus the darn camera lens. The processing was also a joke. Back in the bad old days of films (or slide which was slightly superior) you'd be forced to fill the film up (you were always restricted to either 24 or 36 photos allowed on each film) and once the film was full, you'd then have to rewind it back into the metal cartridge, hoping beyond hope the film inside which was under pressure, didn't stretch of even snap, and then you were left with this small but precious, thin metallic object holding all of your precious Carp memories inside of it. Then this roll of film would need processing, as in printing onto photographic paper so as to make a photo. The heart in mouth moment came when you eventually got the photos back from the processor and often you'd find two or three photos missing, or just a plain black print showing no detail or a half and half photo with a pure white top or corner where some light had leaked in. I had one camera (an Olympus Trip) that I would hazard a guess that I never ever got a whole reel of photos back from. Eventually I annihilated it such was my rage at the vile machines inability to provide me with the 36 photos that I'd taken on that occasion, it paid with its life and good riddance!

The Olympus Trip ... my one was totally unreliable. There was a big TV campaign about these objects of hell at the time, a light hearted advert featuring David Bailey who endorsed this pile of tripe. It said on the advert 'As used by David Bailey' ... yeah, right. One of the world's top photographers uses one of these does he? The TV advert did its job ... it fooled me into buying one. 

After the properly early days we all bought better cameras (Canon SLR's) and I used to carry around two with me out of fear of some photograph disaster. My paranoia was well founded, as even these would let you down from time to time.

Canon AE1 Program. After Geoff bought one of these in 1983 I was so impressed with it as a bit of kit that I went and followed suit. The only competitor in this price range back them was the Olympus 0M1 which although having a better spot meter device was in every other way an inferior product. 

I then picked up one of these Canon AE1's secondhand to use as a backup. Similar (though older) to the AE1 Program, just a fully manual camera. Wow it's weird looking back at these old cameras, nicely weird I mean. 

The modern day post digital mob just wont realise just how fortunate you are. As I say, photography could be expensive, you'd have to pay a couple of quid for the film then another fiver for the processing. When you were earning less than 80 quid a week you had to factor all of this in and you couldn't afford to be willy nilly, taking photos of everything like we all do now. After problems occurred when sending off films through the post, we used to pay extra and get our films developed at Boots. You could then pay a little more than the usual flat rate and get them done within a one hour turnaround or just wait until they were done at their leisure. This usually meant you'd just pay the extra as it was just very, very VERY exciting to get a film full of Carp back from the processors even though you'd be on tenterhooks as you opened the cardboard envelope for that first look. Nine times out of ten you'd be disappointed with the results, the photos rarely reflected the image you had in your head of that day or that fish, and it wasn't as though you could experiment and take two dozen as the films held so very few images. I sound like an old fart here don't I? There's a good reason for that ... I am one.

I found this on-line, some original Heron bite alarms. Believe it or not they were on sale and they wanted £90 for them!!?? It can't have been for the purpose of fishing with them but more likely for some sadistic torture method? The grating sound of a Heron can make a man lose his mind in minutes. I'm not sure if I ever saw white Herons? I remember them coming in either green or black? One of the old alarms came in an army camo colour too, were they Herons? Or did old Gonzo just paint his camouflaged during a moment of tinkering and I have this image stuck in my memory? It does sound like the sort of thing that he would do?  

Cameras had other uses too, not just for smelly old Carp. Here we have a very young Kev Harding who made the mistake of falling asleep on our sofa after a few light ales in the local drinking establishment after a ruby murry. The photo was embellished somewhat by one of the kids toys. 

I wasn't beyond getting caught myself. Either Rich or Craig had snuck into my bivvy, nabbed my camera and taken this. I only found out when I got the photos back from the developers. 

