The Xtreme Carping Club

Carp fishing is a condition, an itch, a fate. It is not a hobby. It gets under your skin and spreads. You have no control. All that can be done is scratch it and hope that with time, you, your friends and family can learn to live with it. In severe cases, it leads to the darkside, the murky and dangerous world of Xtreme Carping, where the stakes are high, the terrain treacherous and testing, but orgasmic rewards. Enter this world at your own risk: you will be changed forever!

And this realisation has seeded an idea for a new club: The Xtreme Carping Club. A place for fellow sufferers to indulge their obsession and confess their addiction: “My Insta TAG is Smoked Ham Boy. I’m a cross-addicted carpoholic who craves big scaly whackers from inland seas and puts banoffee stick mix liquid on my Morrisons cream apple turnovers.” 

This is a club for those who seek out head-banging waters, who have the mental toughness to fish whole seasons knowing the chances of a bite are slim, who can hold the dream through blank after blank, hang in there with a steely masochistic determination. This is a club for those who would otherwise enter the 156-mile Marathon Des Sables through the Moroccan Sahara Desert, compete in the 100-mile Barkley marathons, which to date has only ever been completed by 15 athletes. This is the Fight Club of carp fishing, and as you all know, the first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club! 

You cannot apply for The Xtreme Carping Club, it’s invitation-only. We are watching and will call when the time is right. At present, membership stands at one: me. Can you have a club with a membership of one? Or is that delusional behaviour, and actually a mental health issue? 

I will create a secret website, somewhere for Xtreme Carpers to commune. Like our brethren in the free climbing world, with their bible of extreme ascents, we’ll compile a list of the most Xtreme waters; places where the faint-hearted fear to cast. Oh yes, it’s exclusive and elitist, and only those living on the fringes, deep in the abyss, will be admitted. That’s how we’ll build our fearsome reputation. Five years on a five-hundred-acre water for five fish, that kind of thing. We’ll work our way through the toughest waters in England, pioneer new approaches and then head off into Europe. We’ll dress in black hoodies, fly skull and crossbones flags from our black bivvies, drive beaten-up black VW vans. We’re dark and dangerous to know. We’ll lead you completely astray. Forget what you had planned for this life, we’re gonna fish hard and die young. In truth, life is too short for Xtreme carping but we’re gonna do it anyway and XXXX the consequences! 

We’ll be a new breed of cyber carpers, fiercely independent and solitary animals, but wired and networked to fish and live as one. We’ll be the Carping Borg! You know, like in Star Trek. We’ll submit to cybernetic enhancement as a means of achieving perfection. We’ll gather on remote waters at the spring and autumn equinoxes, to observe secret customs, share the knowledge, reaffirm our lifelong commitment to life on the edge. We’ll have a black mark tattooed on the inside of our wrists, the Xtreme Carpers leaping black mirror, inked out in the Fens by my mate’s cousin, who is also his father. What can I say, shit happens out there!

Those chosen must still pass the initiation—a fearsome rite of passage designed to test your nerve, toughness, commitment and skill. Inductees must fish 50 continuous nights through January and February, on a water chosen by the founding brothers. Your only supplies will be water and 25 Bombay Bad Boy Pot Noodles. Any additional nutrition must be gathered, hunted or stolen. Success is catching. If you stick it, but blank, you have the chance to try again the following year. If you blank and fail to do the 50 nights, you are history, a lightweight, cast aside forever!

This is a radical shake-up, a 21st Century underground carp fishing cult. Eventually, to combat the growing rumours, fear and misinformation surrounding our activities, we’ll produce a DVD, giving the angling world an insight into the techniques employed to achieve our staggering results and capturing some of the greatest Xtreme adventures on video. Secret Weapons for the Xtreme Carper will be the must-have video of the decade. Yeah, I know, alarm bells are ringing: this is turning into just another way to screw money out of anglers. We’re selling out, brothers! Internal strife, splinter groups will form like the Original Xtreme Anglers, the East Anglian Xtreme Carping Chapter, The Xtreme Carp Collective. 

Hang on, who am I kidding, Xtreme Carper, Xtreme bullshitter, more like. I have no desire to push myself outside my comfort zone. I enjoy fishing my local patch. I have a creeping realisation that life really is too short for Xtreme carping. This whole club idea was a conceit, a trap, a one-way ticket into the abyss!

Carp fishing is not a condition, an itch, a fate; it’s a comfort, a connection, a cure. It is nothing more or less than a hobby! Keep it under control. Fit it around work, friends and family. Remember that many go carping their entire lives without realising it is not carp they are after. You can find the magic at dusk and dawn on your doorstep. The chase, the challenge, the connection can be conjured a few feet off well-trodden paths in the local park. Take comfort around the kettle, and enjoy that special carping camaraderie in the company of other weekend warriors. And remember, the only meaning on the mountain top, on the inland sea, at the Xtremes, is that which you take with you.

So, brothers, sisters and mockney gender neutrals, repeat after me: Oh great Rod in the sky, grant me the serenity to accept a modest PB, the courage to strike a healthy carp-life balance, and the wisdom to know when it is time to reel in and go home!