Part 1 – Raw Beginnings on Grey Mist Mere
Just recently my angling life has changed beyond all recognition as a near 20 year chapter has closed and a brand new one opened. 
So what has occurred to spur this fantastic event? What can possibly change a person from a long-time single species obsessive into a broad-minded lover of the wider joys of angling? Well, it involves a passport, an aeroplane and a couple of friends.
Let me explain……..
A long time ago, when I was about 12, I used to fish for anything going; gudgeon, roach and perch, you name it, I fished for it. Most of my time was spent at Warrington AA’s Grey Mist Mere, located on the edge of the town. Great it was, a tub of maggots, 12ft glass rod and a float that would take Jaws to sink it. But I didn’t care, it was fishing and I loved it. It was about this time that I started to notice some anglers fishing in a new way. Heavy rods, casting in to the middle of the lake and waiting for hours until, after a flurry of activity, a monster carp would lie in the base of a huge net. 
Now, for those of you who don’t know, Grey Mist Mere is situated between a rubbish tip and an industrial estate right in the middle of the local populous, so to say that the lake was busy during the summer-time would be an understatement. During August it was as if every schoolboy in the town descended upon the place, looking for piscatorial fun. So, what with the place being so over-run, whenever one of these guys fishing in this new way caught a fish it was big news. I mean, you couldn’t move for kids clammering for a view of whatever lay in the net.
So it was that a few of my friends and I decided to get a piece of the action and have a go at legering, only we wouldn’t fish for carp. Oh no, the reports said that they were too difficult to catch. We decided that tench would be our quarry, spurred on by the fact that one of our number had been given the recipe for a secret killer bait, Munchie paste!
Armed with a tubful of the new wonder-bait we trudged off to ‘The Mist’ on the first day of the school break. My dad had bought me a new 9ft Celglass leger rod made by Stammers of Stockport and a new Ryobi reel, ratio 3:1 mark you! I’ve still got the rod but I think the reel got broken for parts some time ago. Anyway, off we went, anglers all. We set up in the ‘Crabby’s’ swim, so named after the crab apple trees which grew there. Rod-rests in, link-legers on, paste bait on and cast in. Nowhere in particular, just whack it is far as you could, about 30yds if my memory serves. 
That summer we had a great time, the bait worked well and tench after tench succumbed to it’s meaty aroma. Then, one day it happened. I’d cast in as usual, set my Squeezee top bobbin to the required drop and sat back to admire the view. Who am I kidding? I was 13, I was pratting about tormenting worms and pulling the legs off flies! Anyway, preoccupied I was until a voice shouted ‘Oy, your rods going in.’ I looked up just in time to see the butt of my treasured rod disappearing over the edge of the front rod rest. I grabbed it and felt the pull of an unseen beast. Well yes, you’ve guessed, it’s the story of my first carp. It’s probably the same as many others, but for me it was the beginning of a chapter in my life which dominated much of my teenage years and then some.
From that day on fishing meant carp and only carp. I didn’t really know exactly what it was I was actually aiming for until recently, but it was a big carp I’m sure of that. A twenty? A thirty? I don’t know, all I knew was that I wanted a big fish, one I could really be proud to have caught. I did all of things that carp anglers do, I fished weekends, used tonnes of bait, got on the latest boilie, popped-up this, particle that and so on. The tackle, oh the tackle. I’ve lost count of the myriad amount of leads I’ve used, the different pattern hooks, the lines, braid, Dacron, multi-strand. Oh the money I’ve wasted in pursuit of this cause.
And, as sure as eggs are a major constituent in boilie production, the bad habits set in. Getting there, set up the bivvy, cast out, bait up, have a can and off to bed. If the indicator went off in the night, well that was great. If it didn’t, well carping’s hard isn’t it, but I’ve got all the gear, it must the conditions. And so it went on, standard rigs, going baits, multiple rods (all matching mind you). This was it, this was fishing from the age of 14 through 32.
Now, don’t get me wrong I’m not having a pop at carp angling, I loved it, I still love it. It’s just that, as I said at the start, when you’re in the middle of the trees, you can’t appreciate the beauty of the wood. Over the years I’ve caught some lovely fish from some pretty waters, but never THE one. I shied away from circuit waters, I like solitude and so being a carper in the North West, this kind of restricted my choice of waters to those containing singles, doubles and maybe the odd 20. 
As time passed by I gradually became more and more stale. Fishing in the same predictable manner every week, with only minor changes to suit the conditions. Every now and again I would get a flash of inspiration as my dusty old skills tried to resurface and I would do something a bit different to relieve the monotony, only to revert back to my old ways on the next session. I paint a black picture, maybe a little too dark. It’s important to remember that I always enjoyed my fishing, but from my vantage point now I can see that I’d lost the vision to see so much of the real pleasure of angling. I’m sure that my tale is not uncommon, there must be many carp anglers fishing today using the same old techniques week-in, week-out.
You know, it seems strange, but people used to catch carp before the hair rig, bolt rig, oil rig, fat pig or whatever the latest idea is. They fished for them, they were anglers. I think that’s the difference between many run-of-the-mill carpers like myself and the really good guys like Terry Hearn, Frank Warwick and Danny Fairbrass etc. I saw Danny at the NEC earlier this year. He was giving a talk in front of the huge tank that they have each year, about the feeding habits of carp. The large crowd that had gathered were all asking questions such as, ‘which rig for this?’ and, ‘what bait for that?’. He answered the questions in detail but you could see that all Danny was really interested in was the fish. He just kept looking and watching with a glint in his eye like a kid at Christmas. 
That’s about the best way that I can describe what I’d lost but now found again, the glint, the spark, the little something that when you meet a true fisherman you can sense. A happiness of life, the knowledge of a great secret.
So there you go, a potted history of my days as a carp angler, not a serious one by any stretch of the imagination, but a carper all the same. Punctuated by spells at university and playing rugby, I flitted in and out of the game in my mid-twenties, but I’ve always fished. And when I fished it was nearly always in the same old manner……..
So it was that the stage was set for the greatest turning point in my angling life so far, and most of it occurred by sheer luck. I’m a mechanical engineer by trade, a designer of water and air conditioning systems to be exact. Anyway, I work for the same company as Barney the Blanker or Gary Knowles, to give him his Sunday name. Every year Gary and a group of his mates book a trip abroad for a week to fish for whatever takes their fancy and this year, by happy chance, I’d been asked to tag along. Canada was the trips destination, Lakefield, slap-bang in the middle of the Kawarthas region to be precise, to fish for carp, aha thought I, this is going to be good……..
Part 2 – Carping Capers in Canada
