Page 3 of 14: 1980 and the grand C.C.G. project.

1980 and the bewilderingly interesting tale about the top secret society known as the CCG. Read on ... 

An old photo taken on the Barnes at Fordwich taken in 1980. I can see my newly acquired, first ever set of matching 11 foot 6 inch long fibreglass Carp rods and what would be my first ever set of Optonic bite alarms, identifiable as older one's as they have those wires going from the heads down to the speaker box. By about late 1982 we'd have Optonics that had all of the electronics and speakers all built into the head, this being a massive leap forward as those thin spindly cables caused us all sorts of headaches for the first couple of years that we had access to these far superior bite detectors. Our initial 'buzzers' were Herons and they were an absolute  nightmare of epic proportions, these new fangled Optonics were heaven sent to us at the time by comparison. In 1980 and '81 we were still using running ledgers too, hence those old style looped plastic bobbins. 

After the hefty triumph of the previous years fishing when I banked my first three Fordwich Carp and two twenty plus pound Pike, I was quite obviously feeling a bit jack the biscuit about myself. In reality I was still an utter idiot of an angler, not that I'd be anywhere near aware of this inside my infinitesimally small pea sized brain at the time. In retrospect it would be a further three years until I'd properly served my Carp fishing apprenticeship anyway, my 1980 rigs and baits were archaic and I was soon to find out that my gear wasn't up to the job either, my rods especially would soon be holding me back fishing on a large lake like Fordwich where distance fishing was more often than not the proper way to go about things.

The 1980/81 season did see progression with regard to the vast learning curve that Carp fishing presented me with even though any personal improvements were only very, very minimal. Of course we were all like sponges at the time and constantly learning, the local Carp fishing methodology was only just picking up pace, soon we'd have boilies and hair rigs, decent carbon fibre rods able to cast well in excess of 100 yards etc etc things were soon to move forward apace ... 

By 1980 I was one year out of school and had found myself a dead end job, it was all very dull anyway and it well and truly bored the pants off me. My escape was my music, the pub, football and fishing. The work drove me up the wall as it stopped me going fishing. In those days I used to get picked up by the works van on the street outside of my house at about 07.30 during the weekdays and from time to time I'd see Dave Stewart doing pretty much the same as me, as in cadging a lift to work and looking equally as bored about it as I was. Dave was one of the Carp anglers we all knew who fished Fordwich and I'd see him about quite often, we lived just a one minute walk away and seeing as he used to get picked up for work at about the same time of the morning, then we would often have a quick pre work natter about fishing whilst we waited for our respective lifts to show up. I'd known Dave for many years anyway, I went to school with three of his brothers and I would see him in the Flowing Bowl, our local pub too. 

Here is is, ol' Gonzo ... oops, I mean Dave Stewart, seen here with a rather large Carp which I now recognise (for the first time) as Wendy's Fish. Gonzo was great fun to be around, and still is fun on the odd occasion that our paths cross. He still lives in the same place as did he did back then, just round the corner from me, so I still see him about to this day. Why Gonzo? Well it's a bit odd if I honest, not that I'd admit to it at the time when the name Gonzo first started getting used. Once Jock White came into the Carp fishing in the late 1980's he made friends with Dave quite quickly and Jock thought that Dave resembled Gonzo out of the Muppets, it was Jock who came up with the name. For the record I couldn't see the resemblance myself but Gonzo hated that name so much and hid the fact so badly that we made out we thought he did too and called him Gonzo just as a wind up. Anyhow, it stuck.

No sorry, after googling Gonzo so as to refresh the old memory, I take the above 'can't see the resemblance' statement back, Jock was indeed right all along, Dave did look like Gonzo. Hang on ... isn't that Bamber directly below Gonzo? It's the spitting image of him, orange hair, big eyes etc ... hee hee ...

Meanwhile ... back at the tale of how the C.C.G. came about and our eventual enrolment into the top secret organisation ...

