Overweight Moose slips in pool of custard gets management job in nearby spongecake factory.
I'm not sure if that header title is quite what I was going for but it'll have to do for now?
The start of it all - years 1976 - 1979
I started fishing way back in 1976 and gave it up completely in about 1990, having by then ground my way through the ranks of float fishing on lakes for tiny Roach, small Bream and Perch onto small time specimen hunting for Pike and Eels ... I know, yawn ZZZzzz etc. I ended up as a hardened die hard Carp angler for the last decade or so of my time, even though back in 1976/77 I hardly knew what a Carp even looked like. Carp were creatures that lived only in my imagination, things you only saw within the pages of books and magazines.
During those early years I did also try little bits of sea fishing but only because by pure accident I happen to live on the coast and even then, more because of those I came into contact with who then dragged me along with them. Sea fishing wasn't for me, I only went at all for the social aspect of it. So, I did these little half hearted 'bits' of wintertime pier fishing and beach casting too, catching lots of easy to nab species such as Pouting, small Whiting and the occasional small Codling up to about two or three pounds. On three occasions I even went out at sea on charted boats fishing for Cod, which was horrible as I got very sea sick on two of these trips, and sea sickness is enough to put anyone off of pretty much anything, so lucky it was that I preferred the land based part of my chosen hobby. Anyhow, to get to the nub of what I am attempting to explain here, my heart was never really in the sea fishing, the lakes were my thing, When I look back my favourite memories of fishing the sea they most certainly weren't whilst sat freezing to death, chundering away off the side of a small boat ... no, my happy days casting into the sea were from the very early days of my initial attempts at angling, these being the many after school evening sessions spent with my mates on terra firma, fishing in Ramsgate Harbour off the inner side of the pier wall, using light float tackle catching various tiddlers on various types of worms and even maggots, just small Pouting and Whiting or fish of that general ilk. We did get some nice sized Grey Mullet from the harbour in time, also on one occasion I hooked an eight inch Bass off the east pier from the outer harbour which grabbed my float-fished worm as I was reeling it in. I caught nothing any better or larger than that. As I say, it was all about having a bit of fun out with my school mates, nothing more, the Coarse fishing was the thing that got my juices really flowing and the only form of angling I actually took really seriously. I still miss the atmosphere of being on the lakeside even now. The general feeling these lakes created in my mind is hard for me to quantify in writing, though it's something that I still feel deeply and I've never fully forgotten. I miss sitting in my bivvy, all cosy, I miss the smell of the lake, I even miss the pitter patter of light rain on the bivvy roof. I used to love the evenings, both rods cast out in the right spot thinking that any moment one of the rods could go screaming off. I also used to love those after dark thunderstorms - sitting there or laying on my bedchair, all snug, staring out of the bivy door watching the lake being illuminated by the lightening for a mere second before returning to pitch darkness. Wonderful stuff. The taste of a bacon butty ate outside, with dirty hands too, washed down with a lukewarm cup of tea with three dead mosquitos floating around on the top of it was far better than it might actually sound here. Fishing got so deep into my head that I still occasionally dream about fishing every now and then, and one weird thing that I did for a year or two after I gave up was that when it rained after dark I would often go out for a walk in it. I used to get soaked but it made me reconnect with the old days on the banks of some lake. It's these sorts of things that I missed after I knocked the angling on the head ... also the fun and the people I met too of course.
Fishing came at me right out of the blue. In 1976 my best mate at school (Gary Forshoe) asked me about going fishing one day in class, this when I was about 14, though possibly still 13 going on 14 (?) and to cut a long story short for whatever reason I had at the time I agreed to go. Bear in mind here that I'd not ever once even thought about going fishing, in fact my only contact with any sort of angling at the time would have been a visual experience whilst sat gawping at Jack Hargreaves on his TV show of an already bygone era called Out of Town. Anyhow, me and my schoolmate ended up fishing along an arm of the Wansom on one hot summers day in 1976, having just one rod between us and probably a few worms as bait, I can't remember the bait if I'm honest but it would been something very basic. Probably just that one shared float rod with a worm dangled beneath one of those old cheapo quill floats? After cadging a lift off my old man, we set up and fished all day and as I remember it we didn't even get a bite but late on in the evening when it came toward the time to get picked up, my Dad arrived with my younger brother in tow. My brother then jumped out of the van, had one cast of the rod and immediately caught a three inch Roach!! I was spellbound, to see this tiny silver and red fish was a bit of a life changing moment for me. Every angler's had this moment of course.
An aerial photo of the Canterbury and District Angling Associations waters, middle left Westbere then to the right in the lower half of photo, Fordwich in the foreground with Stour Lake on the left of Trenley in middle right. Beyond these lakes in a line from left to right are the shallow tidal (Swan) lake, Collards then Stodmarsh lake.
