1987
Although I have very few proper notes for 1987 I do have to hand many thought provoking/memory jogging photos. It would be apparent that by this time I was getting even less motivated by my fishing than the preceding two years so no doubt the lack of detailed notes are just a consequence of that? Although I do have some written records of the dates/baits etc plus of course the fish I caught, these old images will be the main source of the material for this 'bit' of nostalgic tripe and as much of what I write in this 'bit' will be just stuff from memory it stands to reason that some of it might either be rather vague or contains a few errors after all of this time?
Fordwich 1987
In 1987 I read that my main time on the banks were spent at Fordwich, Yateley and later on in the year on Trenley, both for Carp and Pike. I also did a week session (in June) at a lake in Cornwall during what was at the time our close season ... anyhow, I'll start off with what occurred on Fordwich before coming to the other lakes.
I was absolutely shocked when checking back through my diaries to see that I did very little time on Fordwich at all in 1987, just three summer visits plus two short winter sessions. I was in an on/off relationship for a part of this year, hence the lack of time spent properly fishing.
A photo from a rather madcap one hour attempt at fishing the Richies during a bitterly cold spell in February 1987. PS: Note that the three rods are not actually in use. Being manic I always had a third rod set up and ready to go, it could save me all sorts of hassle if I had a fish at night.
During the early winter of 1987 a cold front hit Kent, the likes of which we'd never seen before, nor since come to that. The temperature in Scotland fell to minus 'whatever' and even in the SE of England the wind-chill fell below - 20 degrees whilst the Gillingham weather centre recorded 22 inches of snow at one point, typical for the UK it was utter chaos here at the time. Anyhow, for whatever rather madcap reason Lockey and I decided that we wanted to go fishing, no doubt an ale or a bored sitting around the house induced decision? A bit of both perhaps? Anyhow, much of the snow had melted by the time but it was still bitterly cold and when we arrived we found the wind was howling across the lake. As there was this strong wind blowing, perhaps we thought that there might be about a 1% chance of it getting a few Carp moving, thereafter feeding? The Lake being relatively shallow, did respond well to the wind in the winter though in retrospect I think we just fancied getting the rods out as it was silly season time for catching Carp in such conditions and even this feint hope was dashed once we got to the lake and first realised just how cold it was out of the house. We arrived in the deserted Car Park and set off for the Richies, we had the lake to ourselves of course, so just picked whatever spot we fancied. As was usual I had two rods set up in my rod holdall all ready to go apart from sticking a boilie on, and was soon casting out into the bitterly cold E/NE wind. This first cast didn't land where I wanted it, so I reeled in instantly noticing ice forming on my line and reel spool. I then chucked both rods out pretty much anywhere they landed and we set up our bivvies, but on trying to reel in ten minutes later I found that I couldn't, due to balls of ice forming on the line. I actually had to suck the ice off the line to retrieve my lead and bait which was about eighty yards out in the lake at the time. It was then that sense prevailed and we finally decided to give up and pack away as it was pointless to stay. I remember before we headed for home that we then walked up as far as the Baldwin's where we were flushing snipe off the frozen ground and there were bits of dropped tackle lying around everywhere too, it was like a scene out of a day after the end of the world type movie. The only reason that the lake wasn't frozen solid was because of the wind strength and due to this choppy water wherever a bush or tree entered the lake each individual branch was thick with gin clear ice as far up as the water had splashed up. It was beautiful to see just foolhardy to try and fish in.
The lake margins were solid with ice, in fact anything close enough to get splashed above water level was coated with beautiful smooth clear ice. If it wasn't for that stiff wind the entire lake would have been frozen solid.
