They Don't Make 'Em Like That Anymore - Herman

When you think about the peak of common-carp form you might imagine the sleek, muscular lines of a Redmire fish or the sheer scaled-up perfection of the Burghfield Common. You probably wouldn’t think about Herman. In a way though, that makes the Herman story even more compelling. Those of you who didn’t fish through the 1990s perhaps might not be able to grasp the shock and awe that a fifty-pound common inspired back then—it even made the TV! To put it into perspective, the only common even close to Herman (in the public domain at least) was the magnificent Snake Pit fish, most famously banked by Damian Clarke in 1991 at 45lb 12oz.

By 1996 Herman had become Britain’s first 50lb common when Angie Clayton cradled the Dorset beast, clad in one of those ubiquitous blue-fleece winter suits… but where did the story start? Well, to understand the fish, you need first to look at its rather unique home. Warmwell is a holiday park close to the town of Dorchester in Dorset, centred around a couple of small (and we mean SMALL), muddy-coloured fishing lakes on site. The one that was home to Herman, now called Heron Lake, was just over an acre, with a prominent back channel behind a couple of islands. The fact that Herman not only grew to such prodigious size, but also managed to avoid capture for long periods in such a small lake, makes his reign at the top of the tree in the 1990s even more remarkable.

One respected big-fish man who was early on the trail of Herman was Essential Baits founder, Mike Willmott. Mike had been invited down to the complex by a friend Ian Gray. At that stage (the late 1980s) Herman hadn’t been named, and nor had the lake’s second in command, the big mirror, Bertha. Mike remembers the lake being notable because it held two fish in the thirties, which was nationally significant then. “There was a fair head of twenties in the lake too,” Mike told us, “From a stock of perhaps 150 fish in total. Although that might seem a high stock, it could be quite tricky to get a bite at times.” 

Being tucked among ranks of cabins on a chaotic holiday complex meant that the fishing on Warmwell could hardly be described as peaceful. It was a vibe that Mike firmly embraced though! Even though he largely confined his fishing to the winter, Mike got to know the Warmwell staff so well that he would occasionally be handed keys to any vacant lodges around the lake and would regularly be found at the bar on the site. In the end, Mike became an unofficial bailiff on the site, and even had a free tab at the bar! It was during his campaign that the BBC sent a camera crew down to document Mike’s pursuit of the great common, calling the resulting feature, The Hunt for Herman. The ‘hardy’ camera crew filmed with Mike until dusk, whereupon the director flicked on a set of huge lights that beamed-up the far margin, before innocently asking Mike, “When do you think you’ll be catching Herman?”

Mike’s first encounter with the big common came on a December trip to a deserted Warmwell with Ian Gray. “Ian was quite a forward-thinking angler” Mike remembers, “He’d set up with those quiver-type indicators (possibly Solar Quiver-Loks?) and used heavy, 4oz backleads.” Lifting into a single bleep, Ian found himself locked in battle with Herman, landing the huge fish before the lads recorded a weight of 40lb 4oz; the first time it had gone over 40lb. Mike wasn’t 100% sure, but thinks that this capture might well have been the UK’s first 40lb winter-caught common. That capture made the front cover of Carp-Talk and really put Warmwell on the map. 

Now, remember that Herman wasn’t actually called Herman at that stage, a point that both Ian and Mike were keen to make. They simply knew the two big fish as the big mirror and the big common. The management of the holiday park, however, were quick to cotton onto the significance of the two big carp that they had in their lake and devised a cunning marketing strategy. Dubbing the big common Herman and the big mirror Bertha, they drew up a wanted-poster which they ran as an advert, featuring Herman resplendent in a cowboy hat and Bertha alongside him, smoking a cigar in true Bonnie and Clyde fashion!

Pretty soon, the lakeside cabins were full of anglers, all of whom had come to test their mettle against the two big carp. The lake saw a huge influx of bait and anglers of the stature of Kevin Nash came from far and wide to try for one of the very biggest carp the UK had ever produced. That influx of bait pushed fish weights through the roof, with Herman crashing through the 50lb mark when Angie Clayton caught him in 1996. You might expect that with the added pressure, Herman would have started to hit the bank more regularly, but this was one seriously elusive carp. Mike Willmott again, “To put it into perspective, while I was fishing Warmwell I was also fishing Wraysbury and Mary came out more times in those five years than Herman did.” 

In order for Mike to close his account on the lake, he had to do some lateral thinking. Now a few years in, he’d caught most of the fish more than once, but not Herman (this turned out to be the fate of many who tried, not least Nashy himself) and worked out that, rather than fishing for fish that he could locate and perhaps catching a few twenties each trip, he’d have to sit on his hands in areas that Herman frequented. 

“I settled on a swim called The Pipe,” Mike told us, “It had plenty of cover that Herman could use and housed an outflow pipe that fed a nearby chalk stream.” In fact, Mike had worked out something that might explain just how Herman was able to get so big. “The lake was fed through an inflow pipe and water went out of the pipe in the swim I’d ended up targeting on a family holiday. I’d done some calculations and worked out that the lake would have had a full water-change every 5-6 days. The whole site was fed from a chalk quarry above, which had crystal clear water that looked to be of great quality.” 

After chasing the great fish for a few years on and off, Mike’s moment came during that family holiday, after resolving to sit on his hands in The Pipe, and Herman weighed in at a very credible 38lb 10oz. It was with a heavy heart that Mike realised that his time on the park was over and he’d made good friends while down there. In fact, for a while, the management would call him up and ask when he was coming down next!

Herman went on to be very much in the news in the mid-1990s, getting something of a reputation for falling to the rods of women and children (presumably down to living in a holiday park lake, popular with families), with Jenny Powell catching him at 49lb 12oz, shortly after Angie Clayton’s monumental capture (which remained the record for the largest carp caught by a female in the UK for a long time). He finally spun off his mortal coil just a couple of years later in 1997. 

The Herman story doesn’t stop there though, because the fish was removed from the lake and set up by a taxidermist. When the cased Herman came up for auction it was a previous captor, Mark Holt, who stumped up the £2,000 to ensure that Herman’s final resting place was with him, telling a local paper, “I’d seen Herman stuffed in his case about five years before so I knew what I was getting—it was like looking at an E-type Jag in its showroom. People may think I’m mad to spend £2,000, but if you were a boxer, it would be like remembering the time you knocked out Mike Tyson.” When asked if he’d ever part with Herman, Mike said, “Herman means far too much to me to ever do that.” Which sounds like a nice place to leave things.