1985
I have virtually no written records from 1985 so I'll be forced to wing this 'bit' ... er, a bit? 1985 was the year when we had our big bait breakthrough (I think it was in '85?) when Geoff in his infinite wisdom decided to blend a version of our variety of Sluis/protein mix with the fish meal/bulk fish oil combo. It was thereafter just a case of add a few glugs of fish oil to the eggs alongside a small amount of pretty much any flavour and it was fill yer boots time. Okay, there was slightly more to it than that ... a light scattering of a few hundred free baits before sitting around awaiting any mobile carps finding themselves being drawn to the large bed of scattered boilies, but not too much else in reality. Those smelly old Fordwich Carps just loved showing up and munching on it ...
When I at first decided to hunt the house out for all of my old Carp photos/written notes, it drove me potty trying to find my diary for the 1985 season. Even my photos from this period have gone missing which proved to be a bit annoying. As I can't be asked to empty the loft, assuming that's where they are hiding, then they'll just have to stay in hiding and I'll be forced to write the next chapter from memory or use the little written evidence that I have to hand
I did find this one page of notes from the start of 1985 at the end of my notes from 1984 but the rest of the pages have fallen out and I still can't find them. No doubt I have a whole photo album of '85 Carpy captures around somewhere too. This does provide one memory jogging moment, the School Pool visit in July. I went for another day session, my second and last School Pool visit as it was to turn out. I arrived with Geoff and we decided to split up, he ended up fishing one part of the lake whilst I ended up setting up in this small weedy bay area. It was really hot day as I remember it and a few Carp were loitering amongst the gaps in these thick weed beds. After a cast or two, I just ended up casting out a couple of baits there, a floating boilie fished straight up ten inches off the lake bed amongst the gaps in the weeds. It was pretty half-hearted as I recall but I see (from the above) that at 10.00 am I had a take. Now, for whatever reason I find that I can remember the whole thing vividly, not the time of the take obviously, but what occurred I mean. After this bit of casting abound I found it was so weedy that I lobbed out two boilies into two separate small gaps in the surface weed, both floaters fished about ten inches off the bottom straight up off the lead and the take was one of those blistering things, it picked up the bait and shot off like a rocket. Once hooked the fish felt really big too but soon weeded itself and though I tried all sorts to get it out, pulling it, putting the rod down and hoping it would move, eventually it did move, well the rig and bait did but by then no Carp was attached unfortunately.
1985 was very much the year that I started to go off the rails and I went full on totally moron, I mean look at me? In truth the hair wasn't my fault. I had really greasy hair (well, that's when I actually had hair) and I used to hate washing it in the smelly muddy lake water, though I did from time to time. In those far flung off days Geoff's brother (Dan) was a professional hairdresser and he used to cut my hair in Geoff's mum's front room after he'd finished his snipping stint at work. Anyhow, he said to me one time, why don't you have some streaks put in? It'll dry your hair out, you'll not have to wash it so often?? Anyway, I acquiesced (as they say, or gave in in normal language) and allowed him access to my hair armed with a bottle of Domestos! So, I ended up sitting down in this chair in this living room, feeling rather uncomfortable about what was to take place and the next thing I know he's put what looked like a head shaped rubber vegetable strainer on my nut, and he's pulling strands of hair through it with this pointed metal thing. He then applied the bleach, leaving it to do its dastardly work for however long before washing the gunk off in the kitchen sink. I knew something as afoot after I heard him and Geoff giggling behind me, but bear in mind here that up till now I had no real clue what was going on as there were no mirrors in the front room to look at. Anyway, the big reveal time came and it was truly frightening, I could barely believe what he'd done to me and wanted to strangle him, not that he or Geoff were bothered, they were wetting themselves. Anyway, what a plum eh? Anyhow, back at the fish, unlike my appearance it's a nice one eh? An oddity as it's a Fordwich Carp I caught in 1985, the year I lost all of my photos. I have no clue as to the fishes size (I think it's 9 or 10 pound) but it is is one of the second wave of introduced fish that went into the lake during the 1980's. I include the photo as recompense for my often ridiculous behaviour at this time of my life when I let things get well out of control. Anyway, back to that hair, the really hard thing was afterwards when it came time to see Lockey. I well remember popping round his flat for the first time after getting my bonce lightened and brightened, and Dot (Dave's missus) opening the door. She didn't say much but you could tell she wanted to. So I wandered along the hall, past the fish tank, and rather sheepishly walked into Lockey's front room where he was sat, already anticipating that I was going to cop it. His reaction was this - he just stared at me, said NOT ONE THING, not even the usual Hello Milly, but then laughed for at least a minute before uttering the immortal words "you silly so and so, you look like an enormous cotton bud!" before laughing even more.
Another rare reference to 1985 that I found in my pages of old notes, this time from August, I had 2200 boilies in the freezer but where did I fish with them? I honestly just can't remember? I only remember the above School Pool tale in the first place due to being guided by the notes I'd written but this page of 'blast from the past' writing leaves me utterly clueless. Thirty five years later I need such a thing so as to get the thinking process started but this is little help in real terms with the what happened in 1985 memory jogging exercise going on inside of my brain.
