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- Herausgeber: Merlin Unwin Books
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
Carp are the big game of the inland angler, and in this book 'BB' tells of some of his experiences with this very sporting fish, how they may be caught or at any rate hooked, and what is the particular charm of their pursuit. He has included the fascinating stories of other people who have brought specimen carp to the bank. BB's readers will know that he was an expert fisherman and that he has, beyond his great technical knowledge and experience, the power to communicate the meditative atmosphere which has accompanied the art since Walton's days. 'Carping' takes place in warm, summer weather and usually in lovely lily-strewn waters. The author's gift of descriptive writing has seldom been better displayed. First published in 1950, and instantly beloved by fisherman, whether they fish for carp or not, Confessions of a Carp Fisher is a much prized addition to any fishing library. This reprint features an updated look including new jacket artwork and a foreword by Chris Yates who explains why, half a century after it was first published, BB's advice about carp and carp fishing are as fresh and fascinating as ever. The illustrations by Denys Watkins-Pitchford are some of the finest examples of his scraperboard art.
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‘The wonder of the world, the beauty and the power, the shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades; these I saw. Look ye also while life lasts.’
A corner of a carp pool
CONFESSIONSOF A CARP FISHER
by ‘BB’
Illustrated by DENYS WATKINS-PITCHFORDF.R.S.A., A.R.C.A.
Foreword by CHRIS YATES
To
Richard Walker
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The extract from Coarse Fishing by Hugh Sheringham is reproduced by permission of Messrs A & C Black Ltd, and the contributions by Flt.-Lt. Burton, Richard Walker, Albert Buckley, and L.D. Davis, by permission of the authors concerned.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD BY CHRIS YATES
A cup of tea with BB
When I first met BB, back in the early 1980s, I probably knew this book better than he did. It was a fine summer afternoon and we sat in his garden feeding the carp in his pond while drinking tea and, naturally, talking about carp fishing. I came up with a quotation which I said distilled all the magical essence of carp fishing and for a moment he looked slightly mystified, as if trying to remember its source. Then it came back to him and he laughed: he’d written it himself, over 30 years previously (the passage on night fishing in Chapter XII). Suddenly, all the memories welled to the surface and he was describing the wonderful lakes and pools that he first explored years before carp fishing was really born. And because I knew Confessions so intimately, it was almost as if we had shared those original exploits and could therefore remind each other of certain details from BB’s encounters with monsters and enchanted waters. Obviously, there were lots of questions I wanted to ask, mostly about the places he fished, and what they were like back in the 30s and 40s. And where, exactly, was the exquisite sounding Woodwater Pool? Was it just a dream?
So much of Confessions reads like a dream, yet of its many other qualities the one I like best is its freshness. There is an innocence in the way the carp is perceived that makes the contemporary carp scene appear cold and deadly dull in comparison.
In his book, BB’s enthusiasm for the fish knows no bounds, nor does his fascination with the creature’s mysterious environment. It was the same kind of passion, though in a less concentrated form, that characterises that other much-loved fishing book, Mr Crabtree Goes Fishing by Bernard Venables, and maybe there’s no coincidence that both books were written at exactly the same time, in the suddenly brighter seeming era immediately after the dark years of the second World War.
There may be a certain innocence in some of these confessions but there is also authority. Throughout his life, BB was an observant and expert naturalist. His studies of butterflies, for instance, especially the rare Purple Emperor, went way beyond mere field notes and book learning. These specialised interests all contributed to a deeper understanding of nature, a breadth of knowledge that makes BB’s writing so convincing and which also make his infatuation with the carp so compelling.
While we were talking and drinking tea, BB showed me his carp tackle. He had one rod and had only ever used that one rod, a split cane Mk.IV carp rod, ever since Richard Walker made it for him in 1952. His reel was a wide diameter centrepin and he said – just as he says in his book – that his favourite method was float fishing, ‘with something like a nicely painted peacock quill’. BB had tried legering and fishing a floating bait, but he said nothing was so exciting as watching a float. And I had to agree with him. He detested electric bite alarms – obviously I was with him there as well – and he just couldn’t understand the present carp angler’s obsession with complex rigs, multiple rods and chemically enhanced baits. Science and technology were the evils he wanted to escape from when he went fishing. The idea of taking these things to the waterside was simply ludicrous. But apart from his dislike of the mechanisation of carp fishing – and how much more he would have hated the 21st century trends – BB was not really that interested in even traditional tackle and methods. All that truly interested him was the creature itself.
