CARPology Classic: The Weather Man

hen it comes to finding someone who knows a helluva lot about weather, there could only be one candidate: Roy Parsons.

“I’ve worked at Linear for over 20 years. To start with we were over at Milton Keynes, which is now called Great Linford Lake, but then moved over to the Oxford site.”

20 years! That’s 20 years of walking around some of the finest lakes in this country, spending time talking to some of the brightest carp anglers and picking their brains. It’s a recipe for super success and hence why we just had to interview him. Right, get ready, this is going to blow you – and us – away! Let’s hit the record button on the Dictaphone and – gulp – begin…

“Okay Roy, tell us, over the years with the increased pressure the fish have received, have you seen the fish’s patterns change?”
“Hugely in weight because of the baits used these days, 10 to 15 years ago there was a lot of rubbish on the market or a lot of homemade boilies which people didn’t know how to make correctly. Nowadays all products are good, whether that’s particle, pellet or boilies – they’re all good. To a certain degree the pressure has changed their feeding habits. They changed very quickly from nocturnal to daytime. Then they have changed back again. A lot of it is down to pressure on the lakes and the weather. They are up and down like a yoyo at the moment; to be honest it has been like that all summer. One minute it has been red hot, the next it’s blowing a gale and then tipping down.”

“What seems to be the perfect weather conditions for the larger fish to come out?”
“Definitely on a strong south, southwesterly, especially St John, Manor and Hardwick – more so than Oxleases.”

“Why like that on those lakes and not Oxleases?”
“There’s not so many fish in St John, Manor and Hardwick as there is in Oxleases, although there’s as many thirties in Oxleases as there is in any other lake. The worse the weather on St John, Manor and Hardwick the happier the fish are. The weather doesn’t seem to affect them so much on Oxleases and I think that’s because there’s over 2,000 fish in there, where there isn’t in the other three lakes.”

The man himself: Roy Parson

“When the weather conditions are spot-on, do all the lakes fish or is it certain ones?”
“They all go – big time.”

“When the spring arrives, which lake seems to kick off first? Why do you think that is?”
“Hardwick/Smiths is the last to go – I don’t know why, it’s bizarre. It seems to go: Oxleases, St John, Manor, Hardwick/Smith, always in a period of about three-weeks. I think Oxleases goes first because of the quantity of fish in there, but you’ve also got people putting bait in all winter, so they are relatively active – not as active as in the summer obviously, but they are still active.”

“Do the deeper lakes – such as Hardwick/Smiths get affected differently to the shallow ponds in certain weather conditions?”
“Definitely. You see it much more so, how the fish are affected by the weather than you do on places like Oxleases, which has a relatively level bottom. There are not so many bars in there because it was bulldozed relatively level before we took it on some six or seven years ago. But you do see it on Hardwick/Smiths because you’ve got 20ft holes and a lot more bars and troughs. That seems to fish well when it’s wet and windy. If you get a high-pressure on there and unless you’re fishing around the back of Smiths you’ll struggle. You’ll catch them on the surface – they’re very easy to catch on the surface – easier than Oxleases that’s got 2,000 fish in.”

“Have you noticed a pattern in the weather when fish get caught on Zig Rigs both during the day and night?”
“The trouble with anglers in this day and age is they all think ‘three rods on the bottom or popped up’. They don’t think and because it has become such a social thing, they’re not over bothered whether they catch or not. They are down for a social with their friends to get away from the missus etc.

“People say to me, “Ooh, I’ve not caught anything.” I’ll say, “Well it’s red hot and where are the fish?” He’ll say, “Just under the surface.” “So where are you fishing?” And he’ll say, “I’m on the bottom.” So I said, “Well that’s got to tell you something – you’ve got to go on the Zigs.” You try and explain to them, and bear in mind I’m not a carp angler by a million miles, I haven’t carp fished for about 10 or 12 years, but walking around the lakes like I do, I see people who do use the Zigs and I know how to do them, but those people are very, very staid in their ways.”

“Iain Macmillan did particularly well over at Linch Hill on the Zigs in the winter. Have you noticed any other people doing that in the winter and is there any pattern in the weather then?”
“Nick Helleur has done it quite a lot. There doesn’t appear to be any pattern in the weather, but if you get a warm spell in the winter, the fish will come up because they need the warmth just as much as you and I do. They like the sun on their back and if you get a warm spell in the winter, they’ll come up.

