Interview with an innovator...

His initials are embedded in carp history, yet somehow the man behind the name remains under the radar. Here John Kneebone catches up with Colne Valley carper, Kenny Dorset

The final message of confirmation had come through: “You, me, Plumb, Damo and Kenny Dorset, we’re going out to Johnny Mac’s place” and a week or so later I was on my way to France with the lads. I’d already fished with everyone except Kenny and was looking forward to meeting someone I’d obviously heard about but had never met. As it happened, we ended up in a double swim together and I can honestly say the first thing that strikes you with Kenny is that he’s a bloody nice bloke. As he set-up, chatting away, inducing one discussion after another about rigs, kit, lakes and all sorts of fishing stuff, it was also very apparent that he was a ‘thinking’ man and an intelligent, analytical angler. You couldn’t help but be intrigued with each story or piece of carping reasoning that Kenny spoke of – and I looked forward to finding out more…

Kenny you’ve been angling for a long time now, and we’re dying to find out what you’ve been up to, but start by telling us how your fishing began?

"I started fishing back in 1979/80 on South Weald day ticket water and from there I managed to get a ticket on a small club water. I was really lucky to get that ticket, as there were quite a few anglers fishing it at that time as well, and a really well-known angler of the time, Geoff Kemp and I really wanted to be like him. It took me a long while to get to a position like the one he was in, I mean I struggled, really struggled to start off with. I just wanted to try my hardest to catch fish and eventually I did get there and never looked back. I loved my fishing then and still love it just as much today.

So back in the beginning, when you saw people like Geoff, what do you think set anglers like him apart when everyone else was struggling?
“Oh it was definitely bait, bait without a doubt, in those days it was bait, well… we all thought it was bait, but he did have a few secrets that we never knew about. Fixed leads for one, that was unheard of, we just never had a clue. He had it sussed out in such a way that when he was casting out it looked like he had just an ordinary lead. When he got a take, it came back as a free running lead, but it wasn’t, he’d fixed it, and in such a way that we couldn’t see. If anyone was around he’d leave the lead as a free running lead, but when he brought it back in and rigged it up again, he used a matchstick and a piece of tubing and looped the line back over so his lead was fixed. As soon as he got a take, the matchstick pinged out of the tubing and needless to say, his lead was free running again! What a fantastic thing to do, well, it was to us and that’s how he caught so many fish.

“Then you start thinking, why didn’t we think of that? Such a simple idea! Then everybody started fixing their leads properly, using proper clips and not worrying about using matchsticks. Everybody knew then and the catch rates were incredible, absolutely incredible. At that time we were using size 2 long shank tealies and low water salmon hooks, it was ridiculous. Paste baits as well. It was Geoff who came out with a boilie; I’d never seen a boilie in my life! The results were just fantastic: twenty twenties in a season he had, and this was around 1982/83, which at that time was unheard of, just unheard of.”

A couple of things you’ve touched upon, rigs, edges and bait. So firstly, give us your thoughts on bait?
“Well, initially we were all doing the same thing, it was all paste baits, everybody was doing the same, but Geoff changed it to a high protein bait. He was in the know. Obviously we didn’t know that at the time, and he came up with a flavouring he put in a bait. No one thought it would make that much difference, but the difference was incredible and from then on everybody wanted to buy Geoff’s bait. It was a boilie because it was harder and it didn’t come off when you cast – there were loads of reasons why it worked better than a paste bait, better than maggots, better than anything. It was new, it was incredible and the learning curve for me was just fantastic, but it was just the beginning where bait was concerned.

1980: My first twenty at 22lb from South Weald Bottom Lake

1988: 34lb 8oz, my first thirty from an Essex club lake

So what happened next?
“It all started on a club water in Essex called The Grange. I was fishing it, along with Kev Knight and Steve Morgan from Mainline Baits – well, Mainline didn’t exist then. They had their own business in the painting and decorating game; really nice blokes who I got on with really well. At the time they were on a water we knew as ‘LG’ (Little Grange) and doing pretty well on the lake. I too was catching quite a few, but I was using a little bait that shouldn’t have been used: tigers. Kev and Steve just couldn’t believe I was catching so many fish, and so they asked me if I’d use their bait?

“You’re having a laugh,” I said, “You know… you’re painters and decorators.”

They said, “No, we’re going to do our own bait.”

I said, “Yeah, alright, pull the other one, please!”

Then one day they pulled up with a van full of bait and said, “Here you go, what do you reckon on that?” and that was the Liver & Marine, their very first one. I said, “Well… I’ll give it a go, I’ll try it.” I looked at it, tasted it, and thought, ‘yeah, that’s alright, yeah it’s nice bait that’. In the end it was just incredible and I never looked back.