Looking back to this time it was evident that I was already on the wane as an angler, my best or most enthusiastic years were already behind me by 1985. I'd caught so many Carp the year prior that I think that I was (and perhaps still am?) the sort of person who needed something different to do, something new, I think it's in my DNA? I've always obsessed about something or other and the only thing that have never left behind is my love for guitars and music ... everything else has been a transitory thing in my life. Although I obsessed about Carping for a goodly chunk of my life, by this time there was the start of a mindset building about bits of the Carping that I loved and various bits that I didn't and the tilt from one to the other was shifting by this time, the bad bits eventually outweighing the good bits. In the middle 1980's I was getting more and more into playing guitar (very badly) plus I was also starting to get into the party scene a bit more too I'm ashamed to say. In the end the party time thing took over my fishing too and I didn't like the way that I was behaving, this made me unhappy and in the end this was the biggest thing that made me stop the Carping all together. I honestly think that had I not gone off the rails in this way that perhaps 'in time' and possibly after a break, I would have given the fishing another go? I was totally burned out by about 1989/90 but I also think that if I hadn't become so aware and frightened as to what sort of nutter I'd become by this time of my life then I may well have had a break, got my head back together and gone back for a second try? I do miss certain things about Carping even now but I cannot risk allowing all the sideshows to take my life over as it did from the middle 1980's onward. I was getting into all sorts of scrapes and capers by the end of my Carp days, I'm far better off out of it anyway. When I think about when we fished Yateley from 1986 onward (I think?) most of the time I wasn't even properly fishing and when I was it was only at and half pace. I remember one day Geoff and I drove all the way there, I dragged my gear all the way up to the Copse lake (at Yateley) and whilst setting up my gear thought to myself 'what on earth am I doing here' ... I swear to you that I just wanted to go home pretty much the first minute after getting the rods out of the holdall! If I had my own car then I would have done so too. It was all getting a bit mad and out of control, soon it would make me a bit ill I think, I was acting like a madman from time to time. We live an learn of course ... I just learned very, very slowly.
As I say, I found so little material (just a few photos of a few fish from Fordwich etc) that I think that I'll use the remainder of this section of the Blog to write my thoughts about Fordwich ... as in the Lake, a place that is still very dear to my heart even now due to all the wonderful times I spent there with many wonderful mates and associates.
Fordwich Lake
For those of you who don't know it and have the bad fortune to stumble across this fishy blog of woe and boringness, Fordwich is a very small village on the outskirts of Sturry. As you wander through this one road village (actually a tiny town but let's not confuse the issue here eh?) past it's one shop, one bakery and two pubs, there is a church alongside of it runs a small muddy road, running parallel to the river Stour (called the drove) that leads onto the lake. For those of you non locals out there, Sturry resides on the outskirts of Canterbury in S/E Kent. Fordwich is the place where my mates and I served the bulk our respective Carp fishing apprenticeship, especially the formative years of it, and for the most part we loved almost every single minute of being there. I fished the lake on and off in 1977 and 1978 then throughout the extended period of 1979 till 1987 as my go to place. Though I fished many other places between 1982 and 1990 I would always consider Fordwich in my own mind as my personal Carping spiritual home. Heaven on earth it would be to me for many years.
Fordwich and its proximity to the three other pits on that side of the River Stour.
Thirty three years on, sitting here bored to death, contemplating the Universe and the leg length of your average Ant alongside what to have for dinner, I still think about those Fordwich Carp, which is all rather weird when you think about it isn't it? Such thoughts stretch to things such as whether or not or any of those original fish that we were fishing for all of those years ago are still swimming around the Lake or how large they grew to before the eventually died? I'd like to think that a few of them might still be around? I mean, weren't some of those old Redmire Carp still getting caught at fifty or even sixty years of age? I'd know all this stuff in years gone by but with it being info from half a lifetime ago I can't recall properly? I well remember a very old Redmire mirror Carp called Raspberry being reported when it was very, very old. If so, then surely some of those old Fordwich fish must still be present there? While I am here waffling about this subject, I'll pass on a bit of information that I came across about one of the well known fish that used to frequent the lake in our day as it'll present a loose timeline as to when some of the original fish were stocked and how this one grew over the course of my time spent on Fordwich.
The weird and (un) wonderful tale of old Arfur Scargill
The fish in question was known to us as 'Scar Gill' initially but soon went on to be known as 'Arfur Scargill' as it was a Carp that I (as well as others) kept on catching for a while just after the miners strike took place under Maggie's government in the mid 1980's. For those of you foetuses of below a certain age, Arthur Scargill was the leader of the Miners Union at the time (was it the NUM the National union of Miners?) and he became a big cheese in the news after Margaret Thatcher set about trying to beat down the national Unions by shutting down the Coal Mines. All of this made national headlines for months going on into years, as these strikes led to near anarchy round some of the mining communities which affected both the hierarchy at Westminster and the entire Country due to these strikes and black outs etc. Well that's the social history lesson done and dusted kids, it's on with the Carpy tale about this fish.
Now the Miners strike, as already touched upon during my Simon Schama moment in the previous paragraph, was a big thing in 1984 and one day in the autumn of '84 I caught this Carp ...