“Two years ago Nick was catching them on St John in December/January just on a corkball fished on a Zig. It’s quite bizarre, but he was catching them. Tim Paisley was a prime example. He was down this summer for the Junior UK Carp Championships on Brasenose and he said to me, “I’ve got to learn how to do this Zig Rigging, boy, because I’ve never seen kids catch on them before.” They were catching loads because it was hot. He said, “I’ve never done that, but I’ve got to learn.” It was quite odd for a man who everyone calls the Godfather of carp fishing to be doing that, but he said, “I’ve got to change with the times.”

“I’ve never understood why carp pick up Zig Rigs. You’ve got something that’s stuck 8 to 14ft up in the water column, as a rule, they should go past it and ignore it, but they don’t, I just think they’re nosey.”

“You mentioned earlier that if you get a warm snap the fish would come up in the water. When you say a “warm snap”, what time period are you looking at – 24hrs?"
“Less than that. You’ll get them come right up in a period of three or four hours. If you get cold frosty day and then the sun comes up at 8, 9 o’clock, then they’re up by midday. Sometime you might not see them, or you might just see a fin break the surface or you might just see a mouth, but if you’re watching the water properly you’ll see them. They will usually be one to two foot below the surface and that’s when you’ll get them on the Zigs – and you’ll get them quite easily on a bit of plastic or cork.”

“On the heavier stocked venues you’ve got, have you noticed the fish group up largely in one or two areas of the lake, or due to the numbers do they keep spread out?”
“In the winter months they seem to go around in shoals more – big shoals. Brasenose One has got 3,000 fish and you’ll get them going around in herds of 400 or 500 fish. People will be getting runs and then it’ll all go quiet and obviously the next shoal hasn’t arrived.”

“On Oxleases, have you noticed it fishes all year just because of the quantity of fish in there?”
“Yes, one, because of the quantity of fish in there, and two, because of how the gear is made in this day and age for the angler. They can now fish comfortably in the winter, where when I used to fish 10 to 15 years ago, you’d freeze your preverbials off! For the simple reason there wasn’t the clothing and there wasn’t the bivvies made for it.

“In this day and age with the alarms, remotes, clothing, boots, hats and winter skins on their bivvies so they can fish comfortably in 14, 15hrs of darkness and that’s why the fish keep moving because the bait keeps going in.

“A lot of the time when people say a water doesn’t fish in the winter, I think it’s because no bait’s going in and the fish just aren’t moving about. Tim Childs proved it on Manor last year. Everyone said, “Oh Manor doesn’t fish in the winter,” but he came down with his mate Reg and only fished the weekends – Friday night until Sunday morning – and when he left, he’d put five or six kilos of bait in every week. Over the winter they had Cut Tail out at over forty, they had five thirties and seven or eight twenties and numerous doubles. And that’s in the depths of winter – December through to February, which are the worst months for fishing.

“They fished two swims all the time, kept the bait going in and they caught fish. It worked well for them and I think it will work all the time. I think once this weather settles down a bit instead of going all around the place, it will fish.”

“On Hardwick/Smiths in the winter, because of the depth, from what have you heard and seen, what seems to be the perfect depth?”
“They seem to go into the back of Smiths a hell of a lot in the winter, which is the shallower part of the lake. I think a lot of it is because the main Hardwick side before it was cut through to Smiths is very open, so it gets affected by the weather much more so. At the back of Smiths, you’ve got a lot more trees and bushes and they seem quite content to stay there. “In the winter, the fish move in very tight to the margins in Smiths – and that’s in 4ft of water. There have been times when I’ve been walking around and just looking down underneath the trees and all of sudden, you’ll see a fin pop up. If you stay very quiet, you’ll see the fish come right in and start feeding on the food in the margins. Because once again, carp anglers spill a lot of food and of course that’s where the fish feed at night.”

“Have you noticed a difference between the smaller and larger fish feeding during certain weather conditions?”
“Larger fish will definitely feed more so on a strong wind, unless you’re surface fishing. The smaller fish don’t seem to worry too much, unless you get a sudden high barometer pressure, then they seem to go off for a bit until they get used to it.

