Savay: John Harry

By John Harry

Laying in the very heart of the prolific Colne Valley in Denham Bucks, and nestling between the Grand Union Canal and the River Colne, is situated the legendary Savay Lake which has everything a serious carp angler could desire... and much more besides.

Never has any fishery in Great Britain produced so many different 30lbs plus carp, including an incredible largest brace at 45lbs 4ozs and 39lb 12ozs, a largest brace of commons at 32lbs 4ozs and 28lbs 14ozs, and for many years one of the largest common carp ever caught in England. John Harry’s account of his 12 years at Savay, since the lake was first opened to the general public in 1980, and since the first syndicate was formed, make fascinating reading.

His exploits are recorded with accuracy and give an instructional insight into the secrets behind his considerable success. There are over 100 photographs reproduced in colour, and together with John Harry’s own line drawings, diagrams and wildlife sketches form an exquisite kaleidoscopic view of his time at Savay Lake.

Note from Rob Maylin

In 2008 I met up with John at his home in Ruislip to interview him about the three decades he has spent at Savay. In this revised edition, the new chapter ‘Savay Now and Then’ describes not only his life on the banks of this historic venue, but his long term friendship with Peter Broxup, the new stock of Savay and its future in the hands of its present owner Tom Banks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BigCarpMagazine
• Release date: Feb 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9780951948507

Book preview

PART I

1 – SAVAY LAKE

I first saw Savay in the summer of 1980. I had just started fishing again after a break of almost 15 years. I had a map of the Colne Valley and Savay was one of the lakes I had marked off to have a look at. I knew nothing about the lake or of the fish it held, nor did 1 know anybody fishing there, so when I pulled into the car park that first time little did I know how much it was to change my life, the years I would spend upon its banks, the good friends I would make there, the good sessions and the bad. I have fished Savay for 12 years now and it still excites me. Although I am a member of other great waters in the Colne Valley for me nothing can compare with Savay. If I were a millionaire the only difference it would make to me is I would spend even more time on its banks.

I remember the first time I walked around the lake, it was mid July and a lovely sunny day. I thought to myself what a beautiful place, big and mature, with leafy elms, willows, and oaks. Acres and acres of water broken up by islands with lily pads fringing them. The margins were full of reeds and rushes. The banks at that time looked like they’d had very little attention. It was the first year it had been opened to the public, I was to learn of this later. There were a few carp anglers fishing at the time but so far I had not spoken to anyone. I had walked the length of the canal bank and back to the North Bay, but I had seen no fish. I made my way back to the car park, I thought I would have a walk along the road bank. When I got level with the ‘Point Swim’ a fish jumped out 25 yards off the point and crashed back into the water, then came straight out again tail walking – I was looking straight at it. A big bronze mirror, what a fish! Truly a ‘whacker’. I think it was that fish more than anything else that hooked me on Savay. I stood there looking and hoping I would see it again but it never showed. A young boy came walking along the path with his tackle, I asked him how to go about getting a ticket to fish, half expecting him to tell me it was a club water and private, but he explained you just fish and the bailiff comes around and you buy your ticket from him. I thought I would stay and have a word with him. The bailiff at that time was Stuart Veretey. I found him a nice helpful sort of a fellow. It was Stuart who informed me the lake had been opened to the public for the first time that year, and that a new carp syndicate was also fishing the water. I asked if there was any chance of a place in the syndicate and was told the books were closed as far as the syndicate was concerned. Stuart went on to say the syndicate had been handpicked and consisted of some of the leading carp anglers in the country. He said Redland, who are the lake owners, were trying to assess just how many big carp were in Savay. The best he could suggest for me was a season ticket. I asked if the season ticket would enable me to fish at night and was told there was no night fishing except for the carp syndicate and the Ruislip Club, which had been on the water for many years and added that he was a member.

I bought a season ticket, and living only 20 minutes from the lake at the time I would be able to fish a couple of evenings a week as well as fishing at weekends. From what Stuart had told me I thought I may have just stumbled on to something a bit special with this lake.

