A Nene Carp At Last

It is true, angling is a cruel sport. It is cruel to the participants. I have spent the past four months on the banks of the rivers Nene and Trent, in thunderous downpours; on mosquito plagued, tropical nights; on nights when the condensation dripped down from the roof of the shelter like raindrops. The sum total for these efforts have been three barbel, although one was a very big one, twenty or more chub, including at least two personal bests, and three carp, all of modest size. I didn’t even derive much satisfaction from the two big chub, as I was actually trying to avoid them at the time. It is true that I caught a carp of over twenty pounds, along with two others in the upper teens, but these were from a private estate lake, so didn’t really count. Fishing can sometimes be comparable to choosing your lottery numbers: you feel that if your numbers haven’t come up for several weeks in a row, if you persist with them, then a win must surely be just around the corner. This is how I came to spend three nights of my holiday beside the North Bank of the Nene. Although there are many far less attractive places, it hardly counts as a beauty spot, but the herds of horses galloping freely on the Whittlesey Washes provide at least an illusion of wilderness.

All my past successes had been achieved by casting my baits as accurately as possible to the far bank marginal ledge. One night last week though, just after dark, I noticed a heavy swirl just under my rod tips, where I had emptied the remnants from my groundbait bucket. Mostly out of curiosity, I dropped a bait onto the area with a gentle underarm swing. About two hours later a carp bolted off with it, disturbing at least one other feeding fish in the process. It may have been only eleven pounds four ounces, but it was extremely welcome. The slugs and mosquitoes had all disappeared, but the friendly water vole munched away in the reeds, and the bank voles scurried about enthusiastically, mopping up all the crumbs I had dropped. A crescent moon tracked the horizon, temporarily eclipsed by a brickworks chimney, before dropping behind the orange glow of the Peterborough lights. Bored with the usual radio stations, I idly flicked the dial through the longwave band, only to discover a live Bowie concert, broadcast from Paris. I sat enjoying the warm night, sipping beer by the dim glow of a tealight, then closing my eyes and drifting in and out of sleep, woken at regular intervals as small fish did their best to demolish the large, hopefully bream-proof boilie.

The following night I repeated the process with a carp eight ounces larger, although the night was altogether cooler. The gentle breeze of the previous night had dropped to a flat calm, and with it came the night angler’s enemy, condensation. Water clung in droplets to the inside of my shelter, so that every time my head brushed the surface, it wet my head and sent droplets running down my neck. Every surface was wet to the touch, and my sleeping bag had acquired a ghostly sheen. The carp run came right out of the blue, just as I had slipped into sleep and was starting to dream. I am a very light sleeper, but the immediacy of such events always causes me to blunder about like a demented zombie, until instinct and adrenaline somehow combine to allow me to function with some semblance of normality.

Having proved that carp were still in residence, I returned on Saturday night for another chance of catching one of the really huge fish that are known to inhabit this stretch of river. I blanked. Perhaps it is time to choose a different set of numbers, and move to the upper reaches.

home