A Passion For Carp

A PASSION FOR CARP

Steve Graham

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2017 Steve Graham

All rights reserved

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INDEX

Chapter One – Albert

Chapter Two - Loeuilly

Chapter Three - Oddstone

Chapter Four – Argoeuves

Chapter Five – A Return To The Big Back Lake

Chapter Six – A Second Trip To Oddstone

Chapter Seven – Disaster on the way to Loeuilly

Chapter Eight – The Velodrome in June

Chapter Nine – Contre

Chapter Ten – Oddstone Again

Chapter Eleven – Argoeuves In July

Chapter Twelve - Glisy

Chapter Thirteen – Albert In August

Chapter Fourteen – Back To Loeuilly

Chapter Fifteen – Soggy Oddstone

Chapter Sixteen – La Base Nautique

Chapter Seventeen – A Wonderful Session

Chapter Eighteen – The Small Back Lake

Chapter Nineteen – The Big Back Lake In October

About The Author

Other Books By Steve Graham

To my good friends Benoit, Corentin and Pierre-Jean, who all helped make this a wonderful year for me.

Thankyou for all your help my friends.

CHAPTER ONE – ALBERT

During 2016 I`d spent a lot of time on the bank, so in the first couple of months of 2017 I decided to take a break from fishing. This allowed me to spend some quality time with my family, and it also gave me a chance to recharge the batteries somewhat, but before too long I was gagging to get the rods out again. I tied up a load of rigs, re-spooled all of my reels with new line, and generally got everything ready for my first session of the year. Just re-spooling with new line was quite an operation in itself, because I use three different types of line, which I keep on spare spools. I use mono for a lot of my fishing, but I also use fluorocarbon for fishing slack, and a braided mainline for fishing in heavy weed. With using four rods a lot of the time, that meant that there were twelve spools to strip of old line, and fill with new, which took quite some time. It’s a job that I don`t enjoy at all, but finally it was done.

During this time I read a couple of books that really got me thinking about my fishing. The first one was Frank Warwick’s book ‘Every Bit of Blue’, which is a must read for any carp angler, and one part that I found particularly fascinating was the section on high-attract hook-baits. Frank makes these himself using a lot of different ingredients, and after having conducted many tests, where he fished them alongside several off the shelf baits, he has found that they work far better than standard baits. In the book he lists a couple of recipes that he uses, and also gives examples of other ingredients that he has found useful, both in hook-baits and when added to particles. The process to make the pop-ups and wafters that he uses didn’t sound too difficult, so I thought that I`d give it a go.

The next one that I read was Martin Clarke’s book ‘Heads Down, Tails Up’. Now on the whole I was rather disappointed with this book, and found it rather dull, which was a shame, because I loved his first one ‘Strictly Carp’, but there was a guest chapter by Tim Childs, in which he wrote about making his own hook-baits. Now Tim is a friend of Frank Warwick, and he freely admits that he has been influenced by him to a great extent, especially when it comes to hook-baits. In this guest chapter, he goes into even more detail than Frank did and gives half a dozen excellent recipes that have worked well for him, so after reading that chapter, I was even more determined to make my own hook-baits.

Now I know that no bait will transform anyone’s angling by itself, and had always thought that location and watercraft are far more important, but having said that, these hook-baits did seem to be something very special. I`d rolled a lot of bait in the past, so that held no fears for me, but I hadn`t ever designed my own hook-baits, and the more I thought about it, the more excited I became.

Over the next couple of weeks I listed all the ingredients that I would need and then ordered them from the net.

Isn`t eBay a wonderful thing!

I was able to find everything that I needed quite easily, without having to search the shelves of all the local tackle shops, and the cost was very reasonable too.

The list of ingredients was quite long, and included simple things like dyes and flavours, but also more obscure things like oyster sauce, multimino, N-butyric acid and mono sodium glutamate, among others.

One word of warning here, be very careful with the N-butyric acid!

One day my wife came into my study and uttered the words –

‘What on earth is that disgusting smell, it smells just like sweaty socks’.

