Big Carp Hunters: Nick Helleur

By Nick Helleur

Nick is another carp angling phenomena. His carp fishing life is unlike anyone I have ever known and although I have known Nick for almost thirty years I have very rarely fished with him!.... why? , because he doesn't fish my sort of carp water. The concept of sitting on a lake fishing for a Bazil or a Heather is totally alien to Nick..." why would I want to devote all that effort to catch a fish that everyone else has caught" would be his reply to that type of question. Nick's true passion is for the unknown in fact ' Passion for The Unknown ' would make a great title for this book, if it needed a name. His passion is just as strong if he is here in the UK fishing for a 'possibility' on a little known pit or stretch of the canal as it is on an unknown stretch of a European river of high up in the Alps chasing dreams.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BigCarpMagazine
• Release date: Jan 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9780992753108

Book preview

Big Carp Hunters

First published in 2014

By Bountyhunter Publications

© Bountyhunter Publications 2014

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 978-0-9927531-0-8

Printed in Great Britain

Big Carp Hunters

Nick Helleur

Foreword by Rob Maylin

Nick is another carp angling phenomenon. His carp fishing life is unlike any I have ever known, and although I have known Nick for almost thirty years, I have very rarely fished with him! Why? Because he doesn’t fish my sort of carp water. The concept of sitting on a lake fishing for a Bazil or a Heather is totally alien to Nick. Why would I want to devote all that effort to catch a fish that everyone else has caught? would be his reply to that type of question. Nick’s true passion is for the unknown; in fact ‘Passion for The Unknown’ would make a great title for this book, if it needed a name. His passion is just as strong if he is here in the UK fishing for a ‘possibility’ on a little known pit or stretch of the canal as it is on an unknown stretch of a European river or high up in the Alps chasing dreams.

Nick is a professional carp angler; in fact he had a monthly column in Big Carp entitled just that. As a sponsored angler Nick has certain demands placed upon him – demands to be seen regularly in the angling press and to be out there catching and doing it, rain or shine, winter and summer. So Nick’s time is divided into two very different types of angling – feature fishing and real fishing. As a feature angler Nick is the feature editor’s dream. Book him up in the dead of winter to catch a fish for the camera and he won’t let you down, snow on the ground, lake half frozen, Nick’s slither of ‘rami will get one out on the worst of days. Nick’s features are world class; he’s been on dozens of front covers here and abroad, he delivers the goods and hits the deadlines with practiced ease these days, and not a month goes by without Nick’s writings appearing somewhere. This also makes him a very sought after consultant for bait and tackle firms, and it would be fair to say that Nick has done the rounds, having worked for the best: Shimano, Dynamite, Solar, Aqua, Sonik and Korda to name drop a few. Nick’s feature fishing is second to none; he is the ultimate brand figurehead because no one catches them like he can… He is a great angler!

However its Nick’s ‘real’ fishing that is his passion, and with articles written and emailed, Nick is planning his ‘proper season’, which consists of a spring UK target or two and a whole list of foreign venues; venues which most of us have never even heard of, and even the top European anglers haven’t, except in whispers. Nick is a pioneer; he likes to be early on waters, whether it’s here or abroad, and it’s this part of Nick’s fishing life that you haven’t read about before, as this is the bit Nick hasn’t written about before, until now… So sit back and prepare to be enthralled by one of the country’s best and most talented anglers.

Believe it or not Nick is a shy and quiet angler. Just because he does a lot of features does not mean he shouts or brags about his catches; it’s his work. He’s quite the opposite in fact. You have never seen Nick do a slide show! Nick shuns the limelight, hates the publicity, shrinks from the stage where other far lesser anglers strut their stuff like egotistical morons. Yet somehow because of this feature writing (his job) people have the wrong idea about Nick, and have him confused with some other ‘glory hunters’ of our beloved sport.

Nick began his carp fishing where he grew up in the Colne Valley, cycling to Savay as a kid and earning the reputation as ‘the pest’ on those secret waters the Cons and Fisheries. When taken under the wing of some boys a little older than him – James, Kerry and Lee – he was quick to learn and outfish his peers. As a fourteen-year-old kid he wrote about his adventures on the Cons for Big Carp, and that’s when Nick had his first encounter with the ‘haters’. Jealous of a little boy’s catches, they threw him out the club and smashed his world to pieces. Nick grew into a man overnight.