On getting home I then spoke to Geoff. He'd fished on Fordwich with a few of the lads the night prior, I think the temperature dropped to -17 or - 14 degrees, something in that range anyhow? He been up the pub where the group he was with played some silly card come drinking game, the rules being to buy some horrid mix of drinks then whoever lost the hand then had to pay a forfeit and down whatever vile concoction was in the centre of the table. Apparently Geoff got lots of consecutive bad hands and ended up drinking far too much. He said he was so sloshed that when he got to his bivvy at night that he was so out of it that he fell asleep on his bed chair ON TOP of his sleeping bag. After falling asleep for however long he said he then woke up in a stupor, feeling bitterly cold and just about had the sense to light both burners of his camping stove before falling asleep again. He woke up in agony much later, still on top of his sleeping bag but still alive! It could well have killed him had he not been within arms reach of his stove? It took a lot for Geoff to get so sloshed, he could handle his drink, but those concoctions knocked him bandy by the sounds of things.
Others side issue things going on around the Fordwich complex of lakes during '87 was that Martin Daley and I were starting to keep one eye on Stour and Trenley and we ended up doing a session there too in August, I think probably just the one session, though I may be wrong? I know that by this time the ambience of Fordwich had changed dramatically, there were lots of new people fishing there with all sorts of attitudes, some good, some not so good. It was at this time that a load of back biting started, also people were getting their fishing gear stolen, things that had never happened prior to this new wave of anglers. In my head it was all doom and gloom and for the first time in my fishing career I was pretty much keeping myself to myself more and more, just sticking with my close mates.
Other problems included irritations such as new inexperienced people leaving loads of stray snapped off line in the lake. They simply didn't understand that if you use a two and half ounce lead then you'd need a shock leader and were continually cracking off and sending baited bolt rigs out into the lake. Some of them weren't even concerned, they just tied on another lead and another rig and continued the process, leaving more and more baited rigs and line in the lake. I remember the right hand side of the Richies being unfishable around this time due to streams of line hanging off the side of the islands after some badly aimed casts, it was dreadful. Often times when these newer lads hooked a fish they wouldn't know how to play it or how to handle any large fish once on the bank, it was carnage at times and used to drive us up the wall. They had all of the gear but not the experience as to how to go about using it and some of them just wouldn't listen to reason, I honestly think some of them were incapable of taking any well meaning advice. There was another issue too which became a bit of a trend amongst the newer anglers, playing fish for far too long. To explain - I heard one day about one of the lads having a certain Carp fight for a certain ridiculously long amount of time. I forget the length of time in question (it was over an hour) but it turned out that some of the lads were keeping fish plugging up and down in the margins just for the bragging rights as to who had a Carp fight for the longest time. I even witnessed it myself, seeing someone applying minimal pressure to a Carp already well ready for the net, as his mates stood around giving him a running commentary as to how long he'd been playing this fish. I did have a word but it was a waste of time and the circus continued. Now this particular 'lad' was the same person who word had reached me had been playing a Carp for about an hour and a quarter or some silly inexplicable amount of time initially. Anyhow, all these things incrementally just pushed me closer and closer to the edge of feeling the need to go somewhere else. I just hated this new rat race, the ego maniacs, the competitive morons, the whining the moaning, the gutter sniping and suchlike. The nice atmosphere of the lake just ebbed away for me. In the end I lost my drive and fished the lake less and less. I still loved the lake, just not these new attitudes.
One of the recognisable common's here at 11 lb 11 oz taken off the Baldwin in February 1987. It might look mint but it had no top lip and looked as if it had never ever had one, it was a very old wound or perhaps just a deformity.
As already touched upon, I did only three sessions on Fordwich after the seasons start in June of '87, two longer stays and one shorter one. After a week fishing on a lake in Cornwall at the beginning of the season followed by a one day session at Chilham (but why?) I see that I then ended up doing a three night/four day session on the Richies in July. It went okay and I had lots of action, landing 6 Carp and losing two more, three of the fish were over twenty pounds, the others being mirrors of 14 lb 14 oz, 9 lb 14 oz and a 14 lb common. Seeing as I was on the fish I think that I may have stayed longer but the lake was in serious flood at the time and I was forced to move my bivvy and ended up with it being set up behind the actual swim, on the higher ground of the entrance path amongst the overhanging trees. I also was forced to use waders to fish at all, I needed them to get back and forward to my rods which were shin deep water!
