| MARK HODSON | |
An angler since he can remember, Mark Hodson almost literally lives, eats and breathes fishing. A match angler in his youth, fishing for the junior Starlets, he turned to the dark side and joined the ‘floppy hat’ brigade in his college years. He worked in the tackle trade for ten years, on a part time or full time basis at Chaplains, one of Birmingham’s busiest tackle shops and managed the specialist department there for two years. He now fishes just for fun, although the ‘floppy specialist hat’ still dominates his angling, his writing concentrates on getting the maximum enjoyment from your angling and trying something different from the norm. |
| IN SEARCH OF LOST TREASURE – PART ONE Fish are the most amazing creatures, they have the innate ability to disappear without trace in the smallest of waters for years on end. They really are the Houdinis of the animal kingdom, but unlike a stage magician they rarely re-appear minutes later to rapturous applause, more usually they give a lone angler a fleeting glimpse, to re-ignite the myth of their existence.  The Birth of the Angling Archaeologist In a recent bout of most uncharacteristic organisation I recently decided to sort through my mounting pile of angling documentation and literature. This consisted of hundreds of tackle catalogues, society magazines, leaflets and pamphlets for various waters, but most interestingly all my old licences, club cards and syndicate memberships along with their accompanying rulesand information. This turned from a quick sort-out, to a half a day reading and reminiscing session, the end result being a bigger mess than I started with and a small question that lodged itself in the back of my mind, a question that started to take hold and all too frequently to consume my ‘idle’ thought time. Whilst sorting through my old club cards and rules I started to sort through my memberships to the specimen pools at Kingsbury Water Park. Now I’ve been a holder of a permit to fish these gravel pits for over 15 years now but it was a leaflet from the early nineties that grabbed my attention. It listed the fish species that inhabited each pool back then. Now I like to think I know all of the lakes at Kingsbury like the back of my hand as I’ve spent so much time their over the years , but in one pool, Burdetts Pool, it stated tench and … crucian carp, I read it again….. crucian carp, CRUCIAN CARP!!  Expedition Preparation All good Fishing Archaeology expeditions need to have a sound basis; it’s no good chasing unconfirmed myths, legends, typing errors or fabricated bar-room boasts. I needed to confirm if firstly the old leaflet was correct, and if it was, if any of the crucians had been caught, moved, or found dead since they were first stocked. Also, I needed advice on a few of problems I had thought of since the initial ‘spark’. The first problem was that Burdetts pool no longer existed, well, it did, but no longer in name, as in the late nineties it had been joined with Gibsons Pool, which was at the time the dedicated specimen carp pool by cutting through the narrow strip of land that divided the two pools. The second problem was that since their creation the pools had been netted on numerous occasions and stock transferred from pool to pool. The third problem was that in their early years the pits used to flood into each other, sometimes as often as three times a year, so the fish became mobile and moved from pit to pit by their own accord, crafty buggers! To answer all of these questions and more I contacted Kingsbury Water Park’s ‘Rumour control and oracle of all things piscatorial’ Head Ranger Fred Hopkins. Now, Fred Hopkins has worked at the park since it opened and so if there’s something worth knowing then he knows it. Fred took half an hour out of a busy summer day (and trust me it does get busy with hundreds of thousands of visitors each year flocking to the park to enjoy its numerous facilities) to answer a multitude of questions from myself.  Now came the important part: crucians were indeed stocked into Burdetts Pool, and a few went into two other pools that were left over from the Burdetts stocking. These pools were Kingfisher Pool and Heron Pool. Like myself, Fred had not heard of any of the crucians being caught though the odd 2lb plus fish had turned up in nettings. He did also confirm that a 4lb-plus fish had been caught from Broomy Croft Pool though on a scale count it was deemed not to be a true crucian, though apart from this everything else gave it the appearance of a true crucian carp, and this was pool that had no crucians stocked into it! He also informed me that in the year 2000 a further small stocking of crucians had taken place, with 50 fish going into Gibsons Pool (by now incorporating the old Burdetts Pool) and 50 into Kingfisher Pool. So now I knew that there was a very good chance that the missing crucians could be waiting to be caught and they could be of a very good size. The next step was to contact the Environmental Agency to see if they had any further details of the original and subsequent stockings as they still monitor the pools today. A quick phone call to Derek Dennis, Technical Officer at the EA, provided the answer to one of most important questions I had, would they be genuine crucians? His answer was, “the original stockings would in all probability be genuine fish and not hybridised in any way”. All my other questions and queries were put in an e-mail to him and he left me with the promise that if he had the information in the EA’s records he would try and dig it out for me when he had the time. Things were looking good and the hunt for the those little missing “Bars of Crucian Gold” was well and truly on. Part two: more answers from the EA, tactics, techniques, experimental early searches and the location ‘headache’ |
