Brooklands 1988
This getting old lark is weird? Now, I initially thought prior to the writing of this 65 pages of Bloggy tripe that it might have been in 1986 or '87 that I returned to Brooklands, I knew that I had made a visit after 1984 and would have sworn blind that it was a year or two earlier than in actually was? I now have the bona fide evidence in front of me (after reading back through the old notepads) that this revisit actually took place in 1988. This was my one and only visit to Brooklands after Lockey moved away no doubt getting nabbed by the bailiff four years prior had left a mental scar or something? On top of this date memory muddle that I suffered I also can't bring to mind who I went with either, my notes don't say? What I do now know is that I fished the same snaggy tree swim as in the winter of '84 on the west bank of the lake and this visit took place in December of '88, as I have these two snippets of info actually properly written down. The only other 'bits' that my old diary reveals is that I caught two fish, both on yellow tropical fruit flavoured milk protein boilies presented as pop-up's fished 3 inches off the bottom and that I caught two Carp in one night. I did write down the weather too which 'apparently' was flat calm and overcast at night with a light and cold NW breeze by day. If I didn't have the photos and this tiny bit of info written in my own fair hand in my own diary, then I'd have no recollection of ever having caught these Carp at all. I do have a strong inkling that I went with Clive Whitlock but even this may well be wrong? One of the other rather befuddling things about these retrospective ramblings is just how many things that happened all those years ago are still crystal clear, whereas other seeming more significant memories are often blurred or sometimes non-existent.
A 23 lb mirror taken from the dead tree swim on Brooklands on 7th December 1988. I had the take at 8.20 pm I read, and as was usual, well after dark. When you think about it I did about the equivalent of a whole week's angling over the years at Brooklands and though I fished for seven days I only managed the one take during daylight whereas after dark I got ten takes in all across the staggered visits between '83 and '88. Like Lockey so rightly said right back at day one back in 1984, you need to fish at night on Brooklands, you just can't beat a light 'bit' of local information now can you?
Then at 11.50 pm that same night I had another take (apparently?) fishing a bait next to a fallen tree right next to the bank, landing this second fish of 24 lb 13 oz. It's odd how the memory works, I recollect vividly my first two winter sessions on Brooklands with Lockey four years earlier but absolutely nothing about this time or these Carp even? I assume that this is me in the above photos and not that other lookalike geezer from Essex in '84, old Phil Newington?
Yateley
After getting kicked out of the Canterbury and District club in 1987/88 (probably in 1988 by the time my ban letter hit the door mat) it messed up whatever plans that I would have had at that time. Who knows what I might have done had this not happened, I was probably thinking about giving Stour and Trenley a go for the thirty (or whatever else swam around there, it was an unknown quantity at the time) but very soon that big Stour fish would actually end up back in Fordwich, so this change of the goal posts might have changed my thinking? Also, though I was thoroughly fed up with the atmosphere on Fordwich, no doubt I'd have gotten a second wind and been forced back there given time? The Fordwich Carp were by then piling on the weight and the influx of newer stocked fish might even have attracted me, who knows, I've never had the option ... I was out, forever too. To make matters even worse I couldn't drive, limiting my options still further. I was fishing on and off with Martin Daley by this time. Martin was fairly new to the Carp game in 1987/8 but there was no doubting that he was in it for the long haul, so we probably would have put more time onto fishing Stour and Trenley? The only other places I could fish within easy reach of home were Westbere (I bought a season ticket for 1990 but never used it) but the only Carp we knew about in that lake were newly stocked and quite small at the time. Another option on the table was to cadge a lift with Martin or Jock up to Yateley? The problem with fishing Yateley was that my enthusiasm for Carping was gone by this time, I was really full on between 1979 and about 1985 but after that I think my heart was no longer properly in it? I enjoyed it from time to time afterwards but I wasn't anywhere near as motivated or manic. By this time I was pretty much using fishing as a sort of mental crutch, so I'd just show up at the lake, chuck a couple of rods out over some loose boilies, spend time out wit my mates and mess about socialising or partying. I was one of those people who let the party thing get a little out of control, I just couldn't fish properly and party like some others. You need to think straight when you're fishing at full speed ahead, all I wanted to do was get off my face I'm afraid. I changed as a person due to all of this and quite often I allowed my behaviour and new horrible attitude to affect my mates, even Lockey and Geoff. I also remember a bad incident with Veggie Mick and I got bailed out by Lockey. I'm ashamed of the way I was carrying on at that time.
