win
a french holiday to etang de la carpe d’or worth £913.60
ISSUE 318 MARCH 2017
ISSUE 318 / MAR 2017 / MONTHLY £4.75
carpworldmagazine.com
GREG ELLIS
GETTING TO GRIPS WITH
BRITAIN’S BIGGEST CARP-ANGLING MAGAZINE
KINGSMEAD
THIS ISSUE
carpworldmagazine.com
INTERNATIONAL CARPER
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C A R P I N G A L L E G E D LY
PAUL FORWARD
Our very own Bill Cotton takes a wry look at our carping world
An awesome guide to fishing with braided main lines in The F Word
THE LATEST NEWS AND FEATURES FROM AROUND THE GLOBE 17/02/2017 15:58
C O N T E NTS The Carpworld Contents / Issue 318 / MARCH 2017
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Trapping Otters – Part Two Mark Walsingham Mark Walsingham takes us through the legal trapping of otters and gives us the details of how the whole procedure is undertaken, as well as the lengthy process you may need to go through to protect your fishery.
43 ON THE COVER: Greg ellis with a stunning kingsmead mirror.
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Editor’s Comments This month, Steve talks about his most recent angling adventures, although not in the pursuit of carp. He also talks about the Carpin’ On show as well as touching on conversations he’s had with some distraught anglers on the subject of otters.
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Gazette All the news and views from around the carp-angling scene to keep you up to date with what’s going on.
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An Invitation To The Whitehouse Garry Carlton Cygnet-backed angler Garry Carlton takes us back 10 years, back to a time when all was kept quiet, and this prolific home of the giants was not even on the radar of most carp anglers due to the strict no-publicity rule.
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A Very British Adventure Tommy De Cleen Fascinated by carp fishing in the UK, long-time Carpworld friend, Tommy De Cleen, once more gives his view on travelling from Belgium to fish here in the UK.
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Letter To A Small Island – Part Two Simon Mansbridge Last month, Simon wrote about what he believes are the three most significant factors to consistently catch carp, and the importance of prioritising them in the right order: location, bait, and finally, presentation. This month he concentrates on location. 4
Dynamite Competition We’ve teamed up with Dynamite Baits to celebrate the launch of their new Complex-T bait to offer you the chance to win one of four Terry Hearn bait packages worth a combined £401.60.
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Carping Allegedly Bill Cottam Bill’s back with his Carping Allegedly piece and keeps you up to date with the latest goings on in his life, as well as taking a trip down memory lane.
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Think Tank During the warmer months when carp are more active we pay a lot of attention to the air pressure, but do you think it affects the feeding patterns in winter as much as it does in summer? We asked our panel of experts for their opinions.
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RigWorld featuring Mike Kavanagh This month, Mike looks at the new Korda Inline Lead Safety System and Avid Carp’s new tungsten rig drops. There’s also Rig Talk with successful angler Dave Springall.
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Kingsmead Chaos Greg Ellis After a successful campaign on the neighbouring Horton, Greg decided to move on to Kingsmead and was off to a flying start. Here’s the first instalment of his epic season.
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Chilled Out Ian Chillcott After a fairly carpless winter, Chilly talks about some of the recent events he’s attended while promoting his new book, as well as recalling a very successful time fishing through some very difficult times during the winter.
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BaitWorld featuring Joe Turnbull This month, Joe has been checking out some of the latest baits to hit the market from Spectrum Baits and Beechwood Baits. There’s also more from Dynamite Baits as we check out the Complex-T range as well as Brtish Aqua Feeds and Bait-Tech.
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The Long Linear And The Strange Case Of The Disappearing Socks Matt Eaton Matt reveals the full story behind his second season on the very tricky White Swan, and how he eventually managed to slip the awesome Long Linear into his net.
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Ask The Experts This month, our panel of experts answer questions on location, and whether you should still target the clear spots, as well as how deep you should fish your Zigs and how to tie a rig that won’t tangle for that perfect presentation. There’s also £250 worth of Mainline Bait to be won.
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Lac d’Or Competition It’s the perfect time to be booking a fishing holiday for later this year, so here’s your chance to win an all-inclusive trip for two to Etang de la Carpe d’Or, worth £913.60.
Northern Gold Paul Mallinson After five years of titanic effort, Paul finally managed to catch his target fish, an awesome Lincolnshire 40lb+ common, one of only 14 residents in this ultra-difficult pit. Read his amazing story.
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The F Word Paul Forward Apart from when fishing abroad, or for spod and marker work, not many anglers fish with braid as a reel line. Paul reveals why he believes that it’s an awesome material which has changed his fishing forever.
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Carpworld F e b r uary 2017
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F: facebook.com/CarpworldMagazine / T: @CarpworldMag
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Pecky’s Progress Darrell Peck This month, Darrell explains just how hard it is to catch a carp when everything, including the weather, conspires against you.
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TackleWorld In this month’s TackleWorld, we check out the all-new Nash Pursuit rods which perform superbly; there’s also a look at the new hardware range from Cygnet and tackle from JRC, NGT and Imperial Fishing.