In time I started meeting up with a few other lads from school who did a bit of fishing and in 1977 I joined the Canterbury and District Angling Association (C&DAA from hereon) and thereafter spent lots of time fishing mainly on Westbere Canal with my newer circle of angler schoolmates, namely Steve (Horne) Jimmy Roberts, Stuart Carnell and my younger cousin Keith. Initially none of us had much of a clue but in time a few other lads from school showed up who were far better and more experienced anglers than any of this early bunch were, and it was this next lot of brand new mates who helped me to reach the next level of angling proficiency. This second 'lot' were in a different league, they had nice rods and reels, even bite alarms (!!) and had caught lots of better quality fish including a few small Carp out of both Fordwich lake and the Reed Ponds, a day ticket water at Sandwich. These new 'lot' were Craig Reynolds, Richard Stubbings, Dave Beadle and Francis Solly. Craig and Rich were the more dedicated fishermen of this new bunch and I related far more to them than anyone else at the time. Both Dave and Francis were far more motivated by birding and soon gave up fishing altogether. I learned an awful lot from Craig and Rich, in fact within about a year or so I'd say we were a small team of medium to half decent pleasure anglers, mainly due to practical experience but also because of our boyish dedication and enthusiasm allied to the combined knowledge we were cherry picking up from each other and the many specialised angling magazines of the day. We read and assimilated everything we could get our hands on back then. The specimen hunter articles in the monthly glossy magazines especially floated our boats and we were soon all devotees of the many types of rigs, baits and methods we were learning about via these and the weekly angling press of the day, the Anglers Mail and the Angling Times, both of which became part of my our newspaper delivery service. Craig, Rich and I were quick learners anyway as we all are when we are young and keen, and progressed rapidly, whereas my other mates from these early days such as Steve and co. were more what I'd refer to as pleasure anglers, lacking the drive or the mania of wanting to know as much as it was humanly possible to know about our chosen passion. In time even Craig and Rich gave up angling, in fact by as early as 1983 I'd be the only one of the early bunch of these initially zealous bunch of schoolboys who was even fishing at all. I had another newer bunch of mates, dedicated Carp angling mates by this time.
Westbere as pinched off of Google Maps. I spent much of my first year of C&DAA membership fishing on these three spots, the Canal for Pike, Roach, Perch and Bream, the Deeps solely for Pike and Eels and L Lake for tiddlers and Tench. Those professional grade 'high tech' yellow graphics set the photo off a treat eh? Nothing but the best for my readers ... as a sidenote: L Lake was also known as Boot Lake due to its shape.
The Canal end, showing the gravel workings. I see there's a canoe club there now too ... I spent many, many hours fishing for Roach, Bream, Eels and Pike here. So many memories ...
As already mentioned, the bulk of my early days of fishing (1977/78) were spent on the Canal at Westbere lake, at the time run by the C&DAA, though it no longer is I see. It wasn't actually a proper Canal in the truest sense of the word but just a thin narrow arm on the western edge of the large (100+ acre?) gravel pit. There were lots of fish in the lake at the time and it was easy to catch many small Roach and Perch, Bream up to 2 - 3 lb and also some decent sized Eels and Pike. Easily enough to keep me more than happy for a year or two anyhow. Being a member of the C&DAA also gave us access to three other gravel pits situated nearby though on the other side of the river Stour, namely Fordwich Lake, Stour Lake and Trenley Lake but in my initial year of membership I avoided the other lakes as some of my mates were not C&DAA members and whereas the Canal wasn't bailiffed properly, the other three far more popular lakes were, meaning that if I wanted to fish with my friends we'd have to do it on the Canal. The atmosphere was far more relaxed about such things back then and I'm pretty sure that if on the very rare occasions a bailiff might show up along the Canal, then they'd allow you to fish if you just had a rod licence? That said I do remember times when some of my mates ran off and hid when they saw the bailiff headed our way. The Canal at the time was an area was still an ongoing gravel extraction company, (by Bretts) so perhaps the reasoning was that none of the proper members would even want to fish on that part of the lake anyway due to the machinery noise etc and perhaps some leeway was given, it was a rare event to see any bailiff as I remember it? We often had the entire stretch of the lake to ourselves and being young and boisterous no doubt we would have been a noisy bunch, so with the Canal being a virtually angler free zone was a good fit all round. I had some nice experiences fishing that Canal, catching my first Roach, Bream, Perch, Pike and Eels from this spot. Oddly, none of us ever caught any Tench from the Canal, in fact the only place where you could catch Tench regularly on the entire lake in those days was an area we used to call L-Lake as ... er ... well ... it was L shaped. This small area, surrounded by tall reeds and wet, squidgy stinky mud banks wasn't actually attached to Westbere at this time but was cut off by a narrow path and its deep sheltered water held lots of fish of many species including some small to medium sized Tench and Pike. It was also a good place to catch Perch too, you'd see them often ambushing groups of fry or Bleak. Anyhow, it held our attention for a while before we moved on to other things.
Top: I see that my mate Steve took a mean photo eh ... at least the top photo shows a small view of L Lake if he only just about got a small portion of my huge frame in shot. Bottom: A huge bag of L Lake goodies back in the summer of 1978.