Bite alarms:

Bite alarms came on leaps and bounds during my time. When I first started there were two bite alarms you could buy. Both were thoroughly awful but one was slightly less awful than the other. The alarms that I went for were called Heron Alarms, most people had them and everybody had many moments when they seriously considered throwing them into the lake. They were easily the most annoying items known to mankind since time in memorial. They saying goes it's the hope that gets you isn't it? Well the 'hope' in this case was that you always hoped your Heron alarms would actually do what it said on the box and alert you to a bite or stay quiet when you didn't. They rarely ever did. We all spent time tinkering with our Heron bite alarms, bending the antennae so they were more or less sensitive, spraying the innards with stuff to stop the water getting to them or sealing off the outside bit to keep them dry etc and they still always let us down ... always. You got to the stage after many months of persevering with these objects of hate, where you knew they were nothing if not utterly untrustworthy and you'd be as well to tie any cast out lines to your big toe to register a take rather than trust a Heron during a night when you needed any kip. Herons worked by putting your line around an antennae, a piece of sprung steel which when pressure was applied to it by the line tightening would create an electrical circuit, setting off a buzzer ... a horrible, stinking, grating, annoying BUZZER. It was a horrible enough sound even when it actually worked and registered a take, but so often it would happen that you'd be deep in kip and you'd hear the buzzer going off outside, you'd run outside into the mud in the dark, in your socks only to find ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAPPENING!! I well remember a comment made by my good mate Steve Horne who once uttered the wise words "wouldn't it be good if you could cause these objects pain" and this was spot on where Heron bite alarms were concerned. Any light breeze or damp would get them a'buzzing and then on occasion you'd get out of bed in the morning, finding your rod on the floor and they'd not let out so much a single bleep. We were fortunate that the age of the Heron bite alarm was short lived for our generation after some local bod invented the rather wonderful Optonic. We bought everything they had to offer, they were heaven sent surely?? I even splashed out on one of those super duper white four way boxes. I became bedazzled by it's vast array of four different coloured flashing L.E.D. lights, and it's deep space movie like tones ... it was loud too, and had extension cables meaning you could have it in your bivvy to glance at like some precious object. These too were rubbish as it turned out. The extension cables were too thin and didn't work after about two weeks and the box housing itself wasn't even waterproof, meaning that once the thin cables broke that I was forced to hide my 'precious object'  under a Tupperware box out near to the front rod rest. The divorce was galling ... finally it broke altogether and I had to bury it in the dustbin with the spent potato peelings and other general trash. A sad, sad day, impending love had turned to sadness then deep sorrow and rejection. Soon Delkim came along, then Geoff (who else, he had his uses) found this Brummy dude called Les who could super dooperise an Optonic by the use of witchcraft, an outlandishly new loudspeaker, and a cut out switch so the batteries didn't run out once a week. Genius it was, pure genius. Geoff was great at getting top quality gear, he always had his finger on the pulse. When we had the bait company up and running I remember him saying that some bloke he knew was able to make us some stainless steel rod rests. The other thing was that he'd give us them in exchange for bait. Now I cannot impress on you enough as to the astounding quality of these bank sticks, made from top quality stainless steel, totally indestructible, beautifully designed to utter perfection and what a joy to behold they were. Of all the fishing gear I ever owned those bank sticks and two/three way rod rests were by far the best quality thing of them all. I hate to think how much they would have cost if we had to buy these custom machined things now? Geoff was the best ever wheeler dealer that I ever met of course.

The old original Optonic set as they came out of the factory back then. I splashed out on a very rare item, by the looks of it as I can find no photo on Google of my large 4 way, 4 LED extension box at all? I bet it would be worth a bob or two after seeing some of the prices this ancient gear is going for? Some people will collect pretty much anything.

A serious upgrade on the original Optonic. I had a few of these Les Bamford conversions and they never gave me any problems, just brilliant they were. You'd send off your old Optonics and Les would send them back with a built in loudspeaker and some magic inner cut off switch gubbings that stopped the batteries wearing out. The odd thing is that mine were identical to these, even the 'ears' fitted so as to stop the rods getting blown off during gales? It's uncanny, even the metal tightening mechanism, another personal upgrade looks identical too. I found this image on-line. 