By 1987 (or 88?) I decided that I didn't like the Car Park Lake very much, I'd never felt any urge to fish the Pad Lake and though I liked the Copse, I could never find a way of getting any of the Carp out of that lake and it had me well and truly stumped. I did however have a slight bit of a thing for the North Pit, home of the UK's biggest Carp, Basil but even then, once I actually fished this north pit I was still very much in second gear, fishing in a half hearted lazy fashion. This lazy fishing style cost me big time, as I'll go on to explain later in greater detail.
By 1988/9 our Bait Business was picking up year upon year by this time and I did very little fishing at all as I remember it? I was courting too, so this affected me going to the lakes as well. I was out on the town a lot, drinking a bit too much and though I went out pubbing regularly I was never into drink, in fact once I gave up fishing I stopped drinking pretty much altogether, just having the odd pint or two every now and then. Even to this day I do much the same, I've drunk about five pints of beer this past few years believe it or not, I'm just not a drinker. I think that I only drunk at all as that's what everyone else was doing? It was a big thing back then in the Carping game, you'd go out to the boozer or the curry house whilst fishing before heading back to the lake for a bankside party. I see that this party thing has changed quite a bit since my day, I heard this via some retrospective Carp videos I saw on Tubeface uploaded by some Carp angler who fished lakes in other parts of the country at roughly the same time as I did. Anyway, away from my head-space at the time, I only went fishing on a very few occasions in 1988, a few times on Yateley (catching nothing) as well as the odd session on Chilham Castle tiddler bashing and 'possibly' checking out Stonar Lake too? I think that after hearing about there being a few Carp in Stonar I went over for a look but probably didn't actually fish there till the following year. Even then it was far from serious, just more tiddler bashing Carping just to get me out of the house.
By 1989 it was just more of the same though as I stated above, I did start fishing on Stonar and I may well have been thinking about the future there as I was by then collecting photos of each individual Carp hoping to catalogue them as they grew? As Bamber was part of the Bait Business by this time I also remember fishing on Chilham Castle Lake with him two or perhaps three times, yet again just as a bit of fun. The only proper fishing that I did at all in 1989 were two sessions on College Reservoir in Cornwall in June and August of '89. I may also have gone to Yateley in 1989 and if I did (and I haven't got my years mixed up?) then this might have been the year that I fished the North Pit a bit more seriously to try and bag Basil and soon got so fed up with my own behaviour that I contemplated giving up on the Carping altogether for the first time? I really do think that had I caught Basil that I would have given up or taken a break from it, as it happened I didn't catch her but gave up anyway. I sort of had to, just to get my head straight.
The Car Park lake. To the left are the Pad lake and a bit of the Spilt lake. I did a very, very silly thing one day on the Car Park lake. I went for a natter with Geoff who was fishing off the west bank this day and whilst he wasn't looking I unscrewed his reel handles and put them on back to front so that they were now left handed with the handle on the right side of the reel. He didn't notice and as there were a few other people in the swim at the time we were all giggling away waiting for him to notice or hoping that he'd have a re-cast but the inevitable happened and as we sat there this very rod went screaming off ... he actually got a take. I remember him going to pick the rod up to pull into the fish and having his brain scrambled by finding the handle on the wrong side. As I remember it we told him to turn the rod upside down wind wind backwards (??) the fish got snagged in thick weed and came off. This was a very serious moment, credit to Geoff he never gave me a hard time about it as I deserved, I think he could see how bad I felt. Even to this day sitting here now I feel awful, it was an awfully stupid thing to do. I think it was the only take he ever got on that lake apart from the local Tench and that was no Tench take. Unbelievable stupidly on my part was that.