A week or two later and I caught Arfur Scargill again. Here it weighed in at 19 lbs, half a pound heavier than the previous time. Carp pack on lots of weight in the autumn months in readiness for the on/off winter siesta, so this weight gain was just normal fat packing rather than any actual growth.
Here is Scargill again in July of 1986 when she weighed in at 18 lbs, Carp are always low in weight during the summer months so once again this would be quite normal. No doubt I caught her in 1985 as well but I can't find my notes or photos for this time.
The next time our paths crossed was in August of '86, here she weighed in at 19 lbs 3 oz so had put on just over a pound in weight already in a little over a month/six weeks during the pre-winter feed up. The swim is the Mungs, quite a new spot at the time.
Now as I say, I already knew this fish. The first time I saw Scargill was in the late 1970's or perhaps in 1980 when I saw my mate Alex Stewart caught her. Now I can't remember the exact weight but I'm pretty sure that she was a low double at the time? I then found this in the C&DAA's annual report for 1979 ...
The first time I ever saw Scargill on the bank was when my mate Alex had caught her in 1979 I think (??) and at the time the fish still had a metal crimp tag clipped onto the outside of its gill on one side. This tag had some numbers and letters stamped on it as I remember it but eventually the tag fell off as the Carp grew, leaving behind that obvious 'scar' mark after which the fish acquired its name. As I never saw or even heard about any other tagged fish coming out of the lake, I can only presume that the Carp mentioned in the above is indeed referring to Scargill. This gives an official timeline on the stocking of these Carp into Fordwich, Scargill was put in the lake in the late winter of 1971 when she weighed just 7 lb 12 oz. She may have been one of the fish either destined for or taken out of Horton Kirby, the jury is out on that as I've already written about in another part of this Blog. [see below] At some time during 1978 she weighed 13 lb 8 oz and then 15 lb 4 oz in August of 1979. By the time I caught her in the mid 1980's she was by then a high double, no doubt hitting about twenty pounds by November should anyone have caught her at that peak time of year for a high weight.
The Lake
As I say, Fordwich was my favourite lake ... back then in the late 70's and '80's it was a lovely place to fish, the atmosphere and seclusion was just serene to someone like me living on a noisy Thanet housing estate. Fordwich Lake is a thirty five acre pit with very few swims and being well off the beaten track the seclusion always made you feel as if you didn't have a worry in the entire world. That said, the village was was within easy reach reach for supplies but was so tiny that you rarely saw too many people there with it being hidden away from the two main roads headed in and out of Canterbury. Back then there was a small newsagents (long since gone, now a house opposite the George and Dragon Hotel, Black Holes was the name we gave the shop, so named by Gonzo - hee hee) and two pubs in the village itself, the Fordwich Arms at the bottom of the Drove and the Middle of the Road pub (was it called that in the 1980's?) on the outskirts. On occasion we also did have the occasional meet up and beer at the small bar in the George and Dragon Hotel too but none too often as it was a bit up market for our type let's say. There was also a Bakery opposite the Middle of the Road Pub that is no longer there plus a small supermarket sort of set up which eventually sprung up down along the main Canterbury road. This meant that essential provisions were easy to obtain even on foot if need be. There was also a slightly more long range drinking hole (the Swan) on the opposite side of the main road but still well within walking/waddling back range. We used the Fordwich Arms more often than not, though with it being a rather stuffy place they only just about tolerated the angling fraternity. You could tell that we weren't really all that welcome let's say? We weren't in fact troublemakers, far from it in fact, but we were often a bit scruffy round the edges and could be a rowdy lot at times, lots of well meaning noise but never causing any problems.
Now I'll take a stab in the dark, take a huge guesstimate and say that there were 'around' 150 - 180 double figure Carp present in the early to middle 1980's, so at 35 acres then this means there would only be about five/six fish per acre give or take. By the later 1980's there would be 200+ double figure fish, many of them over twenty pounds by that time. As already touched upon, we received little feedback about the original stocking as we had little real contact with the hierarchy due to the Committee being a tad above our lowly station let's say with the fishing club aficionados style having a whiff a bit golf club like, jolly hockey sticks etc. This meant we were never really able to sort the wheat from the chaff with regards to good or bad information regarding times and numbers of stocked fish as none of us hardcore Carp anglers knew. During the period in question ('79 - '87) there were little bits of new stocking going on. In the very early 1980's a few small grey Italian type mirrors in the 3 - 4 lb range, probably less than 10 fish (?) were put into the lake and later on from around '83 - '84 time (??) a small section of the lake was netted off in the small narrow gully behind the Baldwin swim into which were introduced some very small, very scaly mirrors of under 1 lb in weight. Eventually these small Carp grew and were introduced into the main lake and some were already into low double figures by the time I stopped fishing the lake in 1987. I'm not sure as to which strain these fish were? The original stock were mostly of the Italian type, deep grey, two-tone fish, sparsely scaled things but there were a few long skinny, heavily scaled at the tail end, Galician types, but no more than a handful or two. Although we noticed spawning going on we never once ever saw or even heard of any Carp fry being seen.