“Putting the amount of bait in was the thing. I’d never had the facilities or knowhow to put a quantity of bait in. Me and a friend of mine started putting a bit in, this is a bit later now, when the Mainline Grange had come out. My friend and me got on it over Little Grange and the amount of bait was just incredible. They (Kev and Steve) gave us a bit of bait to put in and bait up with. Me and my mate, we’d never done a kilo of bait in a day – maybe half – but we started putting in two kilos a day, just to see whether or not it would get us anywhere. We put in two kilos a day – he did the mornings and I did the nights, because I was after work and he was before work, so it suited us lovely as we were both working full-time.

“We started baiting it and unbeknown to both of us, we were both thinking the same thing: he’s not putting the bait in because it’s not there. Little did we know, the fish were eating it all! So I said to my mate, “I think we better up it because I can’t see where the baits are going; the birds must be having it, they’ve got to be.” So he said, “Well, look, I’m still putting it in.” I said, “Are you?” He’s like ‘yeah, yeah, yeah…’ Of course this is when we’ve said we’d both had our doubts, but there you go. Anyway, I said, “I’m going to go down there one day and put five kilo in.” He said, “You can’t do that!” I said, “Well, I’m going to – I’ll sit in the car park for half-an-hour and watch; if it’s birds we’ll know.” So I got there really early one morning and put five kilo straight in the swim and sat back up in the car waiting.

“Then a fella came in, a birder – like with a camera and a tripod. I thought ‘oh God, he’s going down the other end of the lake and I’d not seen any birds or anything down there, so I’m going to follow this fella down there and see if anything is going on’. So I’m walking behind this bloke, and this is the Gods honest truth, as I’m going down, he says, “Are you an angler?” So I said, “Yeah, I’m just having a walk around” not wanting to let him know. He said, “Well I’ve come down to photograph these fish, I’ve been down three mornings on the trot and these fish are just phenomenal, I’ve never seen anything like it.” I said, “Oh yeah, show me.” He went straight to the baited area and there they all were; like thirty fish on five-kilos of bait, just mullering it. Within twenty minutes it was gone – the whole lot!

“That was five-kilo, so then we upped it to ten-kilos, but it didn’t matter how much you put in. We started off with a little area, a clear area about three-foot round and in the end it finished up being thirty-foot around. It was just stupid, we had to move it, so we started baiting everywhere then. We baited the whole lake, everywhere we could, we baited, because we thought if we spread the bait around the lake we’re going to do really, really well and that was when the biggest carp was around thirty-five/thirty-six-pound, and we dreamed of a forty but never ever thought we’d be able to catch one, let alone have one in our lake, but it did, it did its first forty. My mate had it at forty-pound and then at forty-two. I couldn’t catch it at the time, but then I did catch that fish at 49lb and it went on to scrape fifty: 50lb 4oz, and that was because of all the bait going in. Absolutely phenomenal, and like I say, I’ve not looked back since.”

1990: My first encounter with what was to be the Little Grange biggie at 33lb 12oz

1992: Getting bigger at 41lb 8oz and my PB at the time – this shows you what bait can do!

1995/96: The ‘Grange’ bait was formed

Is there a capture that sticks out to you as a real eye-opener?
“Yeah, one of two things really. There was a fish in LG called ‘The Big Linear’; there was also a ‘Little Linear’, not a massive fish, around 25/26lb, something like that, and I just couldn’t catch it. I netted it for a mate of mine and I thought ‘I’ve got to catch this’, what a fish, what a cracking fish. In actual fact, I have got that fish imprinted on the front of my house because I absolutely loved it and I really, really wanted to catch it. We were on the new bait and I still couldn’t catch it and I couldn’t work out why. I was fishing the areas it came out of quite a lot and then one day I was fishing The Disabled swim and this is the truth: I was really upset at the time because a fella turned up who was disabled and you’ve got to leave the swim, which is only fair. I moved out, he moved in and I was not best pleased, but you know, I shook his hand and wished him all the best and I went off walking around the lake thinking what do I do now. As I was walking, a fish topped out in the middle of the lake and I thought ‘that’ll do for me, it’s the only thing I’ve seen, I’m going to go for it’.

“With that, I made up a stringer, thinking ‘we’ve done everything we can all around the lake baiting, if I put a stringer on, which no one’s done for a while, I’ve got a good chance I might catch it’. So I got my stringer ready and first cast it went out perfect – right where I’d seen the fish. I’m was just getting the other rod out and wallop, it’s off and it was the Linear, I couldn’t believe it! Thirty-pounds, too, the first time it’d been out over thirty. I was elated.