Now Dave was five or six years older than us at the time, he still is as it happens, funny that eh? Anyhow, Dave was the 'leader' (hee hee) of a small tongue in cheek Carp group known as the C.C.G., the initial members being Dave, his brother Alex, Alex's best mate Tony Philips and one of Dave's workmates called Mick Wilkinson, one of the worlds nicest ever men is Mick. Back in the day Carping was often a secretive affair and things such as baits and rigs were generally kept hushed up for fear of others finding out and stealing/using what you'd be working on at any one time. It was pathetic really as no-one was even catching very many Carp at the time, so quite why people wanted it to be a big secret as to their baits and rigs that rarely caught anything anyway was always a mystery to me. I think that Carping was like being in a secret society at the time, an elitist mentality thing, the secrecy playing on the ego of the one holding all of the so-called knowledge. It was mostly poppycock of course, as I say nothing any of us was doing was catching us too many fish, so why on earth play these silly mind games? So, Dave and co. formed this C.C.G. as a joke, a poke at the stupidity of adult men with nothing better to do than play their silly little games so that they could pretend to themselves and anyone foolish enough to believe the hype as to how utterly great and superior they were. What did the letters C.C.G. stand for?? The Cartiers Carp Group that's what! Cartiers was the place where Dave worked at the time, perhaps Mick Wilkinson at this time too? I think Cartiers was a sort of early day supermarket come Iceland sort of set up? It was an odd shop, lots of frozen food in freezers, odd bits of general grocery items and ... wait for it ... an L.P. section! L.P.'s were 12 inch long playing records for those of you born in the 80's/90's. Anyhow, L.P.'s on sale in a tiny oddly stocked frozen food shop ... it's a bit radical isn't it? Well it is assuming that my memory is indeed correct? I know for sure that I bought Low and Station to Station (by Bowie) from the shop where Dave was the manager and I am pretty sure that this was indeed Cartiers? If I'm wrong ... well then, I'm wrong? I am now so very very old, please forgive me ... these potential errors of memory just come with the mental territory nowadays I'm afraid.  

Anyhow, one day, probably in the early winter of 1980, whilst waiting for the works van to pick me up, I was approached by Dave (or Gonzo, take yer pick) and he asked me under his breathe, so to speak, or at least hesitantly as I recall it, whether or not we'd like to 'join up' with the C.C.G? You just have to take into account here that this approach was all a bit cloak and dagger, it had the feel of one of those eastern Bloc set, cold war spy novels about it, okay I applied a bit of hyperbole in that last statement but you get the gist perhaps? There were no silly 'ze Gooses are flying avay for ze vinter' passwords or anything but it did feel a little stealth if that's the correct terminology? What Dave had in mind was for us three, Me, Rich and Craig, to join up with the C.C.G. four and then for all seven of us to take part in a mass close season baiting program, thereafter we'd all use the same (rubbish) bait and we would all benefit from using the new (rubbish) bait introduced to the water. I was up for it, as were Rich and Craig when I told them, so a year with the C.C.G. it was to be, Dave as our reluctant leader, the terrible twosome of Alex and Tony plus Mick Wilkie, Rich, Craig and me. I felt quite honoured to be asked at the time if I'm honest, we all looked up to Dave, he was a sort of older fishing guru to us younger plebs back then. After a meeting of the new shiny upgraded C.C.G. (probably at the aforementioned Flowing Bowl Public house, where else) the bait we were to use was at long last announced ... it was super technical ... er NOT! It was to be ...

1: An unspecified amount of ground up Trout Pellets, purchased from I know not where? We'd grind them into powder in a coffee grinder.
2: One sachet of crystallised Gelatine, mixed with hot water ...
3: One 50 ml bottle of Rayners Rum Essence.

4: 'Some' Eggs ... don't laugh, even though I readily admit that it's very much warranted. 

The resulting large ball of paste was then kept in a plastic bag to keep it moist, then moulded into bait sized on the bank. I just thought about Craig as I remember one time he had his pre-rolled baits in in one of those old green plastic (white lidded) maggot containers into which he'd glugged them with extra Rum Essence. I remember being quite impressed at the time as they smelled great when he removed the lid, better than my baits anyhow.

I can't remember exactly but I assume that this new bait would have been Dave's idea? Yeah, okay then ... let's blame Dave! One last thing, we never boiled it but used this awful concoction as a paste! I know what the newer anglers are thinking ... 