Over the next decade, accompanied by his close friend Dan, the pair fished fast and hard on the pits, canals and rivers in that region. Nick pioneered much of the canal and their catches remain legendary. Nick did not write any more articles until it became his profession years later; a lesson had been learned but not before he also taught those haters a lesson in return, as you will read. The last decade of Nick’s ‘real’ fishing is incredible, and I was in awe as we covered venue after venue and target after target. His determination is unequalled; the effort involved and miles driven are unimaginable, but the sights he has seen and the dawns on distant shores outweigh it all… Never has the phrase ‘effort equals reward’ been more applicable.

Nick has never written a book (he should have written ten by now) as he was too busy fishing. So at last, here for the first time is Nick’s carp fishing life history… truly a big carp hunter.

Son of Popeye.

Soon to be Rompey’s 40-plus bloater.

An early Ultraspice-caught autumn Colne Valley mirror.

Introduction

A Move to Harefield

‘Nothing stopped us – fences and gates were no barriers to a ten-year-old and his mates.’

I was born in Edgeware, North London in an old row of prefab buildings that they used as wards. I’ve since been back years later and it’s all gone; all the prefabs have been knocked down to make way for new buildings. Well, I was born in Edgeware General in north London in 1971. I lived in Kingsbury for the first few years of my life, another place I have since been back to, and it’s just nothing like I remember it. But about the age of four, my dad had quite a good job working for a big company in Wembley. I can remember my mum telling me how they couldn’t afford it, but they bought this big house in Harefield. She lied to dad about how much it had cost and that sort of thing; you couldn’t do it nowadays, but that’s how it was. Anyway, we got a big house in Harefield and at four years old I moved out to what was in effect the countryside in comparison to Kingsbury.

I remember, because my mum has told me, that when she first looked at houses around Harefield, the one that she had set her heart on initially was actually the cottage in the Cottage Bay at Savay Lake. Who knows where my fishing would have gone and how things would have changed if I’d grown up there? But it wasn’t to be. Mum didn’t buy that house because she tells me that it was too dark; it was surrounded by trees. I could have throttled her, I tell you! Anyway that was how I ended up living by the lakes in my very early years.

We moved Harefield in the early ‘70s. I can’t remember it that clearly, but if you could go back in the time machine, I think you would just be astonished. At the age of four or five, arriving in what was in effect a village, but surrounded by the lakes of the Colne Valley, there was only one way I was ever going to go as a young boy growing up in that environment. From way before we were ever really allowed out we were spending our days fishing down at the canal and the lakes all through the valley. When you’re between the ages of five and ten, you’re just a little kid, no one takes any notice of you and you can get away with murder, and we did. So we spent a lot of time fishing on the Kodak Lake, which became Boyers Harefield in later years, and I started to see these strange carp anglers. I suppose by the time I was out on my own, we are probably talking late ‘70s, say 79/80, that sort of time. We were getting about the village, fishing everywhere. Nothing stopped us – fences and gates were no barriers to a ten-year-old and his mates. So we had a home range going from one side of the village to the other side of the village. The bottom end of the village, as we called it, was down Moorhall Road with Savay lake and all the other lakes in that immediate area. I lived at the top of the village, and down the hill from my side put me straight at the Fisheries and the Cons.

So I was surrounded by water, and as a young lad in the village I had much more freedom than children would ever get now, because it’s much less safe for children to be out nowadays. Back then however we did literally whatever we wanted within reason. I am no psychologist, but if there were one sat with us as we are talking through my life story, I’ve no doubt that they’d agree that growing up where I did was directly responsible for the person that I have become. I have written many times before that if I’d have been brought up on a council estate in Glasgow I would probably have been dead long ago from heroin or something. You are a product of your environment, and growing up in Harefield developed my spirit for adventure if you like; I was confident and outgoing from a young age, but it was the freedom we had that really shaped me.

