What A Pearl!

While fishing on the Essex Manor last season, I became good friends with an absolute gent known as Uncle Baldy. Talking carp one evening, we got on to the subject of Wharf Pool, which is a quiet little syndicate in Stanford-Le-Hope. He showed me photos of some truly incredible old English carp which he’d caught the previous season and while punishing him for details I couldn’t help but note, that according to his stories, the lake was never busy and he rarely came across other anglers whilst fishing. With my plan only to do one season on the Manor and then get away from such a busy circuit water, the Wharf sounded right up my street. That night I sat there and all that was going over and over in my head was a picture of a fish he showed me called The Pearl. I did a bit of digging and found out that this fish was stocked into the lake in 1982 at around 7lb, which led me to believe it was born around the late 1970s, making it one of the oldest fish in Essex.

In January, Ian (Uncle Baldy), took me for a walk around the lake and I fell in love with the place straight away. It was a really mature looking water with islands, reed beds and quiet corners. To be completely honest, it didn’t matter to me what the lake looked like as the only thing I had on my mind was The Pearl. My ticket was confirmed early in March and after meeting the owner, Andy at the Carpin’ On Show and handing over the money, it was a matter of just a few weeks before I got to finally have a go myself. However, things didn’t quite go to plan and due to an extremely busy workload and trips away with work to China and finishing up with the show season; I didn’t get to actually do my first session until the middle of May. I did however, manage during this time to pop in while on the road, for a quick look around, to try and scope the place out before doing my first night.

So, the time had finally come and I was on my way to the lake, armed with my rods and to fish for the first time. To say I was excited was an understatement and on arrival there was only one other angler on there. I walked round for an hour or so and spotted fish in a couple of areas. With the water gin clear, it wasn’t hard to find them from a vantage point up a tree. There is an out of bounds area situated behind an island and I was watching several fish come in and out from behind the rope. To me, this was an obvious place to start so I dropped a bottle in the swim and ran to the van to get the gear. I got two rods in position with a baiting pole, tight up against the rope and baited lightly with whole and crushed tigers, and some 12mm boilies.

Wharf in the depths of winter

The night passed very quietly and I woke up feeling quite deflated as I simply couldn’t work out why I hadn’t had a bite. I got out of bed and turned on the gas to make a brew, but before I could even put a lighter to the stove my left-hand rod was away. I picked up the rod and as expected the fish darted for the snags. I started to feel the line grate before I got cut off; I was gutted. I remember just standing there thinking, ‘Did that really just happen? My first bite and I bloody lost it!’ I started to get the rod rigged up again, but within two minutes my right-hand rod was also away. I picked it up and managed to steer it away from the snags quite quickly, leaving it just wallowing on the surface in open water with the lead ejecting on the take. I slipped the net under it and instantly the lost fish was forgotten. It was by no means a monster, but first blood on my debut night was a mega result.

Something I always try to do when starting on new water is fish as many swims as possible in the initial few weeks, to try and get a better idea of the lake’s features and depths. I turned up for my second night a week or so later just as it was getting dark and a good friend of mine, Rob was fishing. I hadn’t seen him in ages and so chose to set-up a swim down the bank from him, flick the rods out and have a bit of a social. The swim I was fishing was ‘Kitts Bay’ and was the complete opposite end of the lake to where I fished the previous week. It was getting dark, so I had a quick flick about with a lead to find some clearer areas amongst the weed before deciding on two spots to present baits for the night. All hell broke loose on the right-hand rod around 7:30am, but unfortunately I got cut-off on what I’m sure was a mussel bed. This was really frustrating as I’d now had thee bites from the lake and managed to land only one.

The Pearl in 1991

Again, due to an extremely busy workload I didn’t get back to the lake until mid-June, but when I arrived around early evening, I immediately found a few fish milling around in the shallows. I ran straight back to the van and grabbed my floater rod along with a bucket of mixers and tried to get a few fish going on the top. Prior to joining the lake I’d been told that these fish loved a mixer and they could be quite easy to catch if you timed it right. With this thought in my head I was shaking while setting up the floater rod and watching the fish take the odd mixer. I wouldn’t say the fish properly started ‘troughing’, but after a missed opportunity and with the fish slowly starting to drift out the shallows as the light faded, I decided to call it a day and get the rods positioned for the night. I dropped back in The Sanctuary, the swim with the rope that I fished from on the first night. Just before dusk I had two rods positioned on the rope with the baiting pole and kicked back to chill out for the evening.