Rayners Rum Essence as tracked down via the wonders of Google, print screened wotsited via electronic witchcraft and uploaded by interweb tomfoolery by my good self for your delight and delectation. Ah, I can still bring back to mind the crack of that thin golden pressed tin lid, the sweet heady whiff of the rum and the single sound of the 'glug' as you'd tip the entire contents into your trout pellets before whisking into a gooh ... wonderful, just wonderful. The above states the amount in this modern day bottle as being only 28 ml ... the bottles we bought back in the day were 50 ml, I'm almost certain? 

So that was it! We'd make loads of this vile sticky brown muck, throw it into the lake and once the season started we'd then reap the benefit of all our combined hard work and haul in millions of enormous Carp that would be by then addicted to our bait ... or would we? Well it all sounded good in theory anyway. Of course it's not anywhere near close to what actually occurred but we were young, stupid and overly excitable at the time ... I still am apart from the 'young' bit of that last statement. As time wore on we gradually played around with this concoction by adding other bits and pieces to the blend ... thing such as red food dye, an extra egg or like I did in time, add a bit of Wheat Gluten as a binder to the eggs before the dry powdered Trout Pellets and Flavour was added. The Wheat Gluten did wonders for the consistency of the paste, I knew nothing about the fact that Gluten was almost totally indigestible to the Carp, it was as much good as food source to a Carp as was the liquid rubber stuff you'd use to fix a puncture on your pushbike. We knew nothing about bait back then ... less than nothing almost. We read that Wheat Gluten had a decent protein level and come to the conclusion that this was all that mattered which was totally and utterly wrong. It was also readily available at any Health Food store, the places we'd buy our dried particles from and, as has just occurred to me, was the new wonder Carp bait ingredient of the time, soya powder. Hilarious eh? Although the Gluten was indeed a very good binding agent, the digestibility of the mix was ruined by its inclusion. well, technically speaking anyway. In truth I don't think it mattered all that much as the Trout pellets were the bulk of the mix and being fish meal based things then any bait with fish-meals in it is an awfully good food source item for Carp. The gluten just helped hold the whole mix together for casting and baiting, also adding to its structure as a ball of bait for a better length of time when in the water. We didn't have the sense to increase the egg content and then boil the stuff at the time, this relatively small thing would have helped no end. Now this might be a good time to veer of somewhat make mention of the rather Neanderthal thoughts we had about Carping as we were leaving the 1970's and entering into the cutting edge age of the next decade, the 1980's. Our rigs, bait etc. pretty much everything we were doing at the time, well, all of it was wrong ... 

Carp fishing involves time, time spent planning, thinking and using your initiative and we all spent lots of time either on the bank, back home thinking, planning and talking about Carping. When we first entered into the antique level of the old Carp world as it was in the late 1970's early '80s many old wives tales persisted about Carp being clever and therefore hard to catch ... of course this 'tales' we were to find given time, were massive piles of utter tripe. It took time though before any nonsense was weeded out as I say, lots of wasted time, and for ages we accepted some of these nonsensical conclusions and suffered due to it. Let's face it, Carp although wary in certain circumstances are rather thick creatures of habit and instinct, humans, even the dumb individuals such as myself were always going to have the edge even though we were trying to catch the Carp in it's own environment. Can Carp tell the time, climb ladders, work these new fangled TV handsets, ponder the universe, know anything about important things such as football or work out how to put a pair of socks on in the dark? No, therefore I am far more clever than they are, as I can do most of the previous things mentioned. The time we spent sitting on the edge of some far flung lake somewhere, catching nothing and wondering the why's and what's, do's and don'ts, the ponderables, the imponderables ... this Carp fishing was really full on mental conundrum for us in those early years. Let's face it you rarely catch lots of Carp do you, and we were catching virtually none at the start of our manic Carp angling careers meaning that we had very little to hang our many theories and conclusions upon. Most of the time you are doing nowt at all but think ... or watching the water, cooking dinner or sleeping hoping for one of the bait alarm to go blaring off.  Okay, you can fish for Carp on some easy or overstocked waters where it is possible to catch a fair few Carp in a day when conditions are good, but that type of Carp fishing rarely cut the mustard in my world. In fact we had no easy venues to fish until access to Chilham Castle became available in early 1980's. Even then bashing out lots of small Carp had it's own level and whilst it was okay for a bit of fun us properly manic people rarely do things for the fun of it. It's an overwhelming urge for us, a constant itch that requires constant scratching, a compulsion ... a disease of the fishyfied mind. The longer it takes you to catch a Carp then the more rewarding it is, if it's too easy then what's the point ... what is the reward? Let's face in Capt. Scott didn't didn't drag his light, polystyrene, unladen sledge across the beach at Eastbourne on a nice sunny day now did he? Sir Edmond Hillary didn't put all of that thought and planning into walking up a small hill in Wales now did he? No, his horizons were far more ambitious and in my day Carp were the absolute pinnacle of the freshwater fish on offer, so any effort or time was never considered as wasted in any way shape or form as long as you got your fish in the end. Each second spent on the lake incrementally moved you closer to the time when some silly fish would fall for the trap you'd set to get him into your landing net and onto the bank It's all changed now of course, most waters contain Carp, the baits and rigs are all sorted out and available to the newcomer etc etc it wasn't like this in the 1970's, Carping was challenging and I would guess all the more exciting because of it. That's what makes Carping so interesting for the main part, it's the challenge is the THE thing, finding all the pieces of the puzzle and gradually fixing them all together. It's a Carpy conundrum ...