By 1978 I was starting to branch out a little more and fishing on a few other spots mainly due to my association with others. My initial mates (Steve and co) were still around on and off but by this time I was forming ever stronger friendships with other kids at school and this branching out led me on to fishing ever more and more on Fordwich, Stour and Trenley lakes. By this time I'd also both heard about and eventually fished a place we referred to as the Rudd Pond, a small farmyard pool at Minster where it was a doddle to catch many small kamikaze Rudd that would throw themselves onto the hook regardless of whatever bait you used. My old notepads inform me that Rich caught a 12 oz Rudd from that pond but this would have been a veritable monster by the usual Rudd Pond standards where from what I remember the fish ranged around the 2 - 6 oz category. We also fished the main river at Minster on occasion too and I also spent many an hour perched nearby on the top of the concrete sewerage works water outlet (or inlet?) where in the shallow water beneath that concrete 'roof' there were many Eels and small Flounders to be seen ... and caught of course. We used to have a lot of fun fishing there in those old far flung odd days of our youth, we never caught anything of any real size but it just didn't seem to matter. I was also hanging around with a few older boys from school who would go on to become close mates around this time but I'm not sure about the timescale or exactly when we started to fish together? I would be seeing them down at Stour Lake and Fordwich but I don't think we were really part of the same scene until 1980, well not properly? Three of us lived just a one minute walk from each others front door as we lived on the same housing estate (Alex and Geoff) as did Alex's older brother Dave and Tony was only five or six minutes away on foot, just outside the estate we all grew up on. We'd see each other in the local drinking hole too. We were all on the same trajectory so to speak and would soon all be part of a much larger extended gang of sorts, our paths would be constantly crisscrossing around this general time period anyway.
My only photo of Steve Horne probably taken about 1980 or '81 along Fordwich Deeps. He's pulling that 'mungo' face as his bed chair frame had just collapsed and he was forced to sleep two inches off the ground. I didn't laugh ... honest. Unfortunately I hear that old Steve's none too well these days.
1978, my second full year of proper fishing was just more of a learning curve for me entailing more reading, more thinking and more time spent on the bank, by this time mainly with Craig and Rich who would be my closest fishing companions at the time. Of course, ever since day one I'd been acquiring more and more gear, rods, reels and all other sorts of bits and pieces. The reels we were forced to settle on were Mitchell's, everyone had them, they were reasonably priced and did a reasonable job, no more, no less. There were other budget priced alternatives but in truth just one in reality, the ABU range, all of the other fixed spool reels were pretty cheap and nasty back then. The ABU range were better quality reels but they were both more expensive and far harder to get hold of, so we were pretty much forced to use the Mitchell's early on. I started off by buying a pair of Mitchell 300's before quickly progressing to Mitchell 410's which were similar, only blue instead of black and had a faster retrieve. In time I also acquired a Mitchell 810 (just one) a Mitchell 440 which was a dedicated float fishing reel with an automatic 'flick and cast' bail arm and later on I also bought another rather space age looking automatic casting float fishing reel, an ABU 506, a reel that I had all sorts of problems with. In truth I think mine was just faulty as Craig had one of these reels for years and had little aggravation with his as I remember it? Although I had amassed lots of float rods, ledger rods and Pike rods, I didn't buy any dedicated Carp rods till 1979 as I remember it. In these early years I wasn't even thinking about catching Carp, that was soon to change mind you.
As well as taking occasional trips down to Minster and Westbere Canal I also tried a bit of fishing on the Westbere and Fordwich stretches of the river Stour from time to time, also though rarely, on the Reed Ponds at Sandwich too. The river fishing was never really my thing, okay I enjoyed it, just not as much as I liked fishing the lakes. I enjoyed the longer sessions too much, setting up a bivvy and baiting up a swim for Bream or weekends spent Pike and Eel fishing, the day fishing on the Reed Ponds or the River were nice but not to be compared with a settling in process and enjoying the relaxing/waiting part of fishing, basking in the atmosphere of it all, taking in the view, the birds, the insects and having a bit of fun, larking about during the wait. I soon lost my buzz for any serious float fishing and eventually only did it at all so as to catch some small fish to use as Pike and Eel bait. It would be about this time that I'd read in some article about heavy feeding for Bream fishing and after trying it out found that it worked a treat. I'd often turn up at the Canal, mash up a couple of loaves in a bucket, sometimes adding Oats, even soaked wheat, and lacing it with maggots and casters before throwing the lot out (by hand) in large snooker sized balls then fish over theses large beds of groundbait using a swimfeeder with a large bunch of maggots or a lobworm/brandling on the hook and I soon found that I'd get a far larger catch of better quality bream by doing so. The Bream would usually move in after darkness fell and on a good night I'd get lots of them, many of them in the 2 - 3 lb range. This form of baiting up influenced me big time and in the later years I applied the logic of that early Bream heavy baiting/fishing to the Carping on Fordwich and in time got some fantastic large catches of Carp too. But that wasn't for this time period, I was still an absolute blithering idiot of an angler. My main target fish in those early days however were Pike. I caught my first Pike (from the Canal) in 1977 and boy did that 5 - 6 lb Pike make a big impression on me. On that day I'd copied a simple technique shown in one of the specimen anglers magazines (written by Barry Rickards I think?) who had penned this article about free-lining half a Mackerel using a wire trace with one large single hook and smaller treble. Anyhow, I tried it and caught a Pike the first time out, so that was that, a Pike angler I was, nothing else registered to me for a while, I was a man possessed. The Pike fishing season only ran between October and March and we'd fish throughout, initially at the Canal but also trying the other end of the lake (Westbere) deeps later on too. In October of 1978 I caught a 15 lb 12 oz Pike from Westbere deeps (on half a Mackerel again) and the feeling that this fish gave me was so intense that from that moment on the Pike fishing became something of an obsession.
