Memories 1987
My feedback suggests that you like to read my older stuff, so here we go again! Frankly there are so many memories cluttering up my brain it's hard to know where to start but one tale that I think is worth telling took place in 1987. It is a tale of ten twenties. OK, to some a twenty is no big deal these days but back then a twenty was not to be sniffed at, especially in darkest, deepest Cornwall!
At the time I was concentrating my fishing effort on two vastly different venues, College, the 40-acre reservoir near Penryn, and Salamander Lake, my name for a tiny little pond close to my home on the south coast of Cornwall. This first shot shows my old Dave Barnes bivvy set up in The Beach swim (College) in the autumn of 1987.
And this is the Lifebelt swim on Salamander, my favourite swim on the lake. You can just catch a glimpse of the lifebelt in the hole in the tree line behind the actual swim. Sadly it looks nothing like so 'carpy' today as the park has been 'tidied' by over zealous local council staff with too many power tools to hand!
I had been enjoying success on most of the lakes I had visited, thanks in no small part to my original boiled bait, a pure bird food based upon Haiths Nectarblend and/or Red Factor plus Robin Red, an ingredient that was gaining quite a following back in the day (one that continues to this day).
The concept of Nutritional Recognition had long been hum’d and haw’d over by better brains than mine for several years and opinions were pretty divided back then as to whether it was a load of old hokum or not. I was coming round to becoming a fundamentalist on the subject - there was no question in my mind that carp could indeed recognise and assess the nutritional worth of a bait, and chose that bait over others with a poorer nutritional value..
A few years earlier I had fallen by pure chance under the influence of two of greatest bait brains in the carp world at that time, Tim Paisley and Keith Sykes, with both of whom I had been enjoying a somewhat confusing (on my part) correspondence for some time. Keith's letters sometimes ran to 30 pages or more, starting off typed, but then as his brain ran away with him, in longhand. I still keep that correspondence, as the contents are gold dust, as valid today as they were back then, and they have tremendous emotional and practical value for me.
As you can see from the letterhead of his personalised writing paper Keith was a member of the famous (or perhaps infamous) Official Longfield Drinking Team, which included some of the best carp anglers in the country. The Team was perhaps just a tad less esoteric than the Golden Scale Club, which was also around at the time, but Longfield acted as a test bed for bait buffs to try out their theories on some of the trickiest carp in the Home Counties. If you could catch a carp from that small pit you could catch them anywhere, or so the doggerel asserted.
Keith's correspondence contained way more information than I was capable of handling but all that expertise being aimed my way was bound to have an effect; even my tiny mind was open enough to accept that what he said made sense. Tim's guidance was equally important and his bait ideas tallied completely with Keith's. As a result I had enjoyed fishing beyond my wildest dreams using baits based on Keith and Tim's ideas. This is some of the copious amount of reading material that Keith sent me.
The more I read and researched the more the concept of natural attraction sat easy with me. Keith suggested a number of nutritional aspects of bait based upon his experiences in the Far East working with koi rearers. Specifically this suggested a positive response by carp to a number of what appeared to be natural feeding triggers, among them certain amino acids one of which was betaine! Tim was also a fan and had used it in his original HERNV recipe and Nutrabaits also took on the product. Nowadays there is more betaine in one form or another on the carp bait market to float a boat! Keith put me onto a source of a crystalline, highly soluble betaine and I incorporated it into my baits right away. Almost immediately it started bearing fruit in my fishing and as my results soared it became clear to me that betaine was a very positive attractor or feeding trigger of some kind.
Keith also suggested a couple of other naturally occurring substances that would also help, not so much as nutritional aids but more in the way of detection and attraction. One of these was citric acid. Nowadays this ingredient is either taken for granted or totally ignored. There is no half way house when it come to citric acid! I still use it today and 1g in a kilo of mix is all that is needed.
Another excellent bait ingredient that Tim put me on to was Greenshell Lipped Mussel Concentrate/extract. Try to get the full-fat version. Yes it is less soluble but the Omega-3 fatty acids therein are all beneficial when used in a carp bait. This version from Feed Stimulants is the full-fat version and is excellent. Luc has chosen the full fat version instead of the usual defatted version, as all of the valuable oil is preserved in this extract.
When I was first getting into bait both Tim and Keith set great store in freshness. Indeed, they were adamant that all my bait should be 'freezer-fresh' as Tim put it. It seemed that freezing was the key to the bait as it never worked as well when it was introduced de-frosted or even freshly rolled. Something positive clearly happened to the bait while it was in the freezer and though I had no idea what, it was obviously significant in terms of attraction.
I used to take my bait down to College still frozen and store it in the freezer of The New Inn at Mabe Burnthouse, a nearby pub, which became a second home to many College anglers over the years! This gave me the perfect excuse to go down the boozer every day for fresh bait and naturally a pint or two followed. For Salamander, with the lake being so close to home, I had no excuse! Where possible I liked to introduce the bait while it was still frozen and would keep a couple of Thermos flasks of frozen bait in the car or the back of the bivvy if the car got too hot. Incidentally, this is a going 'back shot' in the Ponderosa swim on College, and it leads me in nicely to late 1987.