Now in later years I love to fish new and different places, which keeps me ticking along, but essentially it all comes from growing up in Harefield during the seventies and eighties. About this time I had a little bit more freedom and I was starting to grow up. I’m 42 now as we are sat here taping this, and I’ve known Rob for a really long time, since I was a little boy, literally before I left school. I was 13 or 14 when I first met Rob. It has been a long and winding road, let’s say that, but I’ve had a great time and I honestly wouldn’t change a thing. I like to think I’ve done things my way, stuck to my morals and never compromised them to further my angling career as it were.

Around the age of ten I was already starting to sneak out of Mum and Dad’s house when they were asleep to go fishing, so keen was I. There was never any fear of anything bad happening to me, or at least I never had any worries about that. You would nowadays; you would be worried about someone abducting you because you had it drummed into you all your life that there are bad people out there, but it wasn’t like that back then.

It was the same old thing each time. When I was sure my parents were asleep I’d lift the squeaky old sash window in my bedroom as quietly as possible, creep out of the window, clamber halfway down the pipe and jump across onto the shed roof. I always had my kit stashed behind the greenhouse. I’d tiptoe off down the garden when I was sure no one was awake to ensure I didn’t wake the dog, throw the rods over the back fence then get my bike out, creep down the side of the house, throw the bike over and set off. Cycling down through the sleeping village was just so exciting as a young boy. Riding around in the middle of the night, no cars, no people, the only thing you ever saw was a fox and very occasionally a milkman and that was it! You never saw a car, and if you heard a car coming you automatically presumed it was your Mum and Dad coming to get you or something, you know, and you’d hide in the nearest garden, but it was always ok.

It was magical growing up in Harefield at that time, because not only did we have that freedom as a young child that you just don’t get anymore, but we had all the water around us to explore. We had dens on every lake in the valley, and all the other lads in my school who lived at the bottom end of the village had dens on all the lakes down there too. We had little competitions, and we’d go down and raid their den and nick all their floats and tackle that they’d stash there, and then they’d come up our end and burn ours down. It was proper boy’s adventure; it was like Swallows and Amazons or Huckleberry Finn, or as close as you can get to that anyway in the modern era. They were magical memories, and it’s sad to think that it’ll never be like that again.

Funnily enough my first carp didn’t come from down the valley; it came from really close to my house. There were a couple of little farm ponds literally no more than an acre in size just on the outskirts of the village by the roadside. I used to get on my little bike and go up there. There were two of these ponds; one that was near the road that everyone knew about, and then there was one down in the woods that no one knew about. It was the classic secret pool – my secret pool. I would never fish there on my own because it was the archetypal haunted pool of old, with fallen oaks in the lake and craggy arms reaching up from the surface. Once it got dark there, it got really dark. I never stayed after sunset much because I was still ten or 11 years old; I shouldn’t be out late on my own, and that place terrified me. But I used to force myself to stay as late as I could because we always caught the biggest fish when it was getting dark. When I couldn’t see the float anymore I’d grab all my kit and my bike, and once back on the path I’d pedal like my life depended on it, never once looking over my shoulder out of sheer terror until I reached the welcome sight of the street lights by the top pond.

Anyway we used to fish the top pond mostly because it was full of crucians and tench. I don’t even think there are many crucians in the Colne Valley anymore, but there were then; it was full of them. It’s so long ago my memories are faded, but I remember it as a happy time. I talked to my mate Terry about this a lot. Terry had an angling father, a countryman, a hunter, a shooter, a fisherman. He was taught by somebody who he could look up to, like you did. Your dad fished didn’t he? But my dad never fished; he never understood it and thought it was a total waste of time. Unless you can eat it what’s the point? You’re an idiot, boy, he’d say. You know, I’m 42 years old, a father myself, I own my own home, I’ve got a great life, I’ve got everything that everyone else has got, and I’ve done it all off my own back from fishing, and yet my father still thinks I’ve wasted my time, bless him. When are you going to get a proper job? he said to me only yesterday. I understand how he feels, as he came from a different time when all that was expected of you was to go into an apprentiship and get a trade. Well, I haven’t got a proper job; I do exactly what Nick wants to do, exactly when Nick wants to do it, and have done as far back as I can remember.