Some of the new Carp stocked in the very early 1980's. They were all small grey, barely scaled Italian strain fish and like peas in a pod, weighing about 4 - 5 lbs in about 1981/82 and were up to about 9 lbs or so by 1986. There were rumours that these fish were stocked out of one of the older Carp anglers garden ponds, possibly illegally if true? I'm not sure of how many were put into Fordwich but if memory serves correct it was less than ten? The top fish weighed in at 5 lbs in 1982 and the two bottom one's at about 8 lbs in 1984 I think?
The source of those original Fordwich Carp?
As I've already touched upon it was always a bit of a mystery to us where the Carp put into Fordwich had come from? We didn't even know when they were stocked either, which is why I got so excited when I found the information (see above on this page) about Scargill being introduced into the lake in 1971 as a 7 pound fish. We did get told 'where and when' with regard to the source and the time-frame but the problem was that where one person would tell you one thing, another seemingly equally knowledgeable source would tell you something different. In the end I stopped asking as it was pointless, and just got on with the fishing. One thing that did come back to mind was that someone who I've since forgotten who it was but I thought at the time to be totally reliable (John Sturge or Joe Fowle perhaps?) told me a tale about some of the original stocked fish coming from Horton Kirby, a lake in North Kent. The bare bones of that story were that either the fish were destined to go into Horton or were removed from Horton and the other bit I have rattling round my head is that the fish were being moved due to low water levels or drainage in some lake or other, perhaps Horton Kirby perhaps some other lake? As I say, some of the stories were contradictory but I now think that this, or a version of this, might well be right? And here's why ...
Now I had all of this info bouncing around inside my head back in November of 2019 when I gathered all of my old Carp memorabilia together and wrote my first Carp fishing Blog, but unlike the early eighties when I was originally told the above tale, by this time I had access to the good old interweb, so I investigated. I found a lot of photos of the Carp caught at Horton and lo and behold there amongst all of these photos were a fair few Carp that properly resemble the Fordwich fish. I've fished two of the other network of lakes which Dartford Angling Association run or ran at some time and those fish are most unlike the usual Fordwich Carp. One or two of the Horton Carp look 'exact replicas' of the Fordwich fish too. Anyhow it does add a little credence to one of the lines of enquiry that I got various answers about back in the day, even though of course my little bit of on-line detective work was far from being totally conclusive.
Anyhow ... back to the lake itself ...
The lake, being a gravel pit extraction, was of various depths, the exact underwater topography of which was often a mystery to us anglers as this was way before the advent of echo sounders and the like. The fact that both boats and swimming were outlawed did little to help or no doubt we'd have mapped the entire lake out for depths during the close season. It was just impossible to plumb the depths at any more than about eighty or so yards anyway, meaning we were pretty much just left to our imagination initially as to how deep the water was out there where we were casting and what the bottom of the pit was like. In time we developed a technique of casting out a lead and 'feeling' what the bottom was like by dragging the lead back a little bit. On a slow retrieve, using the rod to feel whatever you were dragging over, we did get a sniff of what it was like out there but no more than that. As for the depths, well what we could plumb out told us than in places the water might be 15 feet or more at places along the north east bank (as in 'the deeps') whereas the rest of the lake varied between about two and ten feet in some of the deeper margins and gullies. As to some of the other longer range areas where I caught the bulk of my fish, I had no clue as to the depth! I could deduce the bottom by the feel of the lead using my drag back system, a smooth rattle indicating gravel or a smooth feel meaning you were over mud or light silt where there were areas of either small amounts or no weed. Weed was always obvious when felt through a thin carbon rod and silt could be smelt on your baits if left out all night. We used to aim at the gravel bars to fish upon (either the tops or the sides) mostly but the fish used to feed in the silt as well. In the end we got quite good at finding the wide, often regimented gravel bars on certain swims such as the Richies. There, as in other areas of the larger more open bowl of the pit, the gravel bars ran roughly north and south towards and away from you, so then landing on one (and having a quick feel to make certain) wasn't too much of a feat once you had a visual marker on the opposite bank to aim at. We used all sorts of visual markers though never any dedicated marker floats, a tree or a dark patch of earth on the opposite bank that was all we needed, whatever it was where you were aiming for at the time, this was far from being precision fishing. The shallower bars to your right were islands, so this helped you get a more accurate alignment too as you could physically see the angle the bars were originally dug at by any bushes or trees growing along the tops of these more shallow gravel bars. Once you cast and hit your marker, you'd just make the lightest of pullbacks and if smooth then you'd be happy. It's odd, as I sit here writing all this boring garbage that I can still imagine the feel of a lead dragging along the bottom at 140 yards range. The only other clues we could get were when you saw that your lead was getting dented, meaning you'd been casting on top of the more shallow gravel bars. Otherwise we were all in the dark, no one had a clue really, not in the early to mid 1980's anyway. As I write this, I've just remembered the work parties when boats went out into the lake to clear old line or bits of windblown branches, bits of trees, the floating corpses of dead match anglers who'd died from boredom etc. At this time you could see whoever was out in the lake at the time putting an oar into the water which gave you some idea as to the depths too, though in reality this did little to help with specific areas of the lake when you were actually fishing. We also obtained some old aerial photos of the pit, I assume taken in the massive drought year of 1976 when the water levels were very low. On these 10 x 8 inch black and white photos you could see all of the bars and the shallower areas. These were prize possessions (no Google earth then kids) back then in the dark ages when we had our own hair, working brains/limbs and flat bellies. All these old memories kicking around in my head, I can still bring them to mind clear as day.