A couple of Pike from those early days, a small thing taken on a lure and at the bottom, a 19 lb plus Pike taken from Westbere Deeps in 1981 or 1982?
I also found a written account about a days session on the Reed Ponds at Sandwich in November 1978 where I tried out my brand new float rod, a brown fibreglass 12 foot long Bruce and Walker, a properly lovely rod at the time. I see via my old diary that it cost the vast sum of £39.30 ... the thirty pence bit makes me laugh. Anyhow, at some point of this session I hooked into a small Carp apparently but I eventually lost the fish after my one and half pound hook link broke. I make mention of this as at the time I'd not only not ever caught a Carp but was still to even see one on the bank at all.
One other thing from 1978 is that I see that the Bailey Bridge over the river Stour was removed around this time, either in 1978 or possibly in 1979? We used to spend a lot of time climbing out onto the outer metal struts of that bridge so as to get views of the river below. The shade created by the bridge left a clear area in the streamer weed below and you could see all sorts of fish in the clear water underneath that bridge. It was a bit annoying that the bridge was removed as it stopped us traversing the area between the back end of Westbere canal and Fordwich which was a nice walk when the fish on the Canal weren't biting and you wanted to stretch your legs. It would be during these long meandering walks across the bridge onto Fordwich that we'd see our first ever 'dudes' actually Carp fishing. We found them fascinating creatures, extra terrestrials with matching rods and hi-tech electronic 'buzzers' with bespoke bivouacs ... little did I realise that pretty soon I'd be gravitating onto this seemingly higher plane of angling. As I say, back then there was a real mystique to these early day Carp and even those who were fishing for them. Many of them let this go to their heads and even though they weren't actually catching very many Carp a few of them would look down their nose at you as they basked in the glory and magnificence of their cutting edge gear that they hid behind to create the illusion of actually knowing what they were doing. The major exception to this general rule we met during our early wanders round Fordwich was a bloke called Colin Hurst, he always had time for other people no matter how low down the angling food chain they might be perceived to be. He was always willing to help and unlike most, had few if any secrets. He used to catch more than his fair share of Fordwich Carp back then too and caught many of them by making his own tiny loaves which he injected with water (to add weight for casting) ... it all sounds so prehistoric now? Mind you, to show how backward some of the thinking was back then about baits, some people were still using potatoes as bait for Carp at the time. High tech bait knowledge on Fordwich in the late 1970's often went no further than just opening a can of luncheon meat or sweetcorn to many of the anglers though not all. These were the embryonic days of local Carp fishing of course.
1979 - a very silly imbecile tries to catch himself a Carp.
The 'silly imbecile' got one too ... more than one in fact.
By 1979 our little Motley Crew of fishing mates had been whittled down somewhat to 'mainly' Rich, Craig and I, but on the odd occasion also we'd be joined by Steve or even my brother, if only every now and again and more for the camping or the occasional pub visits than the fishing if truth be known. Dave Beadle was still tagging along every now and again for little bits of winter Piking on Westbere or at least this is how I remember it, but Francis would be long gone by the 1979 season, being deep into his full time birding, his angling days well behind him. Also, by this time we had all migrated from Westbere onto Fordwich between June and October before we then revisited Westbere on and off for the winter Pike and Eel fishing vigil. This summertime fishing on Fordwich followed by the general winter on Westbere thing became my usual template, something that I stuck to until about 1981 when from there onward I pretty much concentrated on Carp throughout my time on the bankside apart from the occasional winter Pike session. To be more accurate I was fishing three main spots for Pike after my first few year burst, my favourite spot being Westbere Deeps as I say, but I also did occasional sessions back on the Canal and Fordwich Deeps, even Trenley Lake every now and again. Anyway, our summer quarry was to be Carp. Well I say 'Carp' I was in fact just an inflated version of our specimen hunter style of leger angling only using bigger baits and larger hooks and seeing what came along. I was still more than happy just getting large Tench and Bream at the time, which still fell for the larger hook/bait wotsit and as this pseudo Carping method did cut out all of the smaller fish, meaning that often when we did get a bite then at least it would usually be from a Tench or a Bream and often of a better quality to boot. Both the Tench and Bream in Fordwich were quite often over 3 or 4 lbs, occasionally over 5 or 6 lbs in the latter years, far larger than we were getting out of Westbere at the time anyway. We were using light to normal Carp gear by this time, I'd even splashed out on a proper bivouac and a set of (AWFUL!!) Heron bite alarms, so to all intent and purposes we even looked as if we were Carping when in truth we were only 'sort of' Carping. Most of the takes were from the more common fish such as Bream and Tench, we were just hoping to catch a Carp sooner or later. As I say I was using large hooks, often size 2's festooned with many grains of sweetcorn, a large chunk of Luncheon Meat or our top secret bait, a Campbells Meatball. These Meatballs came in a tin, they were round, quite large and fitted nicely onto a number 2 hook. We used to stop the hook pulling through these rather soft rubbery balls of who knows what during the cast by fitting a small length of twiglet against the bend of the hook, an idea gleaned from Craig I think. Craig and Rich also used some paste baits, we'd refer to them as 'specials' at the time, though believe me, there was nothing special about those early paste baits ... in fact we should have re-named them as 'not very special at all's' as that might have been far more apt description as to how effective a bait they actually were. These were still the days when baits were kept secret so these cryptic names we used such as big M's for meatballs and specials for paste baits were just par for the course at the time. We did also try various particle baits too, things such as tinned Chic Peas, even Broad Beans but they did not seem to get the amount of bites we could get on the sweetcorn or luncheon meat so were soon binned.