The Copse. The two yellow X's mark the Stilts at the top and the Royal Box at the bottom, my two most fished areas. The yellow arrow marks out the Oaks, an area with a fantastic climbing tree where we used to look for the phantom Carp known as The Pineapple. Legend had it that there was a Carp larger that any in the entire Yateley complex and Basil was going over 45 lbs at the time. The story was that Kevin Maddocks had caught this 'orange coloured' mid twenty many years before (hence the Pineapple) and it had never been caught again and in this time had piled on lots of weight? It may all have been one of those old angling legends in retrospect as it never did get caught. One day whilst up that Oak tree (possibly with Terry?) we saw what we thought must be the Pineapple, it was off the side of a orange coloured hump of gravel. It was a big fish but how big it was hard to tell of course? In truth it was more likely to have been a known Carp called the Pig but it certainly did look orange to our eye? I did see two large Carp later on, one fat thing and one longer fish, both well over thirty pounds to my eye? Seeing them was one thing, catching them was another and whilst I fished on the Copse for about six or more weeks all in all between 1986 and 1988 I only ever saw one Carp ever get caught. It was unbelievably hard Carping, unimaginable now.
Yateley was a weird place for me, I wasn't properly motivated by the fishing perhaps given the person I was at the time, but I did like many of the people I met there. Oddly there were few ego's on Yateley, no aggro whatsoever and it had an nice jolly atmosphere all of its own. The fishing was off the scale for being hard as the pits had virtually no Carp in them at all, the Copse held way less than ten fish but at least two thirties (the Parrot and the Pig), the North Pit held seven Carp (one of mid thirties and Basil at mid forty) the Car Park perhaps ten Carp but one of forty (Heather the Leather) and the Pad lake just five Carp but one of over Forty plus another around thirty too. I recently had a scout about online where I saw that the Complex of Lakes at Yateley are now split in two and are now run by separate Clubs, East and West. There are now 30+ Carp in the Car Park Lake, 90 (!!) in the Split Lake and an incredible 80 in the Pad Lake (5 there in our day remember?) 30+ of then OVER THIRTY POUNDS!! It's a tiny lake is the Pad Lake ... 80 Carp is just nuts! We've all heard the old saying 'You're never more than six feet from a rat" well they now say at the Pad Lake 'You're never more than six feet away from a thirty!' It all makes sense now ... with me being an angler from the 1980's, I almost fell out of my chair when I saw some bloke on Tubeface catch THREE CARP in ONE DAY out of the Pad Lake??? I thought "Am I hallucaminating or summit?" no-one gets three Carp out of the Pad lake ... well he might in one season ... if he lives on there! I heard that Carping has changed for the worse and now I'm starting to see why? All these bods on Twitface or Facetube holding up these enormous fat bloated Carp half the size of the family hatchback on the interweb ... whatever happened to proper Carping? My next door neighbour does a bit of Carping and I had a light natter with him the other day and almost had a coronary when he announced that he's currently being vetted to get into some syndicate water which is two grand a year to fish. I told him "in my day you'd have been able to buy the lake for that" ... the world has gone mad, and don't try and tell me it hasn't. £50 million for a footballer to sit on the bench ... £1+ million for a Car (over £5 million for a Bugatti Divo) ... it's all utterly ridiculous.