The Richies July '87 with the lake in full flood as mentioned above. I managed to get a few Carp, it didn't affect the fishing at all just my ability to navigate the swim. It also meant wearing waders all day long too - so not good.
The first of the three bigger Carp I caught that first Fordwich session of 1987. This is a fish that was starting to become an old friend by this time, Scale out of Place at 23 lb 2 oz. I have no idea who took this photo but whoever it was obviously wasn't aware of how to focus the camera. Often times you'd have to hand your non self focusing SLR camera over to someone who had no clue how to work such things and it was often a harrowing experience then getting your photos back from the printers.
Long Barbels, the third time I'd caught her, here at 21 lb 14 oz.
Wendy's Fish at 22 lb 7 oz, just the second time I'd caught this particular Carp.
Later on in July I was back in the Richies. The water had dropped back to normal levels by this time and I stayed for four nights landing seven more Carp including three more twenties up to 23 lb. The others were mirrors of 19 lb 12 oz and 9 lb 4 oz plus two commons of 14 and 10 lbs.
Spot for the umpteenth time at 20 lb 10 oz.
Old Faithful, 19 lb 12 oz.
Trio, in a rather sorry old state at 23 lb 6 oz.
And last but not least a new fish for me, the Seal at 20 lb 9 oz. I named it 'the Seal' because it looks like one if you were wondering. Swap those fins for flippers ... see, told ya!
I didn't return again till August and even then only did one nights fishing. For some reason I fished the Deeps, an area I rarely fished after my first couple of years on the lake. This may have been so I could keep and eye on the nearby lakes at Stour and Trenley, we quite fancied having a try on those lakes, well me and Martin Daley did anyway. I remember we saw a few fish in this back bay on Trenley and thought that if we did fish those pits then we'd probably try this Bay first. This back Bay was shallow and quite weedy but it was the only place on either of the two lakes that we actually saw any Carp. I know that I'd been throwing a few fish meal boilies into that Bay when I went up there for a look and with the deeps being the closest spot on Fordwich, then I'd assume that this was why I chose to fish the Deeps area? I did catch one, albeit just a small common.
The deeps, August 1987 during that last ever Fordwich session as it went on to be. There was a large algae bloom going on at the time by the looks of things.
As it turned out this was my last ever Fordwich Carp, a low double figure common. It was odd whilst looking back that in some bizarre symmetry that both my first and last ever Fordwich Carp were caught from that very same swim. Talk about going full circle ...
As a side note to the above, I did find my main Fordwich bait base mix recipe for 1987. I have many recipes written down but this is one of the few that is actually properly documented and dated: It is ... or perhaps I should say seeing as it's now 33 years later it 'was':
16 oz Sluis
10 oz rennet Casein, probably 80 or 100 mesh.
5 oz Lactalbumin
20 oz Sardine Meal
10 oz of any other fish meal
5 oz Codlivine
To the above dry ingredients I then added 1 oz of vitamin supplement, 1 oz of concentrated Liver Extract powder and 3/4 oz of Garlic Powder. I would also have added a couple of glugs of Fish Oil plus a very small amount of concentrated flavour into the eggs, perhaps 3 ml per six egg mix. The flavour to my mind was almost irrelevant and I'd just use whatever I fancied at that particular moment though one of my main go to flavours by this time was one being a thick gooey liquid called Peach Yoghurt. I liked that Peach Yogurt in a fish meal mix and that's all that mattered really as if you liked it then you'd just fish better and more confidently. I see that I also used Choc Mint flavour too now and again, I caught using both flavourings.
Piking 1987
As I have already expressed about forty times my Pike fishing had become a bit of a side issue by this time. I still enjoyed it but if I'm honest it was more about getting out of the house in the winter months and mixing with certain friends rather than to go about any serious fishing. It was all winter fishing as I say, so rather than hits the pubs back home like we used to for something to do and enjoy a bit of company, I'd just go for a couple of night Pike fishing with either Tony Philips or Martin Daley. Our spot of choice throughout that winter of '87 was the gap between Stour and Trenley Lake, the bit where the bank had collapsed. There was a nice deep channel there and it was just easy fishing being full of small bait fish with plenty of ambush areas for the predatory Pike. It was also far off the beaten path and we rarely ever saw another human being, well not once we'd wandered past Fordwich anyway.