Over a third pot of tea, BB said that he had just recently caught one of the largest carp in his life – a fifteen pounder from his local village pond. And yet, despite the fact that he’d never caught a really huge fish, or even a twenty pounder, he still dreamed that his next cast might connect him to the greatest carp that ever lived. This dream had once driven him to seek out all kinds of secretive, half forgotten lakes at a time when the English landscape was a lot quieter and when life ticked to a much slower clock than it does today. BB always imagined that he would eventually confront his monster at one of these remote and beautiful places and the fact that he caught mostly quite modest specimens never discouraged him. The original dream, which BB evokes so vividly in this book, was far more important than any individual fish, no matter what its size.
By immersing himself in carp fishing, BB discovered that he could re-enter a mythical element in the landscape which, especially as a writer and artist, he found irresistible. It is this magical dimension, surrounded by a vignette of brilliantly observed natural detail, that makes Confessions such an original work, yet also such a classic. It is also the reason why it will always be my favourite fishing book.
Chris Yates
Tollard Royal
Wiltshire
Chapter I
THE CHARACTER OF THE CARP FISHER
I CAN do no better, at the very beginning of the first chapter, than to quote a passage from Mr. Ransome’s delightful collection of fishing essays Rod and Line, Jonathan Cape Ltd., which passage first put into my mind this little book.
‘A true record of the life of an habitual carp fisher would be a book to set beside De Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater, a book of taut nerves, of hallucinations, of a hypnotic state (it is possible to stare a float into invisibility), of visions, Japanese in character of great blunt-headed, golden fish, in golden spray, curving in the air under sprays of weeping willow, and then rare moments when this long-drawn-out tautness of expectation is resolved into a frenzy of action.’
This then is what I am setting out to do, to record my own experiences with these fish and to include the experiences of other people, who have brought to bank and safely ‘cased’ specimen carp.
First, however, you must know that among fishermen there are many divers kinds and they fall into definite classes. The wel1-to-do are ‘game’ fishers, angling for salmon and trout; rarely does the rich man think that ‘coarse’ fish are worth his notice. He is a man who needs movement and change, his tastes are expensive, so is his tackle. He will not read this book.
Salmon and trout are the rich man’s sport; the poor man must be content with coarse fish. Among coarse fishers also there are many types. There is the man who, if he were rich and in a different station of life, would be a fly fisher, a man who must have constant action, and, if possible, plenty of sport. He does not try for the ‘big stuff’, he goes ‘all out’ for the roach, perch, and bream – fish which will, as a general rule, always provide a full keep net or basket. He does not catch fish to eat or to preserve as specimens. The roach fisher – the successful roach fisher – is not to be sneered at. He is an artist. His tackle is fine, his ‘strike’ is delicate and true, as swift and polished as the action of the fly fisher, he casts beautifully with unerring aim. By the end of the day his keep net is full to overflowing – usually with dead or dying fish which might just as well be set free. But he is an artist all the same – your skilled roach fisher. Then the perch fisher – he too needs plenty of action and good bold bites – there is always something of the schoolboy about your blue-blooded perch fisher. The bite of the perch makes glad the heart of a boy – it is a determined, rather leisurely bite. Unlike the roach expert, the perch fisher will sometimes take his catch home and eat them and very good they are (so are roach for that matter, if you know how to cook them).
Then we have the pike fishers, a breezy, hardy, red-faced race of men, impervious to the wildest winter weather, fond of the ale house and jolly company. They too will eat what they catch. Pike fishers, successful pike fishers, are hearty rascals, full of exciting stories of battles with fabulous monsters. Yet there are two types of pike fishers, those who spin and those who live bait. (The spinners would be fly fishers if they had the chance.) The ‘live baiter’ is, perhaps, the hardiest of all the tribe of Isaak. He fishes throughout the most bitter winter day, sitting on his basket, or standing with upturned coat collar, a trembling drop at the end of his nose, his red rimmed eyes (blinded with tears from the icy wind) fixed upon the dancing scarlet buoy of his ‘Fishing Gazette’ pike float as it bobs up and down on the leaden ripples. I take my hat off to the ‘live baiter’ because he has something in his make up of the habitual carp fisher, for he possesses inexhaustible patience.
