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.