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Still Carping On Tim Paisley Tim shares some of his own, and others’, opinions on bait. He also talks about the latest additions to the Hall of Fame and the nomination and selection process behind it. He also touches on the latest from the PAG and other events on the carp-fishing calendar.
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I N I N TER N AT I ONAL C ARP ER I n E ch o e s th is mo nth, the r e a r e s o me ve ry i m pr e ssi v e captur e s fr o m a r o und the gl o b e , i n clu d in g, F r anc e , S pa in, Ge r ma ny a nd Tha il a nd. To ny Dav ie s- Patr ic k is b ac k fo r his fo ur th ins ta l me nt o f A lpin e G i a n ts, whe r e he ta r ge ts a hid d e n po o l w i th w e e dy ma r gins a nd ma ny s nags. We ’ve a l s o go t Sim o n Cr o w, w ho r e c a l l s a r e c e nt tr ip to Fr a nc e w h e r e h e to ok a l a s t- minute tr ip to the O r ie nt f o r th r e e days. Ge r ma n a ngl e r To b ia s tac kl e s a tr u ly str a n g e l a ke , whe r e e ac h winte r the wate r d i sa ppe a r s a nd a l l the c a r p s e e k s a nc tua ry in th e sn ag gy r ive r b e d whic h c a n o nly b e ac c e s s e d w h e n th e te m pe r atur e is we l l b e l o w ze r o.
149 155 Echoes
One Rod On The Orient Simon Crow
161
Nomads Tobias Steinbruck
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Alpine Giants - Part 4 Tony Davies-Patrick
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F EATURE
TOMMY DE CLEEN
A VERY BRITISH ADVENTURE
Long-time Carpworld friend, Tommy De Cleen, once more gives his view on travelling from Belgium to fish here in the UK.
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F EA T UR E
ABOVE: Sunrise at the Quarry. RIGHT: A map of the Quarry. BELOW: Vince with a common stalked from the Quarry margins in May.
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ago, and now I’ve got the UK bug. It’s not easy, like going to France and catching hippo after hippo, from a commercial fishery stocked to the brim. OK, we all like to catch big fish, and so do I, but not in a manner of run after run. Catching needs to be a challenge. If it’s too easy it gets very boring, and that’s why I set myself tests that aren’t that easy. Fishing on the big canals in Belgium is a challenge, and so is fishing in the UK on lakes like the Quarry, a very busy day ticket lake with a head of around 270 fish. They are a mix of original fish from when the Quarry was a syndicate, and new fish which were stocked in the last few years; all fantastic-looking fish. I blanked on my first session there in late-autumn 2014, and always wanted to fish it again, so plans were made to return. After a walk around the place in 2015,
y love and fascination of fishing in the UK, and the urge to catch carp on this island where it all started, has grown. It is where modern-day carp angling was born, so for me it’s back to my roots. I always utilise some of the English-style of fishing over here in Belgium, and other places I have been. The English way has always been kind to me, and I’ve caught a lot of fish along the way. When I say the English way, I mean rig-wise, observation (watercraft), fishing in the margins, wrapping, and clipping, feeling the bottom, using a marker, and all the other tricks that have made me a better angler. So, fishing in the UK was the next step, and I did the odd trip years with my mate Peter van der Star from Holland (when we fished at Ladywell), we decided that we would do a session in 2016. Man, did I look forward to that trip, with a fantastic stock of real stunners and the chance of a UK 30, or even a 40. I was very excited. After a lot of chatting to Peter and Ben Lofting, the owner of Cleverely Fisheries and the Quarry, Ben told me that May was a very good time, but Peter couldn’t take a week off because he was on a very big project at the time. He said I should still go, but I had to go with someone else because I don’t drive. I started to ask around, and Vincent, who is a member of the Gardner Tackle Team Benelux, fancied it. The plan was to fish for a week in May. We would sail on 6th May to fish till the 15th May, and to say I was looking forward to this trip is an understatment! It couldn’t come quick enough and the time passed slowly, but I did some fishing, or must I
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F EATURE
MARK WALSINGHAM
TRAPPING
OTTERS
In the second part of his piece about the legal trapping of otters, Mark gets down to the detail of how this is undertaken, and the lengthy process you may need to go to in order to protect your fishery
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F EA T UR E
ABOVE: Finding and studying signs of otter presence and predation. TOP RIGHT: An otter slide into a weir pool. There were prints and spraints on the large rock. INSET: Typical pad marks in sand, which was laid to detect the presence of an otter. Otter tracks have five toes that arch around the front of a large pad. On occasion, claw marks and webbing may also be present. Sometimes, only four toes may be visible. RIGHT: Types of spraint – faeces containing food items, and the black anal jelly used for scent-marking.