That taught me two things: finding the fish or location and the bait. Without that, I wouldn’t have caught it, because we’d spread that bait about and the fish were used to finding it and this fish had taken the whole lot. The PVA string hadn’t even had time to melt, it’d taken everything! All I’d done was use a single hookbait and three boilies on the PVA and looped it back over so it was one little group of bait and that fish had swallowed the lot.”

1997: 49lb 4oz from Little Grange, the then Essex record

Time to go back

Do you still use PVA stringers?
(Kenny smiles, chuckles and replies) “No, I don’t and people don’t, and I don’t know why they don’t?”

Why don’t you?
“I don’t know, I really don’t know, um… I should. I think at the time it was a new thing, PVA string and it was like proper string; there wasn’t tape like we have today. It was a new thing and everybody used four and five bait stringers and everybody used to catch on them. Why people don’t use it today, I’ve no idea. I’m one of the worst, I don’t and I should, it’s a fantastic method.”

How did things develop after the Big Linear?
“Because there were so many people on the bait now, well, obviously everybody wanted to get on it, because we were catching so many fish, you had to try and be one step ahead, try and be a little bit different. When I was using PVA stringers at the time, I had a chat to one of my mates and said, “I’m going to make a really long Hair up and put three 18mm baits on – bottom baits, just straight bottom baits on a long Hair.” When I’d caught The Big Linear, I’d thought, ‘hang on a minute, that fish has just picked up four baits and it’s like, thirty-pound, and it had never been thirty that fish’. It went on to be nearly forty-pound by the way that fish before it died. Anyway, I just thought, ‘I’ve got to try it, it’s different, it might work and so I did’. I put three 18mms on a long Hair about two-and-a-half-inches long, cast it out and had an 18lb common. I thought, ‘here we go, I’ve bumped into something else now, another thing that we can do’ and I’ve used it quite a lot since, catching lots of fish on it. You’ve really got to look at what you’re doing. Half baits, I’ve tried that, I’ve watched fish going over two half baits back-to-back on the Hair.”

Long, mean, Fighting Machine – that’s the fish Kev Knight is holding at 31lb. Mine weighed 20lb+.

The Butterfly Rig?
“It wasn’t called that then. What happened was, you’d take a bait off the Hair and it would cut in half naturally. You’d then throw it in the water and it would waft down. I thought, ‘bloody hell, I’m going to try that and put half a bait on’ and yeah, it wafted down – it was different. Try this: put a ping-pong ball in your mouth and spit it out: it comes out easy. Put half of one in your mouth and it’s a lot more difficult to spit out. All those sort of things and thinking like that has caught me a lot of fish.”

So do you think it’s still possible to keep an edge secret and should you do so?
“Yeah, I think if you’ve got yourself a little edge, you need to keep it to yourself, well at least until you’ve caught the fish you want to catch. With a few club waters I’ve fished, there were particular fish I wanted to catch more than others, and people are saying to me, “What are you doing, you’re catching really well.” I’d say, “I can’t tell you, I will tell you but not yet.” And they’re like, why? I say, “Well, if I tell you and you catch it, that’s my chance gone, because I’ve come up with something and you’ve used it before I’ve had chance to catch on it. So no, I’ll tell you, but I’m not going to tell you now,” and that’s what I did.
“I did it with two little 10mms on the Hair and sandwiching a piece of plastic corn in between to counter-balance it and all that. I know counter-balancing had been done before, but not with double baits or treble baits; it’s all been done with single baits normally. I tried doing it with a double bait; I tried it with tigers, drilling them out – in fact, drilling out baits hadn’t even been thought of back then, but we did all that then just to be a bit different. This was around 1989/90, something like that. It was such a long time ago – you try all those things and really I should go back to some of them.”

Do you think edges still exist?
“Yes, definitely.”

Even though so much is put out there on Facebook, Twitter etc.?
“Yeah, you can still have an edge. We’re human, we’re all trying to beat or do the best we can, so I’m absolutely convinced there’s always something around the corner. If there wasn’t we’d always be doing the same things. You’ve got to keep one jump ahead and I think there are still edges out there. What they are, I don’t know, but I’m still trying and I’ve been doing this about fifty years.”

Baiting, watching and returning to marginal spot is a number one tactic of Kenny’s

Don’t miss what’s going on in the edge by looking out to the middle

In that time you must have seen some significant changes within carp fishing?
“God… where do you start? Rods: we used to use ten-footers, now they’re 12ft. We used to use 8lb line and now we’re using 15, 18, 20lb line. You’ve got bigger reels too. We used to be using Mitchells and 55’s, and some people were casting a 100yds with those! How did they do it? I’ve no idea, but they did! I couldn’t cast that far, that’s why most of my fishing was done in the margins and still is today.