As I touched upon, I did meet some great blokes at Yateley. We met up with our great old mate Terry Pethybridge the first time we fished at Yateley. He was loud was old Tel, real loud ... a great bloke all the same, nothing was too much for him to do to help you. I think the first time we met he invited me and Geoff to his wedding (did we go, I think we did?) and I swear to you that I never once had to buy any lead weights after getting to know Tel, he'd often show up with a big bag of hand made plastic coated lead weights and hand them out, so many that I never needed to buy any more. I'll never forget his laugh, it was immense in volume. After meeting Tel on the Copse at Yateley during the first week of the season in 1986, amongst the various other anglers there at the time was this chap from Scotland who had this habit of using the word 'bizarre' or if you were really lucky and he wanted to express something extraordinary, he'd say "mega bizarre" and every time he did within earshot of Tel, the air would erupt with laughter from Tel's overly loud gob! To make it even funnier the Scottish bloke didn't even smile, not that this stopped Tel laughing at him! This Scottish bloke was a good bloke too, unsurprisingly acquiring the name of Jock* soon after we all met up. We also met Keith O'Sullivan's Monkey at Yateley, the two Steve's (more to follow on them) and another lovely local bloke called Rob McGill (or Slob Maggoo as his Yateley name was) ... I hear old Rob's died since. I also saw a video on Tubeface recently of old Allan Taylor fishing the Lac dur Der, Geoff tells me that he died recently too, what a crackpot old Al was, as mad as a box of Frogs wearing silly hats was Al ... it's very sad. We also ran into old Dave Gawthorn there ... okay, eight sandwiches short of a picnic but such a properly wonderful character. I've already made mention of his disgusting habit of making tea in the same pot he boiled up Crayfish in earlier on, but that was only part of the tale about Gawthorn. Geoff told me that when you rang his house and he wasn't in, that Dave's answering machine would start up playing the track Cars by Garry Numan. Chatting to Dave was an event ... a surreal madcap event but an event all the same. There were load of others too, too many to mention or else I'll be here all night.
*Not my mate and fellow angler Jock White, another Jock whose surname is log forgotten nowadays.
Mister David Gawthorn, Carp Angler, ace Crayfish catcher/eater, Gary Numan fanatic, travelling refugee nutcase and Tapir rustler ... yep you heard it here first, Tapir rustler. Back in 1989 we were making plans for the second Premier Baits catalogue and between us we decided to allow some anglers to write the odd article in it. The 1990 bait catalogue was to be over forty pages long, so we had plenty of space to fill once we'd got all of the boring businessy bait selling stuff out of the way and inside it. I remember Geoff telling me that Dave was going to write a bit for it, he wasn't the only nutter we allowed, Allan Taylor had also sent us a rather nonsensical article entitled ' Mutants and Pointed Heads' and while loosely touching upon Carp fishing, it wasn't your normal sales promoting article, just Al letting off some steam. It didn't matter, our customers ate it up, they totally got the Premier Baits vibe. I then remember hearing Dave say he was going to write his article about Tapirs eating our bait?? This was to go in a Carp Bait catalogue remember? To be honest I don't think we even took him seriously but when we got the article in our hands, there was Dave, hanging over some Tapir pit in some zoo, trying to feed them a bag of out Fishmeal mix! If you click on the above photo it will enlarge ... that photo isn't messed around with or photoshopped, it's genuine. Oh, and did it make that years catalogue? Of course it did! I've attached the photo of that Premier Baits article above.
While I'm here ... here's two other bait catalogue articles, one by dear old Rob McGill. The one on the right was one that Geoff wrote 'for' an unknowing Hippy Paul who would have gone ballistic once he saw the article with his name against it was about collecting wold flowers. We just gave him a wide berth until he calmed down ...
Ah, the two Steve's. We first ran into each other at Yateley in 1986. They came as a pair, they were mates (they were from Middlesex was it?) and to be quite honest though we became pals we never ever got to know their surnames. We knew them as Ginger Steve and Steve 9 - 1. Now the ginger Steve monika was obvious, as he was a ginge but the other Steve (at the top in the above photo) acquired the name of Steve 9 - 1 as when we first met him, fishing on the Copse at Yateley remember, one of the hardest Carp lakes in the country, his largest ever Carp weighed in at 9 lbs 1 oz! Oh and how we laughed. Geoff started calling him Steve 9 - 1 and it stuck, I bet that even now he'll get called 9 - 1 every now and again? They were great lads anyhow, we even invited down to Thanet for a light booze up and a Curry one night and for some reason we went to the Curry house 'before' the pub? Anyhow, Steve 9 - 1 had a thing for Prawn on Pirri (a starter made up of a small fried bready pancake topped with prawns in a light curry sauce) and after having the Pirri as a starter he then ordered two more as a main course. Much later on after a huge pub crawl we felt peckish again and decided to hit the curry house for a second helping. Guess what, old 9 - 1 went for the trio of prawn Pirri's yet again, has anyone ever eaten SIX prawn on Pirri's in one night? I'd wager not? The real fun came that night. We all kipped down in my front room and you can only imagine the smell of the room by the time we woke up ... it was horrendous, it was any wonder the wallpaper was still stuck to the wall and hadn't peeled off. Phew ... what a pong!
