We Need To Talk About... Advice!

In the past, where I’m from, no one told you a thing. Edges were closely guarded secrets and a frosty wind blew upon those revealing details of any catches. These days quite the opposite is true: you can’t move for news and advice on the latest edge. We’re relentlessly spoon-fed succulent tips and tactics. So much information and advice that it’s hard to settle, leaving you in a permanent state of anxiety about what tackle, tactics and bait to use next, if heaven forbid you should go a couple of sessions without a bite.

And do not think this tsunami of advice is only a problem for beginners? Not at all. The curious thing about fishing is that despite what we like to think, we are all beginners, no matter how long we have been trudging the banks. You see, fishing, and carp fishing in particular, is not like snooker, darts or golf, where it is possible to attain a tedious level of perfection. The older a carp angler gets, the more they realise how much there is to learn, the better they become, and the more conscious they are of their shortcomings. 

Right now, on waters up and down the country, anglers are gathered in swims, sharing brews, beers and herbal cigs, giving and receiving opinions on how the next bite will be achieved. They’re talking up their chances with pet theories, dissection of rumour and even, on rare occasions, a genuine edge based on insightful reflection of experience. The trick to navigating your way through this maze, sorting out golden nuggets from the deliberately misleading and downright delusional and sussing out why the advice is being offered. 

Let’s start with the ‘hush hush’ reality of modern carping: most advice is thinly disguised marketing. And just between me and you, a fair percentage of what you are told is more about catching anglers than fish. Yes, the standard of tackle and bait from leading brands is light years ahead of the gear we had in the past, but I’d still be happy to use one of my Geoff Kemp Dairy Cream milk protein specials on an eye-tied Hair rig with a four boilie PVA stringer. And still do use the rig and bait that led to the downfall of my first twenty from the Woolpack more years ago than I care to remember: sweetcorn on the Hair with a size 8 and a soft braided hooklink. It’s easy to think the next purchase will improve your catch results, but all too often, while your swim is crammed with shiny new gear, your net remains as empty as your bank balance.

And I must mention a particularly pernicious type of advice, usually offered from fellow syndicate members, designed to throw you off the scent, to deliberately mislead. It comes in many forms, but quite often starts with something like: “I’ve seen a few fish showing up the other end. I was just about to move up myself, but you can go in there if you fancy it.” Which roughly translated means: I’m on them here and don’t want you fishing within a hundred metres. A variation might be: “I had one this morning on a spot 25 wraps out towards that tree,” which means: I caught it in the margin down to my left. 

And of course beware of celebrity anglers providing details of the boilie responsible for colossal catches, when in fact it was the humble tiger nut that did it. On the naughty step, please!

A common trend on all syndicates is the member who goes from zero to hero in the space of a single capture. One second we’re on 24hr watch, checking trees at the back of the swim, anticipating their tackle appearing on eBay, talking them out of retreating to the nearest muddy carp puddle syndicate, and then suddenly when one of the big girls hangs themselves on their flip flop rig and they are dishing out advice to anyone who can stand listening to how it’s done, how they’ve cracked the carping code. As a rule, advice from these sources can be largely ignored.

And then there’s just plain bad advice, which is nothing new in carp fishing. Vintage nuggets include: they only eat par-boiled potatoes; you need to use donkey chokers to catch big carp; and they don’t take floaters in here. As well as more modern fallacies like Zigs don’t work at night and they won’t take a bottom bait. Sometimes we get so desperate, even the most bizarre advice can seem to offer a way out of the blanking blues. Such as, get the wife to rub your hookbaits in her hands—female pheromones are superb attractants. And on the back of the recent hormone rumours, I’ve heard of one angler experimenting with rubbing his boilies in more intimate places for an edge.

This is not to say all advice is bad—far from it. But you must wade through the dross, ignore directions into cul de sacs and be ever vigilant for that one piece of information that links up the fragments and gives you a way to outwit your scaly prey. Of course, such advice doesn’t come along very often, maybe a handful of occasions in a carping career. I am old enough to remember the publication of Carp Fever in 1981 when the revolutionary Hair rig was given to everyone. It was like discovering fire or inventing the wheel! 

I also have a vivid memory of standing in John Wilson’s tackle shop in Norwich in 1983 when he told me about the benefits of a semi-fixed bolt rig. Once I plucked up the courage to bin the running rigs, it transformed my twitchy takes into savage bites. And in more recent years, I scoffed at my mates sharpening their hooks, until I tried it, and couldn’t quite believe how many more pick-ups I got. 

The inescapable truth is that all carp anglers die on the cusp of a great leap forward in their understanding, still searching for the ultimate edge. And so, we are all sponges of advice, hoping the next snippet of information will lift the fog, shed certainty on how to consistently catch big elusive carp. And on that point, only last year, a well-known angler gave me a fabulous piece of advice, a huge edge. What you need to do is… sorry, I’ve run over my word count, next month, maybe…