There are barbel fishers (I know few barbel fishers so cannot speak with authority upon them) and there are habitual bream fishers. The latter I am told are rather coarse fellows who like to catch their fish by the stone; I suspect there is something of the fishmonger and poulterer about bream fishers. The bream is hardly an edible fish and bream fishers never – as far as I can discover – eat what they catch and small blame to them for I have tasted bream – they are almost as tasteless as chub and nearly as bony. Bream fishers are usually big, flat-footed men, retired constables and railwaymen and sometimes barbers by profession, men of little imagination. They are not so hardy as your true pike fisher. I believe there are some who fish for nothing but gudgeon. (Gudgeon scratching used to be a popular pastime on the Thames when anglers wore blazers and straw hats.) All are river men and rather nice, peaceable fellows, fond of summer evenings and camp sheathings, willows and weedy scented weirs, and a tall glass of ale at the day’s end. They (the gudgeon scratchers) are, I think, a partly vanished race.
And there are carp fishers, or I should say, carp addicts. These are very strange men indeed (the author is one of them). Carp fishing is a most curious form of fishing and calls for a very special turn of mind and character. First there is the quality of patience. Your habitual carp fisher is a man of inexhaustible patience, no angler born has more than he, not even a wild sad-eyed heron has greater patience and, I may add, watchfulness. He is a man of summer for the carp is a summer fish. Carp fishers disappear in autumn and are not seen until the following midsummer, nobody quite knows where they go or what they do. In my case, as soon as the summer ends, the mania leaves me, and I devote myself to other tasks and hobbies. The winter is a period of rest and recuperation for you must know there is no form of fishing which calls for greater quietness and concentration.
Most carp fishers I have met are big ‘still’ men, slow of movement, soft-footed and low-voiced, many have nagging lean wives (I hasten to add that I am not so afflicted) and it is by the calm secluded waters that they have found peace and quietness for their troubled lives.
Carp fishing entails long periods of inaction, when no ripple disturbs the placid pool, when the light has drained from the sky, and the trees (there are always trees about a good carp water) have grown black against the soft twilit west. Then, maybe, there is a brief period of intense action, to be succeeded again by yet longer spells of inaction and silence. Early morning and late evening will find your carp addict abroad – during the midday hours he is not visible, having left the waterside. So then after a long apprenticeship, he takes upon himself something of the character of the carp – he is most active at sunrise and sunset, and the midday hour knows him not – that time when the cattle seek the shade and stand whisking their tails in the shallows, ears and eyes alert for the dreaded hum of the gadfly which will cause panic in their ruminating ranks.
In actual fact there is only one month in the whole year when you may expect to catch a really large carp, and that month is July. Nearly all the record carp have been taken in that month. It is a little difficult to understand why this is so. Whether it is that the fish are more unwary after ten months’ respite, I do not know but I shrewdly suspect that such is the case.
Before we proceed further it is now necessary to describe the history and the habits of the fish in question, after which we may get down to the business of how he may be caught and of the author’s (and others’) personal experiences in this most difficult form of angling.
Chapter II
SOMETHING ABOUT THE CREATURE (THE CARP)
THE date of the introduction of the carp (a native of Asia) to Britain is not known. It is first mentioned in 1496 but it may have been introduced considerably earlier. It seems to attain much greater size on the continent than here but this is due, principally, I believe, to extensive culture. Carp of 30 lbs and over are found in France and Germany but the fish found in Florida Lake near Johannesburg attain enormous weights, in the region of 50 lbs. A very big fish of 31 lbs was taken in 1945 from the lake of Velodrome near Albert but carp of similar weight and over have been found dead in Mapperly Lake near Nottingham. This lake is the premier carping water in Britain to-day but they are apparently preserved and ‘outsiders’ cannot obtain permission to fish for them. Later in this book will be found Mr. Albert Buckley’s account of catching the record carp for Britain, which account appeared in the author’s Fisherman’s BedsideBook, published by Eyre & Spottiswoode and reprinted by their kind permission.
