* Lockdown *

Bough Beech - Reflections On A Story of Failure

I got a ticket for Bough Beech Reservoir in the Spring of 2018. It was a fill-in year really. I had been on the waiting list for years for a ‘Snodland’ club water and needed somewhere to fish while I was waiting to get to the top of the waiting list and so the reservoir was very much my number two choice of venue. I knew there were big fish in there, this being a pre-requisite of venue choice. Since my good friend Phil Baker had had a forty-pounder it fitted the bill perfectly! I knew from the very outset however that I was probably ‘biting off more than I could chew’.

Bough Beech was the most wonderful place to fish in terms of isolation and 'wildness'. You could be literally miles away from the nearest human being and this in itself presented risks. If you got into trouble, injured, or some other problem you were largely on your own. Every syndicate member however had a telephone number printed on their card from which you could summon help if the need arose. I was not however looking forward to putting it to the test!

I started fishing off the back of one of the worst spells of carp-fishing I had ever had. It had been almost a year since I’d had a UK carp; my fishing at a Mid-Kent venue had come to a miserable end, leaving me discontented and unhappy with my fishing. Believe me I had tried hard - oh how I had tried hard, to string some good sessions together, but things just would not work out for me. The harder I tried the worse things got. I became frustrated and completely lacking in confidence.

To try and get a few captures together I joined a park lake near me where friends and acquaintances of mine had caught quite regularly. I felt fairly confident of catching on there too if I fished only half-reasonably. There too I blanked and I can honestly say that my confidence had never been so low in all the years I had been carp-fishing.

I tried everything I knew to get a bite and still I caught nothing. I resorted to all the baits, rigs, and tackles I had caught on in previous years on other waters… but the fish steadfastly refused to co-operate.

I tried copying others. I knew of one lad that was catching on ‘Ronnie’ rigs and ‘Boom’ booms. Failure. I tried solid bags with wafters having seen someone else catching on them. Failure again. In desperation I enlisted the help of a friend who had caught most of the fish in the lake and got him to describe how he had done it which he did quite openly without holding anything back. He even showed me to the foot, exactly where to place my baits.

And still those damned fish would not bite.

To say it shattered me is an understatement. I had never felt so useless and inept and it is probably true that I convinced myself I would never catch a carp from there (or anywhere else) before I even set foot on Bough Beech. So it was that I began fishing probably the hardest water I had ever fished - with the lowest expectations of my entire angling career.

Double-baits to counter the Bream. They were a real nuisance on occasions, pecking away at the baits until they had whittled them down to nothing.

Angling authors have described how if you don’t know what you are doing, you are doing nothing more than ‘Going Through the Motions’ rather than fishing properly and I think things felt exactly like that. What I completely failed to come to terms with was the fact I never saw a carp either in or out of the water the entire time I held a ticket for the place.

Now I tried. I really tried. Those who know the place know how big it is; walking the banks of the 300 acres is no mean feat but I walked for mile after mile trying to find those fish. I sat for hours looking out at the water, straining to see a roll, swirl, or leap from a carp. Nothing, except for Bream, silvers, and diving fowl.

Dawn at Bough Beech. What's not to like!

Session after session I pushed my barrow around the banks from the two car parks - The Yacht Club, and The Estate Yard Bay. I pushed that barrow as far as it is possible to do so from those two points of entry on to the water, exhausting myself in the process. Many times I was left gasping for air and my arms dropping off with the effort, but believing it would all be worth it in the end when I finally got a fish.

It was a complete and utter waste of time…

I rang old friends and new acquaintances for help and to their great credit they did everything they could to put me on a fish but things just never worked out for me.

In fifty years of carp fishing I have fished many different kinds of waters and caught from almost all of them, The Park Lake and Bough Beech though being two I had failed on… although there were a couple of others back in the seventies I fished which were highly prized tickets which most carp anglers would have given their eye teeth for - Ashlea Pool in Gloucestershire and one nearer my home (also near Snodland).

All these waters I failed on, shared the same characteristic.

In each case I had the most uncanny feeling that I shouldn’t be fishing there. Ashlea Pool in particular gave off such negative vibes to me I fished it only a few times. It wasn’t the fact it was chock-full of lilies (I could cope with that) but I just knew that the water ‘didn’t want me there’ (if that doesn’t sound too fantastical). It’s impossible to describe this feeling other than to say I felt in each case that I shouldn’t be there - that things just ‘didn’t feel right’. It was like, that strong understanding and affinity with the lake and its inhabitants was somehow denied me; that no matter how much time I spent on the water, that special bond between angler and fish which enabled happy catching was never going to happen.

But Bough Beech was my only ticket; it was a case of fish there or nowhere.

'White House Point', one of the furthest walks away from car parking on the res. From here you could see right across to the far side - the Yacht Club and hopefully rescue if you should need it. Of all the places on the reservoir I fished I felt more confident here than anywhere else. Unfortunately, the carp didn't feel the same way about it as I did!

Initially, I thought it was all down to an ability to manage one of the boats which are available for use by the carp anglers. These boats can not be employed until members have completed the compulsory Boat Management Course run by the Syndicate. A fair enough requirement. Bough Beech can be a wild and rough place and boat skills are essential under Health and Safety Rules. Since I have no affinity with boats and have an in-built mistrust of them I chose to make my campaign a bank-only approach and in this I think I had a great disadvantage.

Although I knew of fish having been caught from the bank, the most successful members used the boats to find the fish before setting up their camps; pretty obvious really, the most important aspect of fishing a big water is Location. First find your fish. I noticed that those who did this would travel miles, up and down the res before deciding on a plot. They caught too.

My choices of swim location were invariably random guesses. Occasionally, I fished on recommendations from other members, particularly those who’d had fish prior to my fishing their spots. There were never any fish there when I fished them however.

So for those hoping to pick up some tips on how to fish Bough Beech I’m afraid I have nothing to offer. Nothing. Not a damned thing. I am probably the very last person you should speak to if you want any advice on how to fish the place.

So what is the point in recounting this absolute litany of failure?

It is that there are times in your fishing life when there is nothing you can do to make things happen for you. Oh there is always good advice about sticking to the basics of carp-fishing - getting Location right, feeding right, bait and rigs right, and you may well achieve success. On the difficult waters (and sometimes on the not so difficult) things sometimes do not go according to this plan. Carp do not ‘follow the rules’. They are not automatons who predictably ‘do as they are told’ or behave in a predictable way. Sometimes they are beyond our reach. In my case they are certainly sometimes beyond my capabilities.

So what is the answer?

I don’t believe there is one…

Anyone who has fished for any number of years (or decades) knows that there are times when things go right - and there are times when things go wrong. Like Life really. Sometimes they can go wrong for an awfully long time. If this has never happened to you then you have never fished a Hard water or for long enough.

Fortunately, things never stay the same. As sure as night follows day bad luck will turn into good luck and anyone who says Luck doesn’t come into it doesn’t know what they are talking about. In my own case 2018 (my worst year) was followed by 2019 (my best year). So I guess things evened themselves out.

The Great Harmony of the Universe. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

It just takes a little time and for an old-timer like myself, Time is not something I have in abundance in my advancing years. I just hope I can hang about long enough to catch the fish of my dreams.

That is the way it always has been and I guess always will be…