Back in those days there was nothing like the number of active carpers around and midweek it was quite likely one would have the lake to oneself. What bliss! To have the run of the place with time to chose the most suitable swim for the conditions without a frantic race from the car park or the threat of violence if you happened to get the ‘going’ swim. In the case of College at the time there were two or three banker swims, all situated on the west bank where the shallower water could be found. There was a guy in The Gap and anther on the SE Point swim opposite. Three anglers on 40-odd acres…hardly crowded!
In 1987 the banker swims were all on the west bank namely the Swamp, the Ponderosa and the Beach. When I arrived I found myself spoilt for choice, all three being empty. This photo shows the bars in front of the shallows that run the length of the lake from the Little Bench swim to the Swamp.
On this particular trip the forecast gave falling pressure and increasing southwest wind, which on the face of it would indicate that the east bank might be a better proposition. However, I knew full well that the College fish were notoriously fickle when it came to human dictates and a large proportion of the College fish stubbornly refused to follow the wind…any wind! I therefore set up in the Ponderosa in the relative lee of the forest behind me. I wanted to get set up before the rain arrived and by seven in the evening the baits were out and three frozen mixes had been scattered far and wide over the shallows in front of and to the side of the Ponderosa.
The first run came at 9.30 that evening, a 19lb mirror. This was followed during the night by a further three fish, all mirrors. By now it was raining heavily but in a lull I managed to put out a further three mixes and change hookbaits. We had found that the hookbaits and the freebies bait seldom lasted more than 12 hours in the water before softening up considerably as they took on lake water as the solubles leaked out. It was quite usual to bring back empty hair and a lot of guesswork went on trying to find the optimum time to reel in…when it was pissing down definitely was not the optimum time, but it’s only rain…Can’t kill ‘ya!
However, it can kill a camera so when the next run scorched off at a ferocious pace at just after eight in the morning I thought to myself, if this isn’t a twenty it’s going back without a pic. Of course, it simply had to be a 23lb common. Not wishing to get my camera gear drenched and ruined I set up the camera on its tripod and squeezed it into one corner of my bivvy. Cradling the common in my arms I crouched down in the opposite corner and fired off several shots using the bulb operated shutter release. Remember, this was in the days when digital cameras were a far off dream so there was no in-camera reviewing of shots taken to check that they are OK. You just had to wait until the film came back from the processors. The photo here is the best of a very bad lot. It does no justice whatsoever to a lovely fish and leaves me looking like some sheepish fish nicker caught in the act!
The rain continued to teem down and the fish continued to feed. Yet more twenties followed, mirrors of 21lb 12oz and 20lb 2oz. This made it four twenties on the trot. Everything was coming together at once; the bait, the hookbaits and the weather. Peering out into the lowering skies I saw a carp poke its head and shoulders out less than thirty yards out. It was shallow there; very shallow! When the ressie was full we waded past that spot to cast for heaven's sake. Still, if that’s where they want to feed, then that’s where I’ll put the baits! This is my diary entry at the time.
I put in some more bait and added fresh hookbaits to the hairs and cast all three to the general area where I had seen the fish and then sat down to enjoy my first meal for over 24 hours. Somehow in all the excitement I had completely forgotten to eat! Then half way through my meal I had the fish we called the Near Leather. This was a comparatively rare capture during College's 'special years' as it was seldom caught.
By now, thankfully, the rain had stopped but the midnight shipping gave gales on the way and falling pressure. I took advantage of the lull to clean the bivvy of accumulated mud and debris, some of which was clinging to the roof…How on earth did it get up there? Two fish on at once came at 04.50, then a lull until a double figure common at 08.15. With only three hookbaits left I rebaited and chucked these out to the same area and within the hour had another mirror on the bank. The fish were showing all over the baited area, though I doubt there was much bait left. Maybe they were apart from the smell of the solubles and the rapidly dissolving and softening paste that had once been boiled bait. Further takes were a racing cert and they came half an hour apart at 09.20h and 09.50h, the final fish being an awesome half-linear mirror with a huge mouth, that went by the unlovely name of Big Gob!
But my plans to revisit College were thwarted by a car that adamantly refused to start so I got a mate to drop me at Salamander instead. The generally low pressure that had been sweeping Cornwall for a couple of weeks showed no signs of moving on. I went into the Lifebelt swim and fished with two rods down along the left hand margin heavily baited, and the other off to the right, baited only with a stringer of mini baits to bring them onto the bait hookbaits.
High pressure had moved in during the afternoon and the night looked like it was going to be chilly. I had a good kip undisturbed by any carpy action whatsoever, but when I crept down to my left hand baited area the following morning I saw that all the bait had gone. The resident swans too were not averse to wiping you out during the night but it could have been carp getting away with it. Undaunted I put in a fresh mix and at 10.00h that morning had a big old mirror we had nicknamed Gutbucket, with good reason, as you can see from the photo!
Now one fish per 24 hours is considered good going at Salamander so when I had two more before nightfall including another twenty, Jellybelly at 23lb 6oz, I thought things could not get any better.
But they did get considerably better. I had Big Daddy at just under 28lb at noon the next day and persuaded Dave to give me a lift back home for more bait. This is big bruiser going back.
A further three mixes produced another seven fish including, Humpy at just under 19lb, the Mystery at 21lb 2oz, and Goldie (pictured) at 19lb 4oz.
I got a lift back home from the owner of the garage with a promise that I would drop her in for a big service the next day and as his workshop was so close to Salamander I awarded myself a few hours on the lake after collecting the car. Blow me if I didn't have The Pet at 22 lb!
Written by Ken Townley.