The North Pit
Now I may well be getting my years muddled up here but the rest of what I write in this 'bit' will be totally scientifically (pronounced Sciencphilically) accurate. By the late 1980's I'd done a fair few sessions on Yateley and after starting off on the Copse (and failing dismally) I had then tried a bit of half-hearted angling come messing about/partying on the Car Park lake before setting my sights on a new tactic, the sit and wait method that had served me so well back on Fordwich. In 1988 or '89 and as incredible as it now may sound, even though it held the largest Carp in the UK at the time, pretty much no-one was fishing the North Pit seriously after the start of the season, so I decided to give it a go. By this time I hated fishing the far more popular Car Park lake, the water was clear and very weedy and it seemed to me that the only place you ever saw any Carp regularly was in this very snaggy impenetrable spot in the NW corner of the pit. You would see these Carp there so often that it was hard not to keep popping up there for a look, not that you could present a bait to them there as it was a maze of sunken roots and hawthorn stems surrounded above water by thick bushes and trees. By this time of my life my head was a haze of nonsense and to be honest I wasn't even properly fishing. I even started to take my guitar to the lake with me, that's how hard I was trying. Of course seeing as I was going to just try and bait and fish the same swim, then hard fishing didn't really matter, I was in a real laid back sort of mode by '88/89.
A flyover Hog Nosed Weasel Eagle's eye view of me fishing on the point. The expertly painted on blue X marks the spot that I thought might be the gully mentioned in the later text but I'm now wondering if it was in fact in front of that small pack of Island south of the expertly marked blue X? It's been so long. On this recent Google earth image I see that they now allow you to drive up to the works bank. In our day you were forced to lug your gear up past the Car Park lake on foot. We were real men of course ... grrr!! That is an overhead photo of me y'know ... honest it is.
The spot of choice for me was an area known as 'the Point', a long peninsula attached to the south bank of this pit having much of the main lake in front of you and a small Bay behind you. I liked the idea of fishing the open water side, not only were there a few nice spots to fish on there but you could also see what was going on, I just hated being crammed in a tiny little swim, it felt almost claustrophobic, I needed a view of some sorts just to keep the old brain occupied. I also knew that the North Pit Forty had been caught off the Point, Richie MacDonald had caught her in October of 1984 (or that's what is says on the interweb?) not that this would have had any bearing, the Point was just my sort of swim, the only one on the entire lake that captured my imagination.
Early on in this final season I did my first session of my 'bait up an area then sit and wait method' as I remember it? I went straight onto the Point, an area I had fished from the season before, as usual there was no one on it, so I set up and started my quest for Basil. An awfully short lived quest if truth be told. To cut a long story short here, I didn't catch any Carp this session but I did get two VERY large Tench. I'd baited up this area and had one rod over it all of the time, the other I used to put a P.V.A. stringer on and just cast it wherever I felt and whenever I felt. I had a problem with this baited area as it was attracting Tufted Ducks and they were causing me all sorts of aggro. Oddly, I'd never had too much problem with diving Ducks eating your bait until I fished at Yateley, back home the birds rarely went anywhere near your baits when in the water, though in the winter at Fordwich you might get a gang of Black-headed Gulls trying to catch any catapulted out boilies in mid air, once underwater nothing. The Tufted Ducks used to plague you on the Copse and I never knew how to deal with it? I would wave my arms about and try and shush them away but it never worked. In around 1988 Ritchie MacDonald showed me trick that he used, a sawn off shotgun! He never shot 'at' the birds but just let the gun off, the bang was so loud that every Duck on the lake took to the air immediately and wouldn't return till the following morning. Ritchie was a bit 'Kray Twins' if you met him, he was from that part of the world and had the aire of an east end gangster type about him, so the shotgun wielding suited his character somewhat. He did me some damage with that darn shotgun. I was fishing on the Car Park lake one time and went for a walk, meeting Ritchie in the Stilts on the Copse across the road. Anyhow, whilst nattering away, he let off this gun far too close to my head and dislodged a large bit of wax in my right ear which might not sound too bad but it drove me up the wall. For about two days I was on and off deaf in this ear but the worst thing was the irritation, it itched so bad that I clawed at the inside of that ear until I finally got this rock hard bit of earwax out and 'wow' what a relief that was.