By this time in my life the Carp fishing had totally taken over the fishing part of my head meaning that I only did the occasional Pike fishing trip, usually just for a couple of nights fishing for a laugh with Tony Phillips or Martin Daley, my proper days of Pike fishing were well behind me by this time. Geoff never went Piking, it just wasn't his thing. Anyhow, I did get these two Pike in '87, the top fish is 18 lb 6 oz and the other 17 lbs, both taken from the usual gap swim on Trenley in November/December of '87, otherwise I had to make do with a few small one's and one or two other low doubles. I hadn't fished Westbere at all for perhaps a year or two by this point?
The dastardly, fiendish tale of 'the snide' ...
As in 'the official' story ...
Now this little tale of woe takes us to the early part of the winter of 1987, possibly December? The previous August I'd caught what was to be my last ever Fordwich Carp, not that I knew it at the time and it was due to this session that this came to pass. After getting reported for using a third rod (by a one time friend) I received a letter through the post giving me my marching orders, a lifetime ban!!! It was silly, lots of people got caught using three rods and not one of them got anywhere near such a ban. In truth the decision of a life ban being handed to me was very little to do with using three rods of course. Much of what went into making this decision was regarding various bits of hearsay and rumour (admittedly some of it true but some very much not) but the on-lake politics and whining of many overly gossipy, poorly informed Carp anglers didn't help. I swear to you that when I opened that letter I almost burst into tears when it sunk in what punishment the committee thought was merited for using a third rod. Even after all of this and I stopped fishing, the ridiculous accusations kept on coming. I remember sitting in the Pub one night a year or two after my ban when one of the other anglers (Andy Maple) piped up with "I hear you're still fishing Fordwich?" As this was utter nonsense I denied it "Ah, pull the other one Phil, we know, we know" it was getting silly. Apparently word had it that I'd been sneaking round to the back of the lake fishing the out of bounds section at night which was utter poppycock!! I mean how on earth was I getting there, I couldn't even drive and at this time hadn't used a train for many years!! Perhaps I was walking the fifteen miles with my rods, packing up at dawn and walking back home again?? What is wrong with these people who spread these damaging lies. The vile and despicable grapevine eh? I bet there were a few sly grins around the lake when the news broke from the few of the new crowd at the time? What got me was the actual bloke, who was stealing the fishing gear, actually went to the committee and told a pack of lies about me and they swallowed it! On another previous occasion I received a letter from the C&DAA committee telling me I'd been reported fishing with 'a non member' who was there by my invitation?? To say I was flummoxed was an understatement as it was completely and utterly untrue. Okay there were a few out of bounds members who were fishing on Fordwich at the time but the fact that they'd been given a ticket (sent to a false address) had absolutely nothing to do with me. Anyhow, amongst my old notes I found the rough draft of a letter I sent them in reply which was funny as in it I used as a character witness Geoff! I wrote something along the lines that I always fished with 'Geoff Bowers who is an honorary bailiff, so how could I invite non members, then fish the lake with them and expect to get away with it?' Geoff was an honorary Bailiff ... that's the funny bit! The rest of it made me livid and still wrangles me as I write this thirty years on. There they were listening to hearsay over a G and T with their snobby cohorts and accusing me of something that I never ever did. I could never get to the bottom as to who started the rumours about me fishing the out of bounds part of Fordwich after my ban, an utter pack of lies from start to finish. Look, hands up, I was far from being an angel but I did feel that all of this false innuendo and rumour contributed to the decision to boot me out of the club forever. Okay, I broke the rules and used three rods but so did lots of other people, committee members and bailiffs included. And when they got caught as many of them did, they just got a rap across the knuckles 'don't do it again', it wasn't as though I was a repeat offender. No, they were after me, listened to the false words of vile thieves and liars.