So we used to go to these little farm ponds, and what a lovely time we had. It was so much simpler then; you know, your mind wasn’t clouded by methods and shiny tackle and all the shit that came later in life. The only worry you had was if you could get enough tackle together. I had a little rod, but I don’t even remember what it was; it was like an Avon style rod. It wasn’t a float rod; it was more like what we used to call a tench rod. It had big rings that were modern at the time, and I remember they looked like glow in the dark material. I think they were Seymo rings or whatever they were in the late ‘70s. So I had this rod with a cork handle and these mad rings on it, and I thought, well, that’s it; I’m the man. I thought I had everything I needed. And as if that wasn’t enough, in the village was Harefield Tackle, a little local tackle shop. I went in there only two or three days ago to get a couple of bits as I was passing. I popped in to see my mum; she still lives in Harefield to this day, but the shop’s not the little place it once was. I’ve been going in there literally since I was old enough to to be out on my own.

Anyway we used to go to Harefield farm ponds, and the only way we ever used to fish for the tench and crucians was using the lift method on the float with a shot pinched on about two inches from the hook. You just keep pulling your float till it was stuck out of the water a bit, and that’s how we fished; we didn’t know how to fish any other way. We used to go over the back to get our bait; an old boy showed us how. He had a big sack with him, and he was catching loads of tench, and I was well jealous. Anyway, in the end I went round and he told me to piss off a few times, like the old boys did back then, so I sat and watched him from the other side. He kept throwing in double handfuls of this stuff and was catching one after the other. I went round there and asked him what he was doing the next time I saw him, and he told me to piss off again, so off I went, tail between my legs.

I saw him a couple of weeks later doing the same thing so, I snuck round and watched him, and it looked like he was throwing in soil; big double handfuls of earth. I spoke to the farmer who said, No boy, you’re wasting your time. What yer want to do is get down to yonder shit pit. There’s a fork down there – just dig it out – you’ll see. Anyway I went down there, stuck a fork into the pile and unearthed a load of dendrobaena, or tiger worms we used to call them as nippers; we didn’t know what they were called. So that was it; we used to sit there and do who dares for who’d go and dig the tiger worms. In the end I found an old barrow round the back of the nearby chicken shed, so we nicked that and we used to literally fill this barrow up till it was all heaped up with a big pile of manure and tiger worms, and we would go up to the ponds. This was after school, still in our school uniform. It was like early baiting up, even though we didn’t know what we were doing. We’d race back from school and straight to the ponds. We’d put the whole barrow load in the swim, just throwing it out with two or three of us, get home, get a beating for wrecking our school uniform and for missing our tea… They were good days. I haven’t got lots of memories other than that it was a good period, but the memories I have got make me smile when I think back. Anyway we used to catch a lot of tench, but not many crucians; they were always much harder to catch, but in the end you evolve like anybody does. Every day without fail we’d go the farm pond during the seemingly neverending summer holidays. I was never one for football in the park; I’d much rather be sitting there watching a float.

Pretty much every kid in the village would be at the farm pond in the summer. It was like a youth club; the big kids would come up occasionally, beat you up, nick your bike and throw it in, the usual sort of thing. There’d be kids making rope swings out over the lake or making fires. It was our place, and we used to have lovely times there. I remember one day my dad came home one with a keep net someone at work must have given him. I’d never had a keep net; I didn’t really know what one was. I’d only seen pictures of them in the Angling Times.

It was a big keep net for the time, and we used to put the keep net out so we knew how many we were catching. I can never forget my mate caught something like 25 crucians and 100 tench and that was it; that was the benchmark to beat. He came round and said, I’ve caught 100 tench and we were all firing things across at each other with catapults, like young boys do. I said, You liar, you ain’t caught 100. So anyway we went round and counted them by hand and he had caught 100 tench and 25 crucians and we were gutted. That was the start of it; I wanted to beat that kid, and I wasnt giving up until I did.

Around that time these things called starlights came out. I’d never seen them before; they were new on the scene, and they glowed all night so we were told, and we fixed them to our floats somehow. I think I tied the early ones to my float with a little bit of line because we didn’t have any silicone and stuff like