‘What I wish I’d known at 20’ - Rob Hughes
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, so for this series, we asked some of angling’s stars what nuggets of wisdom they would share with their 20 year-old selves and why. It makes interesting reading...
Rob Hughes - Carp Team England Manager
“Love every minute and grab every opportunity. If you hear about something, investigate it straight away. The best fishing is always the first fishing, because once you’ve read about it someone else will have already enjoyed the best of it.
“I was a proper carp tiger when I was 20, fishing the secret waters of Shropshire and Cheshire and not telling anyone anything.
“I was living in Oswestry training to be a solicitor and it was work, fishing and cars that occupied me. Not a lot’s changed!”
1989 Carp session in between training
Rob is now manager of England’s Carp Teams
‘What I wish I’d known at 20’ - Julian Cundiff
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, so for this series we asked some of angling’s stars what nuggets of wisdom they would share with their 20 year-old selves and why. It makes interesting reading...
Julian Cundiff - well-known carp angler
“Leather trousers, a heaving bosom, lots of vodka, a mass of blonde hair and an adventurous nature may be physically appealing, but they certainly take your eye off the ball when it comes to fishing.
“I’d started work at the local magistrates court in 1980 and by 1983 things were ticking along nicely. Living at home with mum and dad and paying not that much rent left me plenty of money for fishing, girls, gigs and motorbikes.
“I’d been fishing since 1976, specimen-hunting (as it was known) since 1979, and carp had started to become more than just another fish to me and kind of an obsession.
“Side-hooked trout pellet paste, basic Optonics, glass-fibre rods and Abu Cardinals were the order of the day.
“I didn’t have a car then, preferring motorbikes for picking up girls. If I’m being honest, my KLX 25O was definitely not road-legal when loaded up, I can tell you!”
1983 - First year as a dedicated carper
WORLD RECORD CARP BANKED!
DANIEL Bock is only 25 years old, but he’s just landed the heaviest member of the carp family ever taken on rod and line!
The globetrotting angler from Berlin battled the 241lb Siamese carp for nearly an hour at Thailand’s Palm Tree Lagoon Fishery during his three-and-a-half-week trip to the country.
He spent 14 of those days fishing and struck into the carp of his dreams just a day before he was due to leave.
“In the morning, I got off to a good start by catching a 175lb Siamese carp known as ‘The Warrior’ on a Method feeder and pop-up boilie,” Daniel tells us.
“When my next bite came I had a good feeling that this was bigger as its initial run was incredible. I worked for every metre of line on the reel and most of the time this was lost as the fish went on several powerful runs.
“The fight lasted about an hour, and was so exhausting in Thailand’s hot climate. When we finally had it in the net I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“It was madness when staff told me it was a world record. For every angler this is a moment you wish for, and I’m so glad it was one I was allowed to experience.”
Daniel’s effort smashed the previous Siamese carp world record of 232lb just before Germany enforced a lockdown.
The first-ever carp broadcast, 1953 - Keith Arthur
These days, if a TV company said to a carp angler: “We need you to catch a fish live for our cameras” it would seem nigh-on impossible to fail.
Go back 60 or more years and it would be a very different tale. Then, carp were unbelievably scarce and considered by the average angler to be virtually uncatchable anyway.
None of that deterred the great Richard (Dick) Walker when the BBC said that they wanted to broadcast a carp being caught on the first night of the 1953 season… live for the radio!
No such thing as portable equipment was available then. Instead, it was a ‘radio car’ with microphones hard-wired to the swim, along with a presenter and Bernard Venables – one of the co-founders of Angling Times – as commentator.
Carp bait in those days was normally a chunk of boiled potato, which was considered too big for anything else to eat. And do you know what? Walker only went and did it, landing a 16lb fish – which would have been the equivalent of at least a mid-thirty now.
This was June 1953, the year after Walker had smashed the carp record with the 44lb fish that became known as Clarissa.
Dick Walker, as an engineer, developed rods for carp fishing; there were none before his time. Split cane salmon rods were about all the carper could hope for, but Walker developed specific (compound) tapers for the job in hand.
He also invented the test curve principle, measuring the amount of force needed to bend the rod through 90 degrees. From that, the correct breaking strain of line could be calculated. Nowadays this is all done by computer-aided design technology.
Similarly, the recording of the broadcast could all be done these days on a mobile phone...only with video, too. As for catching a 16lb carp...no serious carper worth his salt would bother with fish so small. You’d be better off asking a match angler to catch one on his pole!
Best peg in the country!
Many pegs are given the billing of the ‘best in the country’ throughout a fishing year and at present, the king of them all has to be 99 on the Snake Lake at Essex complex Puddledock Farm, scene of a string of 200lb carp weight since before Christmas and home to Tony Raymond’s 213-10-0 winner in the latest open match.
To look at it though, the swim offers nothing different to the 99 others on this sprawling lake, but the carp seem to like it for some reason and have balled up in numbers here for almost two months and are refusing to move!
Tony caught dobbing maggots along the gaps in the far bank sedges at 14m and then feeding minimally down the central track to net fish to 8lb and leave Ian Nash a distant second with 117-4-0 from next-door peg 98. With £500 golden pegs in operation at the fishery too, regulars will be hoping that 99 is put down as one of them in future opens!
“We see it every year when the carp shoal up in a few pegs and stay there all-winter,” said Puddledock boss Steve Mould.
