Big Carp Hunters

By Dave Mallin

The new big carp hunters series kicks off this autumn with the first in a new series dedicated to a very special group of anglers. Anglers who over the years have quietly gone about their angling with relentless dedication. Not seeking fame or fortune, rarely publicising their catches. Targeting the biggest and hardest carp to catch in the country solely for their own satisfaction. Often these campaigns require huge amounts of effort, both physically and mentally. This sort of fishing is not for everyone, certainly not for the fainthearted. The demands on normal life are incredible and very often there are consequences.
Rob said "Dave is a carp angling phenomena. His ruthless determination is un-equalled as anyone who knows him will agree. Very secretive in his angling, Dave has targeted many waters ' off the radar " For a ten year period through the nineties Dave smashed every venue he campaigned. His accolades include The Black Mirror twice and all the other Colne Mere residents, all the Yateley ' Royalty' Bazil , Heather, Jumbo and Arthur ( only 2 or 3 anglers have done this ever), at Wraysbury he once again ticked all the boxes , naming his own fish and catching Mary at a near record weight....infact everywhere he went, he caught. Today he's out their on another secret venue fishing for dreams....just doing it!. This book tells all the stories of Dave's great passion, from his local Midland venues, moving South and dominating the carp scene with a huge accolade of captures, never before published. A true unsung hero, this book will fill the reader with inspiration and admiration....where effort equals reward no other anglers has ever given so much"

• Language: English
• Publisher: BigCarpMagazine
• Release date: Sep 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311244499

Book preview

Big Carp Hunters

Dave Mallin

Foreword by Rob Maylin

Arfur from the Curly.

My first encounter with Dave came within a month of starting Big Carp magazine, so it would have been 1991. An article arrived in the mail on a Midlands water called Black Root. It concerned a couple of guys who called themselves ‘The Black Country Duo’ – Wayne Dunn being his partner in crime.

The magazine came out a week or so later, and it was at this point that I received a phone call! Are you gonna use that article I sent yer, because if not, I’ll have it back, mate? was the abrupt tone I was subjected to. After ascertaining which article it was, I told him I had quite a lot of articles sent in, but would use it as soon as possible, and he went away happy with that answer… Until the next month that is, when once again his article, which I had read and which was very good, had not been used again – simply due to lack of space.

The second phone call started like this: Send it back, mate! Sorry, I replied, What? The article, send it back if you ain’t using it. I replied that it would be in the next issue, and it was!

At Yateley, after christening a 37-pounder at Wraysbury with his name, I began to fish alongside Dave. Much like another Midlander I had met some ten years’ previously, Steve Allcott, Dave was a first class angler. Not only a great angler as it turned out, but he was also as big a stroke puller as me. In fact I think he even had me pipped for that title. Dave quickly annihilated the Pad Lake as if it was one of his local canals, and the North Lake was due to be one of his next quests.

You know the one thing stopping you from catching Bazil? he said to me one day up on the North Lake. No, I said. Me, he replied in all honesty. And he wasn’t far wrong!

Much like my dear friend Steve, Dave went about his passion with a quiet expertise. One by one, the country’s biggest and best carp fell to his determination, but Dave never sought publicity. Dave was on such a roll in the 1990s, that no one, and I mean no one, including the best of the best could compare their catches to him, and he never publicised a thing.

Word got out of course, like it does, and he was crowned Carp Angler of the Year, a title Dave is very proud of. His captures are legendary, as this book will prove beyond doubt. The photographs are incredible: every big carp in the land was targeted relentlessly until it fell. His accolades included all the Yateley royalty, all from Wraysbury, the Mere, etc… Dave was a catching machine and time was no limit.

Then his world came crashing down, and in the 2000s his wife, his business and his life suffered the consequences of all that time and effort, and Dave fell into a deep depression, giving up fishing and taking to the gym to box his way out of the deep dark hole that he had landed himself in.

Life has a habit of going on though, and Dave found the right woman and family life was restored. Man needs a good woman by his side, and a good woman recognises that man also needs an interest. So more recently Dave’s wife has got him back into fishing; in fact she loves it too!

Dave’s back, as keen as ever, tackling a new ‘Colnemere’ with its own set of challenges, and as for work, well, Dave was always good at one thing, and that was making bait that was irresistible to carp! So that’s what he’s doing. God help the carp, that’s all I say!

My biggest carp off the surface – Chunky at 43lb 12oz.

Introduction

‘My determination comes from my parents. They’d say, You can do it, just keep trying.’

The start of the obsession – 1981, 14 years old, family holiday, first carp, around 2lb. Little did I know what was to come – four years of reading books and progressing.

I started fishing in 1975 when I was eight years old. My dad started me off fishing, and he used to take me to various places. We used to go on family holidays to cottages that had lakes, and we all used to fish – my dad, my mum and me. My dad used to tie a piece of line to the end of the rod so it was sort of pole style; he didn’t trust me with the reel at the start, and really it went from there. When I was fourteen, which would be in 1981, I started to just fish for carp. I had seen my cousin catch a 6lb mirror on a legered worm; it pulled his rod in, and the size of the fish and the colour was unbelievable. So I went out and bought some thick line and I started to try myself, but I didn’t know anything about fishing for carp.

I started to get as much information as I could; I went out and bought Peter Mohan’s book Basic Carp Fishing, which was like a bible to me at the time. He showed you some of the baits in there, such as parboiled potatoes and KiteKat specials. Within days of reading that I was buying KiteKat, mixing a load of bread paste together and getting into a big mess, getting stuck into all the KiteKat paste, rolling it into balls and even colouring it. Then I started to fish for carp; there was a water about five miles away from the house that my dad used to fish. One day I was walking down there and I