“When I started, I was using size 8 Super Specialist; you wouldn’t get 18lb line through the eye once let alone three times for a Knotless Knot! How times have changed, but has it made any difference to the fishing? Yes, it’s got better. We’re using bigger and stronger kit, better hooks and better bait. Although it gives everybody the same opportunity, it mucks it up for people like me, because you’ve not got the edges anymore. Those edges are gone. Sharpening your hooks, I always used to sharpen my hooks, but not now. They’re all chemically sharpened; I sooner change one after catching a fish. In the past I’ve sharpened hooks to such a point that one bump on a stone and they would burr over – and then you get a take but you lose the fish.”

You’ve mentioned you do a lot of fishing in the margins. Is that an edge with so many people now able to cast greater distances?
“You’re giving all my secrets away! Yeah, I love people casting distances; I think the more people casting out to the middle the better for me, because I love fishing in the margins and people give it a big miss. Put some bait in the margins and watch it and you’ll see – there’s nothing better than the margins for the fish to patrol along. Right under your feet they’ll be and people don’t even see them. Of course if I see fish rolling and jumping in the middle, I’ll cast to them, but if I see fish in the margins too I’ll leave those fish in the middle to everyone else. Half the time you spook them with a lead anyway. In the margins you can creep about, watch and wait until fish move off – it gives you loads of edges.”

So is it important to you to see what the fish are doing and how they are reacting?
“Yeah, when you’re on a gin clear pit you can learn so much. People are always just looking out into the lake. If the fish are in the margins, they’ll be fizzing, bubbling and the water will colour up; the fish don’t need to jump to show they’re there. In six-feet of clear water you can see everything; I’ve sat for hours and hours watching fish. Over at LG I’ve sat up in a tree watching fish picking up baits and ‘do’ me over time and time again. You could put a thousand baits in and they’d eat them all and leave yours; ten baits they’d eat them all and leave yours. They’d pick it up, drop it, pick it up, drop it, over and over again. Incredible… And then you’ve got to work out how to catch them!”

Kenny still uses paste from time to time

That leads us on nicely to your namesake rig, ‘The KD Rig’. Can you tell us how that rig came about?
“Again, it was a while ago now. One of my friends showed me a pattern of hook which was a fly hook with a slight curve to it. I tried to find a similar pattern but stronger, but no one did one. Then the ‘curves’ came out and I was able to try what I wanted to do. Quite simple really: I went around the hook twice, flicked out the Hair, went around another three times, then back through the eye to form the Knotless Knot and then I add a split shot on the Hair because initially I wanted a pop-up that would be close to the bottom; I didn’t want it two-inches, an inch, half-an-inch off the bottom, I wanted it really close. With the curved hook like it was, if you put the shot right up, really tight against the back of the shank of the hook it kicked it out even more. With that 45-degree angle, I thought ‘surely if they pick that up, I’ve got to be able to catch on that?’ I gave it a try and never looked back.

“I fished a little club water in the winter where I decided to just fish the evenings, no days or nights, just the evenings and had amazing results, catching fish I didn’t even know were in there. Then I gave it a go on a really easy water, I was catching loads of fish and there was this other fella who hadn’t had a bite, so I said, “Go opposite me” because I was catching and cast to the same spot. It was only a small lake, 30-40yds each to the halfway mark. I wanted to know if he would catch on his rigs. He was getting liners like you wouldn’t believe because I’d baited the area but I was catching fish. Then he came round and asked what I was doing, so I showed him. I said, “Here you are, take this” and gave him my rig. He took it around and caught straight away and I thought, ‘yeah, that’d do for me’.

“Like I said, at first it was difficult to find the right hook. Those fly hooks were very light in the wire and you had to play fish very carefully. The pattern was brilliant, but they weren’t strong enough, then I believe it was Adam Penning who came up with the curved hooks. They came out in all different sizes and I started using them in size 10 as they were much stronger. Unbeknown to me, I could have used them in eights or sixes and I probably would have done better with them.

“It was just luck that it all came about really when I bumped into Max Cottis; he and Adam were working together at Fox and he had five of these hooks in a pack. I said, “I’ve got to have them”, but that’s all there were, just those five, so Max kept one for the pattern and gave me the other four. I’d only got these four hooks and couldn’t afford to lose any, but stupidly I’d cast over to an island and got hooked-up in a tree, so I went and got the boat out and retrieved that hook from the branches so I could reuse it! Those four hooks were so precious to me at the time.”