Anyway, I digress ... again! Back to that early season session ... as I say I was getting all sorts of knocks off these Tufted Ducks that were diving over my groundbait bed of 30 - 40 odd loose boilies. I then remember getting what 'looked like' a proper take, so I very nonchalantly wandered over to the rod and picked it up, half expecting to feel a Duck on the end ... but this was no Duck, it was a Carp - or so I thought! On this particular day I was fishing out into the open water in the middle of the lake and the only other person fishing on the North Pit at that time was my mate Terry Pethybridge. Now Terry was on the mud bank opposite, an area we called the works as it had recently been obliterated, being just hard rutted machine flattened mud with no bushes or trees, a wide expanse perhaps covering perhaps 100 yards or so of the far bank. We'd be in full view of each other anyway, only about 120 yards apart as the Crow flies across the lake. Now I took little notice of Terry when I got this take, and soon at some point of playing in this 'Carp' something didn't feel quite right, okay it was a fish, but it certainly wasn't a big Carp, surely? All of this aside, up to this point I still thought it was a North Pit Carp, so was absolutely full on gutted once I got the fish close enough to the bankside to see a Tench plugging away in the margins. Anyway, I netted it and what my eyes were met with was this enormous fat Tench, and I mean GIGANTIC, absolutely packed full of spawn. I was so enraged that couldn't bring myself to even weigh it such was my annoyance in that moment, so I unhooked it, picked it up and plopped it straight back in the lake! Soon after returning the fish and calming down, the thought started to nag me about how big that thing was? I had no reference point, the largest Tench I'd ever caught (or seen) was around 7 Lbs and a fish of that 'mere' size was utterly dwarfed by this thing. At this time both Wrasbury and Yateley both held double figure Tench, no doubt I'd just lobbed one back without even putting it on the scales or taking a photo. About a minute or two later Terry wanders into my swim "So you got one then?" or something like that he says, "Nah, Tel, it was just an enormous Tench" I replied. Even Terry thought it was one of the Carp, he was watching me from the other bank. On trying to explain what had just occurred, well it just made me even more annoyed and frustrated that I hadn't weighed that fat spawny Tench. Later on the same session, perhaps the very same day, an action replay occurred and off one of the rods goes again, and as I pull into the fish this time I think 'Oh, no' as it felt like another Tench! It was too, another VERY large Tench, not close to the first one for size but still far larger than any Tench I'd ever caught back home. This time I weighed it and it pulled the scales round to 8 lb 13 oz. The other one I lobbed back was far heavier, longer and bloated with spawn, well into double figures, probably 11 or even 12 pounds I reckon? Now that is some Tench isn't it. Just a shame I didn't weigh it. It retrospect I had a session earlier on the Car Park lake one time, I think I recently read that I caught 9 Tench? No doubt some of those would have been quite large, bigger that the Fordwich fish anyhow ... not that I weighed any of course! I didn't go all of the way to Yateley to catch Tench.
I think that it was that same session that something else newsworthy occurred? Now these North Pit Carp did move out into and through the open water and though I'd not actually seen them, I had heard them, twice in fact. One night while I lay there in my bivvy during a previous session on the Point, I heard the most ginormous fish leap out and it 'sounded' roughly speaking where I had my baits out, both then and where I was fishing this second time too. This fish sounded like someone dropping a half hundredweight sack of spuds out of a low flying aircraft and my thoughts immediately jumped to it perhaps being Basil, it sounded that massive a splash. Who knows, there was a fair chance it was either a mid thirty or a mid forty, as that's what two of the only seven Carp in the lake weighed! Even if my imagination had been running away with me there a 1 in 3 or 4 chance that my guess was indeed accurate even in a worse case scenario and I'm not having it that that splash from was caused by one of the smaller Carp. I only ever heard two lunk out in the North Pit ever and I'd be shocked if what I heard wasn't either Basil or that mid Thirty to be honest. I had also seen a fish emerge above the surface during daylight, but just once prior to this, albeit a far smaller fish and that one crashed out in the middle of the pit too.