Anyhow, the baits we used back then have already been mentioned but the rigs haven't, well not in any detail anyway. We had little understanding about how vigorously Carp attacked a large baited area back then nor how we could exploit this to our advantage and pretty much we just used the same tactics. albeit using more beefed up tackle that you'd use for Tench or Bream fishing. These tactics were basically, a running leger rig with a ten inch to one foot long monofilament hook-length, a small lead of one to one and half ounces, attached to a swivel through which the rig ran once the fish picked up your bait. These rigs were not only very basic but also often ineffective too. Fish could pick up your bait, charge off with it and not get hooked. Any anti tangle system we used were down to a small piece of biro or rubbery tubing or use of the massively complex 5mm plastic bead! The hooks were always as large as was required to fold/mould a inch blob of paste, so were always either a number 4 or a number 2 sized things. In essence we were going for a non resistance style rig when we should have been going the opposite direction and causing resistance so as to make the fish bolt and thereby hook itself. As I say we just didn't understand this seeming obvious concept and just copied what we were told or read unquestioningly. It wasn't until 1981 that we even questioned this way of going about such things and I'll print out why in the next section of this tour de force literary masterpiece or ours or anyone's time. I'm retrospect we did from time to time try boiled baits early on but never for very long. Our dry mix recipes were not compatible with being boiled into a hard ball, and anyhow, we thought that the main thing attracting the Carp was the flavour back then (hilarious eh?) so we actually thought that by boiling these semi useless paste baits that it was actually ruining them! When you boiled these almost 100% trout pellet based baits then all they smelt of to us were trout pellets, the flavouring was washed out and smelled more of a background than a foreground thing as it did when applied to a paste. 

Fred Wilton HNV.

C.C.G. head honcho, techno bait guru, home made tackle maker and all round good guy Dave 'Gonzo' Stewart himself, seen here seen contemplating the universe whilst fishing off the right hand end of Fordwich tree swim back in 1980. I bet I know what he's pondering 'hmmm ... I'd love to get to that other side' ... a private joke. Anyhow, I don't know what's worse in the above rather evocative photo, those awful Heron buzzers or the red carpet slippers? No, on second thought's ... it's a complete slam dunk innit, those Herons are the most hateful modern fishing 'aid' ever invented. It was always good fun fishing with Dave, or Gonzo as he became known in the mid 1980's after Jock renamed him once the wee Scottish-person joined our little gang of misfit Carp anglers.