Savay Lake has always been owned by Redlands. The Ruislip Club had rented it from them on a yearly basis and have held the fishing rights exclusively since 1950, but in 1980 they were to share part of the lake with the carp syndicate and the public at large in the form of day ticket anglers. However, Ruislip Club still had part of the lake to themselves, the ‘Long Island’ was still theirs, as was the ‘Small Island ‘in the ‘Cottage Bay’ and the ‘Colne Bank’ was still Ruislip’s exclusively, in 1980, but in1981 the Colne Bank was to be shared with the carp syndicate. That same year Ruislip did a mutual exchange with the syndicate. Ruislip gave the ‘Small Island’ in exchange for a point of land known as ‘Alcatraz’. Ruislip wanted ‘Alcatraz’ as it was situated in a good position for them to install a raft system over to their ‘Long Island’. They have a second raft system on the ‘Long Island’ that takes them over to the’Colne Bank’. This raft system works well and gives their club members easy access to their fishing. The rafts which are the club’s property are kept in compounds under lock and key. These boundaries are still the same today, 1992. It all seems to work well as there are no disagreements between the club and the present syndicate.

It was the Ruislip club who first introduced the carp at Savay. Stocking it that first year (1950) they had started with 300 carp, purchased from Don Leney, the same man who supplied the original stock fish for Redmire Pool. The following year Ruislip put in 300 more of these Leney fish. Over the next 10 years or so literally hundreds of Dutch, Belgian and Italian carp were stocked at regular intervals. Club records show 2,300 carp were put in Savay. However, most of these fish were fingerlings, so therefore the mortality rate, I think, would have been very high. It would take a very brave man indeed to say how many carp were still present in Savay in 1981, after just one years fishing I heard several different figures mentioned from as little as 70 to as many as 150. To be honest I never had a clue, at that time I was in no position to argue. But I must say, I found it hard to believe anybody could come close to knowing how many carp were present in just one seasons fishing.

I had my season ticket and was raring to go. That big mirror I had seen tail walking had given me all the incentive I needed to have a serious try for the carp. At that time I did not really specialise in carp, being an all round angler, but did like to fish for one species at a time, having fished for pike, eels, bream and carp but it was years since I had done any fishing at all. The carp tackle I possessed then was not really suitable for such a big water. I had intended to kit myself out properly for this lake, but the first time I fished there I still only had my old gear. I had given it a bit of thought and had decided to fish the ‘Pads’ swim with a floating crust, I was pretty sure it would offer me my best chance. The ‘Pads’swim is situated in the north west corner of the lake in the ‘Cottage Bay’. The banks which form this corner are the Road Bank and the Colne Bank, this part of the Colne Bank is now private but in 1980 it could be fished and the pads were very easy to reach from it!! I remember very clearly arriving in the ‘Pads’ swim that first afternoon, it was vacant and I thought my luck might be in. I tackled up my old cane rod and had a good look at the water. There are a couple of small islands in this swim, the lily pads grow in between them. In 1980 it was a very big lily bed, two or three times the size it is today. I could not see any fish as there was a slight breeze which made the water a little choppy. I put a piece of crust on, dipped it in the water to give it a bit more weight and flicked it out to the pads, it flew straight off the hook! As I wound in to rebait I saw a swirl and the crust had been taken, I could not believe my eyes. I quickly rebaited and flicked it out once again. It was taken almost as soon as it hit the water, I struck and walked backwards pulling the fish away from the pads. Two minutes later it was on the bank, a nice little mirror weighing 6 or 7lbs, my first Savay carp. I was very pleased, and after having a good look at this fish I took it further down towards the corner of the lake and returned it. To be honest I never realised what a result I’d had. At that time I hadn’t a clue as to how hard a lake Savay was, or the fact that this was an unusually small carp for the water.