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ometimes, events move too fast for the publishing cycle of a monthly magazine like Carpworld, and that’s certainly the case with otters at the moment; they’ve always been lithe animals, and developments around their impact on fisheries are equally fast-moving. Only an article in a quality magazine like this gives enough space to discuss the detail and complexity of the issue, so I hope you will forgive me for the fact that events have rather overtaken my writing in this two-part series. I left last month’s article at the point at which The UK Wild Otter Trust (UKWOT) had submitted an application for a licence to humanely trap and remove otters from fenced fisheries, following 2 years of discussion with Natural England. I cannot overemphasise how helpful it has been to have UKWOT support, as the largest otter trust in the UK, and an organisation engaged at the heart of otter conservation. Dave Webb (who is the head of UKWOT) recognises the impact that otters are having on our fisheries, and he is committed to mitigating that impact. His knowledge of otters has been invaluable, but even more importantly, he has built bridges between angling and nature conservation, which have made it possible to make real progress. I’m not sure whether the current otter licence would have been granted without the initial application coming from UKWOT, but I am certain that the process would have taken far longer and have been far more complicated without UKWOT leadership on the issue.
The licence that has been granted has a number of conditions attached, which are designed to safeguard otter conservation and ensure compliance with the law. One of these conditions is that anyone seeking registration under the licence first must pass a training and assessment programme. This is to ensure that they understand the law, have the skills required to trap and handle otters humanely, and are a suitable person to carry out this work. Under the UKWOT application, we brought together a group of five people for training, including Joss Faulkner and me (both supported by the PAG), Jake Davoile and Richard Bamforth from the Angling Trust, and Dave Webb himself. In the rest of this article, I’ll refer to the five of us as the ‘UKWOT team’, as that is how we continue to operate. Natural
England agreed to a sixth person being trained as well, who had approached them independently. The first problem was that no one had trapped otters in the UK in well over a decade, and Natural England struggled to find someone with the experience needed to provide the training. Eventually, they tracked down someone who had trapped otters many years ago for a radiotracking study. He was identified as the most suitable trainer available, even though his experience was rather limited and far from up to date. The first training event was more of a workshop to share and develop our knowledge, and to refine the licence requirements and training needs for the future. The work we carried out over 2 days of intensive study in the field and in
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F EATURE
TOBIAS STEINBRUCK
NOMADS
German angler Tobias tackles a truly strange lake, where each winter the water disappears and all the carp seek sanctuary in the snaggy riverbed. He and his friends can only venture on to the banks when the temperature drops well below zero.
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F EA T UR E
ABOVE: You have to be careful when landing fish. RIGHT: I found some natural signs of carp food.
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arp have their peculiarities, just as humans do. Their environment shapes their character; hideouts, feeding spots and spawning grounds are remembered and familiar to fish and humans, and this issue makes carp fishing much more predictable. If we find where they live through experience and good location, and especially their larder, success can be had with suitable bait application. Close to my place of origin, Dachwig, which is a small village in the middle of Germany, there is a lake that transforms itself. It’s a huge artificial water above 130ha that creates a paradise of a home, as the fish living there have space and plenty of natural food. During October, the water disappears in 2 weeks; it is drained and all that remains is a small torrential stream no wider than 10m, and rarely deeper than
1m. The carp have to wait for springtime, when the water is dammed again and river fish transform back into lake fish. Over the years, they have adapted to this situation. The carp aren’t massive, but they are powerful, and it seems that they cherish and master this environment. The fish are well versed and issue a challenge to fishermen, plus there are enormous pieces of concrete, general rubbish, trees, roots and stones which line the banks and riverside. A never-drying plain lies where the lakebed once was, covered in slimy decaying weed which surrounds the channel for kilometres. The riverbank can only be reached through sweat-inducing marches, and not even a barrow can pass the area. On icy-cold winter days, the frost allows anglers to walk on freezing ground, but when the thaw sets in, there
is no chance to pass. At 7.00 o’clock in the morning, I headed to a small pond in a park which I wanted to fish, but unfortunately it was frozen solid. I had a useless day off, so to take advantage of the spare time, I decided to make the most arduous location-tour of my life; I walked 8km in icy-cold winds in search of fish. I hiked both banks, in total 16km, and was amply rewarded. I found no sign at all of other anglers, just masses of empty lake. There wasn’t a single sign of human beings, but I discovered the prints from raccoons, boars, foxes and herons, along with my size 43 footprint and four beagle paws. Finally, at the end of my expedition, when I was heading towards exhaustion, I tramped through the last hundred metres of unfrozen riverside mud. I continued my frustrated search deep inside the empty lake, obsessed with finding the carp. I almost missed it, but there was a swirl close to a little cove about 3sq.m. It was formed by a huge rock and gave shelter from the strong current to three carp. My only chance to see them was by creeping up really carefully. I reckon two of them were approximately 22lb, but the other was noticeably bigger, perhaps even over 40. I was in a funk; I had a queasy feeling, a lump in my throat, but I didn’t budge a millimetre. I didn’t feel the frost, or my cold hands, or painful legs anymore. They were perfect common carp, slim and powerful fish tarrying in the smooth
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NEXT MONTH
mere madness Bradley Lewis gives the low-down on tackling these tricky waters
CH U B ZIP/F LOAT SAC K
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