The C&DAA image as it is on their website showing the various swims, some having these new fangled names.
There were very few swims for such a large lake, the main reason being that the entire south blank (running between the Barnes and the Deeps) was out of bounds.
I will go through the swims here one by one:
1: The Barnes. Upon entering the Car Park via the drove, there was just one swim on the smallest (west) bank. I'm not sure what it's like now but back then you'd wander along a thin path sided by masses of willow trees and in the summer months especially, the air was full of mosquitoes, it was marshy and so much so that there were areas where the path was boarded across the wetter areas. The swim was a small, high sided, square mound of earth held in place with boards from where you were looking out across a few shallow bars which formed islands about fifty yards in the distance. The troughs were quite deep, and the Bars, headed roughly right and left across you, were often very weedy in the summer months meaning that once a fish was hooked you were inevitably in for a tough time. We all ended up having to go into the water to retrieve fish here, something that I hated to be honest as it freaked me out swimming through weed and it was always a nice feeling to make it to the next shallow bar for a rest. I used to like casting through the gap in the islands but obviously this was fraught with danger once any Carps were hooked. I used to fish this part of the lake only during my formative years of Carping, even though it was the place that I caught my first ever twenty pound Carp from in 1981. The swim was named after Dave Barnes (he lived in Cliftonville/Margate if memory serves correct?) the man who made the best bivouacs around at the time. Dave didn't fish the lake too often during my years, but he was a nice enough bloke when our paths did cross. Of course I bought my upgraded bivvy from him, up to then I'd been using a heavy wax cotton thing, which although nice and stable was slightly small for me (I am six feet five) and worst of all it leaked!
I had a pig of a time recognising the above photo but eventually worked out that the year is 1980, the swim is the Barnes and those are my first set of shop bought matching Carp rods, c.2.5 Lbs TC 11'5 foot long fibreglass jobbies. Cricky my old 42'' landing net looks new, it served me well throughout, until 1990 in fact when I stopped fishing.
I noticed on the C&DAA website that there is now another swim on the west bank called the Shed Swim. This wasn't there in my day but I can see from the map that it's slightly closer still to the gap in the Islands that we used to cast through from the Barnes. I would imagine that this renders the Barnes swim pretty much redundant as a viable area for Carp fishing nowadays? I also see that there is a marked area called the Disabled Swim in an area that we always just referred to as the 'Car Park'. No one set up to Carp fish from this swim though I did catch my one and only ever Fordwich floating crust fish from this spot. The Car Park area used to be a good place to look at fish cruising during the late close season and it would be a place to look from on hot days during the season when many fish might be seen on the surface, which is what happened when I caught a 13 lb Common on that bit of crust.
2: The Trees: The Trees is the next proper swim wandering east after going through the gate headed east along the north bank. At this end of the lake the bars run more parallel to the bank you are fishing from due to the way the area was dredged for the original gravel extraction. Once you pass the Trees and the adjacent area of island further east to where the lake opens out, the bars run roughly north to south not east to west as they do at the Car Park end. The Trees was made up of three fishing areas, one of which was short range swim then the other two (known as the centre and the right hand Trees) which looked out towards the main islands about 70 yards away. The best way to catch fish here was to fish the middle of the three swims and cast through the largest gap in the islands into the troughs or the back of the main gravel bar. Again this was a nice place to see fish cruising around. The Car Park end being full of scattered Islands, was a big draw to the fish.
A couple of photos of how the middle part of the Trees swim looked in the early 1980's, I think both of these images are from 1982. I haven't set foot on Fordwich for perhaps ten years now but I assume that it's not changed too much? I used to prefer this part of the three part swim as it allowed you to cast one rod through a gap in the Islands into an area both frequented by lots of Carp but also the ground below water was a lovely area to fish over being nice and gravelly. That is Dave Stewart on the other side of my bivvy in the top photo fishing in what we referred to at the time as the 'right hand trees'. The left hand trees was just a float anglers sort of swim.
The left hand Trees ... a float anglers swim but here in looks as if I must have spotted a Carp in the close gully and slung out a rod there? Not that I can actually remember, I just found this unlabelled photo, unseen for decades, earlier on.
3: The Richies: Why named The Richies? Well, I have forgotten the actual Mr Richies himself and I'll have to ask around to find out as the dudes name given to this area of the lake as it has slipped my mind,. That said, 'Paul' Richies rings a bell? This might be wrong of course, he was an angler from the 1970's not my era. The Richies is a great area of the lake which is at it's widest at this point being fully 200+ yards to the far and inaccessible bank. You had the best of both world's fishing the Richies, as not only was it not too much of a hike with your mountain of gear but was easy to fish from too. You could lob a bait 70 - 80 yards alongside the islands to you right or fish into the more open water at extreme range. It was my personal favourite area, as not only would fish be drawn in from the safety of the opposite 'non fishable' side by wandering fish finding mass areas of free bait boilies but it was also a natural spot that fish would move through back and forth through to get in amongst the Islands. It became a bit of a party swim in my era and often was the time there would ten or more people hanging around nattering about this and that. We all had our platoon of 'Mungs' as Geoff referred to them, and being King of the mungs, I had more than most. Of course I was just the most lovable character (hee hee) so they'd all come from far and wide to see uncle Phil. There were pro's and cons with this of course. Eating and sleeping were affected but on the flip side, many was the time you could get one of your Mungs to bring you stuff from the shops meaning you didn't have to leave the lake. Milk, Bread, Cod and Chips, all sorts were delivered straight to your bivvy ...
