The Cape Boards Linear
We’re taking you back to the 1990s for this instalment, to document a fish that defines this series in terms of beauty and elusiveness
If you’ve caught as many big carp as Steve Briggs, from every far-flung corner of the carp-fishing universe, we reckon you’re well qualified to judge the merits of a carp. So, for Steve to say that our fish in focus this month rates as close to the Black Mirror as any other in his CV… well, then you sit up and take notice.
If you’ve ever used the M25 motorway near Iver, then the chances are that you’ll unknowingly have passed right by the lake that was home to the magnificent carp at the centre of this month’s profile. If you were unlucky enough to have sat in traffic on the inside lane of that road, then you might even have caught sight of the gentle flickering of water through the verge-side trees. In fact, the very motorway on which you sat is rather important to the Cape Boards story.
The lake, so legend tells, was once much bigger; so large in fact, that it played host to the British Waterski Championships. Now, as far as we can ascertain, the lake received a Leney stocking, along with a few other introductions over the years, but the sailing wasn’t so smooth for the early inhabitants when a chunk of the lake was backfilled to make way for the motorway in the early 1960s. As far as we can tell, quite a few fish died when the lake was backfilled and it’s unclear whether there were attempts made to retrieve the fish in the section earmarked for filling.
Fishing on the lake was controlled by the Cape Boards plasterboard factory social club and, unlike so many social clubs of the era, non-employees could join the lake for a modest fee. And so it was that a young Steve Briggs, who lived within a few hundred yards of the lake, having moved up to the Colne Valley from Kent, came to get a ticket in 1990. For reasons that will become apparent, Steve is one of the very few anglers who have even been seen with the great fish that came to be the Cape Boards Linear.
“It was a cheap ticket,” Steve told us, “and, being so close to where I was living, it made total sense for me to join.” Steve found it hard going initially and it wasn’t until an angler called Jimmy Clavin caught the fish we’re focusing on at 34lb, along with another linear of 31lb, that Steve really committed to getting one of those fish in his album.
It wasn’t until 1997 that Steve was to see through his quest to catch one of the Leney fish of Cape Boards—the year after a certain Ian Russell had taken the prestigious Classic Carp award with his capture of the magnificent fully scaled from Summerleaze lake, further West, up the M4 corridor. Steve was also fishing Summerleaze at the time and resolved to go straight onto Cape Boards to catch the big linear telling us that, “I knew that if I caught it, it would win the Classic Carp that next season.”
When the start of the 1997 season dawned, Steve was quickly to find himself bridesmaid rather than bride, and eyeball to eyeball with the big linear. An angler on the opposite bank to Steve banked his target and at 38lb 10oz it was a huge carp for the time and cemented Steve’s resolve to catch it himself. So, alongside the big ‘un, what exactly was Steve fishing for?
“It was hard to put a number on the carp present in the lake at the time,” Steve told us, “many of the residents were hardly ever seen, let alone caught, but I’d have guessed that Cape Boards had perhaps 70 carp in it at the time, with 10-15 of those being originals. It had various stockings over the years, which made it tough to be sure on stock levels.”
Fortune dictated that Steve didn’t have too long to wait for his turn with the great fish; in fact, it was just a month into the season that his margin rod, fished on the only clear spot that Steve could find, between the bank and a set of pads, tore off while he was trying to tempt a carp off the top. The fish stripped line out into the lake and weeded itself before Steve was able to carefully tease it back over the net. With friends in attendance, Steve weighed the linear on a hastily constructed tripod made from banksticks lashed together, recording a weight of 40lb 6oz (For the full story be sure to check out Steve’s book, Cassien… and Beyond).
Now, Cape Boards Social Club enforced a no-publicity rule at the time, but Steve was able to secure permission from a committee member to publish pictures of the fish, a decision that would go on to cause quite a stir within the club hierarchy. The outcome was that the fish did indeed win the coveted Gardner Classic Carp award for 1997, and Steve’s pictures serve to remind us that this fish truly was one of the finest carp we’ve seen.
Steve kept his ticket for quite a long time after that capture, and the big linear went on to be caught at weights in excess of 45lb. Of course, with the publicity ban now well and truly back in force, those pictures were likely never to see the light of day, and it’s nice to think that the great fish lived out its days away from the glare of the national spotlight. The big linear is long dead now unfortunately but we think, even in our current era with all its big, scaly carp, it would have been right at the top of the tree still.