Whilst Googling around looking for Optonic images I then came across these. Now these look identical to what we used to refer to as Telkims which was a play on words as by this time a firm called Delkim did their own conversion of the Optonic and after this our mate from Richmond 'Tel' (or Terry Pethybridge) started getting hold of very similar things to these ... hence Tel-Kims. Now these are called Neville's but I just wonder whether or not the are the same thing that Tel used to get for us? I had quiet a few of them (they were cheap, even free in real terms being swapped for boilie mix) and although they looked like they'd been hammered together in an old garden shed they were ultra reliable and worked really well for bolt rig style Carp fishing. I still preferred my old Bamfords if I'm honest. I can't remember who it was that came up with the name Telkim but it was cracking name, it still makes me laugh now.

Hooks and Tinkering:

Tackle was limited back then but more than adequate. Hook technology made various leaps and bounds (thanks to chemically sharpening) during the 1980's and for most of the open water style fishing a Komatsu size 8 and 6 proved impressively strong for a smallish hook made from such a fine gauge wire. The shanks were quite short, but given by then we were mostly using braided hook links at that time, it was quite easy to falsely extend the shank by using superglue as a stiffener which helped with using the hooks for bolt rigs. The points were needle sharp meaning they could be used straight out of the bag, unlike many of the earlier hooks previously available which needed to be re-crowned with the use of a sharpening stone. If it sounds a bit 'cave man' then believe me it pretty much was. Virtually every bit of tackle you bought needed a bit of work done on it before being totally usable.

Also, it's probably worth mentioning here just how much of our gear we either made from scratch or were forced to tinker with in some way in those formative years? I was constantly tinkering, I quite liked it to be honest. I had that sort of mind. Dave Stewart was the most tinkeriest of them all ... he'd tinker with stuff till it worked, then re-tinker with it some more. He was out of control, he couldn't help himself. Tinkering with stuff was all part of the specimen hunter/Carp/Pike anglers game back then.

That's quite a low of pointless waffle about lots of old outdated fishing innit? I never said this blog would be interesting now did I?

Wait ... there's even more boredom on the horizon ...

Then we come to ... the Weather Forecasts.

Ah, the post digital age mob wont be able to even fathom things such as getting weather forecasts via Teletext or Ceefax will they? Ceefax and Teletext were the only 24 hour available mediums we were forced to use before the advent of the interweb and the home P.C. It was accessed on either the BBC or ITV (we only had four TV channels at the time) via the red button on your TV remote which had a few other varied coloured buttons which allowed clicking though a few different menu's. The graphics were square (about 2 pixels per square foot?) and the written content archaic, but it did allow you to find out about the up to date Football news, the daily TV guide and most relevant to this awfully dull and boring, overly nostalgic Blog, an up to date weather forecast and was therefore an essential. It cost nowt anyway, all the TV's at the time had both Teletext and Ceefax. Ceefax was the BBC's version wasn't it? ITV's the Teletext?  Or vice versa? Take yer pick. Cricky, the more of this stuff I write the older I feel.

Remember this ... Ceefax weather. Just the press of a red button away. 

It gave us most of our Football news too, there was all sorts on there. The top image tells a tale eh. Liverpool denied top spot by Bolton (who somehow drew 1 - 1 at Anfield on that day) whilst the bottom image actually tries to insinuate that Frank MacAvennie had scored more goals than Ian Rush. Now let's face facts here, that just isn't possible now is it and it must be a misprint. Perhaps Rushie had scored 108 goals for Liverpool that season and they left a one and a nought off the front of his total? Yeah, that must be it eh. I am so glad that I worked that out. All of this would be from 1985 or 86 as Lineker left the 'bitters' the old 'blues noses' for Barcelona in 87. 

And here one of the great older Teletxt/Ceefax pages ... 4 - 1 at Old Trafford. 

Baits

Our Carp baits fro 1979 were very low tech, mainly just Luncheon Meat, Sweetcorn and our top secret Big M's or in other words, Campbell's Meatballs. I caught my first ever Fordwich Carp on a Campbell's Meatball so there will always be a place in my heart for the humble Big M. 

