They Don't Make 'Em Like That Anymore - Nostell Priory Big 'Un

In a county rich in carp-fishing history, there aren’t too many fish in the same class as the mirror that we’re profiling here. In fact, we could happily make the case for this one being the best mirrors that Yorkshire has ever produced. It lived out its days in the grounds of Nostell Priory (an estate near Wakefield, which dates back to 1654), a property the National Trust describes as, ‘One of the great houses of Northern England’.

The chain of three lakes in the grounds are fed by the Hardwick Beck and at one stage were rumoured to have held many hundreds of carp. The upper lake is the one that went on to produce the huge mirror, although there are carp in all three. Simon Crow remembers seeing carp in the no-fishing middle lake, and after a fruitless time looking for carp in the upper lake sneaked under the bridge that separated the two lakes and threw a handful of tigers on a spot close to where a couple of twenty-pounders had been moving. The fish immediately dropped on the bait and cleaned the lot out! Simon speculated that they’d possibly never been fished for, or if they had it would have been a very long time ago indeed.

The earliest picture we have of the big mirror was in around 1986 with the late Nick Elliott when the mirror weighed just 15lb. It’s likely that the controlling club’s neglect of the venue (it wasn’t stocked with carp because the club was match-orientated and the lake was left largely overgrown apart from a few swims) that the fish eventually prospered in there. 

Over the years carp died off and weren’t replaced (there were some rumours that fish were stolen too) and the stock dwindled. By the middle of the 1990s though, the Nostell carp were starting to attract attention from some of the best anglers around and the big mirror had exceeded 30lb for the first time. Top Yorkshire rod, Lee Walton remembers what attracted him to the lake around that time:

“For me, it was one of Yorkshire’s finest-looking thirties at the time, during a period when thirties were very thin on the ground. I’d been for a look at the lake a few times before fishing it and found it to be very neglected and under-fished. Just to get to the lake involved a long walk and remember, this was before barrows became commonplace!” 

Lee’s campaign on the estate lake lasted just 18 nights, during which time he landed 18 carp, topped by the big mirror at over 30lb. He estimated the stock to be around 50-60 carp at the time and Lee and two friends even had a few repeat captures during the time they spent at Nostell. 

The long walk aside, one of the huge difficulties that the lake presented was that it was days-only fishing, dictated by ‘lighting-up’ times (when the streetlights are switched on and off) rather than dawn or dusk. This led to significantly reduced fishing time outside the warmer months. In fact, Simon Crow tended to avoid the lake between late September and mid-March, because the days were so short and simply getting to the lake involved driving 50 miles for him. 

Simon’s time on the lake started in 2007 but he’d watched the progress of the great fish after he started fishing in Yorkshire in 1997. 

“When I moved to Yorkshire there were only two forties in the whole county,” Simon remembers, “The Motorway Pond big ‘un and the Nostell Priory fish. I couldn’t get a ticket for the Motorway Pond, so Nostell was to be the target.” 

By the time 2007 came around, the big Nostell mirror had been 40lb for ten years or more and things had changed in the lake. The 50 to 60 carp that Lee Walton described had now been whittled down to just a handful. At the time, Simon thought that there were around 25 fish in the lake, but more recently has come to believe that there were even fewer (more of which later); perhaps as few as 15 in 20-acres. The distinct lack of carp had meant that the fish which remained had thrived, with the biggest a consistent forty and others such as Starburst and the Big Lin reaching weights in the mid-thirties. 

“They were easy to catch, but hard to find,” Crowy told us, “Quite often I’d be driving over for the day, simply to find fish but they could be frustratingly elusive.” 

Testament to that is the fact that Simon only saw the big one three times during the three years he spent at Nostell. One of those sightings was memorable for all the wrong reasons. Simon found the big mirror sunbathing in an extremely shallow, silty channel behind the island, with a good proportion of its back sticking out of the water. He tried to flick a rig with a tiny lead attached towards the fish, but succeeded only in hitting it! It spooked, circled round before settling back in exactly the same spot again. Perhaps it was the elusive nature of the big one that leant it a certain mysteriousness. 

“All its life that fish had been surrounded by mystery and bullsh*t,” Crowy said, “Rumours that it was dead constantly circulated online and mere mention of Nostell would have people suggesting that the prospective angler would be beaten up, or have his tyres done. When I was actually fishing over there, lads on the Northern Angling Forum were openly laughing at me, gleefully pointing out that I was wasting my time and that the fish was long dead.” 

It wasn’t dead though and, arguably, Simon caught the great fish during its absolute peak. Weighing 43lb 6oz when he banked it in 2009, the Nostell mirror displayed the perfect mix of age and condition. It did reach a top weight of 45lb exactly but just a year after Simon’s encounter with it, Darren McGee caught the big ‘un at 38lb 8oz; the great fish was starting to decline. It was found dead later that year (even though the forums tried to discredit the fact) and closed a chapter that will live long in the memory of those plugged into the Yorkshire big-carp scene. 

The lake has suffered otter predation in more recent times, through which tragedy light has been shed on the actual stock of the lake. Remember we said that Crowy had scaled back his idea on carp numbers? Well, he’s all the more convinced that the unknown or super-elusive fish that were rumoured to live in the lake (and which were factored into his estimate of 25 fish) were just myths since the fish that have fallen prey to the otters were all the same carp that he knew for sure were in the lake back in 2009.