The MasterBlanker

After reading Jakes blog about his most memorable carp I felt inspired to blog about my most memorable carp as well.

The fish was taken in the summer of 1994 when I was just 17, a session has been arranged in a lake close to where my parents had a house in France in the region. I had arranged to go for a weeks carp fishing with a mate of mine and we traveled down to France with my parents full of anticipation. Bait was rolled before we left the UK and we had 20 KG’s of chick peas with us ( my favourite bait at the time).

Anyway to cut a long story short the weeks fishing was cut down to a few days when my mate had to return back to the UK for personal reasons leaving me fishing alone. I was happy to do this but my parents ( remember this was in the age before mobile phones) were not so 2 x 2 day sessions it had to be.

The fishing was not easy, we expected the fish to come crawling up the line. Well the poisson chat did…. and even swapping to chick pea on the hair didn’t stop them.  The weed was amazing, massive clumps of elodea that seemed to float around to catch you out.

On the last day I received a violent take, far far more violent then I had ever experienced before. The fight was ( from memory) a normal enough fight with the fish kiting right and left, however the fun really started when I got it in the net. The fish was brought to the waiting spreader block a little too early it seemed and once it was in ( and I was celebrating) the fish started to thrash wildly. Really wildly, so much in fact that it managed to rip a hole in the side of the net and swim out. Imagine the scene I am now trying to play a fish whilst the line is running through a massive hole in the net and disappearing into the depths.

Swiftly I realised that the fish had made its way straight into a large bunch of weed and was stuck firm ( no doubt trying to throw the hook) so there was nothing for us but to jump into the water after it. I should point out at this stage that I had no idea how deep the water was in front of me, the drop to the water was 1m and the water could have been 3m deep, as it was it the water came up to my neck but I was able to swim with the net over to the weed ball and haul the whole damn lot into the net. I then swiftly turned and doggy paddled as fast as I could back to the bank.

There was then the frantic search through the weed for the fish and in seconds I realised that I had caught my largest carp ever.

After weighing it several times I settled on a weight of 20lb 2oz and at the time it smashed my previous PB by 3-4 lbs. The fish was not the normal “swimming gut” that you occasionally find but appeared to be a river carp that was just pure muscle. Magic fishing and a memory I will treasure for ever.

Picture quality is really bad due to the camera that was used, I have progressed a lot in the last 16 years

If it looks cold - it was !

Well it is a very glad Quentyn who is back from the Bosbaan leaving 1/2 way through a 2 day session. Normally I would be annoyed about leaving half way through planned session but after the 1st night i though I would quit whilst the going was good.

Here is a tip for you, if you are packing to go fishing and you shake your cooking gas bottle and think “hmm I wonder if there is enough in there for 2 days” there is not. The meerest action of checking ensures that there is not. Now in the summer you can get away with no hot water, in the winter it could be deadly. Well you have guessed it, during the 1st night I went to make a cup of tea and found that in the cold my gas bottle was almost empty with not really even enough grunt to warm 1 kettle of water.  Lesson to be learned I feel and my thanks to Mick to popped along in the morning with a hot flask of tea which was very welcome.

On to the fishing, when I arrived at Bosbaan I was not surprised to find someone camped out in swim 1, under the tree as this is always a popular swim and as the wind was a NE wind I decided to fish the other end anyway. I was surprised to find a group of anglers at the other end however and as darkness was approaching and I knew it was going to be a cold night I decided to fish as far as I could towards the windward end whilst not fishing too close to either the over head lines or to the other anglers.

As it was really the 1st fish able weekend after the intense cold I decided to opt for highly flavoured boilies and only small PVA bags or single glugged popups. Whilst I was in my local fishing shop the other day I notice that Dynamite have just released a new tutti frutti flavour ( which doesn’t show on their website ) however I could smell them across the shop, subtle they are not. They brought back happy memories of using richworth tutti frutti boilies when I was very young, I decided I had to have them.

Dynamite Tutti Fruitti and small bag of boilie chops

The other rod was set up with a CCmoore 15mm perfect Pineapple pop-up that has been marinading in the pineapple booster liquid for weeks and so is fully saturated. This was then presented as a chod rig with no freebies or other baits around.

After a few hours of moving the baits every 30-40 mins searching for the fish I decided to place them both in some likely looking areas and bed down for the night. Just after I buried myself in the sleeping bag, Nico, one of the other anglers from up the bank popped over to ask if I had caught anything. I was just giving my reply when, beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep ! the chod rig rod was away. After a strange fight ( wasn’t even sure it was a carp) the fish was safely ensconced in the net and it was time to dig out the weigh sling and the Korda carp care kit .

Bosbaan linear mirror of 18 lbs 8 oz

I was off the mark ! I always feel a great sense of relief when you have a fish in the bag, it is almost like you can relax as if noting else you have not blanked. My thanks to Niko for the pictures of this fish as it was really too cold to be messing around with self takes and I was glad for his help. One think I would like to point out was that this fish was caught on the exact rig that I made here, a lot of people show how to make rigs but never show you the results. Well this is the fish that that particular rig caught.

After about an hour it was the turn of the other rod, on striking this one felt a lot better. a heavy nodding fish that was quickly kiting to the right and straight into the bank. It is at times like these that I really appreciate the Fox Stratos big pits, on some reels you really have to wind fast and hard to recover line quickly, not these I maintained contact all the way throughout the run towards me.  The result was another rather pretty mirror of again 18lb 8oz ( they must have been brothers)

Bosbaan Mirror carp of 18lb 8oz

Not as pretty scale wise as the 1st but that huge tail really allowed it to fight hard. After a bit of treatment for a previous mouth injury the fish was returned to the water to get back to eating boilies. One thing that was strange was that this fish was really excreting a red bait, I don’t know who as fishing with red boilies but this fish loved them and was pooing then out all over the place.

The rest of the night was uneventful and the fish didnt return till the morning when a brace of 15lb fish made themselves known. As I had good pics of the 18′s and as it was really really cold I just snapped a quick pic on the mat before returning them.

Both were a welcome addition to the tally and along with another small common ( <10) that I released immediately brought the total for the session to 5. Not bad for less than 24 hrs and certainly not bad for a winter session of less than 24hrs.

To recap 4 of the 5 were on CCmoore pineapple popup’s fished chod rig style on a 3 inch chod and the other was on a tutti fruitti bottom bait with a small bag of chops.  Sadly It seems that I was the only angler to catch with based on my rather random swim selection has to be down to the bait or the rig

Do you fish the Bosbaan ? Do you fish in Amsterdam ? Why not tell me what you think, post a comment below