How Gaz Fareham outwitted Yateley's carp: Part 2

I had been well and truly lost down the Yateley rabbit hole by the start of the second season, along with Turner, Davies, Phil and Benji we really were living the dream… socials whenever possible, more tea than you could shake a Yorkshire Tea convention at, endless conversations about what, where, who and why… old books re-read, photos poured over, the Yateley Uncovered DVD watched on repeat… I was well and truly captivated, and all my angling thoughts revolved solely around The Car Park, nothing else, and really, above all, Heather The Leather, queen of the pit, or ‘Mrs Smooth’ as we sometimes affectionately called her.

In retrospect, I couldn’t have wished for a better first season on The Car Park, five captures under my belt was more than I could ever have imagined and with one of those being in the shape of one of my teenage dreams, The Dustbin, I was impossibly keen come the start of that second year.

With The Car Park having had a close season reinstated by this point I spent the spring flitting around on Sandhurst and The Match Lake, trying to catch one of the original Yateley ones that still reside in there and having a clandestine bait up once or twice a week after dark on the CP, followed by daytime soirees to climb a few trees and see where they were and what parts of the pit they seemed to be using most. It was a spring full of expectation, and I was enjoying my angling more than ever.

All set

Key Point 1: Direction

“Which way you ought to go depends on where you want to get to...” Lewis Caroll, Alice in Wonderland

So much more so than any other lake I have come across before or since, The Car Park was especially fickle for only really producing certain carp from certain swims, and at certain times. In the pit’s heyday, Yateley Angling Centre used to produce a printed list, which was fixed up in the shop that listed all the captures each season, with every new capture a new sheet would be printed and the list updated. With only 12 captures in total between us all in my second season it was hardly a concern for paper wastage!

During my first season I asked Kingy, who works in YAC, to print me a copy of all the lists from the last seven or eight seasons, back to about 2000 I think. It made for fascinating reading, and I dearly wish I still had them all just for a keepsake and reference now to write this, but I think as they got carried around in my rucker for a few years they eventually got a bit dogeared and were lost. When the older school lads would pop down in the evenings for tea, I would grill them for info about the captures on the lists and I made notes on them about what swims, and sometimes spots, the captures had come from. Very, very quickly it became clear to see there were a few distinct patterns emerging. Certain fish, like The Dustbin for example, had very few margin captures to its name, and the open water marks in Dessies, Trumptons, Waiting Mans, The Island and The Curly were definitely the spots to fish if you wanted a chance at that one – I caught it from Dessies, so that had already held true for me too, and James Davies, who caught the lovely heart-tailed creature from Trumptons that season as well. Heather was another of the prime candidates for an open water capture, only occasionally coming from any of the margin swims, whereas Pearly Tail definitely favoured the edge spots in The Snags and Gate predominantly and had hardly ever done any captures from the big open water swims.

Dream achieved

I’m sure the Yateley cynics out there are probably thinking this is being over-baked, but when you looked at facts, like Heather not having been caught from The Bars swim for over ten years or something, despite the swim being fished almost as much as any other, if you wanted a chance at that one, it really wouldn’t have made much sense at all. It was mad really, she’d done a fair few captures from the Trumptons spot, and The Curly, The Island, Waiting Mans, and even a couple from the Dug Out, but yet The Bars longer spots, despite being no more than thirty-yards away probably as the crow flies, she just wouldn’t get caught from, mad really. Whatever the reason was you could only ever hazard a guess at, I always felt the gravel was a bit harsher out there and maybe she didn’t like it much, but history didn’t lie, and to me at least, it made sense to at least use what history I did know to help form some kind of plan of attack, informed by what I was seeing each week with my own eyes.

The other especially interesting thing regarding Heather’s captures in particular, was that she would never do a bite from the same area more than once in a year, and rarely even the following year, it seemed she would mark areas as dangerous for a period of time before venturing back in to feed strongly enough to get caught.

June 26th, 2009, the evening before Heather, and the prelude to a sleepless night of liners

Aside from Pearly really, there was an outside chance at all six of the mirrors from those few big open water swims and historically, they were definitely the ones to be in for Heather, so it was there I decided to start investing my time at the start of that second season and pin all my hopes, if everything felt right and I was seeing them in those areas of course.

As things panned out, the weed growth around Trumptons and Waiting Mans was perfect that year, horseshoeing up beautifully around the gravel humps and they did seem to be spending a lot of their time parked up in those weedbeds, and then splintering off to feed on the main open water spots each morning, which ones though was anyone’s guess and there was five choices really that I felt were in the game for Heather – Waiting Mans, Trumptons, The Island, Dessies and the Curly.

She ploughed off strong!

The one I had Heather on

By late June the plan had worked, and I’d fulfilled my long held dream of catching Heather. She came from the Pylon spot in Trumptons, off the very highest, cleanest part of the spot, over two big buckets of bait, and on the same little balanced tiger set-up. I’d got down the night before that trip, just to spend the evening walking and looking, sleeping in my van before being up again at 3am to watch and listen, trying to make a decision for that trip about where to fish.