So, back in 1980 the mid March to mid June angling close season would see us all arriving on Fordwich, each armed with a bucketful of one inched sized pre rolled paste baits and a rather glorious Dave Stewart designed throwing stick. We would wander round and rather randomly lob all of our pre rolled balls of paste into the lake before (no doubt) hitting the boozer on the way home which was the usual procedure at the time. Dave's throwing sticks probably need a bit of an explanation? What Dave did was to get an old bit of fishing rod, perhaps off the tip end, say three feet in length, to which he'd Araldite (an epoxy resin glue) a section of cork rod handle, as in a polo shaped bit of Cork (polo' as in the minty thing not the horsey game you fools) it was about one inch in circumference and 1/2 an inch wide, stuck on at about 45 degrees onto the thin end of the 'stick' bit of rod. Once dried and the glue held, you could then wedge a one inch piece of the (rubbish) paste into the hole and flick it out into the lake. Often times the (rubbish) bait might fly out 60 - 70 yards into the water, sometimes even further if the wind conditions and your timing of the flick was right, though plenty of times this procedure would go all wrong and the bait would either fly up into the air and splosh down 30 yards out ... or fall on the floor behind you, or fly sideways into a bush etc etc. Mind you on the rare occasion that everything went perfectly it was joy to behold, in my humble opinion almost requiring a round of applause if you were to see a bait fly out 80 or 90 yards into the lake. It was much like hitting the perfect iron shot off the golfing tee when it went right. I would refer to Dave as an ace tinkerer, he was always tinkering with his tackle meaning that the invention of the throwing stick was all small potatoes to such a mind as he had. He'd tinker with stuff till it worked and then tinker again with it until it didn't, giving him the opportunity to re-tinker with it ... he was a man totally out of control ... a tinkermaniac. Although these throwing sticks were far from being ideal, they were in fact still far better than using one of those cupped pouched catapults we had available at the time, so fair do's, we needed some way of transferring our free baits into the lake, it was far better than lobbing them out by hand. I must make it clear here that this way of baiting up didn't last all that long. We would soon move on to powerful catapults and machine designed throwing sticks for free baiting.  

A photo of a small Carp taken off the Trees in the summer of 1982. I've uploaded this rather appalling image here as there in the background leaning against my bivvy, is a bone fide Mk 1 Dave Stewart throwing stick painted 'stealth black' so as not to spook any wary Carps. (hee hee) What do you make of the shirt and jumper combo eh? To think, I'd wear some of this gear out at night when going out on the town. Little wonder I'm single is it? 

We soon also hit another snag ... with seven of us all using the same flavouring it soon became impossible to buy any of the Rum Essence anywhere locally due to us rather quickly buying out the entire range of Thanet's shop supplies of the stuff. It got really laughable as I remember one day my Mum seeing Craig's mum outside the supermarket and she said she dashed straight round to the shelf with the Rum Essence on it just in case they had any in stock for fear that Craig's mum got to it first. Craig tells me that this also happened in reverse, his mum would see my mum whilst out and dash into the shop too ... it all sounds a bit 'its a knockout' to me now! And what were the Supermarket shop managers thinking, no doubt scratching their combined heads saying 'why are we selling loads of Rum Essence all of a sudden?' that's what!  In the end the Rum Essence got so hard to locate that I broke ranks and started using Rose Water as a flavour attractant instead. There were no bait companies selling any super concentrated flavourings locally, so we were forced to buy and use for bait what we could find in the supermarkets. Not that the Rayners Rum Essence was in any way shape or form a super concentrate liquid, I'd guess that it was about 10 or 20:1 if that, it was as weak as anything, hence the fact we were using a whole 50 ml bottle tipped in 'one glug' per mix. One day I was standing in the queue in the local Chemist when I spotted what I initially thought was a precious large bottle of Rum essence on a high shelf behind the counter? It had the same a Rayners label on it and it was this that fooled me as when I got close enough to read the label I soon saw that it wasn't Rum Essence but Rose Water. The bottle was far larger than the tiny 50 ml things the Rum came in, I'd guess it was a 200 ml, perhaps 250 ml? Anyhow, seeing as I thought it was Rum Essence and that I stumbled across a bar of pure gold diamond encrusted magnificence in liquid form, I became transfixed by these bottles and when it was my turn to get served, I asked for a look at this stuff and I ended up buying it. On getting it home I then opened the bottle to find it smelled of Turkish Delight, so I used this instead of the Rum, it made little difference to the catch rate of course but it was all part of the fun at the time.

I found these two old photos of Tony and a bearded Alex taken whilst Pike fishing on Westbere Canal in 1980/81 I think? They were a right couple of Imps ... there was always something going on when in their company. Alex used to go to the local Discotheque 'on the pull' in Sturry, mid fishing trip wearing those very same clothes. I remember someone telling me that they actually saw him on the dance-floor there half sozzled, boogieing on down whilst wearing muddy wellington boots!  He was bonkers was Al, no doubt he still is.

