Head of the Class: Nigel Sharp

1. Hitting the marks: Casting accuracy

Nige explains how he hit the marker perfectly each and every time

Friends will often comment on how accurately I can cast – whether that’s to overhanging trees, a marker float or to gaps in the weed, and they will often ask why I’m so good at it. I liken it to anyone who practises something over and over again – like a darts or snooker player. They can throw a dart and hit an exact number or pot a ball and then be perfectly lined up for the next shot – it’s the same with me casting – but that only comes with years of practise.

I’m very fortunate in that I get to fish more than the average angler does, and as a result I make more casts and because of this I also get to learn more about the other things which affect a cast, such as wind direction and how to use it to my advantage so I get the perfect line lay rather than a big belly in the line.

Years of practise has helped hone my casting skills

Sometimes you also need to get a bait in position with just one cast – for example when casting to a showing fish. A bit like taking a penalty I suppose: you have one shot to get it right and make it count. When casting to a showing fish which is at my maximum range, then I’ll try my utmost to go just beyond it to allow for the lead to drop. Obviously on closer-range stuff, providing there’s no lily pads or weedbeds, then I will actually cast well pasted where the fish showed and then reel it back across the surface to where the fish showed or is bubbling. I’ll then just lower the rig down and feel for the drop. Doing it this way just eliminates the splash in the area.

When it comes to casting at a marker or a mid-water mark, I ideally want to slow the lead right down so it hits the clip just before impact with the water; it’s hard to do but years of practise helps. Crosswinds make things difficult when you’re having to cast harder and the lead hits the clip more aggressively causing it to bounce back and then causing a bow in the line. If you can catch it just right, a few inches before it hits the surface, then that’s perfect, particularly if you feather it so it almost just ‘plops’ in. The rod is always at minimum of 45-degrees to the water and up to 90-degrees; you want to use the rod as a brake, using it to cushion the lead as it hits the clip. The wind conditions decide whether I have the rod at 45-degrees or 90-degrees.

Watching the birdlife will teach you a lot

2. It's all about the watercraft

Look out for the less obvious

When I’m at the lake, I’m always looking and listening. I like to know exactly what’s going on, all the time. But there is so much more to be learnt than just seeing a fish blatantly jumping or fizzing, and watching the birdlife is one of the biggest giveaways. A tufty will often dive on your area only to return to the surface panic-stricken and then fly off, and that’s a sure-fire way to know there’s a carp or two on your spot. A coot can often be padding across the lake only to suddenly start running because something spooked it in the weed.

Always looking and listening

I’ve spoken about this before, but watching the birdlife in the morning is a big giveaway to where the carp have been feeding during the night. On Mill Lane it was clear that if you had the mallards above your area at first light then there was a good possibility that the carp were down below eating your particles, with bits and pieces rising to the surface and providing the mallards with a free meal. I saw a similar thing on The Road Lake years ago. Just in the twilight of dawn, just as the light was starting to come through, you’d see seagulls dipping on an area and the same thing would be going on.

The more you look, the more you’ll see

Pit 4 took it to the next extreme. During the night and into first light, the carp would be digging up the weed and in the mornings you’d see the Canadian geese and swans wake up, stretch their necks and then go off in search of the freshly dug up weed. Sure enough, once they’d found it, if you focused on those areas you’d start seeing bubbling and more weed breaking to the surface. And then, when the feed was coming to an end you’d start seeing fish bosh out in that area.
Grebes diving on a weedy lake is another one. They will often keep diving on the same route which often gives away a channel in the weed. Cold-blooded animals like terrapins and snakes seem to like certain parts of the lake – reedbeds, logs etc. and that gives away some of the hottest parts of the lake when the sun’s at its peak.

Little signs like this just give you an insight into where the carp might be or may well turn up. The more you fish, the more you learn and understand watercraft, and it’s something you never stop learning about.

