Dippy the Carp
Rumour has it that Dippy the carp was caught this week. This is the fish that likes to travel. He (she?) took a ticket to ride from his original home and then, about a year or so ago, caught the next bus back.
‘I’ve only had 10 Minutes……’
Is the usual cry from the Sweet Prince aka Eddie Bibby when you’ve been listening to him snoring for two hours. And while we were carp fishing in France earlier this year he had one slumbering spell when he claimed he hadn’t been asleep at all.
But I was ready for this one. I’d already taken this picture while he wasn’t asleep.
It didn’t half make Dave Colclough chortle when he heard about it.
Laid back Lobo
Also on the same trip was a character who goes by the name of Lobo, a really nice guy but one with an attitude to life that rivals Eddie’s when he’s asleep.
Lobo has two main interests in life, fishing and music, so when he’s not fishing he’s singing and playing his guitar. Or both as you can see in the picture entertaining me and Terry Knight.
Lobo only fishes twice a year, for four months each time. The rest of the year he spends looking for new waters and resting. He is a family man with half a dozen or more kids (he wasn’t sure) and they all come down to Terry’s water, Burton Mere, to visit him in his bivvy. No, I’m not kidding.
Earlier this year Terry thought he’d wind him up, so he sent somebody down to his bivvy with a mobile phone to tell Lobo that Angling Times were going to ring him to do an interview. An hour or so later the mobile rang and Terry, in his best hack’s voice, proceeded to ‘interview’ Lobo, asking him about the 20lb carp he’d caught earlier and all kinds of other, generally stupid things. In the end Terry couldn’t stop laughing and gave the game away.
Later still, Terry had another thought (rare for him to have two in one day). Lobo is an interesting character so AT probably would be interested in doing a story on him. So he phoned Richard Lee, who he knows well and is now the editor of Angling Times, and set it up for Richard to interview Lobo.
So off went Terry to Lobo’s bivvy with the mobile phone and told him that AT really were going to phone him and do an interview. Okay, says Lobo, and waited for the call.
Later that day Angling Times phoned and asked Lobo if it was okay to interview him. Lobo’s answer went something like, ‘You can **** *** Knighty. If you think I’m falling for that one again you can ******* think again. Yer nothing but a ******* ……..’. Etc, etc!
Sedge’s Xmas Present
Sedge, Stewart Bloor that is, author of this website’s popular Pilgrim’s Progress column, is always going on about how tight I am.
Well, I’d like everybody to know that it just isn’t true. And to prove there is no truth in it I’ve just bought him a Christmas present.
No, not the phone, the hands-free kit.
Unusual Catch
One night at DDI in France I was roused from a particularly enjoyable dream by an absolute screamer of a run. I ran to the rod and could swear I saw steam coming off the spool it was spinning so fast. As I lifted into it Eddie loomed out of the darkness with landing in hand ready to do the honours.
It didn’t feel like a heavy fish, not like the 30lb-plus fish that inhabit the water, and certainly not one of the 40’s or 50’s. This one was too fast. The biggies go off on slow but very powerful runs and then sandbag the rod in short bursts. This one half-kited, half run, to my left, towards one of the many channels at DDI. So I leaned into it more and forced it to kite right into my own bank about 50yds away. Better that than down the channel where I would have been sure to lose it.
I bent the rod into it and slowly but surely began to gain line as it tried to dig into the bank. ‘Is it a good fish?’ Ed asked.
‘I don’t think so’, I replied. ‘It feels strange. Could be a small cat, or a big grassie. I just don’t know what to think.’
And that sense of the unknown was multiplied a thousand fold when whatever it was started to climb up the bush to my left as I was trying to pull it from under! Bear in mind it was pitch dark and we couldn’t actually see what was going on.
I increased the bend in the rod and dropped ‘it’ back into the water. And soon after a weed-covered object was scooped into the landing net and lowered onto the unhooking mat, whereupon it freed itself from the weed and proceeded to run round the landing net mesh like whirling dervish.
‘It’s a giant rat!’ Said Ed.
I shone the torch on it, holding the landing net at arm’s length and said, ‘No, it’s a bloody baby coypu.’
And so it was, hooked in the back leg just in the flesh, the boilie still intact. ‘Unhook it then’, said Ed.
‘You can go and take a flying **** as well’, I said. ‘That ‘giant rat’ will have your hand off in one bite. They chew through trees with those teeth, you know.’
So while it lay quiet I sneaked a pair of scissors through the mesh of the net and snipped the line close to the hook. It was a micro-barb hook and it would be rid of it in no time. The landing net was dropped in the water and it swam off pretty quickly. 
That definitely rated as my most unusual catch!
Short-Arse
Unlike me, of great stature, Eddie Bibby is a real short-arse. The other day he was wearing a (small size) Hutchie bivvy suit. Take a look at the picture and, believe it or not, those black pads round his ankles are knee pads!
Getting the Hump
Once, when we were sat there in the warm sunshine in France (nice memory that as I write and look through the office window at the pounding rain) supping a few wines and lagers, as you do, I heard this crunch, crunch, crunch. I thought it was Ed grinding his teeth, and then, no more than a yard or so from where we sat, I noticed the turf move.
We guessed it was a mole. It was about a half inch under the surface, chewing at the grass roots. Every tiny movement we made it would shoot off along one of the many sub-surface tunnels and lie quiet for a couple of minutes. Then off it would go again – crunch, crunch, crunch. We did manage one quick sighting of a huge, shovel-like paw, as it popped through the grass.
Invasion of the Hedgehogs
DDI is inhabited by hundreds, if not thousands, of huge hedgehogs that come out at night and scoff any food and bait you’ve left lying around.
On the opposite bank to where we fished two big Wigan lads lay terrified at night listening to the hedgehogs scuffling around outside and occasionally pawing at the sides of their bivvies.
There were only a few where Ed and I fished but we had great fun sneaking up and photographing them as they tried to escape from the rubbish bags. One cheeky hog got quite used to us sneaking up and in the end just carried on feeding as though we weren’t there.
Which was more than we could say for the fish that particular week!
Cooperman’s Half Dozen
Dave Cooper, better known as Cooperman, gets only about four baits from a tin of luncheon meat. All I could hear a few weeks ago when we were fishing the lower river Severn was Cooperman’s tin-opener going ten to the dozen as he opened yet another tin of meat.
Before I realised what was going on I said to him, ‘what’s that noise?’ He said, ‘I’m getting my meat out, that’s what your right hand’s for.’
Later, as he packed for home and we stood chatting he said he was hungry. I asked him why he hadn’t brought any sandwiches, to which he replied, deadpan. ‘I brought these instead. Half a dozen eggs. I picked them up in mistake for my sandwiches.’
There was no answer to that.
