Dreaming Of Huge Carp

By Steve Graham

Many anglers dream of catching huge carp, but few actually turn their dreams into reality.
2017 had been a fantastic year for Steve, which saw him catch some very special fish, and he was determined to emulate those catches in 2018, or possibly do even better.
This book tells of all the ups and downs along the way. Not all went according to plan of course, as nothing ever does in fishing, but it turned out to be an incredible year, and one that he will remember for a very long time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Graham
• Release date: Nov 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463545638

Steve Graham

Steve Graham is a retired financial adviser, who now lives in Staffordshire. He is married to Anita and they have four children – Lynne, John, Diana and Gary, and three grandchildren – Logan, Dylan and Sami. Not forgetting their dog Stan, a Springer Spaniel / Border Collie cross, that is loved by them all. Now that he has retired, Steve spends most of his time doing the things that he enjoys most, which includes writing, walking. Carp fishing, and looking after his grandchildren.

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DREAMING OF HUGE CARP

Steve Graham

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Copyright 2018 Steve Graham

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INDEX

Chapter One – Not A Good Start.

Chapter Two – Oddstone

Chapter Three – La Base Nautique

Chapter Four – The Big Back Lake

Chapter Five – Loeuilly

Chapter Six – Back To The Big Back Lake

Chapter Seven - Argoeuves

Chapter Eight – La Base Nautique Again

Chapter Nine – Oddstone in August

Chapter Ten – Success At Last

Chapter Eleven – Oddstone In September

Chapter Twelve – Back To Argoeuves

Chapter Thirteen – The Big Back Lake Again

Chapter Fourteen – The Small Back Lake

Chapter Fifteen – The Last Session

About The Author

Other Books By Steve Graham

To my wife Anita.

Thank you for your help and understanding, and for allowing me to live the dream.

You`re one in a million.

CHAPTER ONE – NOT A GOOD START

After my last session in France in 2017, I intended to visit my local lake for a few day sessions during the winter. Unfortunately when I first had a look at the lake in mid-November, it was flooded quite badly, and most of the bank was under water. I hoped that the floods would soon abate, but during the next three months or so it hardly stopped raining, so I didn`t get the chance to fish there at all.

I had great hopes for my fishing in France however. I already had access to several superb lakes in Picardie, and in addition I hoped to be able to fish three more. First there were the two lakes at Tilloy. These both held a good stock of very big carp, and I`d wanted to fish there for some time, but had never been able to get a ticket. My friend Pierre-Jean seemed confident that he`d be able to get me a ticket this year however, and he said that he`d let me know sometime in January. Pierre-Jean had also fished a very large lake in 2017, which was about a couple of hours further south, and we`d planned to fish there for a week in May. This lake was apparently huge, very weedy, and extremely difficult, but contained some very large carp indeed, and I was certainly up for the challenge. Although I loved fishing at the lakes in Picardie that I knew, I enjoy fishing new lakes even more. I find the challenge of the unknown just so exciting, and I hoped that 2018 would be a year of new challenges for me.

Unfortunately things didn`t turn out as I`d planned, and Pierre-Jean phoned to give me the bad news that although he had tried, he`d not been able to get me a ticket for the lakes at Tilloy. Apparently all the places had been taken within a couple of days of them going on sale. Not to worry I said, at least we`ve still got that week in May on the big lake to look forward to, but I was to get some bad news about that too. In mid-February Pierre-Jean was made redundant, and although he was able to find a new job, he wouldn`t be able to take any holidays for quite some time, so our trip to the big lake was off.

As you can imagine, this wasn`t exactly the start to the year that I`d hoped for, and not having been fishing since the previous October, I was just gagging to get back out on the bank again. I planned to make by first trip to Picardie in mid-March and booked a crossing on the tunnel, early on Friday 16th March. Everything was ready – rigs were tied, bait and hook-baits were made, reels re-spooled with new line, and I`d even washed the sleeping bag, so nothing could go wrong.

Or could it?

Two or three days before I was due to leave, I looked at a weather forecast for Picardie, and what I saw didn`t exactly make my day. The forecast was for extremely cold weather, with temperatures well below freezing and the possibility of snow. I suppose that I should really have postponed the trip for a couple of weeks, until the weather had improved, but that would have meant travelling during the Easter holidays, which is something that I didn`t want to do. I don`t enjoy driving in England at the best of times, with all the traffic and hold-ups, but during a holiday period it would be even worse. Another reason why I didn`t want to cancel the trip was that my friends Corentin and Christophe had both booked time off work to fish with me, and I didn`t want to let them down.

