Big Carp Legends: Bruce Ashby

By Bruce Ashby

Bruce Ashby was the 'Original' carp super star, although he would have not appreciated the title! His longevity stretching beyond our previous legends Springate, McDonald and Maylin by another decade because it was in the sixties that Bruce began his reign at the very top of his game. No other carp angler has maintained his enthusiasm across five decades, Bruce was as keen as he ever was right up until his untimely passing due to prostrate cancer in 2013. However not before he wrote this book, the life history of one of the greatest carp anglers this country will ever know.

In the sixties at Leybourne and Peckham Bruce and his close fishing pals Mike Harris and Roy Johnson rewrote the record books time and time again. Their catches were legendary and inspired a whole generation to fish for carp. By the mid seventies Bruce had caught a 100 twenties a feat unequalled. In the eighties it was Savay that held Bruce's attention and held it for over twenty years.

Only his love of rod building equalled that of being on the bank and that legacy remains today with thousands still using his beautiful hand made rods. Belgium, Holland , France even Morocco were visited and Bruce had many friends across the globe.

This book contains 250 photos from Bruces life, 40 sepia's from his time at Leyboure in the sixty's, news paper covers, even his own fishing log.

With special memories from his great friends Lee Jackson, Mike Harris and John Harry we feel honoured to present the life story of the last of the legends Bruce Ashby.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BigCarpMagazine
• Release date: Jan 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9780992753153

Book preview

Introduction

‘Lest we forget’ Lee Jackson

My earliest memories of Bruce was when I first started carp fishing back in 1970, not through meeting him in the flesh, but due to regularly seeing pictures of him in the Angling Times or suchlike, grinning behind yet another giant carp. Back in them days I kept a scrapbook made up of newspaper cut outs of carp caught in Kent or South East London, which was the area of the country where I lived and fished at the time. On practically every page there was a picture of Bruce or one of his oppo’s with yet another so called farm pond twenty pounder, back in the day when catching a twenty pounder was still very much a fairly rare occurrence. Well Bruce didn’t just catch the odd twenty pounder, around 1971, between Bruce and fishing companion Mike Harris, if my memory serves me correctly, they caught something like twenty one of them in one season, a season at the time being June 16th to March 14th! And the success’s just escalated from there, to the point that in 1978 Bruce became the first man in history to catch 100 carp over the magical 20 pound barrier, which included three carp in excess of 30 pound, absolutely huge fish for the time

My first meeting with Bruce was in around 1980 at an early CAA meeting held at Gillingham in Kent, quite near to where Bruce and I then lived, and I must admit to feeling a bit ‘star struck’ and almost scared to be meeting one of my carp angling heroes in the flesh. I needn’t have felt that way however, because once we got talking I found that he was just an ordinary bloke and was put at ease by his unique, sometimes cantankerous sense of humour. From this point on, although we never actually managed to fish together, we became very good friends, to the point that the highlight of my Saturdays was calling in on his house for a bit of a ‘carpy chat’ on my way home from work, and his visits to my house to sort out mortgages, insurances and suchlike, and the amusement he caused by tormenting and entertaining my then three very young children, indeed, they very much looked forward to a visit from Uncle Bruce ‘The Moose’.

It was at this point also that my outlook on carp rods took quite a dramatic change, not so much to do with the performance of a carp rod, but more to do with the visual cosmetics, because Bruce Ashby rods had a very distinguished and sought after look about them. From then on and right up to recent times, my rod rests were always graced with a set of Bruce Ashby built Tricasts, Perimeters or Invaders, with a Rocketeer thrown into the equation for all the Spod work, carp rods that were reliable in performance, looked good on the bank, and that I caught quite a large number of carp on, including one or two personal bests.

The one thing that often used to amuse me with my chats with Bruce, was that because our fishing situations were so very different from each other, ie, Bruce’s being predominantly close range work and mine being predominantly short session fishing where sometimes I was needing to blast baits out at extreme range to showing fish. Bruce always used to raise his bushy eyebrows and then say things like – Phew, dunno why you want rods that cast that far son, you can’t get free offerings out that far, and would then proceed to give me a lecture on how to fish for carp properly like what he did. Move on a few years and it was a complete turnaround, Bruce blasting out single hook baits as far as what he could along the Canal Bank on Savay, and me margin fishing on Sutton 2 – Tell you what son, you want to learn how to cast, all of them bigguns live out there, you won’t catch em in the edge! Although Bruce’s tongue in cheek philosophy on carp fishing was all wrong of course, it just shows how adaptable Bruce was at carp fishing; in fact I’m sure that if he put his mind to it he could catch a carp out of a water butt.

In Bruce’s case the word legend shouldn’t be taken lightly, in his carp fishing reign of over 50 years, it’s fair and accurate to say that he’s been there, done it and worn the tee shirt at least three times over, in fact it wouldn’t surprise me one bit that if there is such a thing as the afterlife, he’s still around somewhere, moaning like Victor Mildew, working out how to make the next pound note and terrorising the carp wherever he goes – Good bye old friend, see you on the ice.

World Championships, Italy, 2013.

Chapter 1

Medway Beginnings

Now I knew nothing about fishing, I just knew I’d got to do it. I don’t know why but there was this compulsion, you know, and I just had to have a fishing rod.

Well my introduction to fishing was completely unintended, it was back in 1947 when I was six years old, the end of the war and a time when there was very little other entertainment. It was one Sunday and mum and dad said they were going to take me to Maidstone, hire a rowing boat and then my dad was going to be rowing us up and down the River Medway for the day, which sounded grand. We got over there but because we didn’t have a car as my father could never drive, we went on the bus, walked from the bus station up to the river and along the bank to where you can hire the boats. Trouble was we never actually got there because there was a man sitting there fishing and I was keen to have a look. Now I’d never seen anybody fish before, didn’t know anything about it whatsoever, but at six years old, I wanted to watch. We had a picnic so mum and dad really went along with what I wanted to do so I didn’t throw the usual tantrum. I expect and mum put the old blanket thing down, sat down there, had a sandwich and I just sat watching this man fishing.

I found out a while later his name was Harry Atkins, a very nice bloke. I went over and sat next to him like little boys do and said Can I watch what you’re doing mister sort of thing Yes he said But you’ve got to be quiet. So I sat down and I think from there on I probably ruined his day because I don’t think I stopped asking what he was doing. He caught a few little roach, not that I knew they were roach until he told me obviously, but he caught some roach and he caught I think some bleak. He was a match angler and I think he was practicing, a lot different to today, but he was practicing and I think I probably made his day when he eventually left because I said to him Do you come here often? and he said, Oh yeah, I come here a lot when I’m not fishing somewhere else and I said I’ll come and watch you again" so after that, whenever the weather was pretty good, all I wanted to do was go to Maidstone so my mum and dad would do a picnic and off we’d go. Most times Harry was there and I’d go and watch him, I think they used to have the