Brothers in arms

After an incredible season on the hallowed banks of Horton, Darren Willeatts and brother Rick reveal how their combined approach, as well as individual style, has proved so successful…

Darren with a Church Lake fifty

MARC: “Where to begin chaps… it’s been quite a first year on here for you Darren, but I know that your brother, Rick,
has walked this journey before.”

DARREN: “Yep, it’s my first season on here, but not my brother’s. He was on here previously and, obviously, the tales he told and the carp he caught really got me interested in a ticket for a truly special water; one that I’ve always harboured an ambition to fish.”

The obvious choice: Cell

RICK: “I’d fished the season before last, so 2015, but when it came to renewals I had all my gear stolen so didn’t have the money for a ticket. Instead I had to use it to replace my beloved tackle, some of which was replaceable but some had real sentimental value which could never be replaced.

“I spent 2016 fishing a club water and waiting for the next ticket to become available on here and, what made it even better was that my brother was joining too.

“I’d been using Cell and Hybrid and had done really well on them both. It’s something that my brother and I talk about a lot: The confidence of knowing that your bait is as good as it gets and that you don’t need to worry about that particular piece of the jigsaw. It works wonders for a carp angler’s confidence and I’ve never understood people who constantly chop and change. To have us both on Horton, using the same bait, we hoped would work in our favour.”

A classic Horton stunner for Darren

Taken from one of the large weedbeds

DARREN: “Exactly that. I’d been using Cell for a while and knew that it would be the right choice for Horton. Having seen the success that the likes of Dave Levy had on here and also knowing that there were a fair few lads using and catching on it, the bait choice was made up straight away.

“Having plenty of other lads using the same bait, especially as there are few boys on here that get through a fair bit, effectively did our baiting up for us and we only needed to bring a few kilos at a time.

“We both fish by percentages and pay attention to every last one, however, we are both so confident in the bait that we rarely ever have to give it even a second thought. That’s a great position to be in and allows us to concentrate on other stuff like rigs, presentation and conditions.”

The Willeatts brothers: Rick holding the carp, Darren in the background

RICK: “The beauty about fishing here as well is that there are big bait freezers that you can store your boilies in just in case you ever need a top up. This further adds to the allure fishing at Horton.”

MARC: “Ha ha, yeah, that and the fact that it has the most amazing lodge, great members and some of the most sought-after carp in the land. I can well see why you’d want a ticket one here! Right, so we’re into the 2017 season then and I have to ask about how you approach your fishing as a pair. Do you tend to combine your efforts or is there a bit of brotherly competition going on?”

DARREN: “We don’t actually have that competitive edge as brothers, although we may have done as kids, it has definitely passed now and we both get a massive buzz out of the other one having a result.

“While we do fish together when we can, I’ve actually fished a hell of a lot more than Rick this season as I got myself into a position where I had quite a bit of time off as well as some funds accumulated to cover my bills and what not. This gave me a lot more time on the bank compared to him, which I’ve taken advantage of. If I know he’s fishing, then I will either try and fish with him or at least make sure I get down here for a social and a catch up.”

RICK: “We’ll sometimes fish together or we may find ourselves at opposite ends of the pond. We are most definitely not the kind of blokes that live in each other’s pockets when on the bank and a lot of what we do we do independently. However, we share all of our information and anything we see out in the pond we tell the other one about.

“Our angling style is incredibly similar, borne of many years fishing the same venues and coming to the same conclusions. Many years ago we’d fish places like Sandhurst and plot up next to each other, often fishing all our rods in a row and, so, creating a line of baited areas with rods dotted along it. We’ve made many of the same observations and as a result arrived at similar ways of solving the problems we’ve faced in a fishing sense. This has led to our style of angling being almost a mirror image of one another.

“It’s very different to fishing with your mate, when there is often a bit of caginess borne out of a competitive element and wanting to maybe outdo each other. There’s none of that with us: We arrive together and make the decisions from there, but always with the best interests of each other at heart. If I don’t catch then I want my brother to do so, and vice versa.”