I do not believe that the common carp ever attain such a size (26 lbs); all those from Mapperly appear to be mirror carp, a variety of the common carp which are almost devoid of scales. They have a few scales – very large ones, here and there upon their flanks and are far from attractive fish.
The common or ‘old English’ carp are beautiful creatures – a rich golden bronze in colour, and fully scaled. If, however, size is the object – I am speaking now of stocking a carp water – I should strongly advise introducing mirror carp. Fish culturists will frequently sell (to the unwary) Crucian carp for stocking purposes. These never attain great size – the record to date is 4 lbs 11 oz (from Broadwater Lake, Godalming) and was captured on the 25th September I938, by a Mr. Hinson.
Crucian are beautiful fish, of a deeper, less greenish bronze than the common carp and their pectoral fins are reddish in hue. It is altogether broader and more ‘breamy’ in appearance.
Carp spawn in May and June and are prolific breeders – two or more male fish attend a single female. The eggs hatch in ten or fourteen days. At this period the males develop tubercles on the head, the purpose of which is obscure. Some hold the theory that they assist the male fish to grip the female but this seems to be a far-fetched theory. They are usually active at this time, frequently leaping out of the water. But this is not always the case. A carp water which is described at length later contains fish, some of great age and size, which never exhibit this habit, only on two occasions have I seen a carp jump in that pool. Usually in a weed-grown carp water the fish may be heard sucking at the weeds – especially the under side of lily pads. If a lily leaf is examined on its underside it will be seen to be covered with small semi-transparent worms and it is on these creatures the carp feed. Yet strangely enough I know of some carp waters, abounding in lilies and good fish, where this sucking sound is never heard and I can give no explanation why this is so. It is another of those mysteries which surround the carp.
Anyone wishing to breed carp must pay close attention to the following facts. The water should be deep and plentifully supplied with lilies. It should also have some shallower parts where the fish can bask and breed, for no fish other than the chub delights so much in basking in the summer heat. It should contain no other species of predatory habit such as pike or perch – roach and rudd do not matter but carp do better if they are entirely by themselves.
If you wish to obtain specimen fish they should be fed frequently during the summer with grain and bread crusts. Artificial feeding increases their size with great rapidity.
To give an instance of this. In a lake at Dallington near Northampton some common carp were introduced in 1937. The largest weighed 1½ lbs. In 1945, choosing a hot day when the fish were basking, I put out in a boat, and, gliding quietly along among the weeds, I saw fish which weighed anything from 10 lbs to 18 lbs. One fish of 17 lbs was caught on floating bread a week or so prior to my visit. This shows the carp must have gained as much as 2 lbs per year, an amazing rate of growth. The Secretary of the Club informs me that for a year or two after they were introduced he fed them with grain. It is a small but very deep lake and is fished by the floating bread method described at length later in this book. These fish were obtained from a dealer near Virginia Water. His name and address were given to me but I have most unfortunately mislaid it.1
No other fresh water fish in Britain is so powerful as the carp – the salmon excepted, yet even a salmon does not possess the dogged strength of a large carp. Their sagacity and wariness is a byword and very few men have captured really monster carp. The very largest have never been caught on rod and line, they have been found floating dead, having reached the natural span of years. Croxby Pond in Lincolnshire has the reputation of holding some very big fish. Mr. Otto Overbeck, a king among carp fishers, had one of 17 lbs from this water in 1902. With the exception of Mr. Albert Buckley, Overbeck holds the record for the capture of very big carp. I have been unable to ascertain whether he is still with us but should he chance to see this book, I should be most interested to contact him. He must have had a fund of wonderful stories of his battles with big carp. Chingford Lake in Essex has some splendid fish to its credit, one of 21 lbs 10 oz was captured there by Mr. A. E. Wyatt in 1926. Cheshunt, where Mr. Sheringham caught his fifteen pounder was, at one time, the premier carp water in Britain. A fish of 20 lbs 3 oz was caught there by Mr. J. Andrews in October 1916 – a most unusual month in which to catch a notable carp. Nineteen and eighteen pounders are too numerous to mention but the records of the capture of fish of this weight are not often available.