By 1980 we did start experimenting with baits more and more and we ended up settling initially on using a paste bait. Our first ever paste consisted of ground Trout Pellets bounds with eggs and a sachet of gelatin before being smothered in a bottle of very weak solution of Rayners Rum Essence, which we rolled into inch sized balls, left them to dry out and that was it! Later on, I got all uber scientific and added a couple of spoonfuls of Wheat Gluten which I liked, as it made the bait a little more rubbery. Little did I understand just how indigestible that Wheat Gluten was and that I may have well have just gone out into the shed and squirted a few drops of rubber bike inner tube fixerate into my paste as it would have had much the same effect? We used the above as, well I'm not sure whether or not to admit to this, as a sort of Carp group known as the C.C.G., or the Cartiers Carp Group. Cartiers was the shop where our leader (hee hee) back then, Dave Stewart, used to work. The name C.C.G. was very tongue in cheek of course and we still to this day have an ironic chuckle to ourselves whenever the C.C.G. is mentioned. Anyhow, the inaugural C.C.G. was made up of seven members, Dave and Alex Stewart, Tony Philips, Mick Wilkinson, Richard Stubbings, Craig Reynolds and myself. When I think back to how exciting and hush hush this all was at the time, the start of the CCG, well it was like a scene out of a cold war spy novel as I remember it? There I was outside of my house waiting for the works van to pick me up, and I'd see a pre work Dave Stewart doing the same thing. I used to see him often back then, we lived only 500 yards apart and on this particular cold morning in early 1980, no doubt during the winter and he says to me ...

Dave: "How do you fancy joining up with Al, Mick, Tony and me and getting a bait together for Fordwich?"

Me: "What just me?"

Dave: "No you blithering idiot, you, Rich and Craig. We could get together, all use the same bait, do some pre baiting and we'll hammer them!"

Okay, there were no gobbledegook cloak and dagger code-words or chalk lines drawn on wall or bus shelters, but it did all feel a bit stealth and underhand. I later made mention of this to Craig and Richard who were part of our gang and they too were right up for it and a coalition was formed. The bait recipe would be kept a secret as that's how things were back in the day, well this is sort of how I remember it anyway? We'd meet in the Pub (The Flowing Bowl) across the road, or at Al's and I think the bait recipe was Dave's ... yeah, let's blame Dave eh! Anyhow, we made loads of this stuff and did a fair bit of pre baiting for what it was worth. No doubt the Tench and Bream had a field day? Soon it was impossible to buy any Rum Essence locally but as you could buy rose water I decided to go onto that instead later on in the year. I had to, as there was not one bottle of Rum Essence on any shop shelf for miles around. We used to buy it by the box load and I always have a chuckle to myself when I imagine the shop managers back in the day thinking "who on earth is buying all of this Rum Essence all of a sudden?"

Three of the four originators of the C.C.G. Dave Stewart (or Gonzo) and below Tony Philips and Alex, Dave's brother. I have no photos of Mick Wilkinson though Mick disappeared off the scene pretty much around the time that I started my Carp fishing. The top photos shows Dave with a big Fordwich Carp and the bottom one Tony and Al fishing for Pike on Westbere canal. 

Also, written in a pocket sized diary, I went on to find this. The entire C.C.G. catch from Fordwich for the year of 1980, just 27 Carp shared between all seven anglers. 

Bait 1982 onward ...

I stumbled across this 1982 Geoff Kemp bait 'pamphlet' in an old shoe box full of old fishing paraphernalia. The brown splodges are 35 year old rod varnish stains. Geoff and I drove up to Kempy's every now and again to buy our bait around this time and it was this that gave Geoff the idea to start up Premier Baits. I thought he was crackers when he first made mention of it to me but let's face it he was right. Kempy used to run his firm from a large shed in his back garden at the time. He must have been one of the first privateers to start selling good quality dry ingredients at that time? 

By the 1981/82 season were were trying everything, all sorts of stuff. Particles, pastes, occasionally even boilies. I even went as far as sending off for some packets of Duncan Kaye Slime but that was just horrible stuff and I can imagine Duncan having a sly chuckle to himself every time an order for this vile, horrid coloured glutenous powder arrived. In 1982 I then got hold of a list of high protein ingredients available from Geoff Kemp in Essex, and ended up sending off for a box-full of Casein, Gluten and Soya Isolate plus a few bottles of flavouring which I made into a paste and some boilies. I caught virtually nowt or at least very little on it, but at least things were headed in the right direction perhaps? 