Now obviously I don`t keep bait ingredients in my study, so I couldn`t understand it at first, but after a bit of thought, I realised what was causing the problem. The N-butyric had arrived in the post and was well wrapped in bubble-wrap to protect the bottle. I opened the package, removed the bottle of N-butyric, which I immediately put into the garage, but I’d thrown the wrapping into the bin in my study, and you could soon smell it all over the house.

Trust me, it didn`t go down well with her who must be obeyed. If you use this stuff, then I suggest you don`t use it in your wife`s kitchen. Not if you want to stay married that is.

Once I had all the ingredients, I made plans to make my first batch of high-attract hook-baits on the following Tuesday, when my wife would be out for a few hours, but on Sunday night something happened which put all of my plans on hold.

We were looking after my youngest grandson Sami who was just over one year old, and when I lifted him from the floor, as he crawled towards some ornaments for the umpteenth time, I felt a pain in my lower back. By the next day I was in agony, to such an extent that I couldn`t bend at all and couldn`t even put my shoes and socks on without help from my wife. Not wanting to wait for the NHS, I went to see an osteopath, who told me that the intense pain was caused by the muscles in my back going into spasm. He manipulated my back for half an hour or so, which wasn`t pleasant, but then he gave me some good news. He said that if I was careful and rested for a few days, then I should soon recover.

Now that was a relief, because I certainly wouldn`t have been able to go fishing in that state.

The osteopath was right and three or four days later I started to feel a lot better, but then disaster struck again.

We had arranged to look after my eldest grandson for the night. Logan was five years old and as I drove him back to our house he fell asleep in the car. Not wanting to wake him, I tried to lift him out of the car, and as I did so I felt an excruciating pain in my back once again. This time however, the pain was even worse than before. Soon I was dosed up with pain killers and anti-inflammatory drugs etc. and felt like on old man of ninety-five.

I certainly wasn`t in a state to do battle with a large carp, let alone lift one up for the camera, so my fishing looked like it would be delayed for quite some time.

That was not the start to the year that I was hoping for.

As you can imagine, I was very careful about lifting anything after that, and fortunately, a couple of weeks later I was feeling much better and felt ready to make my first fishing trip of the year to France.

I planned to fish a lake called ‘The Velodrome’ just outside of the town of Albert in Picardie, which is a venue that I`ve fished many times in the past. The lake is about twenty acres in size and holds a good head of carp, plus some grass carp and a few catfish. The biggest carp here are the mirrors, which go to just over forty pounds, and I hoped to catch one or two of those, but for the first session of the year, just to get a bend in the rod would be good.

The journey through England was horrendous as usual, with miles and miles of roadworks, and with the speed limit restricted to fifty miles per hour or less, most of the way. Just before Dartford it got even worse, and the M25 was closed. As I left the motorway I looked for the diversion signs, but I couldn`t see any, so I carried on around a roundabout until I came to a queue of stationary traffic. I sat there for almost twenty minutes, with frustration mounting, but at last the traffic moved a few yards, and I was able to take the next exit off the roundabout. I had no idea where this road would take me, but fortunately, with the help of the sat-nav, I made my way onto the M2 about half an hour later. This wasn`t the road that I normally use, but I knew that it was taking me in the right direction, and I eventually arrived at the tunnel about half an hour before my final check in time. My problems didn`t end there however, because when I checked in, the screen displayed a message informing me that there was a one hour delay on all trains.

Don`t you just love England!

Fortunately there were no problems at all in France, and I arrived at the lake at about seven o`clock in the morning, just as it was getting light.

I barrowed my tackle to the first platform, and I`d just set up the bivvy when my friend Corentin arrived. He`d got my permit for me, and he told me some very good news. Apparently the permit for Albert, which previously had only allowed me to fish at the two lakes there, now allowed me to fish at Argoeuves and Glisy as well. Last year I`d had to buy a separate licence to fish those two lakes, and although it hadn`t been expensive, it was still one less thing that I`d have to pay for this year.

Corentin told me that he had to work that morning, but he`d be back in the afternoon with his tackle, and he`d be able to fish with me that week-end. Corentin is always good company, and he`s very good with a camera too, so that was just what I wanted to hear.