Later that afternoon I was sitting watching the crust when I heard a voice behind me ask any luck? It was Stuart the bailiff, he had his tackle with him and had come to fish for the night. I told Stuart about my small mirror and about the crust being taken as soon as it hit the water.He said it must have been the smallest fish in the lake. There was something in the way he said it and in the way he looked at me that said Pull the other leg it’s got bells on. I am sure he thought it was all a figment of my imagination. I suppose, looking back on this incident, had I been in Stuart’s shoes then and seen some ‘noddy’ flicking out a crust at Savay with an old cane rod I would not have believed it either. The strange thing about this little mirror was that it was the smallest fish caught that year, in fact it was the smallest fish I saw in Savay for many years, but one of the syndicate members, Little Sam, also caught it that first year. It was a very distinctive fish, almost a fully scaled mirror, I have caught it twice since and on both occasions it weighed 20lb exactly.

Over the following weeks Stuart and I became quite friendly and fished together on a number of occasions. He kept me informed with what the syndicate were catching. It seemed every time they caught a fish it was a 20 or a 30. I thought Stuart was pulling my leg half the time with the stories of these fish but as I got to know other anglers fishing there they verified what Stuart had told me. A few of the syndicate were having some unbelievable catches. I was now taking Stuart a lot more seriously, listening to everything he told me concerning the syndicate.One thing was for sure, there were some very good carp anglers fishing Savay, to me they seemed like supermen. Other than the small one I had caught I had not had a take. However, not all of the syndicate were catching, in fact from what Stuart had told me most of them had not had a run! It seemed only three of them were catching the vast majority of the fish. These men were: Andy Little, Rod Hutchinson, and Lenny Middleton, as you are probably aware, three very capable anglers. These three, we now know, were all on the ‘hair rig’ as were Kevin Maddocks and Keith Gillings. To be fair to Kevin he never fished anywhere as much as Rod, Lenny or Andy, however, he did manage to catch a ‘30’. I know at that time there was a lot of talk about who was the best carp angler in the country, I am not suggesting Rod, Andy, Lenny or Kevin were making any such claims but one thing was for certain – if there had been a top ten at that time I am sure these four would have been way at the top of the list. Nowadays it’s a lot different, there are an awful lot of good carp anglers around. It would, I think, have been very interesting in the 1980-81 season, if Rod, Andy, Lenny and Kevin had all fished Savay with the ‘hair rig’ and all put in the same amount of time. The lake was then new to all of them. The presentation they had with the ‘hair’was unbeatable, as the carp had never seen it before. All four of them would have been on a half decent bait. I think location would have probably been the deciding factor. I believe had all the syndicate, that first year, been on the ‘hair’ it would have made a big difference to the numbers of fish Rod, Andy and Lenny caught. Those that blanked, and there were many, just might have caught and those that did catch I am sure would have caught more. That would have given them the incentive to fish harder. Just their presence on the lake would have made a big difference, never mind about what they may or may not have caught.Having said that I am pretty sure Andy, Rod and Lenny would have still caught a lot more fish than anyone else. Make no mistake about it the ‘hair’ was a tremendous edge to have on Savay in 1980, and in the hands of these three carp anglers it was absolutely devastating. At the end of that first season Andy Little had caught forty three fish over 20lbs and thirteen of these fish were over 30lbs. His biggest fish was 34lb 4oz, a truly unbelievable catch and a record that has never been beaten by the syndicate. The nearest I came to Andy was in 1987 with forty two fish, thirty over 20lbs and four over 30lbs. This was before the stocking of 100 carp in 1988. Rod Hutchinson may have got closer to Andy than I. Rod is still a syndicate member but has not fished Savay for quite a number of years. After Andy dropped out in 1981 Rod still fished Savay seriously for a few years. Over this period he was without doubt the most consistent angler on the water and let’s not forget everyone was by then on the ‘hair’.