So, after all of the preparations the 1980 season kicked off, we'd all show up at the lake all fired up hoping to bash the place up with our new killer bait and our awesome cutting edge pre season baiting campaign ... but ... er ... well perhaps this little bit of info sums it up what actually happened pretty well? Whilst going though all of my old fishing knickknack's I found a very old hand written pocket diary. Inside it were all sorts of titbits of info, lots of it being fishing related and in the main dealing with the period between 1978 and 1980, the year of the C.C.G. wotsit. In the middle of this now forty year old notepad I found the entire years haul and weights of the C.C.G. Carp for that 1980 season ... it reads:

Alex            Craig             Rich          Phil            Tony          Mick           Dave  
  13               10.2              17.4            13              12                 -                 11
14.12            17.3               8.1             15                                                     13
11.12             14                15.6          13.12                                                13.12
18.12            13.6                               12.13                                                12.11
 16.9             16.5                               13.2
 17.1            14.12                                16
  17

So at the end of the 1980/81 season all we had to show for all of our efforts were just 27 Carp between all seven of us. I say 27 Carp, I did get another Carp in 1980, a 13 lb Common, but as I caught that one on a floating crust and not on the prerequisite C.C.G. official bait I didn't include that on the C.C.G. list. So all in all we in fact caught 28 Carp between all seven of us ... and guess what, none of us cared, we were as pleased as punch as at the time this would this 'haul' would have been considered as an unmitigated success! What you have to factor in here is that not only were we using awful baits, on awful rigs, cast into awful 'smelly' 'utterly pants' spots due to using 10 lb line with small running leads cast out on on floppy fibre glass rods, is that we had absolutely no yardstick to the potential of the lake at this time. We had no clue as to how many fish were in the lake even and the mass capture of Carp in Fordwich as we were to witness in the years to come just didn't happen in 1980. Therefore we would be utterly content with getting what amounts to less Carp individually over a whole season than we'd be catching during just one fishing session alone at times by the middle 1980's. Even the more experienced local Carp anglers were doing pretty much everything wrong at this time in history, so hardly anyone give or take a few individuals were catching much more than we were. Of course we were in a bit of a backwater here in the SE of Kent, all the more knowledgeable anglers were fishing in North Kent or the Home Counties, we were all miles behind them where Carping nous was concerned. Some of the UK's carp angling 'names' of the day did fish at places such as the School Pool in Faversham, so pretty much any newer thinking was passed on by osmosis (albeit very gradually) via those who fished both at Faversham and at Fordwich. In time the better methods and baits did migrate and get passed on to us, mainly via one of Maddocks associates who'd be fishing the School pool by this time and rubbing shoulder with those in the know, an angler named Rod Killick, one of the few who fished both waters. Then a year or two later on, a lad who moved down from the Home Counties who was up till then fishing the Colne Valley who fished Fordwich from about 1982/3 (??) and became a mate of ours, a chap called Ian Brown. Being cut off from these more progressive areas which held giant Carp and therefore attracted the anglers with all of the knowledge, this held us up no end at Canterbury. None of these dudes who actually knew how to catch Carp were attracted to Fordwich as the fish in the lake were far too small at the time. 

I found this in a Canterbury and District booklet sent out one year to all of the members holding a season ticket. In that black and white image they used that is Ian Brown and whilst he might look like my seventy four year old auntie does now, he caught an awful lot of Carp out of Fordwich. He was good lad too. Memories of Brownie include things like he had the most disgusting tea pot I'd ever seen at the time. It was so brown inside that had the metal outer bit rusted away that the inner brown 'dried tea crust' still would have been good for making a few brews. It wasn't until we got to Yateley many years later that I saw something worse for making tea in. It was at Yateley that we met a bloke called Dave Gawthorn and he used to catch Crayfish and boil them on the bank (to eat ... not for the fun of it) in the same pot he boiled his tea water in. It still makes me want to vomit just thinking about it. Gawthorn was crackers, I'll include a few tales about him later on in the Yateley section. As a side note referring back to the carp in the above photo, might that be the Stour lake fish? Thirty years on it does remind me of that carp? 