Ah ... those glorious Campbell's Meatballs, Carp Bait extraordinaire. This screenshot taken off Tubeface takes me back. I'd guess you'd get about a dozen meatballs per tin and they come in a range of sauces or gravies. In truth they were a bit too soft for a decent Carp bait but you were forced to use what was available at the time, there were no dedicated bait companies around and boilies were yet to be invented in our little sphere of ignorance in this corner of Kent. I caught my first and third ever Carp on these things, so they always have a place in my heart if only for that. If on the verge of any catastrophic lakeside starvation binge they were actually edible to humans too, well if push came to shove, and I remember on the odd occasion eating a can of these on the lakeside tipped on top of a sachet of boil in the bag uncle Ben's rice. I shudder to think what these meatballs were actually made from ... pigs noses, sheep entrails, cows bogies ... who knows?
Although we'd quite often go to the lakes together as a group, once at the lake I'd pretty much fish alongside Rich during the next couple of seasons. We had much in common, we both had a great love of Rock Music and it was this alongside the fishing that formed the bond between us. We were both also starting to play guitar at this time too, rather awfully I might add but we gave it a good and enthusiastic attempt. We used to have the odd jam session round at mine or his house when his parents were out (or mine being more tolerant of such an awful din were in!) and I can only imagine how bad a racket we made? We didn't know any chords ... or notes come to think of it? We didn't even know how to tune the things! Rich had pretty much the worst guitar I ever laid eyes on but he loved it, so that was all that mattered. It was seriously pants ... in truth my first guitar wasn't that much better.
As well as sounding awful we also must have looked pretty awful too, dressed like a right load of berks as we were at the time when on angling duty. After making our arrangements we would often assemble at the train station in Ramsgate ready to catch the train, mostly to Sturry back then, we did also go to Minster and even Chartham on occasion too. We would be armed with our mountain of weird looking gear balanced atop of our fishing trolleys, dressed from head to foot like morons in our wellies and overalls and somehow not feeling the slightest bit self conscious??!! Oh the folly of youth eh. At least me and Craig had nice new proper bespoke fishing trolleys, whereas Rich, rather typically, made his own out of an old 1960's pram frame he plucked from the deep recesses of the family garden shed. Adding to the shame of it all as it sits in my head, a mental image of us waiting for the train dressed like imbeciles, I was also reminded fairly recently by Craig Reynolds about Rich's um er ... 'attire' let's say. Now I had forgotten about this, though it did later came back to me after my search through my old photos, as Craig had made mention that Rich used to wear some rather ridiculous clothes, in fact he even made his own clothes too. I then found this photo that brought it all flooding back to me of an image taken whilst Pike fishing where Rich was in the background, wearing a home made body warmer. He didn't make it from scratch, oh no, he just took some oversized sheepskin coat (possibly one of his sixteen odd older brothers coats?) cut off the arms and then fitted this over his fishing gear to keep him warm in the winter months. As I say, it's unimaginable what we must have looked like getting on and off the train and the mile plus journey on foot through the streets of Ramsgate or through Sturry between both Railways stations and home or the lake. The odd thing for me looking back is as I say, was that we didn't even care! It really was a different era and the wellies/boiler suit look could be gotten away with back then. By this time both Craig and I had proper shop bought bivouacs too, whereas Rich made his own camp by covering his fishing umbrella with large bits of plastic sheeting, He also had a weird liking for hessian sacking and he'd lay a large trail of it out, creating a hessian pathway between the entrance to his sleeping hole and his rods. I have photographic evidence of both Rich's rather wonderful home made body warmer and fishing set up to follow. Ah, these were happy days. We'd arrive on Friday evening after school, then after work as we got older, set up the bivvies and rods, switch on the radio awaiting (that moron) Tommy Vance's Friday Night Rock Show on Radio 1. The show got going about nine pm and ended at midnight if memory serves correct, we'd listen to it from start to finish before retiring for the night. The opening music used was 'Theme One' by the Van Der Graff Generator* and if I hear that bit of music even now it just takes me back to these lakeside days in half a jiffy ... or should that be half a bar?
*This is an error ... although Theme one was often used as a background tune on the Friday Rock Show the opening music was in fact Take it off the top by a jazz fusion band called Dixie Dregs. I Googled it to make sure and hey presto I was ... um er ... wrong.
Here to follow are pretty much the entire haul of my second wave/newer mates from six year school who I fished with from 1978/9 onward till around 1982. Above is a very young Craig Reynolds, the photo used here was taken whilst Piking on my favourite spot on Westbere deeps, I'd assume in 1981 looking at my gear in the background? I can see my two very first carbon fibre Carp rods which I bought as blanks and then built then used them for just that one year before I realised that they weren't up to the job and an immediate upgrade was required. Underneath that Tupperware box is my super duper four way Optonic sounder box which imploded at some time in 1982 ... these are all clues as to times and dates. I still see Craig around every now and again, he no longer sports the yellow and pink renaissance Punk hair do's ... he does a bit of birding these days so I still see him now and again.