My final session later on that same season was a disaster and one that finally drove the nail into the coffin with regard to my Yateley fishing, I don't think I ever returned, either to the North Pit or Yateley at all? Now I'd guess my final try was in 1988 but it may have been in 1999 but if so, very early on in the season?
Now during the week of what went on to be my last session on the north Pit, I had actually seen Basil for the first time, it swum right past me about two or three feet below the surface in a small narrow channel with a small island at the back of it about twenty yards or less away. Now this gully was well on my radar as this same session as I'd already seen some Carp in it and you rarely saw Carp in the north pit due to the stained peaty coloured water colour. One day, before seeing Basil whilst doing what was one of my my usual circuits of the lake, I passed by this gully and there up against this close island was a large Carp, I assumed at the time it must be the fish known as the mid thirty, the second largest Carp in the lake back then. It definitely wasn't Basil but was so large that it just had to be this mid thirty, it was a right old lump anyway, long in shape and thick across the shoulders. The odd thing was is that it was facing head up in the water really close to some overhanging snags (roots and hanging branches) attached to the leading edge of this Island as I viewed it. After this I started baiting this area up, just a handful or two of boilies as I passed by and to make things even more odd, the next day the same Carp was in that same gully, head up like the day before! Now the me sitting here now thinks 'why on earth didn't you fish there the you crazy nutter fool?' Well I had my reasons, one of which was utter laziness but another was that I had set out my stall to bait an area and fish over it come what may. I'd picked this lovely spot off the side of the Point, it was just my sort of fishing, I could see the entire lake from this area, the fish, the birdlife, the comings and going of the other anglers, I even had a fantastic climbing tree right next to me that I'd been working on (as in branch cutting) making it easy to scurry up one side of this tree whenever I felt the need. It was quiet spot, cosy and panoramic. I also hated fishing enclosed claustrophobic spaces such as this spot where I'd seen this fish, I needed something to look at and a small gully with an island in front of me just wasn't cutting the mustard. I hated that sort of Carp fishing anyway, it would have been a bit hit and hold had I even got a take, the island was snaggy etc etc and all these negatives added up to me just sticking to my guns. I just hoped that in time I could attract a Carp onto my bed of baits, I was prepared to put in the time and just sit and wait it out, fishing on my own terms in my own way. It then got even sillier. I don't think it was the next day (I was there for about eight or nine nights you see, it was a longer session) but perhaps a few days later on I dropped by to put in a few more boilies and I saw this movement under the water in mid channel, it was Basil no mistaking it. The fish swam to my right about thirty to forty feet away, perhaps two to three feet beneath the surface of the coloured water and though unaware of my presence I'm certain, it turned slightly and headed off toward the side of this small island as if it was heading out into the open water. Even in that stained water it looked huge. Did I fish the gully? Surely I did? Er ... no. What I was doing by this time was to fish one rod over my usual baited area but swing the left hand rod round toward the back of this island with a line of baits near to it. I reasoned in time that these fish would come out into the open water having by then tasted a few of my free baits and hone in on my baited trap, I had heard that huge fish lunk out in the spot after all. Another huge error I'm afraid. Bad, lazy, sloppy, poorly thought out Carp fishing I'm afraid.
