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Five Memorable Captures from Five Decades of Carping
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Savay nineties.
Blackpool illuminations.
I remember the take on the Monday morning, the blur of that isotope
bobbins like a sparkler raging up on
down manically, as the fish bolted out
into the deep water from the 3ft deep
margin feeding spot. At just over that
magical 20lb mark I was a king for
that day.
As your carp fishing evolves picking a single fish out of 10 years is a bit
of a task but here’s my 90’s one.
Bloody hell which one, my first Trent
20, the Stowe pool biggie, Milly’s,
Savay , Fletchers ,Branston
90s travelling
Gotta be Savay , Id grown up reading
so much and collected so reading
material on Savay , all I ever wanted
was to catch one.
1997 and I’d had a few different
jobs still in retail butchery, even less
hours now, with a 58-hour week normal, and I had that desire to travel 125
miles to try and catch a special Colne
valley inhabitant.
I’d travelled on a July evening, the
hour and three-quarter journey on
Saturday evening with my mate
Richard, we’d meet up at the M1 service station, dump a car, and travel
down together. He lived in Newark
and I in Burton upon Trent. Just entering the lake gates used to give me
goose pimples, the prizes that swam
in the lake , the scene of many a story
id read , it was uncanny , like playing
the lottery, pick a combination, the
right one and you’d be making a lifelong memory for yourself , what a
great opportunity, the lake was/is big
, plenty of space, just had to get it
right and that’s the tricky part , we’d
often walk around the lake ,up to as
far as the syndicate gate ,maybe
fished for a couple of hours but in
general get the heads up between
ourselves where to head at 6am the
next morning. Often at the pub for a
bit of food, we’d sleep over night in
car park up near pit 4, Harefield and
then someone (Dougal, cough cough )
gave us the gate combination for
Korda which gave security whilst we
popped in the pub .
So back to the capture, we’d driven
down and as I recall, we’d only
checked out the cottage and North
Bay area, the weather was warm,
weed up and fish were seen in the
cottage, no syndicate lads about in
that area at all. We started on the bottom, me in the point swim & Richard
on the road bank fishing till the sun
rose ad with it the carp enjoying the
warmth of the rays. In my day I
classed myself a good floater angler,
with limited time, floater fishing could
soon get the carp hitting the spreader
blocks a lot quicker than static fishing. I hardly ever floater fish these
days! So, I was on the point swim
feeding these Savay carp the old mixers, they were having them too. Size 8
super specialist Drennan hooks, 10lb
big game line , Shimano Airlex reels
and 2¾ Diawa dictator z rods , which
Big Carp 49
