Carping Allegedly - July 23'

April Fools
I know I am going back a few weeks, but I found some of this year’s April Fools’ jokes rather amusing. RidgeMonkey’s Dan Hawkes’ left-handed throwing stick was certainly a good one, as was Trakker’s bankside kitchen sink, built into an Aqua Staxx box and incorporating their new Armolife Powerflo Tap. My favourites were Angling Direct’s Avian Bait Boat and the Fox International app, the latter supposedly allowing you to change the background of your capture shots, and even embellish the condition of the fish you are proudly holding in a photo. The Fox wind-up actually got me thinking, though. If there were such an app, would there actually be a demand for it? Rather worryingly, I suspect there might.

When used appropriately, Photoshop is undoubtedly a wonderfully useful tool, and I must confess that a friend of mine has used it to slightly lighten and add a bit of extra definition to a couple of my own pictures in the past. Using it to totally change the content of an image, however, is surely a step too far.

No names, of course, but I know a couple of anglers who, over the years, have used it to airbrush battle scars from photographed fish, and add missing scales. I remember thinking at the time that, if you are going to go down that road, you might as well go the whole hog and transform all your fish into perfect fully scaled mirrors!

Thankfully, the Fox app was merely a wind-up. Just think, though, had it not been, those gnarly old battle-scarred mirrors that we all love so much could become a thing of the past, and every fish we ever see would end up looking like that unbelievable 60lb creature Lee ‘Mozza’ Morris caught a few months ago.

Before I move on, I must give credit to Mozza and his fully scaled fish. It’s been a long time since a picture of a fish stopped me in my tracks to the extent that that beastie did, and let’s be honest, if you can catch carp like that, you don’t need a fish-embellishment app!

More details of Mozza and his big-fish exploits can be found on the Carpfix YouTube channel.

The Saussaie Melting Pot
Although I haven’t fished it for a number of years, I’ve never made any secret of just how much I like spending time at Etang de Saussaie. It can be an incredibly tricky, enormously frustrating venue, and can prove a real headbanger. On the other hand, it could never really be classed as the most taxing venue in France. As a place to spend a lazy week in pursuit of some of the nicest fish around, it is right up there with the very best the country has to offer.

I have lost count of the number of people who have expressed surprise at the fact that I continued to fish this lovely little water after my capture of the big common, but I suspect they either do not realise just how many other good fish swim in Saussaie, or they are missing what is, in my opinion, probably the most important aspect of all when you are choosing a suitable venue, namely how much you enjoy being there. 

One of my most memorable sessions on Saussaie took place in the summer of 2010, in the company of Colin McNeil and ‘Mez’ Marshall. The trip sticks in my mind not only for the fish we were fortunate enough to catch, but also for the unbearable heat we endured all week. We caught a few fish during the day, but unsurprisingly, the lion’s share came during the hours of darkness through to around ten in the morning. The nights were hot—which made sleeping a chore—but the days were ridiculously so. I was in Swim 2, with Colin next door in Swim 3. Both these swims offered a bit of shade, but Mez in Swim 5 (aka The Beach), had very little in the way of cover. As a consequence, he struggled even more than we did. 

We spent the vast majority of the daylight hours keeping out of the sun as best we could, whilst drinking plenty of water in an attempt to keep hydrated. Early afternoon on the Wednesday was our planned time for stocking up with provisions. After a swift freshen-up, a trip to the local supermarché and a quick drive around the nearby Lac du Der not only saw us able to replenish our food and drink supplies, it also allowed us to get the lines out of the water for a couple of hours. Lines are a huge issue on small, heavily pressured waters like Saussaie, and it never ceases to amaze me how removing them for even as little as an hour or so can make an enormous difference to fish movement, their behaviour and what you can then expect from the remainder of a session. Our time away from the lake also gave Mez the much-needed opportunity to get out of the sun for a while.

It was getting on for three o’clock by the time we got back to the lake. Nothing looked to have changed, apart from the fact that the plastic container that housed my tea bags, and which had travelled so many miles with me over the years, had melted! I had made a cuppa just before we left for the shops, and had inadvertently left it at the entrance to the bivvy. I would never have dreamt, though, that the afternoon sun would have been intense enough to totally melt it.

Legends
I have spent the last five weeks virtually bedbound with a broken lower fibula, and now—with my first overseas trip less than a month away—I am attempting to strike a happy balance between resting it and tentatively using it. 

I have never been good at doing nothing and being tied to the house, and the boredom has been indescribable. Social media in its various forms and YouTube have undoubtedly been something of a Godsend, and if nothing else, my period of recuperation gave me plenty of time to catch up on a few podcasts.

I suspect specific anglers who influence and inspire each of us will depend very much on our age and on what era of carp angling we come from. I’d imagine the anglers an eighteen-year-old will hero-worship may well differ from those that fossils like me will continue to be inspired by. 

Korda’s recent podcast featuring Richie McDonald and Pete Springate was a real treat for me, as I suspect it will have been for many carp anglers of my age. Few anglers have inspired me more than Richie and Pete, and listening to their tales from Longfield, Savay, Yeoveney, Redmire and the like was a real treat.

The word ‘legend’ is massively overused these days and legendary status—which once upon a time was reserved for kings who pulled swords from stones—is now seemingly used to categorise anglers who catch a few thirties and spod accurately to a dinner plate at twenty-two wraps in the dark! To my mind, Richie, Pete and a number of others I could mention here from a similar era can undoubtedly be classed as carp angling legends and always will be. 

Each to their own of course, but I doubt I will ever listen to a more interesting and inspiring carp fishing podcast!