That rig has been well publicised since, is that an edge lost or is that still a successful rig for you?
“Yeah, I still use it, I still use it on the odd occasion, but I like to use it with the Balanced Wafters now instead of a pop-up or a bottom bait just to be a bit different again. That said, my favourite rig at the moment is the Hinge Stiff Rig, it’s just incredible. I’ve used it for the last year, year and a half now and I just love everything about it. It casts like a dream, whichever way you cast it – you could throw it in and it would still sit right. If a fish picks it up and does manage to get rid of it, the rig will always reset itself.”

‘I generally use Balanced Wafters with the KD Rig these days’

He’s been on the Hinge Rig for the last 18-months or so

Did you find it difficult to change over from a rig you were so confident in?
“For sure, 100%, but then I was fishing a Colne Valley water and I had a take, well, I thought it was a liner. The rod tip banged and hooped over and I thought that doesn’t happen with the rigs that I’m using. Then I never got another bit of action at all, not a thing. This fella came along and I told him what had just happened. I said, “I can’t believe it, I must have been done, properly done on my rig.” Anyway, the conversation got around to, ‘had I tried the Hinge Rig?’ I was like, no, blimey all that metal and swinging around and stuff, that’s not for me, I like bog standard stuff – the easier the better for me. I couldn’t bring myself to use it, it was animal – the thickness of the line, the size of the hook, but anyway, I did try it, even though I thought it was big, cumbersome and awkward. Anyway, I caught and I thought that’s enough for me. I’m on it now and have been for the last eighteen months.”

What sort of fish have you caught on the rig?
“I’ve had fish up to 44lb and quite a few thirties, but small fish as well. That’s the thing with the rig, it works well with fish of all sizes.”

Tricky fish to catch?
“Oh yeah, very much so, you’re talking Colne Valley and you’re not just fishing against the fish, you’re fishing against all the bloody good anglers out there.”

So talk us through your current terminal set-up?
“People are going to laugh, because I use tubing, I always have done, I’ve used it for years and it’s never stopped me catching. I have tried leadcore but it’s not for me, not my cup of tea, I just don’t like it. I love tubing and put a little bit of weight on the end to weigh it down. So 14-inches of tubing down to a lead clip and I do like using big leads – 4oz at least, sometimes bigger if I can get away with it, and that way, when the fish picks the bait up they’re nailed. Then for the boom section of the hooklink I use 30lb stiff fluorocarbon with a loop and a small swivel at the end. Onto that I tie Stiff Bristle Filament, about two to three-inches long, and to this a Korda Choddy hook – a fantastic hook that’s strong in the wire. I’ll put a curve in this short section and have a ring or a screw clip on the ‘D’ – it doesn’t matter which, they both work.”

Tell us about your fishing now. What are your targets these days and have they changed at all?
“I would say my targets have changed weight-wise, but the my actual fishing hasn’t changed.”

Weight-wise why has that changed then?
“Well, years ago, a twenty was a good fish, a twenty was like the fish of your dreams. You know, the big carp of today weren’t about then. When I first started fishing a twenty was like a fifty today, it’s just incredible the difference now.”

Okay, so what about your fishing now, in 2015?
“I’m fishing in the Colne Valley now and won’t fish anywhere else, they’re publicity shy waters so I won’t say which they are, but I’m really lucky to have got the tickets I have. There’s some really nice fish, and lovely waters so I wouldn’t take that chance.”

How many nights a week, on average, are you fishing?
“Years ago I only used to do one night a week, sometimes not even that, sometimes just a Friday afternoon. Now that I’m sort of semi-retired, I fish three nights a week. I don’t fish the weekends, there’s too many people about, so I’m really lucky at the moment to be able to do what I do and I love it.”

Do you think that’s an edge fishing in the week?
“Yeah definitely, without a doubt. Your chances are much, much better. You’ve got all the time in the world to walk around and find the fish with hardly any other anglers about. You know they’re club waters, so most people are weekend anglers, just like I used to be, but I still caught my fish, but I had to work twice as hard at it. All the things I’ve learnt over the years are just an added bonus now.

“As I’ve said, I’ve taken people with me as guests over there and I’ll walk around what I’m seeing and how I find them. It makes no difference to me, they’re only a guest so they’re not going to jump on what I know. When I’m with them, they’re flabbergasted at what I do. I took someone last year for two nights and at the end of it he said, “I can’t believe what you do” – he’s like, “You do that everyday?” I’m like no, I normally do that three times a day, sometimes four times a day! People think they’re wasting time by reeling in and walking about, but you’re not, you’re gaining information all the time. It’s all a learning curve.”

Reeling in and walking the lake is far from wasted time