PAGE FOUR
The fish
It always amazed me how often some particular fish got caught a lot whereas others just didn't very often? Some fish no doubt are just more wary, or loiter in more out of reach areas of the lake perhaps but it's hard to fathom what the real reason is? Perhaps you'd have to be a Carp to know the real answer? There were always those who would like to hypothesise and then allow what amounted to little more than educated guesses to became fact, but I never allow myself to think like this. People had theories about things like why fish leaped out of the water or why certain Carp hung around together or preferred certain ares of the lake. My way of dealing with this was to take it on board but never really treat things as proven fact. We all think differently of course, it's one of the things that separate us from the animal kingdom.
I was just one of those sorts of dudes who wanted to know all of the fish back then something that most people weren't too bothered about or not to the same extent as me anyway. Being a bit overly anal about such things I spent many, many hours studying scale patterns or perusing other peoples photos so as to get a rough idea inside my own head just how many Carp I was up against. I must have deeply ingrained all of this into my brain as even though I'd not once looked at my old photos in perhaps two and a half decades or more but the second I set eyes on the fish in the photos and 'bang' I remembered them like you might looking back at some old holiday photos or family get together's of old. I swear to you looking at those old photos unlocked all sorts of memories - the smell of the baits, the fish themselves, my stinky weigh sling and landing net, the smell of the lake, the mud ... everything. The human brain is a wonderful thing even mine which is both small and doesn't always work very well.
I realise that it's a bit micky mouse to give fish names, however descriptive or inventive they may be. Also that there were some that didn't like this approach and I get that, but for me it did actually serve a purpose. At least this helped us to discuss certain fish as well allowing me to know that I'd caught or not caught what would become my personal target fish. Other benefits included allowing me (or us) to gauge very roughly certain things like I touched upon in the last paragraph as well as getting another 'very' rough idea of how many fish were in the lake. By 1986 this sort of approach allowed me to realise that all of my target Carp had been banked, previously seen, mentally noted, needed, lusted over, enticed, hooked and netted before being duly ticked off during my eight year spell on the Lake and I wouldn't have known any of this had I not taken so much time learning about my quarry. It was all part of the motivation process at the time, another positive aspect to all those hours learning the fish. It took me many years to bag the singularly big Fordwich fish back then, a fish named Charlie which I finally slid my landing net under in September of 1986. Rather typically I then caught her again in October of '86 though this didn't worry me as recaptures never really bothered me too much. To me it was like running into an old friend.
My feelings toward these fish was perhaps a little hypocritical when I look back at it, I mean I was feeding them so as to stick a hook inside their mouth and then haul them in against their will onto the bank wasn't I? This leads on nicely to another subject, as in the treatment of the fish. By the middle 1980's the baits and rigs used to catch Carp were common knowledge, the Carp became easier and easier to catch and therefore were even getting caught by inexperienced anglers who didn't really understand the ethics of fishing? You'd see these newcomer Carp anglers hauling in fish like they were Cod Fishing off a boat and then once landed they had no idea of how to handle even a middle sized Carp on the bank. They had no mats as decent mats weren't even thought about or available and at times it was galling to us onlookers, especially me as someone who had got to know all of these fish. One of the worst things were people not understanding how to tie knots, or not using sufficient strength shock leaders due to having a complete non understanding as to the mechanics of such things. It was just awful, they'd often cast out, you'd hear a loud 'crack' and a boilie on a tethered bolt rig would fly 100 yards out into the lake. Not realising the stupidity of their actions, the same person would then tie on another rig and go through the whole process again. These people really ought not to have been allowed to fish for Carp but what could you do? Often times certain swims would progressively start getting full of line, something that never happened in the old days in the open water and sometimes fish would get caught with hooks in them and as time wore on, torn mouths and fins. This was mostly down to these newcomers. Of course Carp fishing had just became too attractive to ignore for a new angler as there was a bit of glamour about it back then perhaps? In our day you felt you'd have to serve some sort of fishy apprenticeship and build up to Carping. No more was this the case. In the end it was this more than anything that forced me to have a re-think and eventually give up fishing altogether. To see a fish you'd seen getting caught every now and again for many years showing up with half a tail and a parrot mouth was more than I could deal with. I'm not insinuating that Angling is wrong, I'm just saying that personally I just could no longer justify it. What I was seeing was pure carnage from time to time and some of these people just didn't see the wrong in it and failed to learn by their errors. Okay, we've all had accidents with fish, but at least we'd chastise ourselves on some level and do our level best to not make the same mistake again. Some just didn't get it at all and it was the fish that suffered.