Living off the barrow

3. Practical in my approach

How Sharpy can switch from one style/approach to another with ease

I like to think I can turn my hand to most styles and situations when it comes to catching carp. On certain lakes, such as Pit 4, I picked a swim and then baited it heavily, working the spots as time went on, but at the same time I was always on the lookout for the opportunist bite, which is two completely different styles of fishing. And that’s why I like to organise my fishing tackle so I can do both and it’s not one or the other. I see quite a few anglers fall foul of this: they fish in a certain way, they like to turn up, mark a spot, wrap their lines around sticks, spod out and that’s the only way they’ll fish. They’ll have items of kit all over the place and generally it looks very unorganised.

My kit is broken down into sections, meaning I can just grab what I need at the time

For me, I like to be able to fish both styles without too much hassle. My rods are on top of the barrow so if an opportunity arises I can get them off and into play in an instant. I carry my rucksack on my back which has my banksticks and terminal tackle in so I can fish without having to remove anything else from the barrow. I also only take what I need – my floater kit is a good example of that. It’s always in the car, but if I know I won’t be needing it, that’s where it’ll stay. What’s the point in carrying loads of items you don’t need?

A very simple rig, but one which has been finely-tuned over the years

4. Rig tying

According to Nige it’s all in the detail which makes the big differences

I don’t use many rigs, but the ones I do use have been finely-tuned over the years. Obviously the most important thing is a sharp hook, but that aside, there are certain rigs where you have to tie the knots a particular way to get them to sit perfectly aligned. Chod Rigs and Hinged Stiff Links have to have the correct amount of curve in them; I don’t like them to be too aggressive, just enough to spin the hook around. The right lengths, the right materials – even to the point where the pop-up has got to be right. You can cast out a factory-made one which might be buoyant enough when you first tie it on, but after an hour or so in the water it might start listing to the side and that affects how the rig works – i.e. if this happens with a Choddie it won’t turn or spin right which will result in an iffy hook hold. This is why I roll all my own corkball pop-ups, as then I know they keep the same buoyancy all night, meaning my rig will be fishing as effectively from the moment I cast out to 24 or 36hrs later.

1. 45lb leadcore which is soaked and stretched prior to casting out 2. 30lb fluorocarbon hooklink which is steamed straight 3. Nige uses a Whipping Knot over the Knotless Knot as it sits straighter 4. The ‘D’ is the same size on each and every rig 5. The hook point is the sharpest he can find in the packet 6. Even the baits are carefully tied on, ensuring they’re not cracked

Other key areas which get plenty of focus including the size of my ‘D’ on my Chod Rigs; using the right swivel with my Hinged rigs (some swivels will hinder the rotation of the rig) and making sure all the loops are perfectly round; even making sure my hookbaits are tied on correctly and they’ve not split or cracked. Every part of a rig has got to be bang-on as far as I’m concerned.

Five years of hard work: the mighty Burghfield Common

5. Never giving up

His five-year Burghfield campaign taught us he doesn’t like to give up

I’ve seen it a lot over the years: during the boom time on the lake – mainly the springtime – when word gets out that fish are beginning to get caught, the lake will get rammed out, and although this can be frustrating, I know that slowly they will drop off and one-by-one they’ll disappear. As the summer gets into full swing, the weed comes up and the fishing’s get harder after the initial spring wake-up. On the lake I’m currently fishing, a lot of the known fish have done a capture or two and where we were getting multiple hits, now we’re scratching around to nick a bite. But where are all those super keen anglers now? Well, they’ve vanished like grey owls.

Coming back for this fish after my Burghfield campaign was the right thing to do

But for me, I’m still here. I’d say my enthusiasm is above average, so I can just keep going, even when it’s really tough going. I do sometimes back away from a particular water; I may have given it two or three springs or summers and it didn’t quite work out and I can feel myself getting into a rut, so in my mind it’s best to pull off for a year or two and then go back with a clear mind or maybe when I have a bit more confidence from fishing elsewhere. I’ve proved that before with Richmond Park; I went back after my Burghfield campaign, riding high on that success and I caught The Royal.

I consider this ‘never giving up’ attitude to be a massive edge, as would a lot of other successful anglers I guess.

