Tuesday, 10th.July
Bough Beech, Estate Yard Bay
13.00So I’m back down at the reservoir having another go. There is news… I had a quick look in at the Clubhouse before driving round and got talking to an ex-carp angler - now a bird-watcher, who said that a 45 pounder had been caught. If this is so it is fantastic news and well done to whoever caught it but I have to say - I’m insanely jealous and wish I could get one even half that weight! Any carp would be more than welcome!
I haven’t been fishing lately, apart from a short session (recounted below) to The Back Lake and the reason for this has chiefly been because of the weather. We’ve had the longest, hottest spell of dry weather in years and I just haven’t been able to summon the enthusiasm to get out. Not because I I think the hot conditions are not conducive (which actually, they aren’t) But I just simply can not stand the heat these days. I had four hours in the hot sun at The Back Lake and despite the fact I was able to sit in the shade, I was utterly exhausted when I got home and was next to useless for anything. (Mind you, some would say I am anyway, but that’s by the by). Today is different however and offers temperatures a good ten degrees less than the mid to upper twenties of the past three weeks and whilst it’s not exactly cold - this short window of reduced temperatures may be just what is needed to kick-start feeding.
There’s another reason for my lack of fishing activity. We are going to move house. I say “going to move house” with some fear and trepidation as we have already had one property fall through, getting to just before the point of exchanging contracts before everything going belly-up. They say moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do and they weren’t kidding. With any luck and a fair wind we might be moving in the next couple of weeks after which, I shall be so busy I just don’t know when I shall be able to get out again although Christine is insistent I must have the odd session in-between all the jobs we have planned. I am reassuringly informed it is for the benefit of her sanity rather than my own! But back to the fishing…
My…
13.30
I interrupt these musings to report a take! Yes! My very first take at Bough Beech!… Wow! To say I’m pleased is an understatement. My first bit of action! Didn’t connect and unfortunately I think I know why.
Chris ‘phoned me and was recounting the woes of a close friend of ours who is also selling a house and was having difficulties with solicitors not doing their job etc. when the bite alarm to the left-hand rod went off…
A very slow run ensued… I say slow run - it was a s-l-o-w run, slow enough to count the bleeps of the Fox alarm, the spool turning, albeit very slowly. It stopped unfortunately, before I could get to the rod although I lifted into it… Nothing.
Could have been a line bite; a carp or a pike swimming into the line and pulling it from the clutch. I have to say, it’s the most excitement I’ve had in many a long day. There’s something out there, but what?
So, to go back to the beginning of the session, I had a plan.
The Estate Yard Bay has previous form with regard to member’s catches and I concluded that the carp visited the bay often enough for some of these to get caught. I remember my good friend Mark telling me how he had caught a thirty-pounder from here and he did so by finding a clear spot amongst weed. The weed is the key here. I remember Alan Young telling me, “find the weed, and you will find the fish” so this session I spent a good deal of time leading about trying to find it and fishing adjacent to it.
The spot I have chosen is at the mouth of the bay. I figure any fish coming into the bay will have to pass over my baits so I favour the entrance to it rather than deep into it.
I found soft-ish mud at ten wraps, and then closer in the bottom became harder and stonier. Shortly after that I found the weed. Well, it’s not actually weed as such - it’s filamentous algae but it qualifies for the catch-all term ‘weed’ we all use to describe green stuff growing on the bottom of the lake and which gets caught on our tackle when we reel in. I clipped up at 6 + 1yd. Equivalent to 25 yards. This puts my baits on the hard stoney stuff - but just short of the weed.
Rigs are the combi-rigs I described last time which owe more to allowing the fish to pick the hook up off the bottom rather than having any anti-eject properties. Braided hair and short length tied to fluorocarbon for anti-tangle. A three-bait pva ‘stringer’ is added to prevent the business end from tangling around itself when casting into the seven feet of water.
14.30
Random fact: Slope of the bottom is 7 ft. in 25 yards which equates to 1 in 14. Compare this to the gradient at White House Point which is 1 in 8, almost twice the slope.
14.50
Interesting phenomena. Every so often there’s a little flurry on the surface not two feet out from the water’s edge; it’s tiny little pin-fry scattering. It looks like they are being herded into the bank whereupon they scatter in a little shower as something seems to attack them? I’ve looked hard with the Polaroids but I can’t see anything having a go at them. If they’re not being attacked by a predator, what is the cause of this behaviour? Interesting.
18.00
You know how things suddenly come over you? You know, out of the blue, when your mind is wandering and not focussing on anything in particular. And all of a sudden you get hit smack in the face with a stark realisation. A cataclysmically profound truth which may (or may not) have been lurking in the dark recesses of your subconscious?