My feelings toward these fish was perhaps a little hypocritical when I look back at it, I mean I was feeding them so as to stick a hook inside their mouth and then haul them in against their will onto the bank wasn't I? This leads on nicely to another subject, as in the treatment of the fish. By the middle 1980's the baits and rigs used to catch Carp were common knowledge, the Carp became easier and easier to catch and therefore were even getting caught by inexperienced anglers who didn't really understand the ethics of fishing? You'd see these newcomer Carp anglers hauling in fish like they were Cod Fishing off a boat and then once landed they had no idea of how to handle even a middle sized Carp on the bank. They had no mats as decent mats weren't even thought about or available and at times it was galling to us onlookers, especially me as someone who had got to know all of these fish. One of the worst things were people not understanding how to tie knots, or not using sufficient strength shock leaders due to having a complete non understanding as to the mechanics of such things. It was just awful, they'd often cast out, you'd hear a loud 'crack' and a boilie on a tethered bolt rig would fly 100 yards out into the lake. Not realising the stupidity of their actions, the same person would then tie on another rig and go through the whole process again. These people really ought not to have been allowed to fish for Carp but what could you do? Often times certain swims would progressively start getting full of line, something that never happened in the old days in the open water and sometimes fish would get caught with hooks in them and as time wore on, torn mouths and fins. This was mostly down to these newcomers. Of course Carp fishing had just became too attractive to ignore for a new angler as there was a bit of glamour about it back then perhaps? In our day you felt you'd have to serve some sort of fishy apprenticeship and build up to Carping. No more was this the case. In the end it was this more than anything that forced me to have a re-think and eventually give up fishing altogether. To see a fish you'd seen getting caught every now and again for many years showing up with half a tail and a parrot mouth was more than I could deal with. I'm not insinuating that Angling is wrong, I'm just saying that personally I just could no longer justify it. What I was seeing was pure carnage from time to time and some of these people just didn't see the wrong in it and failed to learn by their errors. Okay, we've all had accidents with fish, but at least we'd chastise ourselves on some level and do our level best to not make the same mistake again. Some just didn't get it at all and it was the fish that suffered.
Another irritation was a period where people, as in newer, younger Carp anglers, messed around with the fish. It became a bit of a trend for a time. To explain, some the Carp in Fordwich were hard fighting fish and it was not uncommon to play a fish for twenty minutes, even half an hour or more. The balancing act between over forcing a fish in and over playing one came to light after I heard word that someone had had a Carp on for over an hour before netting it. Fordwich was an open sort of water and you could let a fish chug around in many of the swims, even though many of the battles continued in the margins but over an Hour? A little later on I actually witnessed what was going on. I then saw one of the younger lads, surrounded by his mates who were keeping him up to date with how long he'd been playing this particular fish. The angler who had the fish on, was at the time hardly putting a bend in his rod and he was doing this just for the bragging rights of being able to get his ego stroked by saying how long the fight had been going on. It was just surreal. I did have a light word with this individual, not that it made much difference, and did so too every time one his mates pipped up how long so and so had had a fish fight for. Don't get me wrong, sometimes you couldn't help but have a fish on for a goodly while and even myself I have on occasion been forced to play a fish for well over half an hour even though the object of the exercise was to get the said fish into the net as soon as was possible without tearing the hook out, not for the bragging rights over a pint later on just to reel off "Oh, that Carp I caught today fought me for an hour and twenty minutes" or whatever. There was just no respect given towards the fish by some people. I was no angel of course but at least I used to think about things a bit more than these types.
Back to the naming of the fish, well the main protagonists were Me and Ian Brown. When I first started to fish the Lake as far as I'm aware only two of the fish were named, a mid double Common named Popeye due to it having two bulging eyes and the biggest fish in the lake, the large grey Italian mirror (written about previously) sporting two large scales on its flank known as Charlie. Now this takes me back to my 'It always amazed me how often some fish got caught whereas others just didn't?' line at the start of this section about the Fordwich Carp. Now Popeye was a fish that would just swim round the lake, munching everyone's baits and continually getting caught. Pretty much all of us that caught a fair number of Carp caught Popeye, some of us more than once. In fact during a six night stint in the Trees swim at the first week of the season in 1984, I caught Popeye one day then two days later caught it again! I refer to the fish as 'it', I am reasonably certain that taking the fishes shape into account that Popeye was in fact a female Carp. I would hazard a guess that sometimes this fish might get caught half a dozen plus to ten times annually? We used to have long (boring) chats about Popeye, I mean was she just stupid or was she just very clever? To add meat to the bones of the debate Popeye never ever fought very hard and I remember putting forth a half hearted theory that I could imagine Popeye just looking at getting hooked as an occupational hazard? The payback was a steady supply of freebaits of many forms. The lack of fight after getting hooked yet again just indicated an 'oh well, here we go again' scenario in the Carps mind? Okay, I'm making light of it but who knows? Conversely, the big fish Charlie rarely got caught and I well remember one time when I thought she may have bitten the dust? From time to time you would hear about a dead Carp getting seen and on one occasion I remember such a report coinciding with Charlie either not getting caught or us not hearing about her getting caught for a whole year. Then, in 1986 I believe, she went berserk and got caught four or five times which was just plain odd for her? In time I got to know scores of the Carp present in the lake and instantly recognised them after the merest of glimpses. Some fish such as the Hog, a black mirror sporting huge scales along both shoulders was an easy one to identify whereas some such as Old Faithful were far more subtle and easily overlooked, well, not to me you understand, to others. This part of the fishing always tickled my fancy, just another perk of the job.