DARREN: “Yeah, our style of fishing is incredibly similar and we often have our rods strategically placed so that we both have a good chance of a bite, or rather so that at least one of us does. There’s a huge difference in this as opposed to competing against each other, which I feel lessens both your chances.

“A good example of how we pitch together is that neither of us spods out bait, preferring instead to use a throwing stick. A good example of this is when we went to Linch Hill where we bucked the trend and didn’t spod out, as it seemed everybody else on the lake was doing.”

MARC: “I think there’s a secret rule that as soon as you enter the county of Oxfordshire you have to break out the spod. Do you see much of it down here?”

RICK: “Oh yeah, in the past I’ve watched blokes spod on here with incredible accuracy, landing every single cast bang on the money. I’ve sat there and thought ‘bloody hell, you’re a bit special’ as they hit the same spot time after time. However, it’s not a tactic that either of us put a lot of faith in - we’re boilie anglers and spodding, in my opinion, isn’t particularly suited to this style of carp fishing. Think about it: 18 boilies landing on a spot the size of a dinner plate doesn’t suit fishing with the rigs we
use, out and out boilie fishing rigs like the Hinged Stiff Rig or Chod.

“I’ve often thought about this and feel that the more spread out you have your boilies the better in terms of rig mechanics. I’ve tried it, throwing a load of boilies individually across an area of grass the size of, say, a tennis court. I picture fish moving from one bait to the next, tipping up and then righting itself again after each one. Predominantly using pop-up rigs, this is exactly how I want the carp to behave as it offers the best possible chance of the rig working effectively.

“It’s a different story when you’re particle fishing, of course, but we tend not to do a lot of that in our own fishing, not in the traditional sense at least.”

DARREN: “I think as well the carp actively search out the boilies, creating a little more competition and also lowering their guard somewhat. A pile of centralised bait creates a situation where the carp can have a nibble and then back off and wait to go again. With a spread of boilies they can only find one at a time and, so, need to go looking for the rest. As my brother says, this suits rigs such as the Chod, which we both use a great deal.”

The truly amazing Horton Church Lake

Chod Rigs, bright hookbaits and Toppers

MARC: “Do you tend to always fish with pop-ups then, and is it a case of matching the hatch, so to speak, or do you do anything different with your hookbaits?”

RICK: “I like to have two out on pop-ups, often bright attractor baits which my brother can tell you about as we both use the same ones mostly, but I also like to have one out on a bottom bait with a two-bait stringer. Imagine a carp going around and hoovering up one bait at a time and then he suddenly comes across a little pile of three baits together. Is he going to be wary of these or, more likely in my opinion, is he going to think that his luck is in and snaffle all three with some vigour?”

DARREN: “100 per cent of my captures have been on bright pop-ups. This water is pretty deep and so it’s murky down there at best. I’m sure that the bright baits stand out and create a different desire in the carp to want to eat it.”

MARC: “Any particular baits work better or is it just a matter sticking to what you’re used to? There are certainly no shortage of ‘carp sweets’ available these days, which can confuse as well as titillate, but how do you approach hookbait choice Darren and do you do anything to your baits or just straight from the tub?”

DARREN: “Ah, that’s a good question about doing anything to the baits as, while I use the hookbaits from the tub, we both do something with our Cell boilies, and that is to pour the Banoffee liquid over them, the hookbait liquid not the flavour. As if the Cell doesn’t smell good enough already, but this adds a whole new dimension to a bag of boilies. The carp still get the benefit of eating the Cell and everything it contains, but the smell and taste profile is transformed to stand out even further.

“I have three hookbaits that I use for just about all of my fishing, pretty similar to Rick’s choices, namely Milky Toffee (“my favourite hookbait on the planet,” adds Rick) and Diamond Whites, which are both obviously white, and the ever-faithful yellow pineapples. These all work brilliantly all year round but have an even more effective pull in winter compared to any other hookbaits I’ve used.”

RICK: “I like to play a little bit with my pop-ups, and sometimes shave bits off two different baits, one larger than the other, and stick them together to combine a double-bait a bit like a snowman but with two trimmed pop-ups back to back. From above the combination of the two different sized baits looks superb and I like to think they offer something very different to the norm. They also change the dynamics of the rig somewhat too, creating something that the carp have not been used to dealing with before. I’m sure this is a bit of an edge that does make a difference, even if it’s only in terms of my own confidence, which is vital when fishing venues like Horton, don’t you think?”

