The idiot's guide to carp fishing in rivers - part 2

In the previous episode I explained how I came to investigate river carp fishing after becoming disillusioned with the rather mechanical nature of its stillwater equivalent. The only problem is that unless you have a reliable guide who can put you onto a known hotspot, it can quickly become quite a daunting prospect. The Trent was supposed to be heaving with naive carp that were queuing up to be caught, so how could I possibly fail? I had been with people who had caught carp from the Nene at Peterborough and had even landed one myself, even if it did turn out to have been foul hooked. The Trent, and especially the tidal river, was a different proposition altogether. So read on and find out how my lonely mission progressed ...

A clapper gate under whatever the type of tree it was that John Hurt, aka Mick Lomas, was rambling on about

Monday July 24th
I started out a bit late, but by coincidence, I happened to be driving through Sleaford just as the High School girls were milling around the streets. Funny that. The sun was shining with not a cloud in the sky, and I was on my way to a swim heaving with carp. Over that nerve wracking hump into the car park again, then loading myself up like a pack horse I began the long, cruel walk under the bridge and along the bank to a point somewhere in the distance. There was a fair old wind blowing down the river by now, and I was cursing my decision to bring my sawn off sun lounger, which was acting as a sail and threatened to send my sweaty body spiralling into the field. I kept looking for this big eddy. “You can’t miss it” he had said. Well I walked further and further and the river looked just the same everywhere. It looked uniformly crap. Ooh look there’s a tree. There’s another tree. Now what did he say, was it a birch, a larch, a Chinese monkey puzzle, a giant redwood? I no longer cared.

Determined not to be caught out again I had made the unwise decision to bring about five pounds of assorted leads with me and I was cream crackered. I just set up where I dropped, in a swim that looked just the same as every other swim. I thought I’d try to see how light a lead I could use, and was quite impressed by the way two and a half ounces was treated by the current with the same disdain as a single swanshot on the upper Welland. I eventually managed to get two baits out in unlikely lies about two rod lengths out. There they remained for about five minutes, before accumulated debris on the line pulled the tips round alarmingly and a gust of wind blew them from the rests. I threw a few handfuls of chick peas in, trying to guess how long it would be before they reached Gainsborough. I looked around for a decent sized rock with which to beat myself unconscious.

And suddenly there it was - the "whacking great big eddy", albeit in a much docile mood than mentioned below

After an hour of two of utter tedium I went for a walk along the bank, then suddenly, there it was; a whacking great big eddy, with all kinds of curious objects drifting round on the surface in never ending circles. It had only now revealed itself as the tide began to ebb. I had walked straight past it. It’s too exhausting even to begin to describe the agony of the two trips it took to move all my gear in the strong wind, so instead, to get yourself in the right mood, you might prefer to just go away and do something really stressful for a while. Try washing the cat in the kitchen sink without the aid of protective clothing. That ought to do it.

After about half an hour I was fully stationed at “the hole”, but for several minutes just lay on the sloping bank, staring at the sky, and pondering the onset of madness. Out of the corner of my eye a dark shape loomed into view. A boat the size of a whole row of terraced houses drifted through my swim. And why not? The earth bank behind me was a blazing red ochre, laced with ribbons of gleaming white clusters of magic crystals. I picked one up and it crumbled in my hand. A strange, purple, glowing mist enveloped me like a shroud and the air crackled with static. Four earth minutes later I was back on the very same spot where I had left.
I suddenly had a strange and unexplained craving for a cheese and pickle sandwich.

The earth bank behind me was of blazing red ochre, laced with gleaming white clusters of magic crystals

A trial cast sent four ounces of lead out towards the middle of the river. It thudded into the murky filth and went down and down as I looked in disbelief at the line being stripped off the spool. However deep this cauldron was, it would be more appropriately measured in fathoms. Any carp hooked at that depth would surely explode by the time it reached the surface. I found a near-side ledge, up to about a rod length wide, that varied from a more acceptable twelve feet in front of me, to about seven or eight feet at the upstream end. When I say “about”, this should not be taken as a comment on my plumbing skills, or lack of them, but merely an account of the depth at that particular state of the tide. On a spring tide, the water can come up about six feet or more, more of which later on. After several attempts, I had still not even seen a carp, and was beginning to wonder if I was really cut out for this lark. I decided to leave early so that I could roll up plenty of bait, and have a re-think about what I was doing. As soon as I got home and calmed down, visions of that swim kept cropping up in my mind and I knew I just had to get back there as soon as possible. What was happening to me?