“The smaller fish, i.e. Brasenose, they do go off when you get the barometer going through the roof like it did do last week then they go off for a few days. It was flat calm, foggy, it was cold, but once they got used to it for a few days, they were off and running again. As soon as the barometer stayed settled – for two days – people were catching again.”

“Is that the sort of rule you have if the weather goes from one extreme to another, two days of settled weather?”
“It seems to be 48hrs, sometimes a little bit longer, but not normally. Once you’ve had settled weather the fish will start feeding again. It’s quite strange when you see it. It doesn’t matter what the weather conditions are, as long as it stays the same for 48hrs, you’re laughing. “It’s quite funny, because you can go two days without anything getting caught, but then after that 48hr period of settled pressure, the buzzers will start going again and you’ll get people say, “Why have they gone all of a sudden?” And I’ll say, “Because you’ve had 48hrs of settled pressure. That’s all it needs.” It doesn’t matter if it’s low- or high-pressure, they’ll feed.”

“In the winter months have you seen any patterns in the winter that seem to spark the fish into feeding?”
“If you get it cold and frosty like we should do in the winter; it’s bizarrely mild now for this time of year, but as long as you get this settled weather I just talked about, then they’ll feed. It went very slow last week when we had the change from high-pressure to low-pressure and from Friday until Sunday there were a few fish out, but nothing like there should be. Once Monday arrived it had all settled down and off they went again.”

“Have you noticed any patterns with regard to moon phases?”
“No. I know Frank Warwick and people like that are strong believers in moon phases, but I’ll be honest, I don’t know a great deal about moon phases, I don’t really study them. I know people like Frank won’t go out unless the moon is right. I know Tim Paisley is the same. “It’s normally when you get a major weather change that you get the moon phases come in and it affects things. But like I said, I don’t know a great deal about them.”

“Have you noticed that when the temperature drops below a certain level, the fish switch completely off?”
“On the less densely stocked waters, i.e. St John, Manor, Hardwick/Smiths, yeah they will, but places like Oxleases and Brasenose One they will feed whatever. Once you get to the freezing mark or just above, the fish in the lower stocked waters will slow right down. The other places where there’s more competition for the food, then they will carry on feeding – and that’s why Oxleases fishes all year.”

“Do you think that if people stopped fishing Oxleases during the winter, the fish would group up and stop feeding?”
“Going back to the ‘social thing’, anglers want to be comfortable. They won’t think ‘where will the fish be?’ They’ll think which swim they want to fish, regardless of whether there is any fish there or not. I see them now, they’ll say, “I want to fish the one next to the fence – donk.” They won’t look around the lake to see if they can see any fish. They just don’t look or talk to me or other anglers. I had them on St Johns this year. It was around April/May time and the wind was howling up towards the shallows and the bloke said, “Where’s the fish, Roy.” I said, “Look.” And they were giving it large – boshing out and rolling. He said “thank you ever so much” and off he went. I then came back sometime later to do my rounds and he was right down the other end of the lake. I said, “What are you doing down here, mate?” He said, “Oh it’s to windy down there, it’s much more comfortable down here.” “You can take the horse to the water but you can’t make it drink. You’re getting back to your social fishing again. He’d come down for a couple of days to get away from everything, and if he got a bite then fine. Whereas an angler that would walk around and look for the fish would have hammered down there. They are feeding big time down there. The ones that weren’t boshing and rolling were feeding on the deck and freezing up big time.”

“Talking of wind, a couple of weeks ago Leon Bartropp and I came down to Oxleases. Leon fished on the back of the wind because it was the first real cold wind he’d had in sometime. We were convinced the fish would be sat on the back of that wind, but yet there was a guy who was sat down in the far corner where the wind was hacking into and he caught a couple whilst we were there. Any explanation for that?!”
“I think once again it was a new wind. They hadn’t moved. If you give them two or three days on a strong wind in the winter, especially in winter, but I have seen it in the summer, if they getting battered by any strong wind – regardless of the direction it’s coming from – they will drop back off it. “I think when yourself and Leon came down here they hadn’t dropped off it, they were still on it. I think you were just a little bit quick going on the back of the wind, where if that wind had stayed in another two days, they would have come back off it. They will go down on a new wind for 48hrs, maybe 72hrs, and then they will go back the other way and lay off it.”

