WIN!
SMART BAIT BOAT WORTH £950! THE ORIGINAL AND STILL THE BEST
FEB – 2019
inside
Issue
341
THE ITALIAN JOB DARRELL PECK - PARCO
DEL
£4.75
BRENTA
SIMON KENNY
T H I N K TA N K
D AV E L A N E
‘FLUFF’ HAS ACCRUED A LIFE TIME’S WORTH OF
TONY GIBSON, LEE JACKSON AND JASON
D AV E B E G I N S A N E W S E R I E S W H E R E H E T A K E S
40LB+ CARP IN JUST EIGHT MONTHS OF ANGLING
TROUGHT GIVE THEIR THOUGHTS ON THE PL ACE
A F O N D L O O K B A C K A T S O M E O F H I S FAV O U R I T E
A T A FA M O U S B E R K S H I R E V E N U E
O F R O C K S A LT I N T H E I R F I S H I N G
H A U N T S F R O M T H E PA S T 4 0 Y E A R S
ALSO: CHRIS BALL IAN CHILLCOTT PAUL FORWARD DAMIAN CLARKE DEREK RITCHIE
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TIM PAISLEY
MIKE KAVANAGH
IAIN MACMILLAN
21/12/2018 12:20:09
Darrell fills in a couple of blanks that complete the look through his 2018 angling year. This month also sees a brief flit back to his local Bayeswater syndicate and a jaunt even further afield than normal through Europe, when he spends a week at the magnificent Parco Del Brenta in Italy...
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21/12/2018 12:39:15
Pecky’s Progress - Darrell Peck -
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21/12/2018 12:39:17
- Jim Wilson -
Along the Way Somewhere Closer to Home
Jim has spent the vast majority of his time whizzing up and down motorways in search of carp in recent years. Of late he found himself a ticket that would change all that though, meaning he could focus on a well-stocked venue not a million miles from his front door CARPWORLD
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21/12/2018 12:47:48
H
aving spent the spring and early part of the summer travelling, I was getting the urge to not spend as much time in the hot cab of a van travelling mile upon mile up and down the A1. I have done this year after year but thankfully, this year, I had found somewhere locally that fitted the bill. Having somewhere local for my fishing is a bit of a godsend really, not that I do a ridiculous number of miles every year for my fishing, but I do enough. I work in a profession where the hours can be quite demanding, and the overtime is commonplace and often lengthy. So 14-16 hour shifts, followed by three hours travelling to a lake, is often tiring to say the least and when I’m anything but at my most motivated, it can be a serious challenge to put in the miles. So I guess you’re asking, why the previous rambling? Well, I’ve been trying to sort some relatively local angling for a good couple of years now, but North Lincolnshire never has been a ‘hotbed’ of carp fishing. Don’t get me wrong, there’s carp in my neck of the woods, but they’ve not
always had the same appeal as the Cambridgeshire mirrors and commons I had been travelling to fish for – for almost a decade. Most of the more readily accessible venues in my neck of the woods – Manton, Ashby Ville, Wold View – I had fished previously and had no desire to go back to. So, having a new option locally really did appeal. In the last year or so, a really good mate had been fishing a lake within 45 minutes of my home. He’d been catching some ridiculously nice fish, and kept mentioning the place with really favourable comments. I was certainly interested... As it turned out I actually knew of the lake, in fact I had even fished it a couple of times back in 2011, but I didn’t for some reason catch on that they were actually one and the same – mainly because of the stamp of fish he had been catching. Last autumn I’d made the right phone calls and obtained a winter ticket for the venue. I had a couple of trips through the winter-ticket period, which ran from November until the end of March. I didn’t manage to catch anything in the trips preceding the Christmas period, but I did manage to learn a fair bit about the layout of the lake, and the preferred swims – well, which ones were
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BELOW
A stunning Lincolnshire sunset. It was good to be nearer home again
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21/12/2018 12:51:11
A season on Church
Simon Kenny has had an unbelievable season on RK Leisure’s Horton Complex, taking fish over 50lb from both the Church and Kingsmead One. Here he tells the story about where he spent the bulk of his time during a balmy spring and summer... Simon Kenny
I