The ‘Pearl spot’

Once more the night passed quietly and again, at around 7:30am my left-hand rod pulled up tight. As I picked it up I felt the line instantly grate; the carp boiled on the surface behind the rope and yes… I got cut off! That was now two cut-offs from the same spot in that swim. I couldn’t believe it! Leaving the lake with my tail between my legs, beating myself up on the drive back to the office, I knew I needed to change something; this couldn’t keep happening. As there was a ‘no leader’ rule, the use of either heavy-duty length of mono or leadcore weren’t an option. I decided therefore, to up my main line to the new Bullet Mono in 20lb, and use long lengths of the Cling-On tubing to help protect the line.

Thankfully, the change paid off during my next few visits to the lake and I started to turn bites into landed fish, with some real crackers to mid-twenties while fishing different areas around the lake. Two patterns really started to emerge: the 7:30am bite time, and the fish showing themselves when it was raining. In the end, I was almost hoping that rain might be forecast the night I planned to go fishing as I could almost guarantee that I’d turn up and find the fish instantly. On several occasions I arrived and had a fish in the net within an hour. I remember an overnighter, I think around the beginning of August. I’d checked the weather in the afternoon and knew rain was on the cards for the evening. I turned up, but there was no sign of rain and after a couple of laps I still couldn’t locate any fish, so I set up in a swim that I hadn’t fished before called High Point. This gave me a good view of the lake.

I had just finished setting up when the heavens opened and as expected, within two minutes I’d seen one show about twenty yards in front of me. Rushing to get a rod rigged up I saw another two shows within the next five minutes, but these were at the other end of the lake, and they were followed after by another two in the same area. I stopped what I was doing and just watched the water and another one came clean out. It was pouring with rain, but I just knew I had to move, so I started packing away as quickly as possible and loaded all the gear in the van as I had to drive around to the other car park in order to fish where the carp were showing. Within twenty minutes or so, I was in the swim watching them show every two or three minutes. I flicked out two rods on two clear spots I’d found a few weeks previously and before I could even put the bobbin on the second rod, the first rod was away, resulting in an absolute cracking wood carving of a mirror.

I also think part of my success was due to making sure I was fishing on the real clear and hard spots, and fishing baits on the deck as opposed to pop-ups in the weed. I’d got my hands on a couple of maps of the lake which showed a lot of clear patches with the number of yards to the areas. However, these maps were years old and I was sure the majority of the spots would no longer be there. I wanted to see for myself, and with the water being gin clear I borrowed a drone from one of my friends and took it over the lake whilst it was quiet one Sunday lunchtime. There was not a gust of wind, so I could fly the drone around and easily locate the clearer areas amongst the weed. To my surprise, a few of the spots that were marked on the maps were still there, but there was one spot that wasn’t on the map and it really stood out. I could tell that it was a real clean area, but it just looked that little bit deeper than the others; there were also a number of fish milling around in the weed on the outside. I noted roughly where it was and landed the drone. I walked round to High Point to utilise its vantage. I made several casts - probably over about 20 or 30 - until I found the spot and was 100% happy. Locating the spot with a Horizon Marker, I noted the number of wraps. Before I left I pre-baited with around five kilos of 12mm Scopex Squid, a bag of crushed tigers and a few whole ones for good measure.

I used a baiting pole to fish tight to the rope

We were now five months into the season and The Pearl still hadn’t made an appearance, with its last capture being seven months before. I truly believed though, that I was starting to unlock the puzzle on the Wharf and one of the big ‘uns wasn’t too far away.
My other half was jetting off to Vegas on a girls’ holiday for a week, so taking full advantage, I planned to fish at least four or five of the seven nights she was away. It was funny actually, because this was the beginning of September and my first session on the lake which wasn’t just a quick overnighter. I’d been seeing a lot of fish in High Point so I decided to focus my week there as it gave me plenty of options with The Sanctuary swim to my right. This was where I’d done well earlier in the season fishing up to the rope - and I’d found that awesome spot the week before in front of High Point.

My spot in The Sanctuary was 22 sections of the pole

I arrived at the lake Monday lunchtime to fish my first night of the week. I dropped a bottle in High Point and wandered around the lake to see if I could see any signs of fish elsewhere, and whether there were any floater opportunities as it was well over 20-degrees. On my travels I got talking to one of the other members whom I hadn’t met before, but we quite quickly got onto the subject of The Pearl. He told me something very interesting: the fish had been caught the last two years on September 3rd… and the 48hr session I had planned for that week fell between the first three days of September! I couldn’t believe my luck in a way, as I knew this lake was dictated by patterns and the fish getting caught two years in a row on the same date wasn’t a coincidence in my opinion.