The Richies in 1986, very much a morning after the night before sort of photo. We must have gone into Canterbury the night before as those plastic flowers would have come from the curry house. Here I was fishing the left hand side ... I can't say who it was on the right.
4: The Little Richies: The little Richies is the area due west of the main Richies swim (about twenty odd paces) where you were looking down the gully toward the islands meaning that casting was always very close range. In the middle 1980's some bright spark deduced that when wearing waders that you could walk past the Little Richies and out onto the Island which soon after became a bona fide swim of it's own, credit where it's due, I'd never thought of that. Thereafter the Little Richies was a virtual nonentity, a place to stake out any sacked up fish caught at night from the Richies or an area to photograph fish in. I didn't fish this area until one night when the gully was seemingly full of fish and my mate who was fishing the spot (Jim Dean) decided to leave the area and go and sleep in his Caravanette in the Car Park for some absurd reason? He wasn't very happy when he returned in the morning to see that I'd bagged a few fish including a cracking mid twenty from his swim.
Geoff on the Little Richies in the early 1980's. The swim was boarded at the front (just about visible bottom left) but these boards were soon removed. I'd assume the area was set up as a float anglers peg but the Carp often wandered through this gully down to to Island swim (just over Mr Bower's right shoulder) so in time it just became a rarely used Carp swim. By the mid to late 1980's the Island swim was being used, when this photo was taken the Islands weren't accessible at all.
Evidence that Carp did wander through that gully off the Little Richies, three Carp I took one night in 1983, a 25+ mirror and 2 mid double common's. An impressive catch at the time.
5: The Island: As already touched upon, this was new spot unavailable until probably 1985 or 1986? The swim could only be accessed by wading out through 20 - 30 yards of two feet deep water which lead to a rather Edenic private Island where should you so imagine the outside world didn't actually exist. The fishing the was an easy affair, and though lovely and secluded the fact that the view was restricted to one small gully of the lake meant that the Island just wasn't my bag as these sorts of swims made me stir crazy with boredom after about an hours 'residence' as I needed space, people to speak to and things to look at. I did fish there though just once, for one night (as in ever) it was early on in the season and although a few fish were present, they were far more interested in spawning than feeding. I did get some spectacular views of many fish, so it was awfully entertaining and it was only the second time that I ever laid eyes on the rarely caught fish we referred to as She Lookalike which was seen chasing around amongst other Carp in the spawning frenzy going on in the margins. One other story from this swim occurred when our mate Chod, a lad from Whitstable who was a rather big lump of human being let's say, slipped and dislocated his knee whilst accessing the Island which was very nasty. As I say swims with no view of the main part of the lake made me feel claustrophobic so I avoided then for the most part.
6: The Mungs: Alongside the Richies, about five paces away, was a small reedy area which originally in the early days of Fordwich wasn't even a swim but was just a small pathway to the next swim along, called the Easterns. I remember removing a few bits of vegetation and throwing couple of rods out there one day in the middle of a wait to get the main Ritchies swim, which at the time was occupied. I also had to flatten the vegetation down behind the swim to put up my bivvy, all this took no time. At the time (1984?) no one ever fished there but would fish another swim that since became overgrown about fifteen yards further along the bank (the Easterns) but as I say, due to various periods where it wasn't fished, it eventually grew over, it was never re-cut and soon it pretty much disappeared being replaced by the Mungs as a spot to set up and fish from. By 1986 there was little man known as Andrew Wilkes. He was part of a long standing array of village idiots going back to the dark ages and beyond. He was voted King of all the UK Village Idiots whilst representing his chosen constituency of Minster on fourteen separate occasions and went on to become nationally and internationally famous as a top class Village Idiot of some repute. I hear that he no longer fishes at all but has gone on to became a golfist? See, I told you he was an Idiot didn't I? Anyway, eventually we took pity on the poor beggar, befriended him, took him under out wings and began to love this idiot, much like you might a smelly old pet. Man could Wilkie drink tea ... wow, it was VERY impressive. He could drink and drink and drink and this just made the rest of us love him more and more as he was always making a brew. The pile of spent tea bags outside of his bivvy is indelibly impressed on my mind, a veritable mountain of used tea bags, inside which it would have been possible to bury a dead horse or three. Okay, he bored the pants off of us for the most part but he was nothing if not utterly harmless, meaning we benevolently offered up our esteemed friendship. I make mention of 'Wilkie' as he became known to us, as it was his fault that the Mungs acquired its name. One day in 1986, as Geoff and I fished side by side in the main Richies swim, old Wilkie showed up, hacked out a far larger amount of newly grown reeds, making the swim into a proper looking spot that thereafter became one of the actual proper spots. This is when Geoff so eloquently christened the swim the Mungs, which led to masses of childish laughter from all within earshot. The term 'Mungs' was due to one of our Mungs (as in Wilkie) making it into a place to fish from properly. From this point on, this meant that six rods could be used in the western end of the main bowl part of the central lake seeing as the Easterns was out of bounds and unusable. Of course you'd have to cast slightly to the left if there were already fours rods out on the Richies. Henceforth the Mungs as a proper swim was born.