Anyway, enough of this ... back to the actual tale of the three rods fiasco ...
One day, probably in late November or December of 1987, Arfur Daley and I were fishing Trenley lake for Pike in the usual spot already mentioned. It was bitterly cold and being midweek, there were no other anglers about at all, not even on Fordwich I don't think. Now Trenley was a half mile walk from the Car Park meaning that very few people ever fished there away from weekends, it was invariably very quiet back then, and as I say, on this day it may well have been that there was not one other person fishing on any of the three lakes, certainly so at night anyhow? We certainly had the whole of Stour and Trenley Lakes to ourselves. We were in the middle of a two night session, we caught a few Pike etc but at one point we heard the sound of feet, the only feet we heard all session apart from each others, they were headed in our direction. No fear, it was a chap we both knew VERY well, a long time angler of the lakes, so we put the kettle, all sat down and had a nice natter as was the way. Now, to be honest, I was 'slightly' nervous at the time as I had a third rod out and it was hidden underneath my rod bag, which I had unzipped down the middle, placing it near the bank on top of two short rod rests placed about six inches off the ground on two rests. A dead bait was lobbed along the deep margin away from the other rods on this 'snide' as we also had our allowed quota of four legal rods in front of us. Martin and I were sharing this swim and we had our two bivvies set up side by side. Almost immediately after our visitor arrived I had the most atrocious bit of appallingly bad awful smelly luck going. We heard one of the buzzers go off ... and guess what, although we had five rods out, it was my illegal one!! I remember 'our visitor' as I'll refer to him here, I wont say his name, his reaction was priceless "I see no movement" he said, referring to the lack of any visual indication on the four rods in view! Me and Martin looked at each other, our faces no doubt a picture, and Martin was actually laughing as I wandered over, threw my rod bag off the rod, picked it up and played in another Pike. It was very funny, don't get me wrong, I did feel like a naughty schoolkid, but it was just genuinely amusing ... ridiculous, surreal. Our visitors reaction was shocking to me if I'm honest, not only did he not see the funny side, but it was obvious that he was annoyed, which for me was an enormous overreaction. I mean I'd known this bloke as friend, having fished with him on occasions during the past ten years or more, as he was one of the blokes we meet up at Westbere when we first started, a man who when we were all Pike fishing years before used to use three rods I'm near certain? We quite often used a third rod to catch some bait, it was a common practise ... so why all of this fuss?? I mean what actual harm was I doing? He then said "I'm going to have to report this to the committee" and stomped off in real mood. I did try to talk to him but he was having absolutely none of it! A few weeks or a month later a letter dropped on my doormat, it was from the committee telling me that they felt what I'd been caught doing as being so serious that they felt the need to ban me for life. It was really upsetting when I read that letter and even now feel that the crime did in no way fit the hefty punishment. People got caught fishing with three rods all of the time, sometimes they'd usually get a telling off about, others might get a short ban. Of course the committee had such a low opinion of me that I always realised that the three rod fiasco was just an excuse to get me out. The bitterness amongst some of the new anglers, the back biting, the exaggerated stories, they all added up to giving them the wrong view of me. Okay some of this was in fact my fault, I have to admit it as I say, I was no saint, but a life ban for using three rods?? There were far worse things going on around the lakes, it was just the build up of hearsay that did for me and the fact that I just refused lick the boots of the various committee members or do them any obeisance when in their esteemed and superior company.
Regarding our old mate who felt the need to report this rather minor incident, we had seen a change in attitude from this chap as the years wore on. He had became bitter, even moaning about my mate Geoff, and everyone liked Geoff, he's that sort of bloke. I remember ringing this unnamed person up and giving him a piece of my mind about it, something I now regret to be honest as I told him a few good home truths, especially what he'd been saying about Geoff, old Geoff wouldn't harm a fly. Anyway, he listened, so give him credit, he didn't hang up. I was like this back then, nowadays I'd have handled the situation completely differently. Of course in my latter years I am a completely different person, wouldn't have broken the rules, not used three rods and therefore the whole thing would never have happened. I am ashamed of the bloke I was then, but even then I was utterly harmless. The aura I gave off might have said otherwise of course but that was all bravado, those that knew me well could spot this a mile off.