From here onward I'm unsure for now how to set the rest of this section about the fish out? I think that what I may do is to set the fish out in some sort of loose order assigning each separate Carp a number next to the accompanying photo which might help in the future if I get any feedback about any particular fish? The numbering system might help to make things easier for us all to know which specific Fish we are referring to. I am going to set them out as a gallery in chronological order as to the date of capture which will only be broken as I will bunch specific individual fish together for weight/growth comparison. As I wrote earlier, I think the timeline will be easier to follow if I do it in this fashion? The proof of the pudding will be in the pie and if the pie is no good then I'll have to think up another strategy and set them out differently? For all I know I may get no feedback at all? Time will tell.
One last thing about the gallery, I don't have photos of every Carp I caught from Fordwich. I can find very few from 1983 and almost and entire years worth from 1985 are missing. Another thing is that it'll be pointless to post photos of the myriad of small and mid to upper double figure Common Carp I caught, probably numbering around 30 or so different fish. I will add photos of the very few Common's that had any obvious distinguishing marks, but this will be just a mere handful, so if you scroll down past the pages of Mirror carp then you'll see the obviously marked commons at the end of page 8. All in all it looks like I caught short of 100 different Mirror Carp out of Fordwich but I did catch some of them on numerous occasions, some five or six times or more, I think I caught Old Faithful seven or eight times?
So ... here goes:
So ... here goes:
9 lb 11 oz, September 1979. My first ever Fordwich Carp taken on a Campbells Meatball and here being loving admired by (right to left) Stewart Coly, Craig Reynolds and a baby Chod. Even though this was an obviously marked fish I never knowingly ever saw it again. It also wasn't of the usual Italian strain, the dominate type in Fordwich at the time.
Carp number 2:
More awful photos again I'm afraid. This fish of 11 lb 10 oz was in fact Carp number 3 but unfortunately I have no photos of number 2, an 11 lb leather, caught the previous night. I enticed this more typical Italian strain of Carp on a massive string of Sweetcorn from the same swim the week after fish number 1. Once again I have no clue whether or not this was ever a known fish due to the photos being of such an appalling quality, though looking at its hoover type mouth it did cross my mind that it may be Hotlips, an upper double to low twenty pound fish that showed up irregularly during the middle 1980's? I did some on screen comparisons and think that in all probability it isn't Hotlips but I couldn't be absolutely certain. The gear in the background isn't mine, I took the fish down to the next swim for the photo into my mate Richard Stubbings swim, so all that layer of hessian, the rods and the old pram frame that he used to lug his gear around in were Rich's.
Carp number 3: Old Faithful;
13 lbs, Reeds, June 1980.
18 lb 12 oz, the Spit, October 1982.
17 lb 4 oz, the Spit, September 1984.
17 lb 1 oz, the Ritchies, September 1984. Photo taken in the Little Ritchies.
19 lb 2 oz, the Ritchies, July 1986.
19 lb 2 oz, the Ritchies, July 1987.
One of the most caught of all the Fordwich fish it became known as Old Faithful, one of my rather soppy names I'm afraid. It did used to dip into the low twenties on occasion and from what I saw of it back then by 1986/7 it would yo-yo between about 18 and 22 pounds. A reasonably nondescript looking Carp, it was always the same colour brown with obviously rounded off tail fin corners.
Carp number 4:
15 lbs, The Easterns, July 1980.
A PB for me at the time. I just love that facial expression, I was just so uncomfortable in front of the camera back then. I was still to develop my overly casual 'it's just another Carp' glance down at the fish or my similarly fake hard man stare straight back at the camera lens. Feel free to laugh as I would.
19 lb 12 oz, the Corner, June 1984.
25 lb 4 oz, the Baldwin, October 1986.
Another Carp you'd see now and again back then though never all that frequently.
Carp number 5:
12 lb 13 oz, the Eastern, August 1980.
12 lb 14 oz, the Deeps, August 1982.