Compared to salmon fishing, carp fishing is far and away the more difficult art. Because of the wiliness of the fish and the lifetime’s endeavour necessary to secure a specimen worthy of a glass case, carp fishing is not followed with any enthusiasm. That is why your habitual carp fisher is a rarity. There are, however, up and down the country, private lakes and pools on big estates where truly enormous carp are found – some pools have never been fished. About two years ago, while angling for tench one still summer’s evening, I met a young Air Force officer and his wife who told me of a pool near Grantham which held giant specimens. His wife had caught an eighteen pounder without any difficulty and he had had several fish over 10 lbs. It was a private lake where the carp had been artificially fed and all fish had to be returned, but he told me that they were voracious feeders and had none of the usual cunning which is associated with the species. This was no doubt due to artificial feeding and to the fact that nobody had tried to catch them. All were captured by the floating bread method. And this brings me to the subject of how to fish for carp which must be dealt with in the following chapter.
One word as to the age of carp. This is a very uncertain point – experts disagreeing. In 1946 I sent the scale from a 4 lb fish I caught in a Devon locality to the Field expert for his inspection. I wished to know the age of the fish. He replied that it is difficult to give the age of a coarse fish as it feeds more or less all the year round, unlike the salmon which feeds only in the sea and does all its growing there.
But he told me my carp was probably eight or nine years old and was in excellent condition. I could certainly believe the latter statement as the fish fought like a sea trout and took me ten minutes to bring to the net.
A few years ago, a man fishing in Harlestone Lake, on Lord Spencer’s estate, nearly fell into the water when a creature like a midget submarine glided by his float. Nobody believed him when he said it was the biggest carp ever. But a year or so later another man found upon the bank a bulky carcase of unbelievable size half eaten by an otter or some other animal of the night. He took one of the scales which was as big as a five shilling piece.
1 The Hazelmere Trout Farm.
Chapter III
FISHING TECHNIQUE
THE common carp, when ‘in the pink’ (or, as I should prefer it, ‘the gold’), puzzles some unobservant people why it should be such a powerful fighter. To understand the reason, you should watch big carp on a hot day in summer when they are lying on the surface. If possible, you should be on some eminence above the water where you can look down upon them. There they lie, always in the exact centre of the pool, well out of harm’s way, listlessly lolling sideways as they expose their motionless flanks to the rays of the warming sun. You will notice one thing immediately. The fish (I am speaking of the big ones) are very thick through the shoulders; the body (observed from behind and above) is seen to taper off in a fine ‘stream-line’, more accentuated in the carp perhaps than in any other British fish. Here lies much of the secret; the rest lies in his very large pectoral fins. These, when the fish is ‘lolling’, are set at an angle of about 45° to the body. When the fish is resting on the bottom of the pond, these fins act as props. It is these powerful driving ‘screws’, combined with the broad shoulders and the tapered body, which enable him to drive through the water at a speed which I estimate to be in the region of 40 miles an hour and I am giving a low estimate. Remember, I have been a habitual carp fisher for thirty years so I speak from experience.1 A tench will sometimes display a considerable ‘first run’ when hooked, precisely for the same reason, for that species has powerful spoon-like pectoral fins but not the stream-lined body. Tench, by the way, are very similar to carp in their habits and are sometimes as wily though, when they are on the feed, you may catch large quantities of handsome fish.
But to return to the carp. His eye is small and full of porcine cunning. The tail, unlike that of the tench which is bold and broad, is forked. Carp, like other fish, vary in colour according to their environment. I have seen golden bronze common carp, and dark greeny-bronze specimens, and yet others almost a smoky-black. In my favourite carping pool in Devon, about which I shall have much more to say later on, they are all the latter variety, though I must admit they appear more ‘smoky’ when in the water than when they are on the bank. These particular fish are fighting fit and as bright and perfect as a ‘newly minted’ dace, fresh from a clear stream. Like all fish, carp are darker on the back and pale on the belly. The fins and tails are slightly tinged with bronzey-red in some specimens) but have not the rufus hue of the Crucian. The mirror carp is always of the smoky variety – some are quite slatey-grey in tone.
