Searching for Big Carp

By Steve Graham

Steve Graham has been an angler since the age of eight, and for the last thirty years has fished exclusively for carp.
He has caught over 130 carp in excess of forty pounds during this time, but is just as enthusiastic today as he was when he first picked up a rod, all those years ago.
Steve fishes both in England and in France, but it is his French angling adventures that he enjoys the most. He doesn`t normally fish on the popular commercial venues in France however, preferring the far lesser-known venues, where he is often the only angler on the lake. These venues are much less pressured than the more popular commercial venues, but can often be very challenging. Here the fish don`t have names, and on many of these lakes the stock of carp is not known, and some of these fish have never seen a hook before, which makes the fishing even more exciting.
Although the fishing can be very difficult at times, the rewards are there for anyone who dares to persevere, and in this book Steve describes some of his adventures in search of these unknown monsters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Graham
• Release date: Nov 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005688578

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.

Book preview

At the start of 2021 we were in lock-down again, which meant no fishing, but that wasn't too much of a hardship initially, because the weather was horrendous. January and February alternated between extremely cold and extremely wet, and most of my local lakes were flooded, making them totally un-fishable. Eventually the restrictions were eased slightly, and we were allowed to go fishing again, but we had to stay local, and we were only able to fish during the day.

Night-fishing was not allowed at all.

I decided to concentrate my efforts on a local club lake called Coton. This was about twenty acres in size, and held a very low stock of carp. I had seen five or six carp on the surface, the previous summer, but since then I hadn't seen any more. I`d spoken to several people about the lake and estimates of the stock level varied between two and six. Now I knew that there were more than two, because I`d seen them myself, but six seemed to be about right. Now of course a lake with so few carp in it was never going to be easy, as I'd found out when I`d fished there in October and November the previous year. I fished five day-sessions during this time, without catching a single fish, not even a bream. I like fishing these low-stock lakes however, and one advantage was that Coton tended to be very rarely fished by other carp anglers. The club held the fishing rights to quite a few lakes, all of which contained a lot more carp than there were in Coton, so most carp anglers tended to fish elsewhere. Occasionally an angler would appear, full of enthusiasm, but after fishing a few times, and failing to catch anything, they didn't come back. This meant that I'd be able to bait up a few swims, without the fear that someone else would fish where I'd been baiting, and reap the rewards of my hard work.

I started baiting two swims in early-February. When I say baiting, that's not quite correct, because initially I didn't introduce any bait as such. I found three spots in each swim, and every three days I put three or four spombs of Himalayan rock salt onto each spot. Carp tend to be attracted to salt at this time of the year, and I hoped that this would keep them in the area. I continued to introduce the rock salt every three days, but after the fourth time, I started to introduce some boilie crumb and sweetcorn too. I was careful not to introduce too much bait, because the water was still very cold, so the fish wouldn't be moving about much, and with such a low stock of carp in the lake, I didn't want it to just lie there and rot. That's one reason why I introduced boilie crumb, rather that whole boilies. If it wasn't eaten by the carp, then I thought that the small silver fish would soon mop it up. The sweetcorn shouldn't do much harm either, and would provide some visual attraction too, which might encourage a fish to drop down to the lake-bed, for a bit of a feed.

I decided to fish the lake for the first time this year, on Wednesday the third of March, and chose a swim that I called the Far Woods. I called it this, because it was on the far side of the lake, and you had to walk through a narrow path through the woods to get to the swim. It was situated towards the far end of the east bank, and when I arrived just after dawn, it was cold and overcast, with a light easterly wind. That wind felt very cold indeed, so I was glad to be on the back of it, rather than have it blowing into my face, which wouldn't have been very comfortable at all.

‘If I were a carp, then this is where I'd be.’ I said to myself, as I set up the rods.

I was hoping that all of my hard work would give me a chance of catching my first carp from Coton, but realistically, there wasn't really much chance of that. The temperature never rose above five degrees all day, and not surprisingly I didn't hear a bleep from any of my alarms, and didn't see any signs of fish either. Despite that, it was good to be out fishing again, and I baited up before I left, determined to return the following week. Unfortunately, the weather then took a turn for the worse, with heavy rain most days, and the lake flooded again.

