Big Carp Legends: Albert Romp

By Albert Romp

One of carp angling’s characters and founder member of the Savay Syndicate – the ‘Looney Rota’ was named so because of him. Sally the carp was named by him when he landed the country’s biggest ever winter caught common, many moons ago, and for a while ‘Sally’ was the world’s best known carp. Inventor of the unhooking mat, Albert rocked the angling world a decade later by smashing the record brace with two huge ‘spawny’ monsters from the North Bay.

Pioneer of Cassien, the rivers Lot, Seine and Yonne and Bulgaria, Albert is a seasoned traveller, but his heart has always been at the banks of Savay. Now here is your chance to learn al about this iconic angler from his early beginnings at Furnace, Chobham and Pippingford, fishing alongside the icons of the seventies – Hutchinson, Little, Middleton and Maddocks in the Colne Valley, always with long-time fishing buddy, Bob Baker. One of carp angling’s good fellas – the amiable and very funny Albert Romp.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BigCarpMagazine
• Release date: Jun 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9780956980014

Book preview

Big Carp Legends

Albert Romp

First published in 2012

By Bountyhunter Publications

© Bountyhunter Publications 2012

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 978-0-9569800-1-4

Printed in Great Britain

Foreword by Rob Maylin

Albert is one of carp fishing’s great characters – a dedicated carp man but with a wicked sense of humour, as this book will prove. I first met Albert in 1983 on the banks of Savay. He was a founder member of the ‘Looney rota’; in fact I think the rota had been christened ‘Looney" by Rod Hutchinson because of Albert. He immediately struck me as one of life’s nice blokes; he was open about his fishing, loved a drink and had a funny story about every subject you could think of. We soon hit it off and became good friends.

If Albert was serious about anything, it was his fishing, and he and fishing buddy, Bob ‘Richworth’ Baker had been doing the business on their local waters Furnace, Pippingford and Chobham through the seventies, being more than a bit successful and attracting a name for themselves. When they became founder members at Savay, they joined the ‘big league’ and alongside Rod Hutchinson, Lenny Middleton, Kevin Maddocks, Andy Little, etc, carved a name for themselves in the carp fishing history books. By learning quickly and thinking outside the box, the duo was soon outfishing their previous idols.

Richworth Baits took Bob in another direction for while, but the two came back together to pioneer Cassien, the French rivers and Bulgaria whilst continuing at Savay, Redmire and the River Thames. Albert rewrote the Savay history books on more than one occasion and in more than one decade! He caught an unnamed winter common that was the biggest ever at that time, as his cover proves. The name he chose for her was ‘Sally’ and she became the best-known carp in the valley, the UK and probably for a while, the world.

A decade later, Albert shook the carp angling world with a huge brace of very spawny mirrors, smashing Steve Allcott’s previous record of Jack and The Parrot from Fox Pool. These two huge ‘deformities of nature’ were plastered across every fishing paper in the country.

These days Albert and Bob are still as keen as ever. Unfortunately for you and I they are fishing a strict no-publicity Colne Valley lake and consequently we’ve no pictures, but as you would expect from two of carp fishing’s great ambassadors they’re ‘avin it off’.

Now here’s your chance to share Albert’s carp fishing life, some of his great wind-ups and some of his great history photos from a byegone age. For me it was a privilege to share – I hope you enjoy it too…

The famous Thick Head Fish.

Introduction

Oxford Monsters and Floating Crust

Chucking clods of earth in was my first experience of groundbaiting to attract fish.

When I was a youngster I was always in ponds, rivers or ditches – anything that had water in it basically, because I just wanted to get some newts or frogs. Although I was interested in a lot of other wildlife, I was more interested in water. Beetles, bugs, larvae of bugs, anything that swam, I was interested in it. I was always coming home with cut feet, covered in mud and filth, getting in trouble with mum and dad.