Stuart had introduced me to a fellow club member and friend of his Bob Tilbury. Bob and I really got on well and soon became good friends. Bob also fished for the carp at Savay and, although he had only been fishing for carp for a year or so I had done exceptionally well there. Bob was friendly with Andy Little as they had once been nextdoor neighbours. Andy helped Bob quite a bit, showing him how to side hook a boilie and putting him on the same bait as himself, although he had not shown Bob the hair rig as it was still top secret at that time. Nevertheless Bob still had to catch the fish himself and judging by the photos he had shown me he was very good at that. Bob knew I was using paste for bait and that I was struggling, he advised me to change to boilies. I listened to what Bob had to say, it was obvious the boys who fished Savay were hundreds of miles in front of me. I knew what boilies were and knew the syndicate were using them but at that time I had never made any. Bob told me about semolina and soya and showed me how he side-hooked the bait. He did not tell me what flavour he was using as Andy had given it to him in confidence. I had already taken the plunge and kitted myself out withnew rods, reels and a couple of optonics, so I thought I’d give the boilies a try. The first mix I used was semolina and soya flavoured with bun spice, but no matter how hard I tried over the following weeks I never got a chance although I was on fish once or twice. I was rapidly going off the boilies and eventually reverted back to the paste baits. Of course I now know this was taking a step in the wrong direction but I had caught carp in the past with paste and had a lot more confidence in it. I did not fish with Bob that first year as he was a club member and did most of his fishing from the Ruislip ‘Long Island’. Bob lived in Harefield, just two minutes from the Lake, so I would often pop around to his house for a cup of tea and a chat and to find out if he had caught any fish. On one of these visits Bob said he thought a new rig was being used, he had overheard two of the syndicate members discussing it. He said a link of some description had been mentioned but that was as much as he knew. He fetched a pencil and paper and we proceeded to draw rigs to see if we could see where a link could in some way be beneficial. I drew the hair rig exactly as it was being used but of course neither Bob nor I knew at that time if what I had drawn was right or wrong. I made a big mistake and never used it that season, I just put it to the back of my mind.

I found it hard to accept the syndicate were catching so many fish and that all I was managing were blanks. I knew the syndicate members that were ‘doing the business’ were putting a tremendous amount of time in and were very good anglers with years of experience behind them. I had done a fair bit of carp fishing in the past and had caught a fair number of fish but I knew I was not in the same class as some of these fellows. I was fishing Savay as hard as I could, putting in more and more time as the weeks went by. I was even arriving at the lake at first light just to fish for an hour or so before going to work. I knew most of the fish were being caught at night but not all of them. I was not expecting to catch a hat full but I did expect the odd fish. I sat and gave it a lot of thought. I reasoned if the answer was just the fish mostly feed at night then surely a lot more of the syndicate would be catching them. Then I thought the members who were catching most of the fish must be a lot better at locating them. I remembered what Bob Tilbury had told me of the new rig and thought for certain the syndicate members who were catching the vast majority of the carp were sure to be using it. If they are locating fish regularly and have a good presentation all they needed was a bait that the carp would eat. I wondered if that on the odd occasion I had seen fish in front of me whilst fishing were indeed the only times I had in fact been in with a chance?

This account of my thoughts may be painfully obvious now to the reader but in 1980 I was a complete novice at fishing big gravel pits and for me to give the impression I was anything but, would be untrue. The waters I had fished before Savay were just puddles in comparison, location had never been a real problem. However, I was not the only one blanking, there were 27 syndicate members that first year and they had been hand picked for their ability to catch carp and the fact was all bar a few were unsuccessful. Andy, Rod, and Lenny were standing out like sore thumbs but they also had their share of blanks, sometimes going for quite long periods in between catches. Savay is a big water and location is sometimes almost impossible. If the carp decided to go down and not show for a week or so the sheer size of the water made it very difficult to locate them. Until 1980 the Colne Bank could not be fished by the syndicate so obviously if the fish went around that side of the lake there was nothing the syndicate members could do. But when Andy, Rod and Lenny were on the fish some of their multiple catches were staggering, especially at that time. Catches such as a couple of 30’s and several 20’s in a night’s fishing were virtually unheard of but on Savay it was quite a regular occurrence. This suggested that at that time the carp were mainly shoal fish. It seemed there were three or four big shoals.