After a few dry days, the floodwater had abated somewhat, and I made my way back to the lake at dawn on the fifteenth of March. I chose my other baited swim this time, which I called the Far Islands. This swim was midway along the south bank, and there were three small islands at about eighty-five yards range, right in front of the swim. I'd been baiting close to the largest one of these islands, where it was between nine and ten feet deep, and the lake-bed was made up of firm silt. I intended to cast one rod there, but the other two, would be positioned to my left, at much closer range. Here the water was much shallower, and I`d discovered two small areas of gravel, which I'd been baiting. It was warmer this time, with the temperature reaching eleven degrees in early afternoon, but despite that, my alarms stayed silent, and once again I didn't see any signs of fish. The air pressure was very high at 1040, which probably didn't help.

The air pressure stayed very high for the next few days, but was predicted to fall slightly to 1020, on Thursday 25th March, and although that was still far from ideal, it was better. I was starting to have a few doubts by this time, but not because I hadn't caught any carp so far. What worried me was that I hadn't seen any carp. I knew that there were five or six carp in the lake the previous year, because I'd seen them, but it had been badly flooded in late January, with the water well over the banks. It was possible that the fish had been able to leave the lake during the floods, and were now in the lake below, which the club didn't have the fishing rights to. If that were the case, then I might be fishing a lake with no carp in it. It was still very early in the year however, and the fish wouldn't be moving about much yet, so it was hardly surprising that I hadn't seen anything so far.

I decided to fish in the Far Woods swim this time, where I'd spent my first session of the year. When I arrived, it was cool and overcast, with a moderate south-westerly wind blowing, but as the day went on it became quite warm and sunny, with the temperature rising to thirteen degrees by noon.

I was using three different hook-baits this time. On the left-hand rod I used a hinged stiff rig, on which I tied a pop-up of the same flavour as the boilie crumb that I'd been baiting with, and this was topped with a piece of yellow plastic sweetcorn. I'd introduced some sweetcorn every time that I'd baited up, so the plastic corn seemed like a good idea, and I positioned the rig about five feet from the south bank, where the water was nine feet deep.

On my second rod I used a snowman presentation, topped with a small white pop-up. The bottom part of the snowman was a boilie the same as the boilie-crumb that I'd been baiting with, and this was wrapped in boilie paste. I'd made these boilies myself, and I'd kept some of the un-boiled paste, to wrap around the boilies. This paste breaks down quite quickly in the water, giving off a lot of attraction, and the method had worked quite well for me on other lakes in the past. I attached a tiny one-inch pva mesh bag of boilie crumb to the rig, and positioned it at about forty yards range, on a small spot where the gravel on the lake-bed met the silt.

On my right-hand rod, I used two pieces of sweet, salty maize. I boiled up the maize myself, using a small amount of thaumatin in the water when I cooked it, which made the maize quite sweet. I then drained off most of the water, before adding two tablespoons of golden syrup, and simmering it again for a minute or so. This made the maize even sweeter, and gave it a caramel-like taste. After allowing this to cool, I then added some rock salt. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, I'd been spombing rock salt onto the spots for some time, so making the maize salty, seemed like a good idea. Secondly, the salt stopped the maize from melting the pva, so I could use it inside pva bags. Of course, once the pva bag was in the water, it would melt in the normal way. I made up a small pva mesh bag with a small amount of boilie crumb, then six grains of my sweet salty maize, followed by another small amount of boilie crumb. This produced a mesh bag of just over one inch in diameter, which I hooked onto the rig, before positioning it at about thirty yards range, on a small patch of gravel, mid-way towards a small island.

Later that morning, the wind increased in strength, and occasional gusts were very strong indeed, causing my alarms to bleep from time to time, despite the sensitivity being turned down quite low. This happened most to the alarms supporting my two right-hand rods, on which I was fishing with the lines slack. I was using running leads, and a fluorocarbon main-line, with no leader, and I often fish this way if I can. The heavy fluorocarbon main-line lays tight to the lake-bed, and is very inconspicuous, and it's a method that the carp rarely come across, with most carp anglers tending to use a bolt rig of some description. With the running rig, a fish can’t use the weight of the lead to help it shake out the hook, and I find the bite registration to be surprisingly good, especially at relatively close range. Much as I like the method, I would never use it when fishing close to snags or heavy weed for instance, preferring to fish with a tight line and the reel locked-up, in such a situation, to prevent the fish from reaching the snags. I don't use the method when long-range casting is required either, because the heavy fluorocarbon line doesn't cast as well as mono or braid. For shorter range however, that is not an issue.

By mid-morning, the sun had broken through the clouds, and it was considerably warmer, so it was quite pleasant sitting there. I even saw a kingfisher flying close to the far bank, and it really felt like spring had arrived at last.

Just before noon, I heard a few bleeps from my middle alarm, and walked towards it to