I’m not going to catch here… Ever. I’ve tried everything I know, I’ve exhausted every plan. My bucket of ideas, my stash of little tricks and dodges has been turned upside down and nothing is tumbling out. My options gone - with all the accumulated hope I’ve been saving up, storing away, stashed in my heart, ready to be brought out when I’m feeling really low and stuck for something new to try. Gone.
Where do you look for inspiration when all hope is gone? How do you keep fishing a water where you’ve never even seen a carp much less caught one?
But hang on, didn’t I have a bite this afternoon, not half a dozen hours ago!? At least it indicates there’s something out there. Doesn’t it?
Emotional fragility is so not what is required at the moment. Come on. Buck up. I’m supposed to be a carp-angler. Hardcore. Yeah! I can do it! Bring on the blanks - I can suffer as many of them as you like!…
But I can’t. I don’t feel I have that kind of emotional strength in me. I feel fragile, human, ordinary. I feel as a man of straw with feet of clay, weak, and weakened by failure.
I want to give up.
This isn’t making a good carp story. What should be happening here is that ‘heroic carp-angler catches big fish after months of tedious blanks’. What really seems to be happening is ‘hope dies after continued failure’. I’d prefer the former headline rather than the latter.
20.20
Sitting watching the World Cup semi-final between France and Belgium on my iplayer app. Recast all rods at half-time and didn’t manage to get back on until fifteen minutes after the re-start, by which time France had gone 1-0 up. Good game! Good game! As Sir Brucie would say.
Scattered a few more boilies around the area with the catapult. What was all that I said about giving up? Had my little moment of self-doubt which now seems to have passed.
The rods are on the dancefloor, the fish are in the pond, and I’m back on it!
Wednesday, 11th.July
05.10Up early to see if there’s anything about. Fry still scattering in the margins and unusually, lots of ‘flipping’ from what seem to be small Roach.
Where are the carp? Where are they?
I recall my friend Phil saying something about them moving into deeper water as the summer progresses and that the ‘Three Trees’ area fishes better later on. These fish are fry feeders and it is highly likely their movements are dictated by the whereabouts of the massive shoals of fry. Others have described going out in boats with ‘echo sounders’ and seeing the traces of huge shoals at great depth in the reservoir. Who knows? I am at a loss really and confess I haven’t a clue what to do next.
This doesn’t feel like searching for a needle in a haystack; more like searching for a needle in a field of hay.
05.45
Did I mention I had nothing last night?… From the moment I recast at half-time last night and clipped on the bobbins - until now, this morning, there has literally been complete and utter silence from all three bite alarms. Not even a single bleep at any time. Now that’s what you call a blank!
Knowing I suffer with a mental health issue, how did I think fishing Bough Beech with its inevitably long strings of blanks was going to be!? For sure ‘The Black Dog’ of depression was certain to raise its ugly head - but realistically, it doesn’t take a series of unsuccessful fishing trips for it to do so. Depression happens as a result of ‘normal’ daily life anyway.
I must go back on my medication and get an appointment with ‘the quack’.
About a year ago she suggested I come off my tablets and take a course of hypnotherapy and CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and this seemed to work for about six months. The last six months however have been an increasing struggle and I think I need a little help.
Depression is an absolute sod of a thing. It doesn’t help my fishing in the slightest. I’m not depressed because the fishing is going badly - my mood is grumpy as a course of normal living. The thing is, it’s what I find folks find so hard to understand - depression isn’t actually caused by anything. It’s because of how you actually are. (In my case, it’s due to an imbalance of Serotonin in the brain - but that’s another story). What is a fact is that it makes Living - any kind of living, hard at times.
So often carp-angling writers give the impression that carp-fishing is little more than a series of mechanical processes. Oh that it were that simple! The fact is, we are all limited in our abilities in one way or another and these limitations can be both mental as well as physical. It’s the overcoming of those limitations that gives individual and personal satisfaction in our Angling. That’s why it doesn’t matter a damn how good other anglers are, it’s about how you as an individual can overcome the personal limitations imposed on yourself by you.
Postscript:
I packed up early, determined to increase my efforts in trying to find the fish. I drove round to the Yacht Club and parked in the Angler’s Car Park and set off up along the Dam looking for carp. I got as far as the Draw-Off Tower which is a mile and a quarter walk from the car park scanning the margins as I went. Nothing.
At the Tower there is a bridge which goes out over the water to the tower itself and here I was convinced I would find fish. This bridge is thirty to forty feet above the water and offers an ideal vantage point to spot carp - if there were any about I’d see them!
Never saw a damn thing…
I walked the mile and a quarter back to the clubhouse and set off up the bank, past Three Trees, round Days Bay (where I spotted blue-green algae - mental note to report it in the members log) and on up to ‘The Alamo’, possibly the furthest point you can fish before the Out-of-Bounds Nature Reserve. Apart from tracks of deer and foxes in the soft mud at the edge of the water I saw nothing of any interest and certainly no carp.
Why can’t I find them?…
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