Carpworld 353 February 2020

JULIAN CUNDIFF

TIM PAISLEY

OUT OF THE DARKNESS

WINTER CARPING: JUST DO IT!

THE ORIGINAL AND STILL THE BEST

inside

STONEACRES ANTHONY JONES SPENT TWO YEARS IN PURSUIT OF HIS TARGET FISH AND THEN ONE DAY HIS BUS CAME ALONG

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TH I N K TA N K

CHRI S B A L L

M Y L ES G IBS O N

O U R PA N E L O F E X P E R T S D I S C U S S H O W T H E Y

C H R I S T E L L S T H E S TO RY O F L E E JAC K S O N ’ S

MYLES’ PERSEVERANCE AND DRIVE SEES

AV O I D T H E D R E A D E D B U R N O U T O V E R T H E

C A P T U R E O F T H E FA M O U S H E R T S C L U B W A T E R ’ S

C O N T I N U E D R E S U LT S O N H I S C H O S E N V E N U E F O R

WINTER MONTHS

FIRST 40-POUNDER IN 1983

THE SEASON

ALSO: DARRELL PECK GARTH ETHELSTON DAVE LANE BRIAN SKOYLES FRANK WARWICK PAUL FORWARD IAN CHILLCOTT GARETH FAREHAM

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Stoneacres

Anthony has spent the past two seasons fishing on the famous Oxfordshire venue in pursuit of its wily residents Anothony Jones CARPWORLD

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A

fter receiving a call from Julie, the fishery manager at Linch Hill, over the winter, asking if I would like a Stoneys ticket, I gladly accepted and couldn’t wait to get cracking – the 1st of April 2018 couldn’t come soon enough.

For those of you that aren’t aware, Stoneacres is the large, syndicate water on the famous Linch Hill complex, set in rural west Oxfordshire. It is some 50-acres in size with varying depths to 14ft, there are bays, gravel bars, an island, basically everything you would hope for in a big pit. The whole complex is very special, but Stoneys has a feeling about it that I can’t quite explain. The lake has been left largely untouched for years and its natural appearance adds an extra something for me.

It is home to around 50 stunning old carp that are notoriously very tricky to catch and are proper old original fish that are second to none in my opinion. Literally every one of them can be classed as the fish of a lifetime. I can only hope that the gene pool isn’t diluted by other strains in the future as these fish really are so special. Over the years, many of the biggest names in carp fishing have attempted to catch these fish and to even just be able to fish the lake itself felt like an achievement for me.

Firstly I went about purchasing a boat and some bits and bobs which I was lucky enough to obtain off an old member and then went about piecing together suitable kit for the challenge ahead, as well as spending many an hour pondering some little ideas I had up my sleeve...

I opted to use my old 12ft 3lb TC Greys rods as they were nice and soft to use with a braided main line. I coupled these with four Penn Affinity 8000s as they are both affordable and saltwatercompatible, meaning they could handle even the harshest of weather and treatment. These were loaded with 22lb braid and a 24ft fluorocarbon leader, with large blobs of putty positioned at metre-long intervals down its length.

The winter prior to my first session was horrendous as the Beast from the East battered the country hard. All the lakes on the complex were literally overflowing after the amount of rainfall we had suffered and the bad weather seemed to be never ending. Throughout this period I had

walked past Stoneys on so many occasions during my time on Christchurch, but chose not to get involved with what was going on over there until I really knew what it was all about (a bit like looking round a Ferrari showroom if you get my drift).

Consequently, my knowledge of the big lake was seriously lacking, and with this being the case I decided to start my campaign in a swim called ‘Big Point’ due to its central location and vast amount of accessible water. This gave me the chance to find my sea legs and get used to dropping rigs from a boat. I started with four zigs, all spread over the swim at slightly different depths. Being perfectly honest it felt quite daunting at first and I remember sitting in my bivvy on that first afternoon, gazing across the vast expanse of water and wondering what on earth I was doing there. I felt well out of my depth and so far from the fish!

I stuck to this approach throughout my time on the bank in early April but, alas, to no avail.

The realisation had set in that I could well have to get used to not catching for long periods and I had to adapt my mind-set accordingly so that, unlike next door, catching solitary carp here and there would now become a more realistic target.

