Carping on ...

I had a love affair with carp , but you know how it is . It all starts off great , you spend all your waking hours thinking about them while you're not out there spending endless nights chasing them . Then the enevitable happens , you realise they're are fat pigs and you wonder what you ever saw in them ?
It wasn't all bad though , carp and me had some great times together . Many an evening would be spent at Ravenfield chasing them , now this little pond is deceptive . Now let me say I love this place and anyone would do well to apply for a ticket , you will learn a lot and become a better angler for it .
The water is crystal clear most of the time and the carp can be easily seen from the bank , quite often sun bathing in the shallows by the car park . It wasn't rare to see new members lean over the fence and look into the shallows and spot 20 carp with ease "fucking hell ! there's loads of 'em" I would hear bellowed from the car park . You could hear them telling each other how they would take the place apart " gonna be a piece of piss this " was just as common to hear .
To be fair it must have looked easy , and it did at first to me too ...
 A few of those who joined after me have actually taken the place apart , I know a couple of them have gone to the effort of creating their own bait and putting the time in to getting the carp on it . Good angling I say and just reward for all of the effort !

You see it's only a small pond and as such it needs a stealthy approach , I would say that 90% of my catches were from the margins . Now this meant being quiet and keeping out of view from the carp , if you did this you were always in with a shout of a pick up , on the other hand if you wanted to bivvy up and listen to the radio at full blast while you sunk enough Stella to kill an elephant and supplement that with herbal roll ups it isn't the place for you . The committee quite rightly won't tolerate such behaviour , as a few have found out .
    Saying that , there are couple of regulars at various other places I've been who catch a few doing just that .However , they tend to spend longer trying than most but I suppose you have little concept of time when you're stoned . Each to there own , eh ?
The problem here is that carp anglers can all get tarred with the same brush and I think that kind of behaviour finally saw me fishing for carp less and less , you see I don't want to associate myself with anglers who treat their bivvies like crack houses or drink so much they piss the bed . I still want to catch the odd carp but I no longer want to be a " carp angler "
I shall still drive down that narrow lane to Ravo this spring when the rivers close , I plan to try catching one on the float using my new centre pin too . Keep you posted on that one ...