The big bend at The Dubs (whatever a dub is) - the incoming tide can sweep a 3-5 oz lead upstream

Tuesday July 28th
I had managed to drag myself out of bed quite early for a change and was soon racing through Sleaford while the schoolgirls were probably still sleeping off their hangovers on the floor of the local pool hall. The day was bright and sunny again, but thankfully, much less windy. You may be wondering why I wasn’t night fishing, but night fishing is (officially) allowed hardly anywhere on the Trent, and in any case, to leave a car all night a long distance away from where you are fishing is just asking for trouble. I had reasoned that ninety fathoms down in all that murk they wouldn’t know whether it was day or night anyway.

Once I had recovered from the long walk I felt quite optimistic as I sat on the bank trying to work out a plan. It was obviously close to high tide as the eddy was barely visible and the double boilies, complete with stringer, took longer to reach bottom than I was expecting. I cast a bait to the upstream end of the slack, then just as I was wondering where to cast the second, a fish rolled about three quarters of the way across. I couldn’t be sure it was a carp, but what the hell, and the second bolt rig with stringer began its long descent to the bottom. The rods were propped up on separate rests, about five yards apart and fished beachcaster style again - more to keep the line away from the caravan of surface filth than because of the current. I folded the back legs of my chair beneath the seat to restore an even keel on the sloping bank, then sat back contentedly to enjoy the sun.

At 10am the world exploded then inverted into a vortex, reversing the laws of time and space as angels screamed and demons roared. Without even a preliminary tremble, the right hand rod hooped over into a semi-circle and the sound of the bite alarm was drowned out by the demented screams of the baitrunner. Breaking the rod free from the Rod Lok on the rear rest, I struggled to hoist it upright then tried to engage the clutch. As soon as I did so, the rod was nearly wrenched from my grasp, as I had set the clutch too tightly and I was now in danger of becoming an involuntary water skier. With the rod now pointing straight at the fish, I managed to slacken off the tension just in time to avoid a break, while the thing on the end continued on its upriver course, seemingly oblivious to my intervention. With about forty yards of tight line humming and whining in the air it stopped and turned. I feverishly wound down to keep tension on the line, but then, after gaining only a few turns the line went slack. I simply refused to believe it at first and kept winding as fast as I could, believing that at any moment I would surely make contact again. But it was not to be. I stood on the slope, weak in the legs, with a feeling of sickness and incomprehension. It was like seeing your winning lottery numbers come up, only to find the pulped remains of your ticket in a trouser pocket as you retrieve them from the washing machine. I recast to the same position, then sat back to ponder on what might have been.

Earlier on, I had noticed a lone angler setting up his gear precariously on a little ledge on the far bank. Suddenly, I was aware of a gentle roaring sound that had me puzzled, as I couldn’t work out where it was coming from. Then I watched in amazement, as what appeared to be the big wake of a boat rolling into the far bank about two hundred yards downstream. Yet there was no boat. This thing seemed to gather power and momentum, and the roar got louder as it came closer and closer. Then I remembered the angler on the far bank. He must have heard the noise, but he was hidden from whatever was making it by a thick bush. He realised something was wrong just in time to grab some of his tackle and make a mad scramble up the bank. From where I was sitting I’m ashamed to admit that I felt some kind of wicked pleasure from his predicament, but looking back on it, it could have ended tragically. I was totally unaware that under certain conditions, the Trent experiences tidal surges similar to those on the River Severn, although to a lesser degree.