Then came the hammer-blow. After around a week or so's fishing I got woken up by one of the other lads "C'mon he says, so and so has caught Basil" ... I was groggy so perhaps thought to myself, did he just tell me that someone's caught Basil? As I recall it was like a bad dream? I reeled in both rods and followed this chap (I still can't remember who it was but we knew each other) and we ended up going to the exact spot ... that gully, where a bloke I'd never laid eyes on in my life was there amongst about ten other Carp anglers just pacing around the swim. There in the margins was a Carp sack. It turned out that this angler had turned up just before dark, picked this very unlikely spot and in the night had a take which turned out to be the big north pit fish. It was just surreal ... I mean why fish that precise spot, the entire lake was virtually empty, I'm still shaking my head as I write this here now, it was all just so very very odd. Soon he pulled out this sack and there she was in the flesh .. huge, a lovely fish, she weighed over 45 pounds. My reaction was awful, I've never had a feeling like it. I always prided myself on having a good attitude about others catching any fish but this time I was gutted, totally and utterly gutted. I joined in the photo session, taking a few photos but could never bring myself to even have that film developed. It sat on a shelf for years, I can see it in my minds eye, this green coloured 36 exposure Fuji film in its translucent plastic tube ... in the end, after a few years, I lobbed it in the bin. Too many bad memories.
After all of this I slinked off back to my rods, packed everything away and moved to the next closest swim which was in the middle of the north bank of the Car Park Lake. I went through the motions there, left when it was time to leave and never ever went back again I don't think? Certainly never again to that North Pit anyhow. Shameful behaviour in my book but that's just how I felt at the time.
Anyhow, this pretty much finished me off with the serious Carping. It was unlikely that the forty would get caught again any time soon, I couldn't fish Fordwich, or even go Piking due to the ban ... so what to do??
Sitting here now, looking back over those old days I was quite fortunate in some ways as I saw all three Yateley forties on the bank. I first saw Heather from the Car Park lake (at about 41 lb) we were fishing on one of the other lakes but word got to us and we arrived for the photo session. The bloke caught her from an odd spot, right dawn near to the southwest corner of the pit, but what a Carp she was. I was there when Jock caught the Forty from the Pad lake too before finally seeing Basil in 1988 or 89, not too many UK anglers would have seen three forties on the bank back then, it was just a bit of a shame that I never bagged one for myself. There were very few English forties back then, less that ten in the entire Country.
I have other memories of Yateley too. The people at Yateley made the fishing, not the Carp and I got to know all sorts there. Apart from the Carp and the people, Yateley was interesting for other things too. I remember seeing an enormous grass snake sunning itself on the path behind the Copse Lake one morning, I'd guess it was two and half feet long when it skulked off. Other memories included a massive hatch of Dragonfly larvae, the nymphs crawling out of the water at night and into our bivvies where they dried out. I've never witnessed such a thing on any other the other lakes I fished on. One other time on the Copse, I saw this small creature in the wooded undergrowth which bolted into the ferns and bushes. On another occasion I then flushed three more, this time seeing them better ... they were Deer, tiny deer! Muntjacs, the first time Id ever seen them. Though the local Ducks were mostly Mallard of Tufted's on these Yateley lakes, there were lots of Mandarins too and you'd also see Concorde often amongst the many Jets coming and going from Heathrow airport as Yateley was on the flight-path. You always knew when Concorde was coming as wow was it noisy, VERY noisy, about twice or even three times louder than the regular Jumbo jets. Another time on the North Pit I saw a large Stag (Fallow?) Deer swim right across the lake from one side to the other ... you didn't see these things back in the Stour valley at home. I also remember shopping at the Tesco's in Camberley with Jock, it was a proper nightmare. Jock's agenda was to always tried to embarrass us for his own amusement. Jock never got embarrassed in any circumstance and once he noticed that we did, well wow did he make us pay. We all used to dive into the supermarket to get all of our fishing groceries and try and shake off Jock but then all he did was to shout at us from long range meaning we had to walk round with him just to make him shut up. His favourite trick came at the checkout ... he used to try and barter with the girl on the till and I'd feel like dropping dead, curling up in ball on the floor and dying. He knew he'd not get away with it, he just did it to get to us. Cricky these were funny times, there was never a dull moment. I still see Jock every now and again. Well I say 'see him' but the truth is that I'm usually on my bike and he's in his van and I hear this enormous Scottish holler of 'Phiyaaal' as he shoots past me ... that's how the old duffer pronounced my name. So many maniacs, so many of them. That's just Carping in the old days of course when there were a few characters about before the entire world had its post social media sense of humour bypass. Sorry to repeat myself but it's true. So there! Ner ne ne ne ner ... okay!
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