Looking back to these early years the problems we had were threefold, rigs, baits and the ability to bait and cast to the proper areas. You could say that's four things but the last two are linked I think, albeit only tenuously perhaps? The Carp would eat our soft baits, but so would the Tench and Bream and they outnumbered the Carp, so this was the first problem as in getting past those Tench. Problem two was the rigs we were using allowed the Carp to mouth your baits without getting hooked and the gear we were using on such a large pit didn't allow to us to cast to where the fish often were. As already mentioned Fred Wilton had published his H.N.V. bait theories many years prior by this time but what we didn't understand was that by using hard baits (as in boilies) with a sharp exposed hook, that this made it awfully hard for the Carp to mouth your bait without you knowing about it. Once we had boilies, bolt/hair rigs, proper rods and reels, heavy leads, shock leaders and lighter mainlines etc only then would we start to catch lots of fish. We also had to get our baits to compete with the lakes natural resources, but this was still a few years future at the time. Once the right amount of boilies got introduced into the lake over the course of a few years as more and more anglers started using proper baits that we all reaped the benefits. Mr Killick and Brown both filled in an awful lot of gaps in our combined knowledge at the time. To be honest we were almost clueless in our little part of the world.  Kevin Maddocks published Carp Fever in 1981, so once we had access to these secret rigs and boilies first revealed en masse in this book that even using the bad indigestible milk protein boilies we initially used that our catch rates increased exponentially. It took me till 1983 to join up all of the dots meaning that for three or four years I was in some some of carping wasteland mentally. I'm not complaining, it was all good fun learning it the hard way, I'm just trying to convey to any newcomers how things were back then. To be satisfied with catching seven Carp out of Fordwich in a whole season (well from June till September anyhow) just shows how low our personal bar actually was, I'd go on to catch seven Fordwich Carp in just one day by about 1984 or 85. 

It wasn't all the bait and rigs, As we gained experience we started to learn the ways of the lake, corelate the weather conditions and time of year into the other factors. You can't really learn all of this peripheral stuff from a book, you have to physically live it for it, soaking it up so to get it drummed into the grey matter properly I think. As I already wrote, we were living it. 

C.C.G. Carp number 1 ... a 13 lb mirror taken off the Reeds in June 1980, a PB Carp for me at the time. The background is almost more impressive than the fish to my eyes now, my old bespoke fishing trolley on top of Rich's old rusty pram behind my recently purchased Dave Barnes bivvy. On top of my tackle/seat box just there to my right is my new Olympus Trip camera (a horrid thing) and my brand new Salter Dial scales. The Reeds swim was a tiny little pitch back then, only allowing room for one shared bivvy whilst another handicap was that the area was one of the worst for squadrons of mosquitoes this side of the south-eastern jungles of Asia. Behind where I am squatting with the above fish you can that we were surrounded by lots of marshy bog, especially behind the swim, the bog being straddled by that planked walkway in view on the image and the entire air was filled by shoulder to shoulder buzzing hoards of nasty, irritating Mosi's. The above Carp became a well known fish to me in time and soon acquired the name of 'Old Faithful' as I caught her on numerous occasions, perhaps ten times across the years.

C.C.G. Carp number two, a new PB Carp of 15 lbs taken off the Eastern's in July 1980. This was another Carp that I caught a few times, lastly at over 25 lbs in the mid to late 1980's. If, as a relative newcomer to Fordwich, you might you be wondering where the Easterns swim used to be? Well it's the area to the left (or east) of the Richies, see below. Also if you're wondering why I pulled that facial expression as one of my companions pressed the camera shutter ... I have not one clue, answers on a postcard please? Perhaps I was egg-bound on that particular day? I also love the lopsided wonky scanning ... my fault once again. 

C.C.G. Carp number three - 12 lb 13 oz taken off the Easterns, once again in August of 1980. As a reference point as to the location of the Easterns, you can just about see a bivvy on the Richies about thirty paces over my right hand shoulder if you click on and enlarge the above image. Prior to the Mungs swim being opened in the middle 1980's we used to fish the Easterns quite often, well, or at least I did. This went on to be another recognisable Carp, I caught it a few times and saw it a few other times after other angers caught it too. 

C.C.G. Carp number five - 13 lb 12 oz, the Easterns, August 1980.

C.C.G. Carp number five - 13 lb 12 oz, the Barnes, August 1980.

C.C.G. Carp number six - another new PB for me at 16 lbs, taken off the Barnes in August 1980. What a great pose eh? Has anyone EVER had a photo of a Carp taken holding it in this manner? I'd wager not?