Towards the latter end of April the weather was finally showing signs of picking up and with Stoneacres yet to do a bite off the bottom, to the best of my knowledge, the pull of Christchurch was too great and I decided to drop back on there in the hope of a kick-start to my season. Luckily I did and I managed the stunning Hartley’s at 39lb and to boot it was one I hadn’t previously caught.

Following the month of inactivity this was just the fillip I needed and I felt ready to launch a spring offensive back on the big lake. I booked a week off work and looked forward to heading back in the coming weeks.

During the interim period the bites had started to come off the bottom and the weather was now roasting hot as we seemed to come out of winter straight into summer without any sort of traditional spring.

Sadly, just before my planned return my mother had a terrible fall

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ABOVE

At around 50 acres in size, Stoneacres isn’t to be taken lightly

LEFT

I drew first blood with a mid-30 known as the Fighting Machine

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Carp Diary

Myles has kept plugging away on the snaggy pit throughout the autumn and as the year drew to a close he did an extra session here and there to try and maximise his chances

Myles Gibson

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pecky’s

Progress

With things not going quite according to plan down at Wellington Country Park, Darrell is contemplating easing back for the winter to focus on odd jobs around the house and just the occasional social event, such as this, with his friend, Phil Darrell Peck CARPWORLD

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E BELOW

While things haven’t necessarily gone my way on Welly, one or two others have had some measured success – 61lb 12oz!

very year around this time the material for my diary pieces gets harder to come by because coldwater big carp fishing is pretty damn slow at the best of times, let alone as the seasons change and temperatures start to plummet. If I was smarter I’d milk my warm weather success that little bit more!

This isn’t the case however and I will probably ask for one or two months off this piece as I don’t plan on doing a lot through January and February.

Don’t get me wrong I love my winter fishing, but when you fish as often as I do not a lot else ever gets done! I have to make a concerted decision to ‘hang ‘em up’ if I am to make a decent dent in anything else. At around the same time last year, I made a start on writing a second book, but it is still a long way off completion. You might remember me saying I’d hang em up then too, but I then still

managed to cram in 20-odd blank nights on the bank. We shall see what happens this year, but if the weather’s good I’m pretty sure that I doubt I’ll be able to contain myself once more.

Last month I covered what I’d caught from Welly and I think it’s fair to say that I had underestimated how difficult it might be. Obviously I was pleased to catch that 50lb common, but overall I had thought I might have done a little bit better. Welly isn’t classed as ultralow stock by any stretch of the imagination, but at the same time it certainly isn’t to be branded as ‘seal clubbing’ either. For some reason I just had it in my mind I would roll up with my barrow, fly fish chods and be hauling absolute behemoths at will. Being totally honest the most disappointing thing about my first visits to Welly are how I have angled. On at least three occasions I can recall ignoring signs of carp to angle in ‘productive’ swims and this is totally against my normal style.

I think I have shown a lack of respect for the importance of each sighting, which is bad angling on my part. Having spent a lot of time fishing abroad in recent years I had forgotten what it is like to fish extremely pressured UK syndicates.

To sum up best what I am trying to say is that I feel a little bit off the pace. There are a lot of good anglers on Welly and if you’re not catching them, then someone else will be! Dave Finn’s capture of Scruffy Bob at 61lb 12oz gave me a bit of a reality check, and is all the motivation I need to up my game a bit in 2020. A UK 60 is very special carp indeed, so my congratulations go out to Mr. Finn.

So what have I actually caught then? When the going gets tough I always find myself creeping back over to my local day-ticket venue, Blasford Hill. Blasford, which is situated in Chelmsford, close to Broomfield Hospital, and is a picturesque little five-acre gravel pit next to the river Chelmer.

I have been coming here in the winter for years LEFT

Congratulations to Dave Finn on his capture of Scruffy Bob – It has certainly given me the motivation for when I return RIGHT TOP

Tom Rositer had only recently enjoyed a result in the Deep Bay, I’d have been a fool to overlook the fact...

RIGHT BOTTOM

On first glance I thought it was an otter, but it was just Molly, enjoying her breakfast

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“Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.

Don’t stop, it’ll soon be here.

It’ll be better than before.

Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone....”