I fished the Monday night, but didn’t have anything. I’m not making excuses, but I had to pack up really early and was on the road well before the 7:30am bite time. I returned on the Wednesday night, did a couple of laps of the lake, but didn’t see any signs of fish so jumped into High Point and within a couple of hours had a small, jet black common in the net. I hung it out well past the 7:30am, but a second bite never came. Before I left the lake, I gave them quite a bit of bait, knowing I was due to return for my 48hr session the next day.

Friday was a really busy day and I don’t think I left the office until around 6pm and typically, hit every piece of traffic on the way; I didn’t arrive at the lake until gone 7pm. There were actually a couple of other anglers on, but luckily nobody was fishing High Point. I wasted no time and got the rods straight out on the spots, but as ever, the night passed with no bites. It was now around midday and the wind had swung round and was blowing a south-westerly up the opposite end. I reeled in and took a walk up there to find a few fish milling around behind a weedbed. I ran back to the van and grabbed the floater rod, but got royally mugged off by four or so fish during the next few hours and couldn’t get them feeding confidently.

Another one of the members had turned up, a guy called Ben. Ben didn’t really fish the lake much as he had other waters he liked to focus on, so I sat with him for an hour or so having a brew and a catch-up whilst chatting about the water before he then brought up the same subject of The Pearl being due that weekend - that was why he’d pulled off his other syndicate and came to fish Wharf. A few fish started to show opposite Ben, and I was debating a move when my good friend, Rob walked into the swim. ‘Bruv, why have you not got your rods out in High point?’ he said. ‘I’ve just seen two shows in the last ten minutes.’ I necked off my tea and walked back to the swim to get the rods out.

First blood

An upper-double common

It was about 7pm when I had a take on my right-hand rod and off the clear spot, but unfortunately the hook pulled. Gutted! With the rod back on the spot, I wasn’t expecting another bite until the following morning as I hadn’t had a single night-take from the lake all season. I chilled out for the evening until finally calling it a night around 11pm. It felt like I was asleep for all of two minutes when the right-hand rod was away again. The take was very slow and as I picked up the rod I heard the fish in the distance splash on the surface as the lead had ejected and the carp came straight to the top. The fish didn’t really put up a fight until it was around twenty-yards out, when it started trying to kite around into The Sanctuary. With a bit of side strain I steered the fish back in front of me before sliding the net under it. I usually sleep with my head torch loose around my neck, but for some reason I didn’t that night, so I secured the net and grabbed my torch. I walked back to the net and flicked the torch on. As the light caught the flank of the fish, the first thing I noticed was the heart-shaped tail. My knees went weak and I can remember saying about twenty times, “It’s the ****ing Pearl, it’s the ****ing Pearl!”

I couldn’t believe it. It was 2:15am on the September 3rd and she was in the bottom of my landing net! Three years in a row she’d been caught on this date and that is no coincidence. I popped the hook out in the water and properly secured the net. There is a no sacking rule on the Wharf, but luckily for me, Ben was fishing and is a bit of a bad man behind the lens, so I walked around and woke him up. I said, “Ben, I’ve got the ****ing Pearl mate, can you believe it?”

“**** off!” said Ben laughing. “No way!”

I think he was buzzing just as much as I was. We both got back to my swim and as we were getting the camera gear set-up, I was literally shaking!

I recognise that tail! A lovely heart-shaped

We got her out of the water and put her on the scales. Not that it mattered, but she was the biggest she’d been for a few years at 28lb 14oz. Just to catch this carp was such an achievement and a buzz, and as expected Ben smashed the night shots too. As the margins are so shallow and weedy, I went to the van and grabbed the waders to give her the respect she deserved when returning her. She’s such an old girl and took a fair while to swim away, but in the end she gained the energy and drifted off into The Sanctuary to sulk. I got the rod back out and stuck the kettle on as I wasn’t tired in the slightest because of my adrenaline. People often say this a lot in carp fishing, but catching a target fish that you want so dearly, truly is the best feeling in the world; it is for that exact reason I go fishing.

I don’t think I actually managed to get back to sleep until gone 4am, and only managed a few hours’ sleep until I awoke to a bite on the right-hand rod again at the magic time of 7:30am – a lovely mid-twenty mirror was the culprit. The spot had now done three bites in 12hrs and it was rocking! I made an executive decision and stay another night. I’m glad I did, as I landed another two fish from the spot by the Monday morning: a scraper 20 mirror and a weathered old upper-double common. That was a total of six bites throughout that week and I’ve told the missus she can go to Vegas again next year!

Since September I haven’t done a great deal on the lake as I moved onto other waters for the autumn and winter. I have though, just begun fishing there again and I’m going to make the most of the next couple of months before my ticket runs out. There are a couple of the A-Team that I would dearly love to catch, but if I do it will only be a bonus… it was The Pearl that was the jewel for me!

The Pearl in all her ancient glory