This is a fish that I think I caught at least once or twice again but can't find the photos. I'd see it every now and again and immediately recognise the fish when other people caught it and it never appeared to put on or lose too much weight. We never used mats back in those days which is pretty bad an oversight looking back? We'd just head for the grassiest of areas and then pile all of our sacks or whatever under the fish back then. I see one of my old cork handled Rod Hutchinson rods there which were an enormous enhancement on the mid to long range carping scene back then. I think the hand and knee belong to my old mate Steve Horne?
Carp number 6:
13 lb 12 oz, the Eastern, August 1980.
An unknown fish though being a typical looking Mirror of the day it may well just have been overlooked?
Carp number 7:
16 lbs, the Barnes, August 1980.
Another PB, this fish was one that was rarely ever seen. It's a properly obvious looking too taking into account those large tail end plate scales.
Carp number 8:
11 lbs, the Ritchies, June 1981. Dig those rock star sideburns eh?
A rather unusually scaly fish for the the period of time before all the heavily scaled stockies were put into the lake years later on.
Carp number 9: Muscles;
20 lb 14 oz, the Barnes, July 1981.
My first encounter with Muscles and my first ever twenty pound plus Carp, so what's with the mishog style 'I catch 'em like this all the time' look back at the camera about eh? That's not my bivvy even though it's a ringer for one I used one or two seasons prior. I wonder if I sold it to Rich as from memory I think we were both fishing the same swim at the time?
24 lb 10 oz, the Spit, September 1984.
21 lb 6 oz, the Ritchies, July 1986. The old thing's looking awfully thin here. It weighed in at 26 lb later that same year.
Ian Brown named this fish Muscles which was rather fitting as it always gave a good account of itself. This was one of my favourite Carp, it had a huge protruding white mouth and lips and of course it was also my first ever Fordwich twenty pound Carp back in the day. Although it was at its best when I caught it in 1984, this was also one of the most frustrating sessions for me. I used to do a bit of labouring work at the time and as we were near to the end of the job (working on the roads building some duel carriageway) I'd cadged a week off to go fishing. On arriving at the lake a medium sized SW breeze was chugging down the lake, it was overcast, a low pressure system in command and I ended up dragging all my gear down to the Spit where to cut a long story short the water was full of Carp. In that first night I could hear fish lunking out, I had 6 takes landing 4 (a 12 lb, a 17 lb, a 21 lb and this 24 lb) and was obviously in for an absolute killing when I saw this familiar figure approaching. It was my old man who had news that I was needed at work, so after landing plumb on top of a swim full of feeding Carp, after less than 24 hours of fishing, I then had to pack all of my gear away and go home. It was infuriating to me at the time.
Carp number 10:
5 lb 5 oz, the Trees, July 1982.
One of a handful of small Italian mirrors stocked perhaps the year prior? It had some sort of fin rot and I don't think I ever saw this fish ever again? Of note in the background is my rather ad hoc weighing sling (or large heavy gauge polythene laundry bag) plus leaning against my bivvy is a Dave Stewart made throwing stick. Notice it's been painted in matt black paint (by Dave) for stealth throwing.
Carp number 11:
14 lb 2 oz, Killick Point, September 1982.
14 lb 12 oz, the Ritchies, September 1984.
14 lb 14 oz, the Ritchies, July 1987.
Another fish I'd see often over the years which always stood out due to its thin shape, banana shape, down turned head and crescent half moon scale down by the tail fin. This one used to yo-yo between 14 and 16 pounds, perhaps a little more?
Carp number 12:
16 lb 10 oz, Killick Point, November 1982.
17 lb 4 oz, Killick Point, August 1984.
18 lbs, the Ritchies, September 1984.
17 lb 1 oz, the Mungs, July 1986.
Another typical Fordwich mirror which graced my net on at least four occasions.
Carp number 13: Voodoo mask.
15 lb 6 oz, the Trees, March 1983.
15 lb 9 oz, Corner Swim, October 1983. Note those African mask shaped scale patterns.
... and here with a 16 lb Common showing the opposite side to the Voodoo mask flank.
Another of the original stock of long lean fish, this one I named Voodoo Mask due to the scale pattern on its right flank looking a bit like those old African masks you see in the museums over here. Okay, the Voodoo thing is inaccurate (Haiti isn't in Africa) but those scales do have that sort of vibe. Well, to my eye they do?
Carp number 14:
19 lb 4 oz, Killick Point, March 1983.
20 lbs 2 oz, the Ritchies, September 1984. Showing both sides here.
Another of those typical Fordwich Mirrors.
Carp number 15:
25 lb 15 oz, the Little Ritchies, September 1983.
A PB Carp for me at the time. I did see this one again at sometime, even though I didn't catch the fish myself again. That long white scar above the lateral line in the middle of the fish was always there and those tiny fins might be a good indicator. This would have been one of the three or four largest Carp in the lake at the time.
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