That camping and self-sufficiency are enjoyable is a ‘given’, and the sheer good quality of the gear at our disposal today makes it doubly so – so much so that much of today’s carp fishing is given second billing to the business of sleeping! I find this mildly worrying and very disappointing. Heaven only knows how many nights I’ve spent under a brolly, quietly thrilled at sitting still and unobtrusively within an unfamiliar, colourless world. But every one of them has been an individual and potentially memorable experience: laughing with the sheer exhilaration of warm whomping winds at three in the morning; pondering our purpose in the world beneath a full, butter-yellow moon or just rejoicing at being dry and warm but fresh of face. The carping-kippers are missing out on this. I’ve wandered in and out of sleep on warm and windless nights to find clooping-great carp in the reeds, right under my nose; I’ve furled in awful anticipation of the ceaseless, drumming rain pummelling through the brolly canvas; hovered over a cautious bobbin and watched it magically levitate in the darkness. The carping-kippers don’t live through this.
I find this disappointing because I and my contemporaries – and there are many out there – absolutely know how wonderful night-fishing can be if fishing rather than sleeping is the objective. Dozing, or even getting your head down for an hour, would give me no concern at all but, astonishingly, ‘getting a really good night’s sleep’ has become something for carp anglers to aspire to: how did that ever come about? Well, I have a theory, but that’s probably best left for another time…no, that’s probably best left full-stop.
You might ask: ‘What’s it to do with you?’ but when we cease to question and debate we become assumptive and inured to all sorts of injustices and bad practices: what’s it to do with society that millions of kids get no exercise and risk ill-health in later life? Well, we want our fellow humans to be healthy! Similarly, ‘old school’ anglers who can recall and recount the events of a thousand glorious nights want our successors to have the same unforgettable experiences – not blurred half-memories of a fish that interrupted their sleep! What will these people have to tell their children and grandchildren? Worse still, what do they have to talk about now? The very stuff of fishing – and night-fishing in particular – can form no part of their personal narrative if they have made a special point of avoiding it by slipping into unconsciousness! Thank heaven for the bolt-rig, eh?
I mean, do you remember those miserable, primitive days when we used to hover over our rods in the wee, small hours, wide-eyed and near spellbound, willing the foil or the bobbin to smack the rod? Oh, the frustration! The aching back! The uncertainty – well, do you want it or don’t you! we’d urge. The indecision could last for ages but when the indicator adopted that purposeful ascent you were there to sweep back the rod and commence battle! How sad was that? If only we had possessed the wit and intelligence to devise a self-hooking rig we could have avoided all that time-wasting vigilance, the subdued chat, the shared brew and the sounds of the night…what fools we were!
But we weren’t, were we? That great lump in the torch-beam was the reward for your determination and attentiveness: it was well deserved; a twenty-pounder from a pool of unknown potential. You had no conception of a purpose-dug lake “…containing hundreds of health-certified carp to over 50lbs including the one we all love to target, Brenda”; indeed, you’d have been most disappointed to learn of your fish’s acquaintance with so many others.
Keep Calm and Carry On Carping, brothers, but choose your venue wisely. Remember that size really doesn’t matter that much, and that the whole experience is what truly matters. Like the atomic bomb, contemporary carp-trapping methods cannot be un-invented – we just have to live with them.
Cliff Hatton