The Mungs at night in 1986. By this time we'd hacked out all of the reeds in the water, initially we left a few of the close plants and just netted any fish over the top of them.
7: The Easterns: So called as it was fifteen/twenty yards east of the Ritchies, the only area of access to the Easterns. The area has long since overgrown and was unused or unusable from the middle 1980's at least. It was once a nice secluded swim and a place that I often used to head for in my formative years. The area you were fishing was between the Mungs and the Mound, so it was yet another longer range casting area of the lake. The swim easily accommodated a single bivvy and 2 rods and though on occasion during the pre Mungs days we did fish there two up, it was always a bit of a squeeze to do so. I remember one night when my mate Steve and my brother tagged along, I shared a bivvy with my brother on the Easterns whilst Steve shared with someone else in the Richies, possibly Geoff? We were getting very serious about the Carping by this time and frowned upon the fact that both Steve and my brother decided to hit the pub in the evening. At post Pub time Steve and my brother showed up more than half cut and at some time of the night my brother turned over whilst sleeping on a lilo laid on the floor, rolled out of the bivvy and ended up in the lake still zipped up inside a mummy type sleeping bag. I ended up having to go into the lake to rescue him, I'm not exaggerating when I say that he may well have drowned stuck inside a soaked tube type sleeping bag. The next thing I know Steve appears, I get my brother out of the lake being none too pleased I can tell you, then Steve dives in the lake (bearing in mind this was by then well past midnight) and starts swimming around the Bay area shown in the photo below. He was being really noisy too, so there I was trying to use all sorts of threats to get him to shut up and get back on dry land and at some point I said to him "shut up willya, Rod Killick's fishing on the Mound" as in the next swim along, Steve was still so sloshed that he then started shouting out as he carried on swimming around the lake "Don't worry Mr Killick, I'm not a Swan ... it's only me Mr Killick" etc etc I could have strangled him. I was so worried about getting in trouble that the following morning I went round to the Mound to apologise but found the Mound empty! Now Rod Killick was definitely fishing there at dusk, hopefully he packed up before Steve and co got back from the boozer?
The view from the Easterns in 1980 ... in my head a view still accompanied by the words "Don't worry Mr Killick, I'm not a Swan" .... anyway. Those reeds (between this swim and the Mound) were often a hazard when trying to bring Carp towards the bank. In time we let the swim grow over, bashed out a hole between this spot and the Richies and gave birth to the Mungs. From the Mungs you had more leeway when and Carp were kiting to the left.
8: The Mound: Now known as Woodman's, it was always the Mound in the 1970's/80's. The original swim was quite large, able to accommodate two anglers/four rods and in the early days was just a mud mound (hence the name) which sloped into the main lake about five yards inside of the trees between the lake and the main path. Eventually it got boarded off at the waters edge and was levelled off, forming a thirty by fifteen feet area of flat mud overlooking the very middle part of the lake. Fishing there was usually mid to long range, I never ever saw any Carp close to the bank in this part of the lake. Since then I see it's been filled in to form a point of land jutting out into the lake with two areas to cast from, or at least that's how it appears on Google Earth? Back in our day you'd have just about have enough swinging room to cast out due a patch of Willow Trees growing behind you.
A scene from the mound c.1983?
A misty lake Mound scene from 1982.
9: The Reeds: The Reeds swim is another like the Mound which looks as if a fair bit of work has taken place on it since my days by building the swim out into the main lake. The original swim was tiny and though you could fish there two up with four rods, you'd have to share a bivvy should you do so as there wasn't room for two. The access off the main path was very marshy and you'd be forced to wander across a few thin loose boards to avoid the stinking mosi filled slimy mud either side. The swim had another problem as being the closest area to the point area, then this meant you could well be fishing the same water as someone totally unaware of you being there due to the swim being hidden from view from the points back then. A few arguments were heard emanating from this area, often at raging point when people cast across each other unknowingly. Eventually it became so bad once the lake became overly popular that we avoided fishing this area altogether. It was hellish for mosquitoes there, hellish. To us it was famous as being an area where Al Stewart, who let's just say had downed many a light ale the night before, awoke to see one of his rods in the lake and still disappearing into the distance at a reasonably vast range. If I remember rightly, he went in swam out and even landed the Carp that had towed his gear out there.
Then we come to the four point swims, I say four, it was three proper swims the Baldwin, Killick Point, the Corner Swim and a small grassy area that looked back down towards the Reeds and Mound. I never felt it was so important to fish at long range off the three main Point swims and often caught fish there in the seventy/eighty yards range, easy fishing to those of us who had learned the art of extreme range casting and baiting up.