Finding that perfect spot

6. Feature finding and gravel pits

Nigel explains about the two types of gravel pits and how he goes about feature finding

It’s obviously very important to know the topography of a lake, and luckily for me I actually saw some of the lakes I now fish get dug, Pit 3 being a good example. This underwater insight, along with learning how to feature find with nylon in the 80’s and 90’s before braid came along has been invaluable. Over the years I’ve learnt to count the float up and down to get the exact depth and now understand that you need to pull the lead back very slowly otherwise you’ll miss features and/or bump the lead over them. Slower the better. I believe through seeing these ‘bare’ lakes and the experience I’ve gained over the last three decades, has helped me build up a better picture what I feel through a rod.

I don’t tend to use a marker float as much these days, mainly because the lake I’m currently fishing I know very well, but on a new lake I probably would send a float to the surface rather than just casting a lead to feel what I’m fishing over.

There are two types of gravel pits. One is a ‘maximum extraction’ where they take out every piece of gravel they can, digging down until they hit clay. In the Blackwater Valley this is, on average, between 8 to 10ft. On these types of digs, like Pit 3 and 4 and The Match Lake at Yateley, they generally don’t leave a great deal feature-wise. I think Dinton over in Reading is very similar to that: there’s not a great deal left apart from the sides of the lake and a flat bottom – like a bathtub almost.

Nige uses just one rod for marker work and baiting up, and a simple loop system allows him to change it quickly

Nige uses just one rod for marker work and baiting up, and a simple loop system allows him to change it quickly

The second type is the line-dragged pits, of which there is quite a few in the Colne Valley and we do have a few in the Blackwater Valley, like Old Hollybush Lane Lakes, some of the older lakes at Frimley, such as Pit 1, and The Copse Lake and Nunnery Lake at Yateley, both of which are shallow dug with lots of features left in them. Some have bars running in lines, like Pit 1 at Frimley, and you can also see how they used them as a roadway, digging at either side. I found those types of lakes far more exciting as there’s so much more going on feature-wise. These are the type of features that almost control which direction the fish move around in, whereas on maximum extraction lakes, if they’re not weeded the fish can disappear in any direction.

The line-dragged ones do tend to have more to find: they have gravel, they have silt, they have clay, and they have small stones and big stones. In these types of lakes, the silt gets trapped and builds up in the gullies between bars, so it can often be quite deep silt, whereas in maximum extraction lakes it tends to be spread a bit finer all over the bottom of the lake. You will often find the deeper areas are where the undertows will settle and dump a lot of silt. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re ‘bad areas’ – bloodworm like those areas and you often see loads of bubbling going on, but it’s in these situations you tend to find the carp are bloody hard to catch as they’re up to their gills in the silt feeding.

Looking for the channels in the weed makes life a lot easier before you’ve even cast out a bare lead

7. Fishing in weed

The reasons why he loves it so much

I like fishing in a weed, as I find it a challenge – a challenge to find a decent spot to fish. What I have found on weedy lakes is once the area becomes too big, it’s very difficult to get a bite off it; the art is to find a small area, or a relatively new area to fish too, and then manage it, baiting it correctly so you don’t open it up too much.

Often, the smaller the area and the deeper it is, the trickier it is to feel for a drop – and again this goes back to my casting accuracy. There’s a number of different ways to feel for a drop – quite often you can let the lead swing in, but if you’re only fishing a gap which is 2 or 3ft wide in 10ft of water, it’s quite tricky to get a lead to drop straight through it. In a way you have to follow it down with the rod – almost like threading a lead down a drainpipe but without touching the sides. And at distance that’s pretty tricky! Again, it’s all down to practise.

Dropping a lead into a small hole in the weed is an art form!

Fishing in weed has become easier over the last few years, since the Chod Rig became mainstream, but one edge I have at the moment is to free-lining a Chod Rig. It works devastatingly well when you find fish fizzing and moving around in the weed at close-range. You can drop it on the heads with zero noise and disturbance.