Heather hadn’t been caught yet that season, we knew she was due any day, and the forecast for the following 48hrs was blisteringly hot. I knew she had a penchant for getting caught in the hottest weather and highest pressure (bizarrely) and so having seen a few show that morning behind Trumptons, I plumped for there, with it being one of the shallowest of the open water marks as well. As it turned out, I chose well, and after that fateful morning, absolutely anything else during my time on The Car Park would simply be a bonus. My dream was complete, and history had held true once again.

Gate sunset

Key Point 2: Decisions, decisions

“Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.” Lewis Caroll, Alice in Wonderland

Even though The Car Park was incredibly busy during the years I fished it, because of the 48hr rule, it meant that if you arrived early enough, i.e. before anyone else, then theoretically everyone on the lake had already fished one night, and so you could always get at least one night in any swim on the lake. If you were already on the lake and fishing, you could ‘pencil yourself in’ for a move, but if you weren’t already fishing, you couldn’t bucket a swim until after 4am on the morning you were due to start. You couldn’t earmark a swim before you arrived either, or the night before you started. It worked perfectly, gave everyone a completely level playing field and stopped anyone trying to stitch areas up. Love or hate the idea of swims being able to be bucketed for a few hours, it worked perfectly and even though a few other rules were bent now and again, the gentleman’s agreement and etiquette on that one never was.

It might seem like a minor point that, but I’ve fished lakes in the past where at times there literally hasn’t been a cat in hell’s chance of getting anywhere near any of the prime swims where you would need to be to have half a chance of catching one. It genuinely has felt impossible at times when faced with full-time anglers, swim rotations going on and five or seven day rules for how long you can stay in swims. I’m just not up for that and for me, as a 48hr a week angler, I knew if I made the effort, I could get at least one night a week in any area I wanted on The CP. Ideally I preferred to be settled in an area for the two nights, but if I had to ‘waste’ a night waiting to get a night in a particular area, then so it was. My usual script was to arrive at about 2-3am, make myself a super-strength coffee in the back of the van and then head off into the darkness, just listening for activity and making sure I was best placed to make a decision as early as possible as often you’d be forced into making a call before you would ideally have liked because of other anglers arriving, and leaving. It was all a big game of chess at times.

Once or twice I heard a few show in those dead hours of 2-3am, ones I’m sure most other people missed and you would often see a few just as the light broke, again, well before most other people would arrive to start their trips. It was those that were the feeding fish and I’d often made my decision by about 5am.

To my mind, arriving after the first light feeding spell had passed was almost pointless, as where you found them parked in the weed in the day, often didn’t bear much relation to where you could find them feeding come first light the following day. At the time, it felt like it was one of the biggest things I could do to tip things in my favour and to try to make the right decisions with location.

Pearly used to pretty much live in main Gate snag, but would only do a bite every few years off the spot. It was a frustrating ‘oh so close’ situation

Key Point 3: Finding an end

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” Lewis Caroll, Alice in Wonderland

After catching Heather, and having caught The Dustbin the year previously, it meant I needed a new approach as realistically, it no longer made sense to focus my efforts on the big, main open water spots. Historically, Arfur was a complete wild card in terms of looking at where to consider targeting her from. She had a couple of captures from the Brutes/Snags area, but after that, it was a random scattering with no patterns to go on at all, certainly not in the summer months, and in all that time, and with all that pressure, she had barely done a capture from any one spot more than once or twice, it was enough to fry your head that, thinking about what equated to literally hundreds of thousands and thousands of rod hours by some of the best carp anglers the country has to offer! Best not to think about that one too much was my eventual conclusion!

If she came along, she came along, but I couldn’t really see how I could ‘target’ her, unless it was just in the autumn up in the Brutes/Snags area where Benny Hamilton and Phil had caught her in recent years. That left the two O’s, and Pearly to play for. The Big O did do a few captures here and there, and so was almost in the game anywhere, and Pearly and The Baby Orange over the years had done a fair few captures from The Gate. That season I’d been spending a bit of time watching and feeding Pearly and The Baby O in The Gate snag and so really, my decision had almost been made for me: The Gate it was to be, and that one little gravel spot tucked up on the shelf under the canopy would be the next focus for my attentions.

I spent a few weeks prepping The Gate spot, giving it a rake to clear out any old twigs and debris and giving it few nice big hits of seed, nuts and boilie and then unbelievably, on my second trip in there and only my third evening in the swim I had Pearly Tail in the net. I hadn’t really done anything different at all, and that spot got fished on a frighteningly regular basis for roughly just one bite a year, again, I think it was just a well-laid trap and some good fortune and timing that brought things together – the old ‘convergence factor’ coming into play again!