“Pegs 100, 99 and 98 are the current epicentres and they all want to draw there but it has its own pressure when you do get it because everyone is expecting you to win and win with 200lb too!”
'Fish Protection Bureau' to compile evidence of otter attacks on stocks
FISHERY managers nationwide are rallying to raise awareness of the continued threat of otters to their livelihoods – and it’s all thanks to the introduction of a new data-collecting initiative.
The Fish Protection Bureau is the creation of a team of like-minded anglers whose businesses have suffered over the last ten years due to the introduction of the otter.
One of them is renowned fish farmer Mark Simmonds who feels that fishery owners deserve the right to be able to defend their stocks, but agrees that a huge portfolio of evidence must first be collected to prove just how damaging the mammal can be.
Mark told Angling Times:
“The purpose of the Bureau is to provide a point of contact for those who have been impacted by otters over the last decade.
“It doesn’t matter if you run a carp water, a river venue or a multi-lake complex – we want to know just how you have been effected by otters.
“We want to know how many fish you have lost and how many thousands of pounds you have paid to ensure they’re are kept out of your fishery.
“We know otters have affected thousands of people and if each could submit information of their personal damages the evidence will be overwhelming – we will eventually have something substantial to present at Government level.
“Ten years ago, I nearly went bust after losing over £250,000 worth of stock however I managed to survive, but others aren’t so lucky.
“I want to reiterate we are not trying to create a nationwide cull of the otter here – we simply want to have the same right as farmers and protect our livelihoods.”
The news of the Bureau’s creation has already made waves in the angling community especially with carp syndicate owners, whose businesses have been hit hardest by otters.
Reading-based complex CWA Fisheries suffered from a breach over the Christmas period and lost around £8,000 in carp when a family of otters entered the site’s Long Lake.
Manager Alan Cooper said:
“In the space of three weeks I lost pike, tench and eight stunning carp including a 32lb mirror that I’d grown-on in my own pond from mere ounces.
“On Christmas day I even had to make the 35-minute drive from my home to the fishery, as yet another carp was found dragged up the bank.
“Besides the cost of lost fish, I’ve now had to fork-out £50,000 for a fence to ensure this doesn’t happen again, and around £300 on dead salmon so the otters have an alternative food source from my carp – the situation has simply been terrible.
“The Fish Protection Bureau is a superb opportunity and if we can get 1,000 fishery owners all providing proof of loss of finances and business, we can show on a massive scale just how otters are slowly killing our sport.”
How you can get involved…
If you’re a fishery manager, fish farmer, club chairman or syndicate owner who’s been affected by otters over the last 10 years, you can submit your complaint and loss of assets to the Fish Protection Bureau. The Bureau want to know:
You full name, address and contact number
The damage caused to your fishery
The quantity of fish lost due to an otter attack
How much money you lost due to an otter attack – cost of buying an otter fence, new fish and loss of membership numbers
The location of your fishery
If you would like to participate you can request an information form by emailing your interest to FishProtectionBureau@protonmail.com
How you can apply to trap and release otters that are inside your fishery…
On January 1st 2020 Natural England announced that a licence could be obtained to capture and transport otters trapped in fisheries to prevent damage. For a full description of the terms of the licence, visit www.gov.uk/government/collections/otter-licences
Did You Know?
It is an offence to disturb, injure or kill otters as they are a protected species. Trapping to injure or kill an otter – whether deliberately or through carelessness – is a serious offence under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Offenders face an unlimited fine and up to six months in prison.
Biodegradable bait 'first' by Enterprise
FAKE-BAIT kings Enterprise Tackle are set to shake-up the angling market with a ground-breaking move to make all of their products fully biodegradable.
Starting this coming spring, the company’s huge range of imitation hookbaits and plastic terminal tackle items will contain an additive that helps them to break down fully within just a couple of years, compared to the 200 to 300 years it currently takes with plastics.
Enterprise, which has sold around 25 million units of its imitation corn hookbaits alone since launching them as a market-first back in 1999, has been working on the new products for a number of years, as the company’s Chris Hornsby revealed.
“As the market leader in imitation carp and coarse baits, we felt that it was a no-brainer for us to make our baits biodegradable.”
“We began looking into it five years ago, but the additives available back then adversely affected the products. For example, we ended up with rock-hard plastic maggots, which were far from ideal. But extensive trials of the new additive has shown that the baits looked and felt exactly as they should, and catch reports confirmed their effectiveness had not been compromised.”
Although Enterprise has made a big investment in the new process, anglers will welcome the news that the price of the new offerings will mirror that of the old.
“We’re absorbing the cost because we feel that the benefits to the environment, and the positive message we will be sending out, far outweigh any financial gain.
“From early spring 2020 we will be running out some of our most popular items, such as pop-up sweetcorn, containing the biodegradable additive. These items will be identified by a round sticker on the front of the packaging. Eventually all of our products will have it.
Until now the angling industry has been slow to embrace environmental issues, so we’re proud to set the ball rolling.”
Indeed, the forward-thinking move by Enterprise will not only be welcomed by environmentally-aware anglers, but also fishery owners, some of whom have banned plastic baits.
Richard Wilby, who runs Airfield Lakes in Norfolk and several other waters said:
“This is a great development. Currently I don’t allow plastic baits on any of my venues because they’re always ‘fishing’, which can be a problem if a rig is left out due to a crack-off or bite-off from a pike. I look forward to seeing these new baits and hopefully being able to allow them again in my lakes. It’s an excellent move by Enterprise, and good luck to them.”
