I don’t like to bang on. Whinge, wine criticise people for the sake of it. Trash someone’s spirit or session because they are catching and I’m not. Everyone’s Carp fishing journey is personal, it’s got jack shit to do with me or anyone else. Until it starts effecting my journey that is and even then, I tend not to say anything, it’s a waste of time. Picture the scene It’s a quiet late summer afternoon. We are all out of Lockdown and allowed back on the Lakes. We are like kids on Xmas morning. Me and a couple of good mates have been planning for weeks, we know where we want to be and how we would attack it if it’s on! We get to the lake, late but we are there and on the big fish lake. It is 11 am ish. It’s not fishing weather, the air temperature is about 29c, its flat calm and every carp in the lake is sunning its self just under the surface or milling about in the margin. We got to the water late as there was a que a mile long at the gates. So, on arrival we did the math, weighed up the % chances of catching in the afternoon heat. We all made the call, let’s not flick the Zigs out lads, let’s find a margin and get the nets up. Leave the water alone until dark. Let’s not disturb anything. We had purposely moved into an area that other anglers do not favour. Its snaggy, lots of detritus on the bottom due to the huge overhanging trees, there is almost no chance of an overhead cast at all. Tucked away in a corner out of sight. We have no tackle set up at all, bivvies’ are stored in the truck, we have our small Nash chairs, a Preston Innovations match fishing catapult each, and a bag of yellow corn & casters. Maybe 6 handfuls in total. We are quietly sitting behind our cam nets feeding single bits of sweetcorn & the odd caster to fish under the margins in our swims. Whispering to each other to report a Big Carp here and a Tench there. So, we are all good, the world is as it was pre-Lockdown, we are all out fishing. Bliss. The only problem was thus. There was a spare peg to our right, now then, we could have been a bunch of total dickheads and stuck a bucket on it and pretended that we were waiting for a mate to turn up. However, we are not in the habit of being a small group of clicky dick heads, we prefer to help if we can, rather than destroy stuff. So, we left it free. After a few hours of watching the Rudd fighting off the big Roach in an effort to get to the free offerings first. The odd Tench moving around having a nosy, and some very fat scaly Carp milling about, we herd the unmistakable sound of car tyres gently crunching along the lane. We just looked at each other with that knowing feeling. A Big Audi Estate A6 pulled up. 50k’s worth of machine. Click, slam, car door well and truly closed and the usual. “How’s it going guys”? Good mate, I whispered. After commenting on the Cam Nets and asking us if we were in the Army he went for a look at the spare swim. He came back and asked me at the top of his voice if it was free!! The water in my margin shuddered as the fish started to get spooky, one of them moved out. Every cell in my body wanted to say no, it’s taken he’s on his way down. But I could not do it, it’s not our way. Yes mate, its free I said. The fella strolled back to his beast of an Audi and started unloading £6000 / £8000 quid’s worth of tackle out of the back of the thing. You name it he had it, latest Ridge Monkey Escape XF1 Bivvy. Holdalls, bags, boxes, potions, a f*****g huge bed chair in its own bag. Enough perfumed 16 mill balls in airdrying bags to raise the level of Burghfield Main Lake! It’s all being loaded furiously onto his shiny new Electric Tackle Porter, it’s all shiny, new & expensive. Northern Tackle Show condition and lots of it! Noise from the off. Lots of it!He walked past me with a smile and a nod, like a proud new mum pushing her pram. I’m sat there, behind a battered old cam net that I had acquired (if you know what I mean), before leaving the Army in the early 90’s, a Nash chair which I bought in the 1980’s a £5 quid match catty & some corn from Aldi’s, 40p a tin and a few casters. Yes, in the back of my Range Rover I have some of the best vintage tackle ever made, 4 X SS 3000’s from 1985 original condition, Diawa Amorphous X 3, Harrison Ballista’s X 3, Jim Gibbinson Eclipse X 4 etc etc etc. Yawn. My point is thus, its where it needs to be at this time of day, while I’m out feeding a margin! In the truck, out of the way so that we do not spook all of the fish out of the margins where they are so much easier to catch on a highly pressured Big Fish day ticket water. It’s a warm day, after checking Net Weather is going to stay warm all night. No need for a Bivvy at all. 1 rod, landing net, cradle, brew kit, TT Box, and if I sleep (which is rare on a single overnight session), I will grab my bed-chair, maybe. We all watched our new friend in total disbelief as a tripod went up, and a camouflaged bucket was placed into the hole. For F***s sake, my mate whispered to me, here we go. Then out came what can only be described as the biggest Spomb I have ever seen, I thought they only did Small / Medium & Large. This was a Dutch style huge shiny white bastard of a thing, looking like something out of Russia’s space programme. I’m sure I heard it growling at one point! TT, go over and have a word Johno whispered, please mate or we are all f****d. So, I crawled backwards on my hands and knees until I could stand up without spooking my resident fish. I walked over quietly. Mate you do know that you have fish in your margins, don’t you? No mate, I fish here all the time you need to be in the middle Son. My heart sank, I could literal feel the blood draining out of my system.I looked into his green bin, Danny would have been very proud of him. Full to the top with Munga!!! All kinds of magical potions, stinking of some fruity magical fish catching secret elixir, sold at £12 a bottle. I tried one last time, mate I said you really should pop over and have a look at my margin, it’s a game changer. Please come and have a look,

