13 things we learnt about the 'noughties'...
Bigger, better and heavier tackle, almost monthly carp shows, the birth of YouTube and the opportunity to dress up like a reedbed. The ‘noughties’ really was the decade that carp fishing exploded…
Tackle got bigger
Fishing tackle became bigger and bulkier; unhooking mats suddenly took half the car over, bedchairs grew extra legs and bivvies grew much larger to accommodate them. As the tackle bulk grew we all suddenly needed wheelbarrows to move our gear around.
Rod development
The 00’s dawned with some massive steps forward in carp rod development, in particular the materials being used. Free Spirit Fishing launched the ‘S’ Range and suddenly there were new goals to be reached.
Dedicated holiday companies
Although carp anglers had travelled overseas for many years we suddenly started to see the emergence of dedicated carp fishing holiday companies and with it many more commercial carp fisheries in France. The 00’s was really the start of the English owned carp lakes in France.
Super expensive
More and more UK ticket waters started to turn into syndicate waters and the prices of membership soared on a lot of waters.
Spicy hemp
The start of the 00’s and the secret of ‘Chillied Hemp’ started to escape to the masses.
More carp shows
Different carp shows started to spring up and from the days of only having two specialist shows a year to attend (N.A.S.A. and The Carp Society) it was now almost possible to attend one monthly.
Further afield
The travelling angler started to become a little more adventurous visiting many other countries apart from the usual Holland, Belgium and France.
Fake baits
Artificial/imitation plastic baits hit the shops big time.
Camo mental
The carp fishing world went Realtree ‘camo mad’. Suddenly reedbeds were seen to be walking around lakes and mini copses
were growing everywhere as clothing, luggage, bivvies and buckets were all being subjected to the ‘Realtree’ look. I always wanted a ‘Real Railway Sleeper’ design to fit in with the huge ‘dug out’ swims that also became the unsightly norm in the 00’s.
Super cheap
Mini head torches that had always been expensive were now available at silly cheap prices.
YouTube
Video cameras started to make a much more frequent appearance once a fish was banked.
Quest Baits
I finally gave up my job after 25 years in a tackle shop to concentrate full time on developing my own company, Quest Baits.
Huge carp
Carp continued to grow to sizes we could only previously have dreamed about but sadly as many of our well known fish were really cracking on in age we started to lose a lot of them too. Whenever you have livestock you will invariably end up with dead stock but to me it was the 00’s when I suddenly realised a lot of the fish we angle for aren’t there forever and one by one we started to lose some really well known fish that had brought deep joy to so many over the years. Rest in peace all you big old warriors. You were never supposed to have been fished for as heavily as you were in your latter days.