What's the biggest skill? Watercraft or technical skills?

Question: I think watercraft skills have changed massively over the years. What do you guys think? It’s very much like the difference between old style musicians and modern manufactured bands. Both are immensely talented and perform well, but in a different way. This is not meant to be a criticism of either generation by the way. Simply an observation, and as England Manager I have to do an awful lot of observing.

New school anglers, and I’ll use the last 10 years of high stock day ticket waters and “spodding the granny out if it” as the genre to categorise this, have grown up on artificially and highly stocked waters that receive a large amount of pressure.
They have to be accurate, technically capable, and have a great understanding of bait and bait application. They are competing with other anglers and location, to a degree, is not as important as the fish have to eat and they will be moved around the venue by angler pressure (or indeed lack of it). They grew up fishing for pack fish and encourage competition between the group to get them to lower their guard. Watercraft, spot finding, feature finding and also stealth is less important.

Old school anglers on the other hand understand how natural carp work a little more. The importance of understanding features, depths, water conditions and weather etc. Technically I would say they are not as capable as the more modern school anglers in respect of certain aspects but they are better at others. What do you think is the biggest skill?

The best anglers out there are the ones that catch fish and understand what they need to do to catch fish using whichever tactic is required. A mix of old school knowledge and new school skills is definitely a winning combo in my eyes. Rob Hughes

'Big S’ stonker. Just twenty odd carp and 80+-acres of open, windswept water. No need for Spombing or wrapping up here, just good location and watercraft

Funny you ask this one, Rob, as it’s something I’ve thought about myself. I don’t know whether this is more about heavily stocked versus low stocked, or match carp fishing versus big carp fishing even, but I completely agree with what you’re saying in the sense that some of the new school anglers are very good when it comes to things like spodding and competing with other anglers. So they should be, practise makes perfect, and as nowadays the lakes are busier than ever, they have to ‘play the game’. I’m not sure that these things slot into the watercraft department though. To me, watercraft is all about having an understanding of wherever you happen to be fishing and adapting to the changes, things like water quality, wind direction, water temperature and even timing, and that’s just scraping the surface.

We should also remember that when it comes to match carp fishing, pulling a number out of a hat before deciding on which swim we’re allowed to go in kind of skips the main ingredients of watercraft from the very blow of the whistle. I’m not so sure that using ready-rolled boilies with little idea of the ingredients they’re made from, or pre-prepared particles, equates to a great understanding of bait either. We rolled our own boilies and prepared our own particles, remember?

Sometimes I just like a challenge and a bit of peace and quiet. All tucked away on a very tricky water

Something else worth remembering is that no ‘old school’ angler started off as ‘old school’. Most have already done the ‘smashing it up’ thing years ago, and as is often the path, they’ve now progressed onto spending their time fishing for bigger fish on quieter venues. As you say, much of the time that means fishing more natural, lesser stocked waters, with less action to the rods, places where watercraft becomes more important than being good with a spod, or indeed, a need to compete with other anglers. Fact is, old school anglers are often more laid back, they’ve seen it all before.

I used to be into match fishing as a youngster and I think it helped me massively when it comes to making the most of my time on the bank. Things like understanding flow and how to build up a swim, knowing when to put more feed in and when not to, making sure I’m as organised as possible etc., etc.

The organisation bit I believe is especially important, which is why I still do things like tying my pop-ups onto the rods whilst I’m at home, so that I can get them out as soon as I arrive at first light the following morning, or having several baited rigs all lined up and ready to loop on quick-time when I’m getting plenty of action off my boat on the Thames. The more prolific the fishing is, the more I go into ‘match angler mode’.

A nice Wasing mirror. Winter is a time when watercraft is all the more important

The truth is, most old hands that I know would actually make very good match carpers if that’s what they wanted to do, but they’ve already done the catching as many as possible thing and now they’ve set their sights on something a bit more special. That’s my own experience anyway. Catching numbers of similar sized and similar looking carp on busy day ticket waters won’t hold their interest forever, they’ll get bored of it and then they’ll want to move onto something more challenging, where the carp and the surroundings are more inspiring, and where the individual fish means more than being able to say how many they caught, or in the case of the match scene, how big an overall weight they’ve achieved. I think this is the natural progression of most anglers. We start off with minnows in a jam jar and hope to progress on to fish which make our eyes bulge and our arms ache. That’s why the old classic fishing tale down the pub is one of outstretched arms and not of ‘how many?’

I think a lot of the attraction in match fishing for carp is the camaraderie of it all, the social side of it and having the crack. I think that’s wonderful, and for sure we can all learn a lot from the tactics and methods used in that branch of the sport which can be applied to big carp fishing with good effect. Like Rob says, the better anglers have a good mix of both old school watercraft and new school methods, but we should never allow it to become too sanitised. We mustn’t forget that fishing is a country pursuit, sister to shooting, and in both worlds having an understanding of your quarry’s environment is especially important.

We might start off with minnows in a jam jar, but eventually the path takes us to where the fish make our eyes bulge and our arms ache

You know, watercraft and fieldcraft are very alike. Some shooters are incredibly skilled and can nail the bullseye every time at their local shooting range. They’ve learnt how to line up a rifle and they know how to control their breathing, but at real targets out in the field they aren’t necessarily in their comfort zone. They might not be able to look at the wind’s direction or the crops in the fields and work out which way the pigeons are going to fly in, or the spots they’re likely to settle and feed, and neither are they likely to be aware of the best seasons and times to head out. And that’s learning from my Dad’s experience, only a fraction of which has passed down to me, which kind of says it all really…old school, new school… more experienced, lesser experienced… which is best?

Both skill and watercraft are important. I’m no expert with a spod, in fact I’m blooming well useless, but my accuracy with a catapult is something I take pride in. On the sort of waters I’ve fished, that accuracy with a catapult has perhaps been more valuable. I also love the feeling I get when I hit the exact spot with a rig and then feel the perfect drop of the lead, it makes me smile. But I get even more of a buzz from working out where the low stock of carp in a huge great gravel pit are most likely to be in the depths of winter, with little in the way of visible signs to go on, just instinct and watercraft. That’s the part I get the most enjoyment from, though for certain, both skill and watercraft do need to be balanced.