almost begging him at this point. No, your all right Son, I have been at it a while, he said to me smiling. Well. The fella went on to smash the granny out of the water in lots of different places due to the fact that his casting was a retarded joke. Kilos of crap were sent smashing into the water none of it in the same place, 20 yards / 30 yards / 10 yards. Left, right, up down he even managed to leave the bail arm on, on one occasion and fed his margin with an almighty crash. I could not believe that his top section did not let go, I think it was a Fox rod, I do not know what Fox are using but it was seriously impressive, it bent his rod double, the rocket hit his margin at lightning speed. It was truly disturbing. We looked on with total amazement as a lunatic destroyed our quiet corner of paradise in 30 minutes flat. Our margins emptied instantly, we could see bow waves as the carp moved off and headed straight for the safety of a very big willow tree on the far side of the water. An area that already had anglers in it, with no free pegs, so we could not even move to them. We move, we think nothing of moving to showing fish several times a day. In the middle of the night, at any time at all. Big Carp crashes out on the other side of any lake and the peg in front of its free, it’s a race to get to it in any weather. No amount of rain will stop us from going. Fish of all descriptions were bolting out of sheer panic in every direction. Birds flying out of the trees above us, it was bedlam. It was 1500hrs ish, blistering sunshine and nurse Ratchets out patient has arrived. He just had to do it, he just had to let everyone on the water know he had arrived, in style with a mountain of tackle and he is Havin IT! He had been glued to Sky TV during Lockdown watching Danny and his boys and he was now ready for action. He had been allowed out of the house without his Carer and he was on the lake. Out of control and alone. Mate, he absolutely trashed the place, smashed it to pieces over and over and f*****g over again. It was a relentless display of total madness, bait going everywhere, Spomb opening mid-flight, he stood on his spot grunting and huffing. Stamping of feet when the inevitable went pear shaped in a frenzied, manic attempt to get his bait into the water. It was absolutely bizarre. After about 10 minutes of staring blankly into space, I took my first sip of a cold pint of Lager (Do as your told. Better known as Stella) and we all burst out laughing at the same time. Side splitting laughter the kind that makes you cry. We had decided to simply stop fishing. We had exited the swims and we now sat on the bank next to our vehicles. We always a carry a few tins to celebrate a big fish with. Contemplating what we had all just witnessed it was quite simply strange and totally unnecessary. In conclusion Looking back at it, its hilariously funny today. I sincerely hope that the fella went on to catch something after all of that misguided effort. He deserved to catch nothing, however that’s very bad Karma so I really hope that something decided to hang its self that day and managed to get something on film to show the missis and kids. If Fox need a Rod Tester he is your man guys, that Rod should be in 4 or 5 pieces today, it survived. Impressive stuff. One day on a local sports field and he would have himself casting in a straight line and accurately. A lesson on the fundamentals of water craft and how important it is, would have the fella leaving all of that stuff in his car until it’s all actually needed. Which is usually never. Give me 1 rod, a decent location, a margin shelf and a bag of corn / hemp / casters / tigers over a long cast any day of the week. Yes, I can cast my old school Zig rigs as far as I can cast a bottom bait without it tangling. The question is why do it, if it’s not necessary? Why set everything you own up? Why attempt to fish the middle of a small lake? Why fill it in?Why? Why? Why? The question is always Why before setting up. It was a real pity, because we all had a few lumps in our margin on that day, they were calm, not spooky, milling about picking up and blowing out the odd bit of corn / caster. They were going nowhere at all, all the new fella needed to do was go and do likewise. If he had asked we would have lent him a cam net, we always have a few spares. He could have had some of our casters and corn, we would have tied him one of the deadliest margin rigs out there. The Mini Bungee Rig, if he could not make one for himself we would have shown him how and tied one for him. All he needed to do was ask for help and we would have helped him. No questions asked, nothing wanted in return. It’s nice to be nice. Good Karma points. But no, he fishes it all the time, he is on the ball. He has got it sussed. He has actually been at it 5 minutes and unfortunately it showed. It’s not hard to spot. The Mini Bungee Rig He would have caught I’m certain of it, we would have caught, I’m certain of that, it’s our local water, we have been fishing it for 15 odd years. We have emptied the margins on more than one occasion over the years. All would have been well with the world again on that day. Pure Insanity ensued. Thinking back to that early Post-Lockdown session of 2020 we all still laugh about it when we are on the phone to each other talking Carp stuff. However, at the time it was soul destroying. Catching Big Carp is hard enough as it is, without people making it impossible for you to catch them. Anyhow, good luck to the fella. Tight Lines for 2021.