Some of my early boilie recipes found amongst the many pages of my notepads and diaries. 

The baits for 1983 were all boilies by then, made up of various milk proteins and various bird foods, products I think I'd first started trying in 1982? I caught lots of Carp on this stuff so continued on and off with it into 1984, by which time I was making small gobstopper sized baits which I could catapult out over 100 yards into the lake as freebies. At some time or other (probably 1982/3?) I was also adding a bit of SMA, a type of high protein powdered Baby food which not only was a food source in itself but it also made the baits go all smooth, which was great help to the rather rough 100 mesh Casein we had then (no 200 mesh was available in those early days) and even rougher Sluis bird mix. An even more useful side effect was that it also made the baits go really hard too if left to dry. It came in a 1 litre paint sized can, it was quite expensive but I did really like the product. I was from time to time adding other things such as useless taste enhancers (including MSG) but also good stuff such as Liver Extract and Sesame Oil. By 1983/4 Geoff was firmly on the scene. Up till this time he'd been a professional butcher and had little proper free time to go proper fishing. He was always around, both at the lakes and in my upstairs sitting room where he'd sit demanding tea, chewing everything within arms reach and dribbling on my carpet. 

More very early Boilie recipes, these from 1982? 

For some reason we started the '84 season off going back to milk proteins which was just mad in retrospect, though by the late summer/autumn time I was back on the bird food/milk proteins again which lasted until this bloke showed up in 1983/4 or 1985? His name was Ian Brown, a man who had previously been fishing in the Colne Valley and had recently moved down into Kent. On occasion we used to stay in his flat after nights out, but for the life of me I can't remember where on earth it was? On the outskirts of Canterbury somewhere, in the sticks but that's about all I can bring to mind? Now Ian absolutely murdered the place, bashed it up good and proper, almost emptying the lake and he was using fish-meals. Now we had tried fish-meals in the past but never really used them properly. 

The top mix would have been similar to the early 84 mix we started that season with. We didn't really like using semolina but it was useful being cheap (as we were skint) and it not only helped the baits to roll up nicely but also was nice a dense for long range catapulting. You had to think about density when properly long range fishing, stuff like casein caseinate was a no no for such things as it was too light and fluffy and even lactalbumin had to be used sparingly. Lactalbumin did help the mix to be sticky and not dry out but our main reason back then was the thinking that it proved a more balanced amino acid profile, though whether this actually mattered or not in retrospect is debatable? 

By 1986 we hit the baity jackpot. Geoff had a brainwave and mixed the fish-meals with a rough form of my milk protein/bird food combo, we added glugs of fish oil and had at last solved the age old problem of looking for a killer bait. We caught loads of fish. 

Although the above was a mix for another lake, in essence if you take the Robin Red out then this would pretty much be the bare bones of the 1986 - 1987 mixes we used on Fordwich. Why I even put Robin Red in this mix in 1989 beats me as I hated the stuff and at the time I had access to any free ingredients that I wanted? I must have just been at work on that day and on a whim knocked up a few bags of the above in preparation for a long stint at College Reservoir down in Cornwall. It may also have been that I already had a lot of plain brown fish-meals already prepared but wanted two different baits? If so why then did I just not stick some red colouring into one mix to help differentiate it from the other? Answers on a postcard please. 

The method used was to pick a spot and just bait it up and sit on it. Keep the bait going in and sooner or later if you sat it out for long enough, then a group of Carp would find it and you could get many Carps! I think on a couple of separate days I landed 7 Carp each time, and if memory serves correct had TEN runs in one 24 hour period during one of the sessions off the Killick Point. It was just mad. To think that in the whole season of 1981/82 I only caught 7 Carp and here I was getting a whole seasons worth in one day. It wasn't always like this of course, you'd often have to wait around twiddling your thumbs for days on end or even blank during shorter sessions when the fish weren't feeding or you were in the wrong spot and couldn't or were too lazy to move.