Boilies spread over a large area has been the winning method for Darren and Rick

MARC: “Absolutely. Without confidence we are always going to struggle and yours is obviously built up over many years fishing, always the best way to learn how to carp fish. Does the nature of the bottom have a bearing on your choice of a pop-up over a bottom bait?”

DARREN: “For sure, it absolutely does. Horton, despite its depths, can get very weedy and it’s also surrounded by trees so there is no shortage of detritus on the bottom at certain times of year. Pop-ups offer a much better presentation generally. I must add as well that we both happily use single hookbaits, which is still extremely alien to lots of anglers, but which have produced results for us both.”

RICK: “The weed tends to grow on the shallower areas of the lake but the deeper water sees much less of it as well as being darker. Maybe this is one reason why the attractor baits work so well. Using a pop-up has one really important benefit though, it allows us to use the rigs we’ve mentioned, which we have total confidence in. There’s another important point here too, and that is not to necessarily avoid the weed as the carp love it. My brother has a good story about this.”

DARREN: “That’s right, and it’s a classic example of not having preconceived ideas. I was doing particularly well out of one swim earlier this year, which was quite weedy. As is the norm, for a while people started to suss where I was casting but then they’d struggle to find spots on these marks when in the swim themselves. That was because I wasn’t fishing spots at all, I was fishing in the weed where the carp were and where they fed confidently. Too many anglers get obsessed with finding spots or a rock-hard drop when it’s not all about that. In fact, we both prefer to fish silty areas more than hard spots anyway, generally.”

RICK: “It’s also true with known spots on the lake. I was in Captors a little while back and found what were the known spots in the swim, but they both seemed a bit blatant. Imagine how many people have stood in each of the Horton swims over the years and fished to famous or known spots in each one? These spots see an incredible amount of pressure so I figured on doing something different. In this case I looked elsewhere, nearby to the hard area but far enough away to hopefully not arouse too much suspicion in terms of the hookbait. Instead of a ‘bang’ as the lead landed down I was looking for a softer thud, if you like.

“It’s a really good point to make about popular spots. Two years ago when I first came down here, wet behind the ears and having read every bit of Horton-related literature I could get my hands on, I felt like I already knew the place. However, I decided to do my own thing and ignore the known ‘spots’.

“First trip I had the Dynamite Fish and followed this up on my next trip with Scar at 44lb, which was the one Darren had recently at 50s. Neither of these were from known spots, but over time I made the mistake of listening to too many people and being steered towards the well known spots, which I started fishing to and getting a real ‘crack’ when dropping a lead on.

“My bites started to dry up, almost immediately, and I’d committed the cardinal sin of doing what others said rather than doing my own thing. I was not fishing for a share of the carp that were being caught from these spots, so my chances of a bite were dramatically reduced. I even flirted with using some inferior bait that was going into the lake at the time, but thankfully I thought better of it. I also changed back entirely to my own way of fishing, finding my own areas, very often in the silt rather than the firm stuff and generally doing things my way. Lo and behold I started catching again. I was catching my own fish on my own merit and felt a lot better for it.”

DARREN: “A good spot is only a good spot until everybody knows about it and it gets fished all the time. Earlier in the year there was an area on here that was hardly being touched, except for one guy occasionally doing overnighters between work, but he’d always be gone by about 6am. Other than that there was no pressure in there but I noticed a good number of shows a couple of hours later, long after matey had left, if he’d been there at all.

“Making a note of the time the fish showed in there I targeted the area, but fishing the silt rather than the more obvious and well-known spots and did really well. I had a three-fish hit one week and then the week after I had seven carp including Fingers at fifty. All my bites came between 7:30am and 9am and, needless to say, that unfancied swim got very busy after that!”

RICK: “That’s a perfect example of our approach, combining our efforts but also making our own choices and ignoring the local ‘folklore’ so to speak. It’s what we have always done and what we will continue to do. Hopefully it will keep bringing us a few carp along the way.”