I used to spend a lot of time on Hounslow Heath, which had the River Crane running through it. I think the first fish I ever caught were by hand, gudgeon and stone loach, which always interested me. It wasn’t until I was a little bit older and started knocking about with some of the kids at school when I was 12 or 13 that I found out that a couple of them used to go fishing. I went fishing with them the first time in a lake in Feltham, which is no longer there, but I’m going back over 50 years now. We started fishing for perch with floats and worms, sat there for a couple of hours, didn’t have any bites, and then as kids do, we started playing about. I don’t know how it started, but someone threw a stone at someone’s float and then someone threw another stone at someone else’s float, and then it wasn’t long before we were all throwing stones at each other’s floats and then it got a bit silly. We were pulling up big clods of earth and throwing them at the floats, and then we got bored with that and then suddenly, all the floats started going under. Unbeknown to us we had attracted the perch by chucking the clods of earth in, and that was my first experience of groundbaiting to attract fish.

I didn’t know much about rods; I borrowed one off one of my mates. It wouldn’t have been anything special, just a cheap one as we were only about 12-13 years of age. I remember the first bite that I had – my float went under, and it takes a bit of believing, but I didn’t have the patience to wind the fish in. Once I struck and felt the line go tight, I actually ran up the bank and dragged the fish out of the water; I was frightened it was going to get away. I ended up catching two or three that day, and that was my first experience of ever catching a fish on a rod.

From then on I think I was probably hooked on fishing. I can’t remember for sure, but I’m pretty sure my dad bought me my first rod, or I might have even saved my pocket money and bought it. Looking back, it was probably a Christmas present actually, because I remember going fishing on Christmas Day to a gravel pit for roach. I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing but managed to catch three, nothing special, probably about ¼lb’ers. It was a freezing cold, winter’s day and even by today’s standards that’s probably quite a feat, especially for a young kid who didn’t know what he was doing.

Then I progressed to different waters. Obviously I didn’t have a car, so I was going everywhere on my bike, putting my rod on the crossbar like kids did. I started to fish the River Thames because I’d heard there were big perch in certain areas. I started fishing for the perch using worm, and then I went to a few gravel pits in the local area around Colnbrook. I lived at Hounslow at the time, and it wasn’t that far to cycle to Colnbrook. There wasn’t the traffic about in those days and things weren’t such a problem. I started going to the gravel pits at Colnbrook, some of which are still there, and some of which have gone. They’re all full of big carp now, but back in those days they didn’t have the carp in them; there were just perch, pike, roach, even bream, and a 2lb bream was a very, very big fish in those days.

I caught quite a few perch up to maybe a 1lb, which for me, back in those days, was a very big fish. I was catching the odd eel amongst them, and really enjoying myself. It was about that time, at the age of 13, that I met a man called John Beadle. He’s dead now, but his nickname was Trill; he was known as Trill Beadle. He had an Alsatian dog that I used to take for a walk for a pound a week. He happened to be a fisherman and he started taking me fishing with him to various venues. I used to spend a lot of time around Oxford on the Thames, and Shillingford is one of the main places he took me to on the Thames. I don’t know if anyone reading this knows the Shillingford area or the Oxford area – there’s a lovely stretch of the Thames there, but back then, it was a lot more wild and less fished than it is now.

I was fishing there one day on worms, float fishing and catching a few small bream, roach, and the odd perch on my match rod and 4lb line when I got a bite that bent the rod double and the line just snapped. Obviously I assumed it was a big perch, and 20 minutes later, on worm again, up against the reeds and lilies, I lost another big one. I lost about three that same day. I wasn’t prepared to lose any more so the next time I went back I stepped up to 6lb line, lost another two or three, and I thought, these are very, very big perch. Eventually I caught one and it was a carp, about 4lb or possibly 4½lb, but to me back in those days, a 4lb carp was an absolute monster, because people just didn’t catch carp. We heard about the odd carp here and there, but there were very few lakes that had carp in, unlike today where you’ve got very few lakes that haven’t got carp in them. It wasn’t the size of the