10: The Baldwin: So named after everyone's favourite hoity toity committee bloke Mr Andy Baldwin. Andy was a bit upper crust, a Trout angler (shudder!) and a member of the dreaded C&DAA committee but was an eminently likeable bloke. Full of old tales, he was one of the older committee members who never looked down his nostrils at you like you were some sort of foul smell under his nose. Okay, the committee changed (a bit) later on once proper humans such as John Sturge and Joe Fowle were allowed access, but when I first joined it was all a bit stuffy and middle class as I remember it? The lake slightly narrows at this point (though is still 170+ yards wide) and there used to be a tiny island atop a gravel bar in the middle of the swim about 100+ yards offshore. Perhaps it's still there though I can't see it on Google maps? I can see that they've since built a long landing platform sticking into the lake alongside the thin point to the right of the swim. This wasn't there in our day. It was just a flat open swim, able to accommodate two people/four rods at a push. I caught many of my Carp from this spot off the main 'middle' bar, baiting/casting toward that island.
The Baldwin, probably in 1985 or '86, definitely a winter session. The kid is Jock's son Ben, the rods on the left are mine and those on the right are Lockey's. Ben will kill me if he see's this photo .. it's odd for me to even think that he'll be in his forties now?
11: The Killick Point: So named due to Rod Killick, who showed up using the first versions of the as yet unknown to us Hair Rig in the early 1980's and absolutely battered the area from this spot good and proper. He had us all scratching our combined heads did Rod? Of course as soon as Carp Fever was released we all joined in with the Carpy fun too. Word about the hair rig got to the Faversham anglers (where Kevin Maddocks and Rod Killick fished) way before it hit the dark backwater that was the Canterbury scene back then. We were light years behind. There were some nice gravelly areas off the Killick at medium range, I think the best method to fish all three of the point swims was to fish one rod at range and the other closer in, then adjust as and when you got any action. The best session I ever had off this swim I was catching the fish at about 70 - 80 yards range. I also caught a few at 120 yards too of course.
The Killick Point in the summer of 1984.
The Killick Point in the winter of 1985 or '86, the same session as the one with Ben in the photo above it. The rods on the left are Jock's and those on the right are Geoff's. I recognise Jock's old landing net.
12: The Corner Swim: Even in our day it was occasionally referred to as 'the gap' by newcomer anglers, but to us it was always the Corner swim. I see that now it's been re-named again as the Killick Gap but this is a new one to me? There was another small swim round the back of the Corner swim that faced west with the Reeds swim on the right, but if you did fish there then there was an unwritten rule that it was particle only swim (or at least a close in swim using other baits) so as not to interfere with anyone fishing from the Reeds. I actually fished this swim once but only a post pub night spent waiting for a better spot during a spell where the lake was full up with anglers. This was another of the areas where I used to feel that distance fishing wasn't as essential as further down the lake. There were some nice areas to fish over within sixty to eighty yards or less of the bank. I never used to like fishing too close in as I liked having a bit of fun and could be a noisy so and so ... the further out you'd cast and bait the more you could relax!
The Corner (now the Killick Gap) in either 1983 or more likely 1984. That tunnel of reeds were rather hazardous when bringing big fish in to the netting stage of things.
13: The Spit: The Spit was an interesting place to fish, in fact one the best spots on the entire lake but I always felt a bit cut off my from my mates when out there. I was always happiest fishing the larger more open swims, so did far less time out there than I ought to have done perhaps? The Spit was only accessible after about 1981/2? Being just a small thin point on an otherwise inaccessible island up till then, it wasn't until a wooden bridge was built across to the Island just to the north of the Baldwin that there was any swim there at all. The swim itself was tiny, just about large enough for a Bivvy and two rods, I'd assume it still is quite small as a swim though I see via the wonders of Tubeface that it's had a fair bit of work done to it since my day?
Geoff on the side of the Spit where it looks as if he had two Carp sacked up from the previous night looking at those two bank sticks?
Geoff again with a small common. This one shows the old original Spit swim, tiny it was, you couldn't even get a full sized bivvy on it. I would guess that both of theses photos of Geoff were taken in 1983, perhaps 1984?
An even older image of the Spit, possibly taken during the first year it was even accessible in the early 1980's? I have no clue who the bloke in the photo is but I recognise that Carp ... it's the no-top lipped Common. I found a couple of this fish and another that this bloke caught during the same session but I never saw him again so couldn't hand over these images. I'll have a stab in the dark guess that this was in 1981?
14: The Deeps: An area that any of us ever rarely fished for Carp, I did on a few occasions but I'll take an educated stab guess that Geoff never ever did? He was just too fat and lazy (hee hee) to drag all of his gear up there of course. In truth it was a bit of a hoick with your gear and you would by then have wandered past so many other good areas to fish from that inevitably you'd just drop in somewhere else even if you'd headed off that way. I did get my first ever Carp (s) from the deeps, also many half decent Pike and one night a huge Eel which tipped the scales at 4 lb 12 oz. I liked to cast to the shallower water over near the far bank about half way along.
Fordwich Deeps, autumn 1979.
And the next swim to the left hand side of the one above. Note the bashed and mashed up Carp rod.
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