You may attempt to catch carp in three ways. (I would ask the reader to bear in mind I am only speaking of big carp.) You may ledger for them, usually by far the deadliest method – and you may try to outwit them by floating bread crusts and you may fish for them in mid-water. Any book on coarse fishing will give details of ledgering for carp and it is a straightforward business. Personally, I use no cast whatever. I find that, in most carp water, there are weeds and snags – fallen trees and branches – and, when hooked, your fish will dash straight for these. If you are using a fine gut cast (no self-respecting carp of any size will ever be captured on gut stouter than 3x in clear water) they will invariably break you. You will have had the satisfaction of knowing what the first run of a big carp is like but that is all. The usual tackle recommended by anglers who have not specialized in carp fishing is a 2x cast, dyed to harmonise with the pond bed – a ten or twelve foot rod and a 3½ inch Sheffield reel. Some recommend a No. 8 hook. Albert Buckley caught his twenty-six pounder on roach tackle. But then it must be remembered he had open deep water in which to wage his battle and there were few obstructions. Nevertheless his was a great achievement, only those who have played and lost big carp can know just how notable it was.
If you have a clear open water without obstructions, then I would say, by all means, fish as fine as you can, use roach tackle as Buckley did, but I know of no carp water other than Mapperly where such ideal conditions obtain.
Your average big carp water is large, surrounded or partially surrounded by trees. Old mine shafts and flooded workings are frequently inhabited by carp and trees usually grow round such places after a lapse of time. Again, as the years pass, the trees decay and fall into the pool and, once this happens, the giants are secure against anything the angler can do short of netting and draining the place. A big fish, in his first rush, will take out 100 yards of line. No other coarse fish will do this, save perhaps a barbel which is a very powerful fighter, almost as powerful perhaps as a carp.
So your reel must be a large one. I use a Milward sea reel made of bakelite. This reel, which is fitted with a check and can be used as a spinning reel, holds 200 yards of tapered line. It pays to use good line – the very best quality, with a 9lb breaking strain. I am wholly in agreement with those writers who advocate a strong rod – I use a Wallis Wizard rod – a doughty weapon specially made for me by Allcocks of Redditch. Most important of all, I never use a gut cast. Up to 1946 I always did so and lost every big fish I hooked, due to ‘snaggy’ water, save once, in the case of a 20 lb fish which I lost through a piece of sheer absent-mindedness as will be described later. And then a friend suggested alasticum wire, such as is used in salmon spinning. This wire is made in various sizes and breaking strains. I experimented and found the 8 lb breaking strain alasticum wire was best. To this I attached an eyed hook, number 8, and the best method of attaching it is as follows. (see diagram.)
This attachment ensures that the hook is not flopping awkwardly on the end of the wire cast as it would if simply tied to it. The same method is, of course, employed in fly fishing when a fly is attached to a gut cast.
The smaller the float the better. You can ledger with a floatless line but such a method tries the patience of the most patient habitual carp fisher. If you have a float to gaze at, you have at least some interest; a line descending at an angle into murky waters of great depth is neither an exhilarating sight or one to foster optimism. Indeed there are great psychological deeps to be sounded in the matter of floats.
My favourite carp float is 3½ inches long – a white quill tipped with scarlet, as every self-respecting float should be dressed and, instead of a wire or quill ring at its lower end, it is grooved and twisted so that one has only to wind the line two or three times about the ‘twist’ to make the float secure. The upper end is held in the usual manner by a ring to the line. The advantages of this type of float are obvious, for quick adjustment is useful in carp fishing. The float is, of course, on the line and the sinker, a single shot, is pinched on the alasticum wire at the correct depth. Plumbing your water is very necessary. The float should, of course, be at half cock, and below the shot I have at least 2½ feet of alasticum wire attached to the hook.
When I cast out, which I do by the coiled line method, I let the bait sink and then draw the line towards me for a little way so as to allow the wire to lie along the bottom of the pool. Nothing disturbs a carp more than a perpendicular cast rising direct from the bait to the float. Your bait, needless to say, must lie on the bottom. Alasticum wire is more invisible than gut – it does not glint and is infinitely stronger.