By the later 1980's we had the bait firm up and running so had access to huge sacks of free baits for ever more. Those early days of getting PB up and running were just great fun as was going to work which was just a laugh a minute working with Geoff, Bamber, Brian 'dyes his hair'  Allen et al. We had an indoor cricket pitch inside the bait factory and at some point had the floor set up like a rock gig, a 100 watt Marshall, 4 x 12 cabs, Gibson Les Paul, Strats etc etc. I wonder what the visiting public made of it all? I also used to have after hours jam sessions in there with a full unpadded drum kit on the go so you can only imagine how loud it got when four or five of us were at it. In time some of the other Carp anglers used to bring their guitars in. Dave Kemp had the best stuff including a superb 1970's Gibson Explorer that not only sounded wonderful but had one of the best necks that I ever felt, far better than my old Les Paul's anyway. What days they were. Another silly thing happened once word got out that I played guitar. I then got a phone call off Lee Jackson who was trying to set up a band to play on stage for the newly formed Carp conventions back then. Apparently he'd just started playing the Bass and was in need of a guitarist and had this madcap idea of having a Carp band. Let's face it he was crackers. I declined the gig ... why? For the good of musical taste that's why. My writing thing pretty much came about due to PB. The year before we wrote the 91/92 catalogue in the above image, we were forced to write out a products list to let word out and advertise our product. We decided to go the full on glossy catalogue route and the job of writing it pretty much fell to me as it worked out. I was no good at the organisational/business side of things, that was Geoff's domain, I was just a Carp angler with a few ideas and opinions. I was also better at cricket and playing guitar than the others too. Unfortunately I don't have a copy of the original 1990 Premier Baits Catalogue, I'd love to see one again.

The 1991 Catalogue did get a bit mad at times. Our scathing though well meaning sledgehammer wit came very much to the fore and stuff like the above got included amongst what went on to became a 44 page poke in the eye at overly stuffy, plastic pseudo intellectual, blind you with science, business minded selling of Carp bait. We were just so very, very, very down to earth and wanted people to know this. I say this was a catalogue but I well remember well when Bamber proof read the scribble we'd set forth for inclusion prior to sending it off to the printers. After chuckling away to himself in semi disbelief he then came out with in conclusion "I don't know about this being a Catalogue, it's more of a Comic!!" To which I replied in a half a jiffy, "that's a very good idea Bamber, I'll change the name from 'Premier Baits Catalogue 1991' to 'Premier Baits Comic 1991'. These days of Premier Baits was all a bit like Top Gear was once Clarkson got his way. We just laughed our way through the whole thing. 

And now its time for Imaginary question time? Did the birds on Fordwich eat your bait?

I'm so glad you asked that imaginary reader. If Frank Zappa can write Imaginary guitar solos then I can have imaginary readers too! This is my world remember. Okay, a tenuous link if ever there was one but keep it to yourself if you noticed the disjointed nature of the above. After fishing the lakes at Yateley where the Tufted Ducks, Coots, Moorhens, Invisible Auks etc would drive you insane, the following occurred to me. Why? Who knows?

Birds eating your baits were rarely a problem on Fordwich. We did get periods where a platoon of Black-headed Gulls would be attracted to the small balls of bait flying out onto and into the lake and they might grab one or two in mid air but the diving birds such as Moorhens, Coots, Tufted Ducks etc that would drive you mad on some other pits just weren't too problematical on Fordwich. Drastic measures were forced to shoo away diving birds on other pits, Richie MacDonald used to use a sawn off shotgun on the Copse at Yateley. Not that he loaded it, he just let it off and the bang did the trick as every Tufted Duck took to the sky. I found this out after he let the darn thing off two feet from my right ear hole and I was deaf in one ear for ages afterwards. The main problem that we had at Fordwich were as minor as occasional Swans swimming through your line between the rod tip and the lake, but that was about it. Tench and Bream were always a problem, an occupational hazard. The worst things were Eels as the lake was full of them. I also once caught a four/five pound Jack on a boilie fished off the Ritchies which was novel.