Big Carp Legends: Ritchie McDonald

By Ritchie McDonald

Ritchie McDonald

There is no doubt that Ritchie McDonald is a carp fishing legend. He dominated the headlines in the eighties when he caught the Yateley North Lake Forty (later to be christened Bazil) at a weight two pounds above the official British record held by Richard Walker. By refusing to claim the record, as he believed Chris Yates was in fact the true record holder, he stamped his mark on the record fish committee and proved to everyone that he had great character and consequently earned the respect of the carp fishing world.

Already in the headlines, his next assault was in France at the recently pioneered Lake Cassien. We all read about his exploits weekly in the Angling Times; Ritchie was on a roll, but in actual fact this roll had began ten years before the big Yateley fish.

In the seventies, Ritchie was the first angler to catch a twenty pounder from Redmire in winter and the first angler ever to catch thirty twenties in a season. By the early eighties his tally of 35lb-plus carp was light years ahead of his contemporaries, and he took his good friend Rod Hutchinson under his wing in an attempt to land Rod’s first big carp.

Ritchie earned the reputation as the big carp hunter of the day, and not without reason. Longfield fell to his approach, and a season on Ashlea Pool saw him soon become the lake record holder with Peter Mohan pushing this publicity-shy phenomenon to tell the world of his captures.

Once in the Colne Valley, Ritchie once again ruled the roost, smashing the exclusive Conservative Club venue, catching Sally from Savay and conquering Harefield. But it was Yateley again where Ritchie was back in the headlines, catching the impossible by landing the Pad Lake Forty (Jumbo) and Heather from the Car Park in the same week.

This was not the end of Ritchie’s story, as he was also to capture ‘The Royal’ from his local Pen Pond before he hung up his rods and was lost to carp fishing forever.

I consider myself lucky to be one of Ritchie’s close friends and to have fished alongside him on several well-known waters in the UK. Ritchie is without a doubt a ‘one off’, a great angler of his time, who was way ahead of his time in understanding the carp and how their minds worked.

Although he no longer fishes for carp, Ritchie enjoyed carp fishing during the great years of the seventies and eighties, and he would be the first to agree with me that he had the best of it, and that the good old days could never be repeated. Readers of this volume should please bear in mind that the content of each chapter is a taped interview with some chapters containing extracts from Ritchie’s own diary, also recorded on a Dictaphone.

The text has not been proofread to death or ghostwritten. We tried to encapsulate the soul of the angler. It should be read as though Ritchie himself were sitting in the bivvy with you one long winter’s night on the lake telling you, in his own unique way, of his adventures.

This is classic Ritchie with the odd swear word, disjointed ramblings and arrogant self-belief, told as only one of big carp’s true legends could. I hope you enjoy it...

• Language: English
• Publisher: BigCarpMagazine
• Release date: Apr 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9780951512715

Book preview

Big Carp Legends

First published in 2011

By Bountyhunter Publications

© Bountyhunter Publications 2011

All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN 978-0-9515127-1-5

Printed in Great Britain

Big Carp Legends

Ritchie McDonald

Following in Ritchie’s footsteps, the North Lake forty.

Foreword by Rob Maylin

There is no doubt that Ritchie McDonald is a carp fishing legend. He dominated the headlines in the eighties when he caught the Yateley North Lake Forty (later to be christened Bazil) at a weight two pounds above the official British record held by Richard Walker. By refusing to claim the record, as he believed Chris Yates was in fact the true record holder, he stamped his mark on the record fish committee and proved to everyone that he had great character and consequently earned the respect of the carp fishing world.

Already in the headlines, his next assault was in France at the recently pioneered Lake Cassien. We all read about his exploits weekly in the Angling Times; Ritchie was on a roll, but in actual fact this roll had began ten years before the big Yateley fish.

In the seventies, Ritchie was the first angler to catch a twenty pounder from Redmire in winter and the first angler ever to catch thirty twenties in a season. By the early eighties his tally of 35lb-plus carp was light years ahead of his contemporaries, and he took his good friend Rod Hutchinson under his wing in an attempt to land Rod’s first big carp.

Ritchie earned the reputation as the big carp hunter of the day, and not without reason. Longfield fell to his approach, and a season on Ashlea Pool saw him soon become the lake record holder with Peter Mohan pushing this publicity-shy phenomenon to tell the world of his captures.

Once in the Colne Valley, Ritchie once again ruled the roost, smashing the exclusive Conservative Club venue, catching Sally from Savay and conquering Harefield. But it was Yateley again where Ritchie was back in the headlines, catching the impossible by landing the Pad Lake Forty (Jumbo) and Heather from the Car Park in the same week.

This was not the end of Ritchie’s story, as he was also to capture ‘The Royal’ from his local Pen Pond before he hung up his rods and was lost to carp fishing forever.

I consider myself lucky to be one of Ritchie’s close friends and to have fished alongside him on several well-known waters in the UK. Ritchie is without a doubt a ‘one off’, a great angler of his time, who was way ahead of his time in understanding the carp and how their minds worked.

Although he no longer fishes for carp, Ritchie enjoyed carp fishing during the great years of the seventies and eighties, and he would be the first to agree with me that he had the best of it, and that the good old days could never be repeated. Readers of this volume should please bear in mind that the content of each chapter is a taped interview with some chapters containing extracts from Ritchie’s own diary, also recorded on a Dictaphone.

The text has not been proofread to death or ghostwritten. We tried to encapsulate the soul of the angler. It should be read as though Ritchie himself were sitting in the bivvy with you one long winter’s night on the lake telling you, in his own unique way, of his adventures.

This is classic Ritchie with the odd swear word, disjointed ramblings and arrogant self-belief, told as only one of big carp’s true legends could. I hope you enjoy it...