I had already been lucky enough to have one incredible session on the Church, landing 13 fish and some of the lake’s biggest carp to boot. I was sure it was just a one-off trip, one where the stars had aligned and everything simply fell into place. Those sorts of sessions don’t happen often on the Church, or anywhere, so I knew I must have fallen on some carp and got the tactics right. There are only 90-odd carp in the lake, so to hook over 10% of the stock in one trip was pretty surreal. The following week the weather had gone bad and it was really quiet. It was good carp fishing weather, but the cooler winds and not being able to get on the fish made the stay a quiet one. On my third trip though, the weather had turned and it was warm again. I knew the fish would be visiting the plateau, which was the area that I had caught from on my original trip. Unfortunately though, the swim was on lockdown since those captures and I just couldn’t get back in there. The guy fishing it was off in a couple of days though, so it meant fishing elsewhere and waiting for my chance to get back in there. I decided to set up opposite and keep an eye on proceedings, willing to sacrifice some rod hours just to watch the water. For two days I watched the fish show all over the area. Early on the second morning the chap was packing up. I had already folded the kit down, extra early, and wrapped all the rods to the
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21/12/2018 12:51:13
A Trip Down Memory Lane
- Harefield Lake -
Over the next 12 months, Dave’s new series will follow him as he takes a fond look back at the venues and fish that helped shape him as an angler, beginning with the mighty Harefield Lake CARPWORLD
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21/12/2018 12:42:25
F
or this coming year I am going to be taking a look back at some of the waters I have fished over the past few decades – those that have had the most influence on my fishing, or have stirred the greatest emotions, and left me with everlasting memories. I would like to start with Harefield Lake, the first of the real ‘big fish’ waters I dared to venture onto, way back in the 80s. Harefield came about more by accident than by any real plans to fish the venue; we originally wanted tickets for another William Boyer’s water, Rodney Meadows, but none were available, so we took Harefield as a second choice. Bearing in mind that my mate, Keith, and I had only really fished in and around Sussex at this time – albeit on various stillwaters, from estate lakes, to small gravel pits – Harefield was to be a major step up the ladder for us. Not only was it located in the hotbed of British carp angling, the Colne Valley (and opposite the famous Savay Lake), but it also held fish in excess of 30lb, which were huge fish at that time and way bigger than anything we had ever seen, let alone caught. I’d read about the place in Hutchy’s incredible book The Carp Strikes Back in a guest chapter by Paul Gummer. Paul told the tale of having to use 60 foot leaders made of some indestructible material to overcome the mussel-topped gravel bars for which the lake was infamous. Our first walk around during the closed season left us speechless. At 70 acres, the lake seemed huge and it was adorned with cranes, diggers, floating gravel barges and the odd tug boat. We also found a dead cat on the bank and one very bloated and deceased Jack Russell, bobbing about in the margins. All things considered, we were only one very small step up the scale from that poor old dog and would ourselves be floundering to keep afloat in this new and harsh environment. What I do remember, however, far more than the fear, was the sheer excitement for that coming season – the chance to fish for carp that were way beyond our wildest dreams, and to rub shoulders with anglers who would no doubt be equally as impressive. Well, I am not sure if the anglers turned out to be all that different, to be honest, although some of them could cast over 100 yards which was pretty awesome, but the fish were definitely on another scale. The first night of the new season saw anglers in nearly every swim... at least right up until the pub opened anyway and then the lake was deserted for a while. The whole pub scene in the Colne Valley was more like a religion, and the famous Horse and Barge, that featured in so many articles and chapters of the time, was literally just over the road which was a dangerous scenario indeed. I could probably write a whole book about the antics that went on within that famous old pub, but it might not paint carp anglers in a very good light to be fair. Three quarters of the
...the chance to fish for carp that were way beyond our wildest dreams, and to rub shoulders with anglers who would no doubt be equally as impressive
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21/12/2018 12:42:26
Next Month
In the March issue Jamie Bellhouse This time last year, Jamie and some friends spent time in France, both on a commercial venue and chasing uncaught monsters on one of the vast river systems... Richard Harker Richard looks back over a decade on Dinton and covers his recent capture of White Swan’s mighty Triple Row in more detail...
Tobias Steinbruck Tobias gets permission to fish an intimate and untouched water set in a quaint and sleepy village not too far from his own home... On sale: Friday 15th February 2019 | Subscribe now to have next month’s issue delivered to your door! www.gifts4anglers.co.uk
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