And here we have my good mate and top gigging buddy Rich Stubbings, or Butt as we referred to him. I think I took this photo in 2012 after bumping into him along the Sandwich Road whilst out birding. I lost touch with Rich for many years after he gave up the fishing and though I used to run into him every now and again during those early to middle 2000's I haven't seen him now for perhaps two or three years, perhaps longer? I hope he's okay as he was quite ill a few years back. You can perhaps get the quip about Rich being the Harry Seacombe to my Milligan?
And here we have the three modern day avian hunting amigo's ... on the left; Dave Beadle, in the middle; an enormous musclebound Babe magnet and hiding in the top right; one Francis Solly, Thanet's top knower of all things mothy, planty and birdy. I have no old fishing photos of these two old schoolmates, so this'll have to do for this here bit. Dave emigrated to Canada in the middle 1980's but Francis still lives locally and our paths cross quite often seeing as we're both birders and run moths traps an awful very lot. Dave tries to visit the UK every year to see his family, so I do see him every now and again when he's in town, most years in fact. As the photo readily testifies to, and to state the obvious once again, then I would be considered as the only level headed member of the old crew of long lost anglers. That physique drives all of the eighty plus year old dears walking their dogs potty down at the nature reserve ...
Anyway, that long ago year of 1979 we fished all summer long, most or perhaps every weekend from June till October perhaps, plus any worktime holidays we had. And during all of this time on the bankside much of it was spent in the main not getting any Carps whatsoever, just many 'blimmin' Tench and many 'stinking' 'slimy' Bream up to 5 lb but like I say, unfortunately not one much wanted, beautiful single smelly old Carp. In fact the summer period came and went and it appeared that the all out Carpy quest was a total failure but things turned out alright in the end. I read in one of my old journals that I actually had my first ever Fordwich 'run' from a Carp on a Meatball in July '79 but after getting this flying take, the hook pulled out soon after pulling the rod into the fish, so I did at least get a chance at banking a Carp. In truth I have absolutely no recollection of this take and if it wasn't written in my old diary this titbit of info would have been lost forever to me. I'll wager that I would have been absolutely distraught losing a Fordwich Carp at the time, but that's how it goes of course, just one of the up's and down's of fishing. But then one fine autumn day, at long last 'it' actually went and happened. Anyhow, one September morning, fresh out of school and now looking for my first ever job, there I was, another weekend session sat fishing on Fordwich deeps, a large mass of Sweetcorn on one rod and a Meatball on the other rig and at 09.45 the Meatball baited rod went trundling off and I hooked what was immediately obvious a Carp. Unlike the first one this one didn't fall off the hook and almost three quarters of an hour later I finally slid the net under it, a nice long brown scaly mirror Carp of 9 lb 11 oz. I was absolutely elated. I had finally joined the 'I've caught a Carp club' ...
What a wonderfully evocative photo eh ... Fordwich Deeps, September 1979, me with my first ever Carp of 9 lb 11 oz snapped here wearing my old school coat ... lovely eh? I assume that Rich took the rather lop sided photo, though looking back now I'm so glad that he did as we can see my associates from that life changing event day. Stuart Coly wearing the chequered shirt, his best mate Chod (a Baby Chod in fact) with Craig Reynolds in the foreground. Nice to see the first prototype model of the hi tech sooper duper Kevin Maddocks carping chair there ... titter ... chortle ...
The following weekend and I was back in the exact same swim on Fordwich Deeps. Everything was the same, well apart from the date. The same swim, the same school coat, reels, rigs, the same meatball and sweetcorn baits on the same rods cast into roughly the same spot with the same people, namely Rich and Craig. Apparently I was woken by my bite alarm at 2.00 am after I got a take on my mass grains of sweetcorn baited rig and was soon enjoying another decent scrap with yet another Carp. Twenty minutes later (I read) and it was in the net, an 11 lb leather Carp this time. There was more action in the offing soon after too as the following day at about midday and the meatball baited rod was away and I soon landed a short fat 11 lb 10 oz mirror. I'd have left the lake floating on air no doubt having bagged myself three Carp in a little over a week. Things would never quite be the same again after that.
My third ever Carp taken about a week or so and one bad haircut later than the first, though still in September of 1979. The night previous I'd also caught an 11 lb leather but for whatever reason I have no photos? It may have been that the photos just didn't come out, a common problem with those overly cheap plastic Kodak snap and go cameras we used back then? But I think it is far more likely that having caught the fish in the dark at 02.00 am, that I'd have been forced to return it without a photo as we'd have had no proper Carp sacks nor perhaps a flash for the camera at the time? By the way, that's not my set up in the background but Rich's ... as I made mention of earlier, he had a thing about hessian, laying a long path of it from his fishing shelter right up to his rods. Note the old pram in the background, one of Rich's way of transporting his gear from home to the train then from the train to the lake and back again afterwards. There's a chance that with him being the youngest of his parents enormous clan that the last thing that graced that old pram fifteen years prior may have been a far smaller/younger Rich himself?