Peace and calm was restored once more. I spent a few minutes with my binoculars, first spying on an angler on a distant bend, then having a good laugh at what I thought was a bloated corpse, but which disappointingly turned out to be a seal, floating on its back, holding some sort of colourful trophy that it had found on its travels. I sat back again, watching the flotsam on its circular tours of the eddy, then closed my eyes, watching the different colours that the sun and clouds projected onto my eyelids.

This seal is in Norfolk, but I'm pretty damned sure it was the same one that I saw on the Trent that day

Just as the heat was draining from late afternoon, the rod at my right hand side performed a repeat of its actions eight hours before, and panic stricken as ever I hung on for dear life. The fish surged off with the same speed and power of the one I lost earlier, but this time I stopped the first run and still remained connected. The tension was almost unbearable, as I waited for the sickening lurch and the slackened line. I was so engrossed that I hadn’t noticed the angler from downstream approaching me. It was my guru Mick, aka John Hurt, aka Clint Eastwood, who arrived just in time to grab my landing net and scramble down the rocks to the water’s edge. He did a good job, and I was overjoyed to see a glistening, golden common carp enclosed in the bottom of the mesh. A quick weighing job showed it to be 12lbs 10ozs, and he even performed the honours with the camera. “Thanks again. By the way, what did you say your name was?”
“I am known in these parts as Mick Lomas”, he replied. Re-lighting his cheroot, he slung the poncho back over his shoulders, re-mounted his piebald stallion, then slowly trotted away. By the time I had returned my prize to the water and climbed back up the bank, he had mysteriously disappeared, even though I could see all the way along the half mile of empty bank to the bridge. A half smoked cheroot lay smouldering in the grass.

My first carp from the Tidal Trent, landed by Mick Lomas, who was mysteriously passing by at the time

As I had been returning the fish, I had been amazed to see bubbles rising to the surface only feet from the bank. When I looked again from my fishing position, they were still coming up and what’s more, they were slowly moving. Not to miss a chance, I gently reeled my other rod in and tried to lower the bait as quietly as possible into the path of the bubbles, virtually under the rod tip. I laid the rod over a rock, and watched the line where it entered the water. Impossibly, within a few seconds it began to twitch and the line suddenly snaked out towards the middle of the river. I didn’t know what on earth I had hit as the rod curved over, but something weighty and ponderous began a slow cruise around the area in front of me. Climbing down over the wet rocks with the rod and the net was tricky, but I found somewhere that was only slightly dangerous and continued to battle this mystery creature. Every so often I got it close to the surface, causing huge boils to erupt as whatever it was made another dive for the bottom. It wasn’t actually going anywhere in particular, but was just a plodding semi-animated weight that just didn’t want to come in.

Finally, on what proved to be its last excursion to the surface it actually dived into the half sunken net. At this point I was still not quite sure exactly what it was that I had caught, but tried to lift it from the water. This proved to be surprisingly difficult, for a reason that suddenly became quite clear, as my brain gradually interpreted this big, fat, pink thing encapsulated within the mesh. It vaguely resembled a mirror carp, but was actually more like a beach ball with fins on - and not too many of those either. Half of its tail was missing, and it was covered in thick snot. On the scales it weighed 21lbs 12ozs and as I was about to take a quick photo, it heaved its quivering bulk off the mat and onto the hard but grassy bank. Panicking and guilt stricken, I fired off a quick one handed shot, the worst carp photo ever, then wedged my knees against it before it had chance either to roll away, or before its stopper came out and it zig zagged away over the trees in a squeal of escaping air.

I quickly encased it within the rolled up mat, and cradled it against my body like a farmer’s daughter with a new born lamb. My main concern was to get this assemblage of piscine spare parts back into the water as soon as I could, before anything fell off it. It didn’t look any more worse for wear than it did before, although I'm not sure if that was actually possible. Even so, I cursed my moment of carelessness and felt sorry for inconveniencing the poor old thing. Where she came from I couldn’t imagine and how she survived in the turbulent waters of the tidal river is a mystery. I hope the poor old girl still lives on somewhere in those oily waters.

It's a carp Jim, but not as we know it. 21 lbs 12 ozs of carp, made out of a beach ball and rubber gloves

Part 3 follows at some point, with tales from Collingham and beyond

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