One from the golden age, the Pad Lake Forty.

Introduction

Staines in the Early Years

As a youngster I was shown a 6 pounder by a stranger and it’s still the biggest fish I have ever seen to this day

Let’s go back to the very, very beginning, shall we? My first day’s fishing was in 1964, after my mum had won a fishing kit at bingo. My neighbour upstairs, John Taylor, had a father who used to like going fishing, and when my mum gave me this fishing kit, young Taylor came down and said, Do you want to come fishing with me and my dad? I said, Yeah, ok, great, but I didn’t have a clue how to do it.

Anyway, they took me to the canal and basically set me up. I didn’t have any floats or anything; I just had the rod and a reel. They set me up with this float that was like a pike float, and we were fishing for roach. So Mr Taylor said to me, Listen, when the float goes under, just strike as hard as you can. I remember looking across and thinking what a horrible place the canal was. No disrespect to any match anglers, but fishing a canal; there are no trees to climb, which I wasn’t bothered about in those days, but later on of course I was.

Anyway, all of a sudden the float started bobbing and moving along, and Mr Taylor looked round and said, Strike that, strike that! I said, Why, it’s not gone under? He said, It doesn’t matter, just strike it. So I hit it as hard as I could, and it went over a garden fence, and I thought, bloody hell! I climbed up the fence; this geezer was mowing his lawn, and the fish was flapping about in the grass. I said, Excuse me mate, can you give me my fish back please? So that was my first experience of fishing, and I didn’t like it at all. I thought, I can’t be bothered with it because, you know, you’re just looking at a thin bit of water with no scenery, no nothing, and it was really boring. I thought, I’m never going to go fishing again.

Anyway, a few weeks later John came down and he said, Do you want to come fishing with me and my dad? We’re going to a country park; it’s a lake. I said, Yeah alright then. So anyway, we went to this country park and walked around the lake. Mr Taylor started setting up, John started setting up, and I looked at some geezer across the lake and I thought, why is he doing something different to everybody else? I’m going to go and have a chat with him.

So I went round, but I don’t know who the guy was, and we didn’t exchange names and stuff. I said What you fishing for, mate? He said, I’m fishing for carp, His rods were high up in the air over lily pads. I’ll tell you how serious an angler he could have been, because basically his rods were like we fished back in the 80’s when we fished the heavy leads. We fished our rods high, and he was doing it then to get his line over the lily pads. He had a keep net out because they didn’t have sacks in those days, and I said, Have you caught any? He said, Yeah, I’ve got a 6lb’er in there, and so I said, Can I have a look, please? Anyway, he pulled the net in and it was the most glorious thing I’d ever seen. It’s still the biggest fish I’ve ever seen to this day, because I was a youngster, and it seemed huge. I thought, that’s it for me; I’m having some carp without a doubt.

So anyway, I didn’t know anything about fishing; I mean my hooklinks were tied on with shoelace knots! Honestly, I didn’t have a clue, and I didn’t read and write in those days. So I went back to John and said, Listen, I’m going to fish for these carp, and he said, No, no, you won’t be able to catch them; they’re too hard to catch. I said, I’m gonna catch these carp, I’m telling you now straight.

So as time went on, another young lad (I’m sorry mate, but I can’t remember your name, I really do apologise) used to come to my block of flats on a Friday night. He’d wait downstairs with his gear and I’d lower my stuff down over the balcony when my mum had gone to bed. We walked to the country park to go carp fishing, but it was a long, long time before I actually started catching carp. In the end I said to my mum, I’m going fishing at four in the morning, and she’d say, Ah, that’s not a problem. I got my flask and everything sorted, but I was actually going at one o’clock when she’d gone to bed. So that’s when my carp fishing experiences started.

My grandad was a salmon fisherman, but not with rod and line; he used to tickle them and throw them out of the water. He said, Have you started fishing, son? I said, Yes grandad, and he said, Well I’ll give you a little bit of line. He gave me a length of line about 3ft long with a lump of lead that you get off a roof and the biggest hook you’ve ever seen in your life. He said, That’s what you need. Alright, grandad... I mean, I didn’t have any knowledge in those days, but I knew that wasn’t the right rig to use.

So anyway, we started getting bites using worms. We had a big grass area in front of the block of flats, and we used to go out in the evenings and put water and Fairy Liquid down, and the worms would come up and we’d collect them. I’d get bites, but I’d lose everything I hooked. Then one day some guy came along and he said, You’re not tying the right knots, mate. He basically showed me how to tie a knot, and it took me a few times to get the hang of it. My mum said one day, You don’t catch any fish do you? I said, I have, mum. I’d caught several fish at this time up to about 2½-3lb perhaps, but she didn’t believe me, and I thought, right, ok. Anyway, I caught a 3lb’er one day, and I know now it was terribly wrong to do so, but I didn’t know then; we used to weigh our fish through the gills on the little Sampson scales. Anyway, I thought, I’m going take this fish home. It was a least an hour’s walk home with a tackle box on my back.

I wrapped the fish up in a wet cloth, put it in my tackle box, and brought it home. As I opened my tackle box up, the fish flapped. I thought, oh, it’s still alive, so I ran the bath and put it in there. Anyway, I was sitting there all proud, watching the TV, waiting for mum to come home so I could say, I’ve caught a big carp here. Anyway, she came home, and cor, did I get it in the neck or what? She asked me, What the hell’s this in the bath? I said, It’s one of those carp that you don’t think I can catch. I tried to feed it bread as well, but it wouldn’t have any of it. It kept coming up to the top, gulping, and of course it was short of oxygen, which I didn’t know about at the time, and there I was, trying to feed it