Things were going well in other areas of my fishing by this time too and I see that I caught lots of decent sized Pike in the winter of '79. During October of 1979 we all packed up the Carping, left Fordwich behind and went Pike fishing across the river on Westbere Lake. There were lots of old wives tales about Carp only feeding during the summer months so this rather mad decision to go Piking in retrospect was just what we all thought to be the norm at the time. In truth I don't think that I was ready for year round Carp fishing anyway and during those initial years, I was still very much in love with the Pike fishing so I'd be more than happy anyway. That winter of 1979/80 I caught lots of double figure Pike (sixteen in fact) including two of over twenty pounds.
The short tale of my first twenty pound Pike
A far duller tale it might be hard to imagine ...
At some point of 1979 October came about, so off we (probably Rich and me plus 'some' others) waddled up to Westbere deeps for the usual Pike fishing expeditions. On this particular weekend, early on in the Pike season, in November of '79, I set about fishing the same 'quagmire' swim on Westbere deeps as I'd taken my previous largest Pike of 15 lb 12 oz the year prior. I fished with my usual two rods as that's as many as were allowed at the time, one rod baited with half a Mackerel and the other with a legered Sprat. At some point of the weekend I got a take on the Sprat and pulled into a really heavy feeling Pike. I soon had the fish ploughing up and down the deep margins of the lake and when we saw this thing in the water it looked absolutely ginormous. Anyway, after many heart stopping minutes the fish eventually wore itself out and once netted we hauled it up onto the bank ... we were all shocked ... it was absolutely massive. It was one of those 'we're going to need a bigger landing net' moments. Once unhooked and on the scales the Pike weighed in at just over 24 lb, an enormous weight for an October Pike.
I remember that we measured the fish and the predicted weight to length in best condition was about 27 or 28 lbs and no doubt it would have weighed this had a caught it in February or March. I remember that I'd never had a feeling like this, even after catching those Carp a few weeks prior, it was just mind-blowing ...
A rather appalling photo of my first ever twenty pound Pike, a fish of just over 24 lbs taken from Westbere Deeps in November 1979.
And here's an even worse image of the same Pike from the same series of photos ... I haven't laid eyes on this bottom image for well over thirty five years. You can see why when I saw those photos, I assume taken on a cloudy day, that my next move was to save up and buy myself a new camera. I also splashed and bought myself a new 42 inch landing net too. I think I bought the net mail order from a shop in Lincolnshire, ( a shop run by Trevor Moss) it was near impossible to buy any decent bespoke Carp and Pike gear from the local tackle shops as that is just how it was at the time. The gear that I was using for those early pike trips was barely even coarse gear. One of the pair of rods I used for Piking until 1980, although adequate for Piking, was actually an eleven foot long brown fibreglass three pound testy curve Bass rod built for beach fishing. I think the other rod was was a black fibreglass 2lb test curve blank that I bought from a local shop and built myself, in fact it was as I just checked the rod in the shot with my first ever Carp, and there is the blank I built, resplendent with its lime green whipping! During that winter and following close season, as well as a new camera and a larger landing net, I also bought two hand built 11 foot 6 inch Carp rods, again bought mail order from that same shop I bought my big landing net from. It was all change on the gear front from that moment on.
Another even duller though thankfully equally short tale of 'another' twenty pound Pike ... yawn ..
The following weekend (possibly two?) Rich and I went back to Westbere deeps. I see that we didn't fish the same area as before, perhaps someone was already fishing there when we arrived meaning we had to fish another spot? I can recall that the approach path into the lake to access that initial area was awfully boggy and the swim itself was like a quagmire under foot, so perhaps it was this that put us off and we just set up in a more accessible less muddy spot? We then chose an adjacent spot that wasn't too far away from the same patch of water anyway and the ground on the river bank of the lake was far more stable and the ground far drier too and therefore more suitable for setting up a bivvy. The initial swim we'd been Piking from was like wading around in a mud-like soup that would splash up the side of your bivvy walls, your legs and up your nostrils if you were too heavy footed. Anyhow, during this second or third weekend in October of '79 I had a belter of a take in the early part of the night, a take that still sticks in my mind after all of these years. The fish took the sunken float paternostered 8 oz Roach cast just a few yards from the margins on a slightly shallower shelf as I say the run was ferocious, like a Marlin take it was though after I hooked it unlike the twenty four pounder from a week or two earlier, this fish gave me a very poor fight, in fact within just five minutes or so we had it in the net. Another huge Pike anyway of just over twenty pounds.
What a jammy so and so, two twenties within the first few weeks of the Pike season starting up. The Pike fishing didn't always go so well of course ... er ... never in fact! Sorry about the fact that the 'thankfully shorter tale' was in fact longer than the other other ... it easily matched the other account for boringness.
Twenty plus pound Pike number two ... Westbere Deeps, November 1979. There's a very young Richard Stubbings in the top right hand corner, resplendent in his home made sheepskin body warmer mentioned earlier. This photo was taken on a decent SLR camera and handed on to me by some very helpful travelling anglers from Maidstone. I can't remember their names but I well recall that they more than knew what they were doing. They'd arrive most weekends, armed with a large white bucket full of live baits having an aerator attached to the side. They took me under their wing back then, showing me a few cutting edge rigs and tactics such as the balanced sunken paternoster rig that I caught the above Pike on, also using large vaned floats for drifting dead baits around in the wind. They were mates of Jim Gibbinson, he used to be around the C&DAA waters back at that time, both Piking at Westbere and Carping on Fordwich.