1980 Pike and Eels

I was still doing my summer Carp/winter Pike fishing thing in 1980, something that wasn't to last as the years wore on as I did progressively less and less Piking as the Carp fishing gradually took my head over. I did get one particularly large Pike out of Trenley in November of 1980. 

I see from my notes that on this particular weekend I went to Trenley, I was on my own. It was a two night (Friday and Saturday) weekend session and though I'd been getting a fair number of double figure Pike from the (opposite) south facing bank, the centre path 'bit' between Trenley and Stour Lakes, I decided to check out the opposite bank for some reason. I'd never fished this shallower side of the lake at the time, so it was all a bit exploratory. I was in fact not just Pike but Eel fishing at night too, and I arrived with a large bag of frozen three to four inch Roach dead-baits using them whole for the daytime Pike fishing and then use half baits, the tail ends for the night-time Eel fishing. I'd also swap out the two treble hook wire traces for a large single hook using 20 lb nylon for the Eels. I also used to flatten the barb on these size 2 single hooks with a pair of pliers to aid the dreaded on the bank Eel unhooking debacle. Anyone who has fished for Eels will see the sense in this move. You had to be careful as being a person who usually turned up, set up camp and then fished for at least two nights at a time, I soon learned that you could catch Pike at night too from time to time and they could bite through a 20 lb nylon hook length, not that I ever had it happen to me whilst Eel fishing but it was always a slight possibility. I had caught a few Pike at night, including a twenty pounder from Westbere the year prior so I always felt a bit uneasy when not using wire traces, the more pliable nylon just felt right to my mind when properly setting out to fish for the Eels. I caught lots of 2 lb plus Eels over the years, a fair few over 3 lbs too. I used to really enjoy Eel fishing. Anyhow, this particular session I dragged all of my gear round into what was a fenced off part of a cow field at the time, there was a style you'd be forced to climb over but once in this heavily wooden backed field then I had the entire far bank of the lake to myself. As this particular session wore on I had already caught a Pike of 11 lb 6 oz on one of these frozen Roach dead-baits when I got another take from what felt like a much larger fish. I wasn't wrong either as after a reasonably long and powerful scrap with what was up till then an unseen fish, I then saw this enormous Pike for the first time, a fish far larger than I even imagined was in the lake in the first place! It looked immense in the water and though not quite as large as I first thought, once in the net and weighed, it did pull the scales down to 22 lb 3 oz. I remember at one point as I stood on the bank all alone that I was thinking it to be closer to thirty than twenty pounds before I slid the net under it. I also had one other double figure Pike during that session plus some nice sized Eels up to 3 lb 4 oz ... and I never ever went back to that spot, well not Pike fishing anyway!! I did do a session Carp fishing nearby in 1987, all of the other Piking I did on Trenley was back on the other bank in my usual spot for some reason long lost to me as I sit here now? I know it sounds silly but being around Cows always freaked me out a bit, perhaps it was them being in the field that put me off? Moo ... "who said that?" Hee hee ... titter chortle ... 

My largest Pike of the year, a huge beast weighing in at 'only'  22 lb 3 oz taken from the woodland/cow field side of Trenley in November 1980. I can't even think who it was that I got to take this photo ... I had the entire side of the lake to myself meaning I'd have been forced to leave the fish in my landing net and go for help. I do have a vague recollection having to going to find another  human to take the above photo and that I staked out my large landing using bank sticks with the Pike inside of it in the water so as it not being pulled in at some time. I finally found another angler fishing on Fordwich as I recall it? Anyhow, whoever it was  he didn't mind leaving his swim and wandering off to do the photographic honours for me. Re staking the above fish out in my landing net to get help with the photo - those black nylon retaining Carp sacks were just about being invented by this time, perhaps just after? I can't have had one on me or else I would have used it.

More Pike from 1980 ... I'm not sure as to the weights as this was an unlabelled loose photo, the top one looks a bit of a lump, that's a large set of Salter dial scales above it and they'd be eight or nine inches deep to give some scale? There's a chance it's the same twenty as the photo above it I suppose? I know it's from 1980 as it a photo taken with my new camera which I bought that year.

And a 3 lb 4 oz Eel taken during that same session on Trenley in November of 1980. I wonder who took this photo? I was on my own after all.