As for 'The Snide' in the title ... well that was Geoff's pet name for the 'snide' hidden third rod. The word still makes me laugh even if on this occasion it didn't make me laugh very much at the time.
I could scarcely believe my eyes when I found this image of a low double-figure Pike amongst a pile of old photos. Now this is not only the very same session written about in some length in the above drivel but there laying against my bivvy is the actual Snide, the very rod that caused me so much angst. I'm not absolutely certain but I do strongly feel that the rod was a cut down version of my mate Rich Stubbings old fibreglass leger rods he bought in the mid to late 1970's, the same things he was using in the photo of his home made plastic sheet bivvy in 1979 uploaded earlier on in this Blog. I cut the rod down to somewhere between five to six feet, whipped on a few ring rings and hey presto I had myself a snide! Oh how I came to regret having one at all ... so kids, the moral of this story is 'stick to the rules' ... I didn't on this occasion and suffered many years of heartache.
Trenley August 1987.
Above: A very early photo of Trenley Lake, possibly taken in the late 1970's or very early 1980's? Behind the lake on the far bank is Trenley Park Woods home to Nightingales and many breeding Marsh Tits back in the day. There was also an enormous sand pit there in the late 1970's, a place where loads of Sand Martins nested but has since been obliterated for some reason?
The time came where we decided to give Trenley a try for a Carp. As touched upon earlier I was getting thoroughly fed up with the atmosphere on Fordwich and by this time we'd became aware that there were some large Carp in Stour Lake, very few of them though, meaning it would a hard slog but it was pretty exciting at the time as it still had an element of the unknown about it, something that Fordwich had lost over the years. You could also get some peace and quite up there too.
During our formative years we all fished Stour and Trenley for Tench and Bream and latterly for Pike too. I caught some nice Pike out of Trenley, quite a lot of upper doubles and one whopper of over 22 lbs. We did no Carp fishing there at all until 1987 and even then only Martin Daley and I were the only foolhardy bods out of our little gang to go and give a try. I thought that I had probably caught pretty much all of the big Carp out of Fordwich by this time, so would have been just about game for anything by then. In the winter of 1982 the centre path which separated Trenley from Stour Lake subsided, meaning that after this both lakes were co-joined in the centre even though only by this one small forty-ish feet wide crevasse. There were always a few Carp in the Stour Lake and none were stocked fish, they were just ex Fordwich fish that had escaped and swam into the lake during times of flooding. Being so close to the river at the bottom of a steep valley in this part of the world meant that the lake flooded quite often. On quite a few occasions over the years you'd be forced to move your bivvy mid session in search of dry ground due to the lake's water level rising to the point that the banks would flood. One night alone we were forced to move about three times before eventually giving up and heading for home (me and Terry Pethybridge fishing the Trees swim) in which time the lake water rose at least a foot, probably even more? There was certainly nowhere we could get close enough to the lake to re-set up on that occasion anyhow. Initially it never crossed our minds that Carp would escape out of Fordwich and swim into the other lakes. Once aware of it I know that I used to worry during any time of flood that one or two of the bigger fish might even end up in the river which would have been a nightmare scenario for us Fordwich anglers at the time. I well remember chatting to the bailiff on who was employed by the C&DAA from the late 1970's till the early 1980's (Mike O'Sullivan) and him telling me that whilst wading along the main path past the Deeps whilst on duty one day, that he'd spooked a fair few Carp swimming in the shallow water flooding the main path along the Deeps, usually terra firma that he was wading through at the time. The most obvious evidence of this Carp escaping wotsit came in 1986 when word got to us that the first ever C&DAA thirty pound Carp had at last been caught and we were all shocked to find out it had not come out of Fordwich as we'd anticipated but from Stour Lake. This same fish did end up getting caught out of Fordwich in the autumn of 1987 or '88, though whether or not it entered the lake by fair or foul means we never ever found out? There were various scenarios that may well have occurred, one could have been that the fish was netted and put in the 'proper' Carp lake by the committee? They always liked the idea of keeping Fordwich solely for the Carp anglers but Stour and Trenley for the more general course anglers. I however think this is highly unlikely, as surely it would be really hard to try and net one specific fish? And even then, how would they ever keep it quiet? I may be wrong but I think that it's far more likely that the Stour Fish was either put straight into Fordwich by whoever caught it at the time or perhaps just swam back into the lake during another period of flooding. I can't remember the name of the bloke who caught the fish at thirty from Stour Lake but we all saw Steve Attwoods photos after he took it from Fordwich in 1990 and it was definitely the same grey, relatively un-scaled Carp as the Stour Lake fish.
