The Smell Of Carp Fishing

There’s no doubt about it: carp fishing is smelly! But that’s not a bad thing because the scent of an old tackle bag, a vintage boilie flavour, or a favourite jacket festering in the garage can seemingly break the laws of physics and warp the space-time continuum. Amazingly, vapours from cherished carping paraphernalia wafting up your snout onto your smell cells can unlock a portal to the past and release vivid memories and emotions.

The power of a pungent aroma has been explained by neuroscientists, who discovered that smells are handled by the olfactory bulb, a structure in the front of our brain that sends information to the amygdala and hippocampus, regions related to emotion and memory. This explains why, even now, I am literally stopped in my tracks by carpy smells first experienced at an early age, such as the powerful pong of pond, luncheon meat, and bacon frying in the bivvy.

And is it me, or was the past smellier? Perhaps it was just childhood when I had… one, two, three, four, five… senses working overtime (XTC reference, for younger CARPologists). For example, I still have my Mitchell 301s in black vinyl cases from John Wilson’s Tackle Den. Their distinctive whiff instantly teleports me back to Norwich and fishing the UEA Broad in 1984, to happy memories of simmering freshly rolled semolina and milk protein boilies flavoured with Geoff Kemp’s Dairy Cream, and the sweet heady fragrance of summer flowers as we slept under the stars on ropey old Woolworths sun loungers.

Tackle shops have always been wonderfully intense sources of olfactory super stimuli. Whether it was John’s Tackle Den on Bridewell Alley in Norwich, Simpson’s of Turnford, Gerry’s of Wimbledon or St Ives Tackle, the strange thing is they all had or have the same magic funky mixture in abundance. For some obscure reason, the odour of sweating maggots, mixed with halibut pellets, myriad boilie flavours, hemp and tiger nuts cooking out the back, and that new bivvy fragrance is an intoxicating brew that keeps us coming back like pigeons who yearn for home, like faithful labradors drooling by the kitchen table.

There are, of course, some smells, more accurately described as ‘stinks’, which are best avoided, as once smelt, they can never be forgotten. You are changed forever, always on edge as you wind your way around the syndicate. These include the downwind waft of ripe bivvy tramp at the end of a long session. This pungent aroma is an alarming mixture of body odour, bad breath, stale beer and tobacco, with the killer punch of a warm poo bucket striking the solar plexus once you have acclimatised to the initial shock. On the plus side, if you bottled and sold this chemical weapon as Eau de Bivvy, the number of punishers and sheep visiting your swim would fall off a cliff. Just as shocking, but with added sadness and grief, is the dreaded stench of death floating on the wind as you come upon one of the A-Team belly up in the margin or dragged up the bank by the furry carp assassin Lucifer Lutra.

And, of course, there are smells you wish you could smell again but never will. The smell of Dad in his Mark II Vauxhall Cavalier, after a crafty fag, even though he told Mum he had quit, driving us down to Nazeing for a session. The 1970s whiff of leather, leaking engine oil and Bun Spice boilies in my uncle’s old Austin Morris Traveller as he drove us to London Colney for a day’s carping. The heavenly scent of fish and chips being eaten in the Volvo 240 estate in Faversham’s School Pool car park. I’m not a particularly avid petrolhead, but there is something deeply nostalgic and moving about the smell of old fishing cars. If I close my eyes and recall their distinctive and unique odours, I’m there, in the passenger seat, over-tired, overstimulated, and about as happy as I’ve ever been.

Now, we come to a great carp fishing controversy. The smell of carp. I can smell them on my mat, the sour, slimy smell of success. On my net in the car on the way home, which is not so much euphoria, more like, you dirty mud pigs. But, I am not, and sadly have never been, like many claim, able to smell them in my swim. I always stare in amazement and disbelief when a fellow brother of the angle walks into a swim and confidently declares: ‘Oh yes, they are here, I can smell them!’

I know I’m a muggle when it comes to carp wizard superpowers, but this really does baffle and frustrate me. What an edge it would be if I could locate the carp by smell. Can someone please fine-tune my hooter, supercharge my sniffer, and teach me how to perform the Accio carpio-smelling spell? Maybe I should buy a bloodhound and train it. I’ll ask my mate Darren, ‘The Dog Whisperer’ Davidson. He knows about these things. 

So, where would we be without our sense of smell? Certainly, a lot safer walking into the swims of some syndicate members, who seem to regard personal hygiene as an unwelcome modern trend and that their chances of catching will be significantly reduced if they ever come into contact with shampoo, soap or deodorant. And we’d be protected from the gut-wrenching stench of decaying bait festering in the shed. But we would also be much poorer in spirit because the myriad marvellous smells of carp fishing mysteriously and gloriously trigger vivid emotional contacts with the past and unlock portals to halcyon days on the bank with beloved friends and family.

My final thought on the smells of carp fishing is always channel your inner Lieutenant Colonel William Kilgore from Apocalypse Now, by repeating this mantra at every sunrise: ‘I love the smell of belachan in the morning… smells like… Victory!’