When you were on fish, if you had things right, you would catch and sometimes in ‘large portions’. Today it’s different, fishing pressure has seen to that. Now there are lots of small shoals, probably with not more than a dozen fish in the larger shoals and they are now a lot more unpredictable as they do not always move on the wind. Fishing pressure makes a tremendous amount of difference even on big waters like Savay.

One day, right out of the blue, Stuart asked me if I would like to fish a weekend with him as his guest. Of course I jumped at the chance. I knew the vast majority of fish were being caught in the hours of darkness that first year, I saw this as a real opportunity. I thought even if I didn’t catch it would be nice to have a weekend of uninterrupted fishing, it really was a pain having to pack up at night, especially as I knew it was the nights that were producing the majority of fish. I had no luck with the carp that weekend. However, my luck wasn’t all bad as Stuart said if I was sensible and never gave the syndicate any hassle I could fish a night now and again on my own. He said he would be responsible for me and it would be OK with Redlands as he had put my name forward and I was being considered for a place as a bailiff the following season. He went on to say most of the syndicate had stopped fishing and that the lake was virtually empty most nights midweek. I thought this might be the turning point for me. I knew I wasn’t Rod Hutchinson but I only wanted one fish. The one I had caught on my first visit I now knew to be a fluke. I wanted a proper one, caught from the bottom where my good friend Peter Broxup says the men fish.

I remember arriving in the car park at Savay one particular evening, it was October 1980 and Stuart had given me the OK to fish for the night. I thought the ‘Birches’ along the Canal Bank, would be a good bet as there was a good Northerly blowing at the time. I got my gear out and started the long walk around the lake. I did not take too much gear then as I only fished for one night as a rule. I didn’t bother with a bed or bivvy, just a low chair and the umbrella. The rods were already tackled up, there was no rod bag – just a couple of rubber bands around the rods and the landing net and a small bag to put my tea things in. As I walked along the Canal Bank the Northerly was getting stronger. I thought I might be wasting my time going down to the ‘Birches’ as some of the syndicate were bound to be down that end of the lake. I could not believe my luck when I found the swim vacant, in fact there wasn’t a soul along the Canal Bank anywhere. It was so windy that I had a job getting the brolly up. I remember tying it to a small bush that used to be at the right of the swim. I cast the rods out and pushed the front rests down low so my rod tips were in the water. I pushed two very long quill floats into the ground to use as needles and put the pepper pot bobbins on them to stop the wind blowing them about. I was fishing 1½oz running leads with 15 inch nylon hook lengths with size 4 Au Lion D’ors. I was fishing a paste bait on both rods, set up identically. I sat and rolled my bait into a mountain of little balls, but there was no way I was going to be able to get them out in the strong wind. As darkness fell the wind gradually dropped off and eventually the lake was still and quiet, it seemed a completely different place. I was firing out the bait when I had a bleep on my left hand rod. I remember I didn’t take too much notice as I thought I might have knocked the rod with my leg. Then it bleeped again, I could see the bobbin rising almost in slow motion. It gave several more bleeps and the line steadily started trickling from the open spool. I picked the rod up, put the ball arm in and struck hard. It was just like hitting the bottom! There was a short pause before the fish realised he was in trouble then he went off on a strong run. To merely say I was nervous would be the understatement of all time, my bottle had well and truly gone! I was standing there in the dark with the rod hooped well over trying desperately to compose myself and believe me, it wasn’t easy. At that moment of time I wanted that fish more than anything. Had I lost it I think that would have been the end of me at Savay Lake, but I didn’t, I was still shaking as it went into the net. The sense of relief I felt was tremendous and I do not think I could have been more pleased had it been a world record. On lifting it out I knew it was the biggest carp I had ever caught, on the scales it weighed 27½1b, not a world record but at that time a personal best for me. I was over the moon. Later that night I had another bleep to the same rod. The bobbin kept rising, another slow take, identical to the first. I struck and was into another carp. As I played this fish I felt a lot more confident. I was excited but nothing like as much as I was with first one. This fish was slow but strong and took a fair bit of line from me. I started to regain a little from him, when everything went solid. I eased off the pressure but he wasn’t going anywhere. When I tightened