I stuck with the exact same bait prep, with the heavily washed-out boilies, hemp and a few nuts, and I was still using the big flat 5oz pears and exact same rig. The only thing I did do was to lengthen my leadcore to counteract any possible issues with the snags that flanked both sides of the spot.

I’d narrowly avoided disaster that evening too, having been done by a mallard and the rig left in a root just a few hours previous… amazingly the hook had just popped out of the wood with some pressure and I hadn’t been left with any line trailing through the spot which could well have ruined any chance I might have had. I managed to get the rig back on the spot sweetly without any drama and just as the light started to fall, the bite came. Good fortune was definitely on my side that evening!

I stuck it out for the rest of the year, spurred on by the two captures of another two of Yateley’s prized mirrors but by the autumn, with The Gate spot eventually turning sour and as choices and decisions had become severely narrowed by now only trying to target the remaining three, I’d become bored of sitting it out in the same spots trying to target Arfur, which in essence was like chasing a shadow, with virtually no sightings to go on, and just a wing and a prayer and a bit of history. That autumn I went and fished the Kempsich Canal in Belgium, and then Burghfield. I wasn’t sure, but it felt like my time on The CP was maybe coming to a close.

Chasing shadows… Steve with Arfur. It was a privilege to spend time talking to guys like Steve

Key Point 4: Kes, and the make shift tree canopy trick

“I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit-hole—and yet—it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life!” Lewis Caroll, Alice in Wonderland

As it turned out, I did decide to head back to The Car Park the following year for one last go at Arfur, and the two Oranges. I couldn’t help it, I had no desire to fish anywhere else just yet. Typically there was hardly a sighting of Arfur to be had between all of us; The Big Orange did an early capture to Martyn, and so that left just The Baby O to play for really, and so I started another little campaign in The Gate spot as it was spending most days tucked up in the snag in the corner.

After a few weeks of persevering and baiting, it didn’t seem to be happening. The birds were an absolute nightmare and keeping them off the spot seemed nigh-on impossible, Chris Muir having to take a swim one morning to free one that had hooked itself and then managed to lasso itself onto one of the end trailing branches. Most people that were giving The Gate spot a go were only fishing a sprinkling of seed and tiger, hoping to escape the attentions of the birds but years and years of conditioning and regular baiting had well and truly tuned the birds into it, and they would dive regardless of whether there was any bait down there or not.

My first plan was one shown to me by my mate Rob Gillespie from up north, and utilised that essential and often carried angling aid: a large plastic decoy bird of prey! Rob had used it to great effect on Capesthorne and then subsequently Stoneacres, and he reckoned it put the fear of god into the local coot and duck population so I gave it a go, inserting a thread into the base of the peregrine falcon I’d procured from eBay so I could screw it onto a small bankstick that I inserted flush to the ground as close to the back of the spot as I could, it being a mere foot or so from the bank. It worked a treat, for about 24hrs, but unfortunately the birds soon clocked everything wasn’t quite as it should’ve been with old Kes as we nicknamed him. I was back to square one.

The makeshift canopy worked a treat. The Baby Orange, looking prime at his summer fighting weight

My second plan was slightly more involved. One week in early July I spotted a few big, nicely leaf covered branches that had been cut down from a work party on The Pad. I reasoned that with a few other strategically placed, more sturdy branches I might just be able to build a new canopy above the spot, enough to keep the birds out. I remember walking through the car park dragging half a tree behind me and bumping into Darren Miles who had popped down on his tea break from work, he found the whole plan hilarious and wished me good luck with it, to be honest I was starting to think I might have just lost the plot!

I arrived the following week, no one had fished The Gate since I’d given it a big hit of bait the week previously and so I set-up in there, meticulously laying the trap and putting a full bucket of steaming hot hemp, ten millers and a sprinkling of nuts in over the top. It seemed an outrageous amount to put on an edge spot but I had three nights to play with and was hoping that once the trap was set, I wouldn’t move it until it was sprung. It was a hell of a lot harder to get the big branches in position than I’d imagined, but soon I had a thick, impenetrable new canopy over the top of my little balanced nut and all that bait. Two hours later I was attached to a carp, sadly it turned out to be a stockie mirror. I was a little disgruntled the trap had been sprung but at least it had worked.

I just about managed to get the rig back in before dark, it being a nightmare to move the new makeshift canopy back out of the way to get the rig in, but I managed it. Just two hours later, after a manic battle, I had the Baby Orange in the net, and my fourth of The Car Park mirrors. Amazingly it had only taken a few hours to work, but work it had, keeping the birds off, and providing maybe even a bit of extra cover and confidence on the spot itself.

And so my tale ended, I did fish the year out, losing what I think was The Big Orange one night in The Islands from down the margin, but with four out of the six to my name, and four commons, I couldn’t possibly have been happier for my three years on The Car Park.

Hampshire Graham was right though, it had ruined me, and it took me another three or four years to find my way out of the rabbit-hole and muster anything like the same sense of enthusiasm up for anywhere else again! Special times indeed. Thanks for reading!