“In the winter, what seems to be the best weather conditions?”
“Settled to start with a light breeze. If it’s cold and bright then fine, as long as it stays cold and bright for 48hrs+ you’ll catch fish. It doesn’t matter if it’s hot, cold, wet, wind, as long as it stays doing it and not keep changing.”

“Casting your mind back, can you think of any captures when you were convinced nothing would get caught and has?”
“Oh yeah, especially this year. When that 43lber came out of Smiths, I didn’t think they stood a prayer. Give them their due though, they fished well. They were fishing one of the spits, which means you can listen to both lakes. “They said to me, “Where would you fish?” I said I’d have gone around the back of Smiths knowing it was a chilly wind and I was thinking they’d been held up there. They started on the Hardwick side, but they did listen and they did hear fish in Smiths side so they switched over and fished Smiths and bang, one of them caught a 43lber. Those spits are ideal, especially in the wintertime because you can fish one lake or another, but at the same time listen and look to see which lake they are in. If you’re fishing Hardwick, but keep seeing fish in Smiths, then all you have to do is turn around and cast out.”

“Have you noticed any other fish coming out when you really didn’t think anything else would be?”
“It goes in phases, and whether this has anything to do with the moon or not, I’ll be honest as I said to you before, I haven’t studied that, but you did see it. A lot with fishing is the ‘right place, right time’. I’ve seen anglers and I’ve thought, ‘you’ve not got a prayer of catching’, and then he’ll go and pull out an upper-thirty. “There was a bloke on St Johns three weeks ago. He was a really nice guy, but I thought, ‘well, I don’t think you’re going to catch much, mate’. He had a two-bob rod and a two-bob reel as I would call it, and then he went and pulled out two twenties and Star Burst at 39lb 8oz. His personal best prior to that was a 17lber! “To be honest, nothing surprises me now what comes out of lakes. I say that, but I do get a bit surprised, but I think, ‘oh well, that’s something else I’ve learnt’.”

“Have you noticed any patterns in the weather when the fish will really show themselves – jumping, boshing etc.?”
“Always on a new wind, regardless of the weather conditions, they will show on a new wind. Whether they’re moving themselves or cleaning themselves on the way to wherever they’re going to go, I don’t know, but they definitely show more on a new wind."

“What about in the winter?”
“Oxlease especially so – more so that Brasenose One. They were boshing about on Oxlease all week – really throwing themselves out of the water. One bloke who was fishing over there said to me, “I’ve got more fish showing over here than you can wag a stick at, but I can’t buy a bite. I said, “Yeah, but have you got the Zigs out?” He said, “Well no.” So I told him to stick at least one out, because that could be all you need.”

“Although you haven’t been carp fishing for some ten years, have you come to any of your own conclusions about the way fish bosh out?”
“I think in the spring time, when they’re on the new winds, I think they are cleaning themselves for sure. Where they’ve been laid up in the winter, in the silt where you’ve got your leeches, lice, etc., etc., they’re just cleaning them off after the winter months. “In the winter I think it’s just if they get the sunshine they come up and just show off basically.”

“Have you noticed any difference between the way fish show on the different lakes?”
“There’s not a huge amount of difference. When you see the fish on Hardwick/Smiths, and yes I know there are a lot of big fish in there, but you seem to see the lumps more so than the smaller ones. Although we stocked with 125 Elstow stockies last year, you still see the big ones more. It’s weird.”

“You’ve seen all the top anglers down at Linear, what is the one thing they all seem to have in common?”
“They are all prepared to move. If the fish are moving and there is room on the lake, then they’ll move. Years ago when Terry did his major stint on Manor, he only ever had two rods out and the third one would be waiting for fish to show. “I might pop down and have a cup of tea with him in the morning and then come back a few hours later and think, ‘right, now where’s he gone?’ He’s seen fish and he’s moved. Frank Warwick is the same. If the wind turns or the fish move on the new wind or off the wind or whatever, he’ll move. “Okay, it isn’t quite as easy as it used to be because we’re that much busier now, but people who move will catch more fish.”

“If you had to pick one angler who’s impressed you most, who would it be?”
“I’d have to pick three. Frank for his knowledge of waters in general and finding fish and Terry and Dave Lane for moving.”