There was also an old Carpy tale from Stour lake which I stumbled across recently. In retrospect, the fact that a thirty came out of Stour lake shouldn't have been that much of a surprise as years before an enormous fish had been caught there. The tale goes that on 17th June 1985 a pleasure angler turned up to do some fishing on Fordwich but found every decent spot was taken. This forced him to look further afield, and he ended up on Stour fishing float fishing for Tench. That day he ended up getting a bite from what ended up being a 29 lb 6 oz mirror Carp. I assume that this was that same Stour Lake thirty? This would have been a record weight Carp for all of the C&DAA waters at the time. The name of the lucky chap was D. Stingemore I read. I then stumbled across another tale about a big Carp in Stour lake, I found this in the 1979 annual report. The story went that some bloke hooked a large fish whilst fishing Stour Lake in 1979. He was just float fishing for anything, using a bit of bread flake on the hook and eventually landed what was a 20 lb 5 oz mirror, the largest Carp caught from any of the association waters including Fordwich in 1979.
So we always knew that there were a few Carp in Stour and Trenley lakes. We even fished for them on occasion when we wanted a bit of peace and quiet away from what became a very busy Fordwich as the years wore on. I even caught one ...
So we always knew that there were a few Carp in Stour and Trenley lakes. We even fished for them on occasion when we wanted a bit of peace and quiet away from what became a very busy Fordwich as the years wore on. I even caught one ...
The Google Earth view on the Bay where we spotted those Trenley Carp, expertly marked here by that long red arrow. Seeing as there were so very few Carp in these lakes it was difficult to find any at all. I refer to it as 'these lakes' as Trenley was joined to Stour lake in a gap along the footpath on the other side of the lake at the time. In the winter of 1982 were wandered along the path now referred to here as 'the Stour Valley walk' to find that the path separating both lakes had collapsed. In time this collapse became a small chasm perhaps forty feet wide. It must have since been filled back in or else anyone wandering this new fangled Stour Valley Walk would soon find themselves in ten feet of water. As for the two red X's ... er ... don't ask, I marked them for a pike tale that never made the final cut.
Anyway, I can't remember any of the capture but know (due to the next image) that I ended up landing this fish ...
I know what you're thinking ... who's that hideously ugly blonde bird holding that tiny Carp? Well the human being is me and that is what a half decent sized Carp looked like back then! I was super chuffed to get this fish at the time, it weighed in at 19 lb 9 oz, far from the largest Carp I even caught but one of the more pleasing of my latter day captures. 1987 was to be the last year I ever fished the C&DAA waters as I got in a bit of trouble with the committee and I was booted out. In truth I can't blame them, looking back things were getting rather silly though at the time this news came as a hammer-blow, the worst thing by far that I'd ever had to deal with in my twenty five years on planet earth. Of course the pain of it all was surpassed in 1989 when Michael Thomas scored a last minute winner at Anfield and lost us the league. I've got over the C&ADAA thing, flashbacks of that vile and despicable goal still cause me agony from time to time even now.
I 'think' that Martin and I may well have had a second go at Trenley and probably in that same back Bay?? Hmm?? If we did then we caught nowt. Very soon I was to get in trouble with the committee and my days fishing any of these lakes were numbered. It was all my own stupid fault, well, most of it anyhow.
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