Away from the Pike and Carp the other coarse fishing during the entire 1979/80 season produced very little of any note barring the Pike, Eels and eventually those September Carp. I read that Craig caught a huge 2 lb 4 oz Roach out of the river at Minster but otherwise none of the other species we had access to were anywhere near UK specimen weights. I do remember catching a nice Roach trotting on the river just above the Bailey Bridge one day, I think it might have weighed in at 1 lb 12 oz but that was my largest ever Roach by a huge margin. My best ever Perch was only 1 lb 3 oz (taken on a spinner intended for Pike on Westbere apparently) and the size of the Bream and Tench we caught at the time were pathetic. My personal best Bream was 5 lb 8 oz, caught whilst Carping on Fordwich and I caught very few Tench over 6 lbs and even then only at the back end of my days on Fordwich, the early day Tench were more in the 3 - 5 lbs sort of range. I did get a double figure Tench out of Yateley in the late 1980's (also another of 8 lb 13 oz) but it's odd looking back to see just how small most of the fish we were catching from the C&DAA waters were at the time. Not that it mattered as we were happy enough catching what we caught. Every trip out of the house was an action packed fun filled mini adventure back then.
That winter of 1979 was a particularly memorable time for birding too. There was some bitterly cold weather in the winter of that year and Westbere was full of all sorts of scarce continental diving Ducks driven into the UK from the continent, plus amazingly all five species of UK Grebe overwintered on the lake too. There were also large flocks of scarce Bean Geese to go with the usual Bitterns and Great Grey Shrike sightings. It's odd looking back to think that we would see the Shrikes fairly often back then, they usually frequented the tall dead trees along the bank between the Car Park and the deeps, perching in full view looking for the prey. They are a rarity in Kent as a whole nowadays and virtually never overwinter here at all, a reals shame as a Great Grey Shrike is an astounding looking bird. Back then there must have been multiple birds wintering around the Stour Valley as there were often at least two birds on Westbere alone. The only really rare bird that I ever saw was down on Westbere canal. One (June?) morning I was fishing away when I saw a dark gangly looking Heron feeding out in the open in the shallow water on the opposite bank, a Purple Heron, a really rare bird back then. Unlike those Shrikes the Purple Heron is more often seen these days in Kent due to the latter day global warming wotsit. Also, possibly in 1978 perhaps '79, whilst fishing with Dave Beadle on Fordwich Deeps, I remember him spotting what he thought was an Eagle. After dashing to his bivvy to get his binoculars, he focused in and then said to me "hang on it looks like a Stork ... a Marabou Stork!" now this thing was immense, bigger that any Eagle in fact. It later turned out that the Stork wasn't a Marabou but a Adjudent Stork I think, very similar to a Marabou and almost as large ... I just googled it and the wingspan is stated as being over 250 cm which is in excess of eight feet, so you can well imagine our shock at seeing such a thing soaring over a lake on the outskirts of Canterbury. It had obviously escaped from some zoo or collection somewhere and was eventually seen here there and everywhere in time Dave told me later on. I also saw three separate Ospreys over Fordwich during my spell of fishing during the 1980's, unlike now they were very rare back then. Ospreys are annual as migrants in Kent these days but in the 1970's and '80's sightings were as rare as hen's teeth or Lockey not finishing a pint of beer.
In 1979 we were running into other new Carp anglers, most of whom were about our age, equally keen and poorly skilled at the practise of catching Carp. There were about four lads from Whitstable who started Carping on Fordwich at the very same time as we did, one of them, well his name has slipped my mind during the intervening years (was it Nigel?) but the others were Chod, Gapson and Stuart Coly. They were all good lads and we all got along very well.
Ah, that's more like it, that's the Chod I remember, here rather expertly playing the Cello Landing Net with a throwing stick bow on the Richies during a very sunny day way back when. We used to have some laughs with old Chod. He was a big old lump too, about half the size of Margate. I have no photos of Gapson and just the one of Stewart Coly in the previous series of photos showing my first Carp.
I am also pretty sure it was in 1979 that we met up with another person who went on to be a great mate of ours in time, John Baldrey. Craig, Rich and I went on the train to fish this lake at Chartham and I'm 99% sure it was there we first met up with John? Chartham was a small water which held a few double figure Carp and the only other thing I remember about the lake was that when we went there that it was absolutely swarming with tiny Frogs, so many that you couldn't help but tread on them which wasn't very nice. My old fishing companion Craig Reynolds told me a story recently about one of our trips to Chartham where he ran into a bloke who had escaped from the nearby lunatic asylum as it was referred to at the time, a tale that I only had a very vague recollection of.
The only written evidence found amongst my old notes with regards to me having ever fished the lake at Chartham. I found it in a small pocket diary written in 1980. I can scarcely even remember the place if I'm honest, I know that first came across a very young John Baldrey on Chartham, it was crawling with frogs in plague proportions and that I caught no Carp there, this small Tench would have been the only thing to make it as far as my list of notes. The 'F' against the Tench captures written above the Chartham fish denoted a female Tench, you can differentiate between the sexes with Tench and it was something I made note of at the time. C'mon, I was only 16 or 17 at the time.
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