Fleetwood Mac - Don’t Stop - 1977

2020 Vision As Chilly prepares to embark upon another year of angling in his own inimitable style, he ponders some of the thoughts and words of others on the same path Ian Chillcott CARPWORLD

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T

he most incredible thing about entering another ten-year era in my life is that this is the start of my seventh decade! And I can’t stop slowly shaking my head in disbelief when I think about how long I have been around, the things I have done and more importantly, how the hell I made it this far! “Time and tide wait for no man”, was a saying imprinted upon my brain as a child, and a saying which has shaped all that I have done thereafter.

I have never wanted to waste a minute, so never have. Achieving all I wanted from life would be a good indicator I had got things right for myself, at every turn... although, at times, nothing could have seemed further from the truth. ‘Getting things right’ seems such a small sentence which encapsulates so much. Maybe in terms of sacrifice, maybe in terms of hard work, but it just doesn’t pan out that way all the time. It’s the mistakes we make along the way, and the way we learn from those harsh realities that make the difference.

Whether you have to look back and laugh or cry doesn’t really matter, the moments have made an impact on your life. For good or for bad, they will inevitably shape your life in the years to come.

My personal life is quite another story believe me, but my carp angling adventures have been well-documented over the years through one media outlet or another. I started my writing career way back in the 90s and my first written piece was about my capture of Jack the Net Ripper from Horton Church Lake in 1996. That article in Carp-Talk, lead on nicely to other things. My first technical scribbling appeared in Catchmore Carp, and I cannot tell you how much I fretted about Jim Foster’s response to my efforts on feature finding.

He loved it. So much so in fact, that he reckoned it was one of the best things he had ever read! Praise indeed, although he may have been overstating things a little? Whatever, his keen reply spurred

BELOW

Sir Pete was a massive influence throughout the 1980s, not just for me, but for many others too

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me on to better things, I hope. After all, it’s what you the readers think that counts, isn’t it?

This isn’t exactly what I wanted to write about, but I just need to mention a little aside from the main theme of this particular piece, which was basically a look at the next decade and the way I want things to go, not only for me, I might add.

I had this subject in mind when I opened the December 2019 issue of Carpworld. I was unaware that my ugly mug would be decorating the front cover, and it is hard for me to describe just how I felt! Anyway, as always I had a scan through the magazine, I still love to turn pages as I read. That tactile feeling can never be beaten by the push of a button to read the words on a computer screen. It was wonderful to see my good friends Mr Forward and Dave Lane still writing their stuff, in fact the whole magazine was a real pleasure, until I came to the Think Tank piece when something stopped me in my tracks. Whilst I still want this piece to cover the next decade, I will have to change tack for a while...

No names, no pack drill here, but I couldn’t help feeling hugely upset that someone had tried to slag off the way which many feel about carp angling in the 1980s. He described it as Bullock Excrement (BE), to put it in a far more polite way.

I definitely agree that carp fishing has changed, it simply had to. Is it more exciting now than it was then? Who knows? Is it better to have everything at your fingertips, without having to endure the mistakes you had to make to find a better way?

I have no idea as it happens, but what I do know is the men who fished during that era gave carp fishing the roots to move on. In fact, it created an incredible and massive industry, one that “Mr BE” openly admitted to making a living from. Just think if it hadn’t been for those incredibly driven and inspirational people, he would have had to get himself a completely different job, hoping he may get a chance to go fishing at the weekend after grafting all week!

ABOVE

In amongst my hectic Army days, I still found time to fish in the 80s

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Through the Lens Lorcan Davenport PART IV This month’s subject under the spotlight is aperture.

As explained by Lorcan, it is perhaps the simplest of disciplines to master, but at times, getting it just right can also prove to be the trickiest.

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Next Month

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In the March issue Oli Davies - Better to be lucky than good Oli takes a look back at last season, where in a year that wasn’t plain sailing for him, he still managed to reap the rewards Greg Ellis – Madness on the Meads Greg set his sights on a large venue in the Lee Valley for a couple of months as he sought to recharge his batteries whilst on a winter sabbatical from the mighty Burghfield Echoes – European round-up Daren ‘Tinpot’ Norman heads up a strong English contingent amongst those doing it overseas in next month’s edition of Echoes

Also... Jim Wilson, Steve Briggs, Tim Paisley, Dave Lane, Paul Forward, Brian Skoyles with Derek Pye, Ian Chillcott and much much more...

On sale: Friday 21st February 2020 | Subscribe now to have next month’s issue delivered to your door! www.gifts4anglers.co.uk *Contents subject to change

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