We were going to fish a lake called the Velodrome just outside of the town of Albert, which is a lake that I`d fished several times in the past. The lake is about twenty acres in size, very picturesque, and holds carp to low forties, with the average being mid-twenties. There are also quite a few grass carp and catfish in the lake, but I hoped to avoid those, and maybe catch one or two of the big mirrors.

I arrived at the lake just after seven o`clock on Friday morning, and was pleased to find that it was dry and not quite as cold as I`d expected, so perhaps it wasn`t going to be too bad after all. I was just setting up my bivvy when my phone rang. It was a French number, and although none of my friends` names were shown alongside the number, I answered it anyway. I was surprised to hear that it was Corentin, and couldn`t understand why his name didn`t show on the display, but I was soon to find out. Corentin asked which swim I was in and when I told him that I was on the far platform, he said that he thought it was a good choice and that he`d fish there with me. There`s plenty of room in this swim for both of us and we`d often doubled up there before, with each of us fishing in our own section of the lake, on opposite sides of the platform, and I was pleased to have the company.

Christophe then rang to say that he was at the opposite end of the lake, but that he`d be round to see me later. Once again his name didn`t appear on the display on my phone screen which I couldn`t understand at all. Once I`d got everything organised, I thought that I`d better ring my wife Anita, to let her know that I`d arrived safely, but when I looked in contacts on my phone, to find her number, I discovered that there were no contact details for anybody.

All my contacts were missing!

How that happened, I have no idea, but it certainly explained why neither Corentin or Christophe`s name had appeared on my phone display when they called me earlier. I couldn`t remember my wife`s mobile number, so I couldn`t ring her, but fortunately she rang me an hour or so later, and I was able to explain the problem. I now had her number, so that was one problem solved, but how it happened remained a mystery.

I then started to look for three suitable spots to place my hook-baits. Having fished this swim several times in the past, I knew that there was a firm area about ten yards short of the large island, and I sent the marker out in that direction. Unfortunately my first three casts only found areas of soft silt, which wasn`t what I was looking for at all. My next cast sent the marker fifteen yards further to the right, and there was the firm area of lake-bed that I was searching for. It`s funny how the memory plays tricks on you, because I was sure that I`d positioned my hook-baits further to the left in the past, but maybe not. After popping up the float. I cast a bare lead towards it with one of my fishing rods, to get the correct distance. The cast was perfect, and landed right next to the marker float, so I put the line in the clip and marked it with pole elastic. All that was needed now was to put some bait on the spot with my throwing stick, but unfortunately when I reeled in the lead, I pulled in the marker float with it, so I had to start all over again.

If I`d tried to do that I wouldn`t have been able to.

Fortunately I soon found the spot again, and baited it with about 150 boilies. In the past when I`ve fished here, I`ve baited up with boilies that have been soaked in a bucket of lake-water for an hour or so. This isn`t to wash the flavour out of the baits, it`s just so that they take on a little bit of water. The theory is that boilies in this state don`t suck up the smell of the silt so much as dry baits do. This time however I didn`t bother, and I baited up with boilies straight out of the bag. There was no real reason for this, other than that I was feeling a little tired after the journey, and I just didn`t bother.

I hoped that I wouldn`t regret that later.

I soon found two more spots, at closer range than the first, and baited those more lightly, one with about 120 boilies and the other with about eighty or so. Now that may not sound like a lot of bait, and I admit that I usually bait far more heavily here, but if the weather was going to be as bad as predicted, and the water temperature was going to be very low, then I worried that even this amount of bait may be too much.

I decided to fish with quite bright hook-baits to begin with, thinking that the fish might be quite lethargic this early in the season, so I wanted the baits to really get their attention. I used pop-up`s on two of the rods – one white and one yellow, and an orange wafter on the third rod. All three of these were home-made, and although they were of different colours, they all contained the same attractors as the boilies that I`d baited up with, but at higher levels, so that the fish just couldn`t miss them. I`d just got the last hook-bait into position when Corentin told me that dinner was ready.

Chicken and rice, washed down with a beer.

Perfect.

That afternoon several people came to see us. First there was Corentin`s wife Sophie with his son Nathan, followed by Nicholas and his girlfriend, and then a couple of other friends of Corentin. Hands were shaken, another couple of beers drunk, and the time just flew by. Unfortunately the alarms stayed totally silent, with neither of us hearing a single bleep, but we told ourselves that it was still very early in the session, and that we`d have a better chance during the night and maybe early the next morning. Christophe had fared a little better at the other end of the lake, catching two fish. Unfortunately they were both bream, and I didn`t envy him those.

I decided