‘My other summer fish is the carp. I caught my first carp back in 1944 from a small farm pond surrounded by apple trees. If it was a hot summer the pond would virtually dry out except for a liquid muddy bottom. What was amazing was to discover that when the rain returned and the pond filled up, we found the carp were still there’
Once again we can seek our freshwater fish in rivers, canals and still waters. The original close season for coarse fish goes back to the Mundella Act of 1878. The date of June 16th brings another edition of Raconteurs so is nicely timed, coinciding with the start of a new coarse fishing season. The Environment Agency removed the close season from most still waters in 1995 and from most canals in 2000.
Thankfully, we have a close season on rivers. When it was first suggested that we lift the close season on still waters, I at once approached my solicitor to send a letter giving my reasons why the close season should be retained. For four years I protested against lifting the close season but sadly lost the fight. In fact, I reckon the decision to lift was made for the benefit of commercial fishery owners, not for the wildlife and aquatic species. I noticed immediately on a local lake that, once fishing became allowed in the old close season, the great crested grebes moved away.
In addition, there were some anglers who hoped for a cold spring, so that the fish did not spawn early and therefore would be heavier in weight when caught. We have all seen the obscene pictures in the angling press of tench with extended guts. My best tench weighed in at 8lb 6oz, a fish caught in late July on a float fished lobworm and for me it was the most perfect looking tench.
In this feature to commemorate the start of new coarse fishing season, I am writing about two summer species, the tench and the carp. I reckon there is nothing better than watching a crimson-tipped float when fishing for tench. My enjoyable way of fishing for carp is with a cane rod, centre-pin reel and a loaf of bread as bait. With these, I roam roaming around a pool with plenty of reeds, lilies, trees and bushes around the water. In my 89th year, I still get a ‘big buzz’ on June 15th when I arrive at my ‘Crabtree pool’, as I call it, in the late afternoon. I will then sit on the grassy bank, not far from a magnificent oak tree, and around the pool will be willows, hawthorns, an alder tree, banks of tall nettles, also brambles.
The most beautiful of fish, A summer’s tench is up there
In the margins are small areas of bulrushes where there is some gravel. In the swampy muddy areas I will see reedmace with their sausage-like brown heads. In my tench pool are numerous patches of white and yellow lilies, adding a great splash of colour. There are the broad-leafed pond-weed, the curled pond-weed also some Canadian water-weed; these plants are the areas where you can often catch Tench. No doubt I will see young moorhens, looking like balls of wool, and the coots no doubt will be just as quarrelsome as always.
Martin’s ‘Crabtree Pool’
Damsel and dragon flies will be around in good numbers; it’s that type of pool. Hopefully, also enjoying the warm sunshine, on more occasions than I can count, I will also see damselflies alight on my float. The most frequent are usually the common blue and the small and large red-eye damsels, but it is rare to get a bite when they sit on the float in these peaceful surroundings. The hum and sight of a bumble bees or pigeons cooing in the nearby trees let me know that it’s really summer; there will be insects both land and water based, alive and active, and no doubt few red ants will come and annoy me.
As in other seasons, I hope June will be one of those delightful months with the countryside painted in all shades of green and brown. The hum of insects no doubt will make me drowsy and I often doze off on occasions. As dawn breaks, there will likely be wisps of mist over the pool as the sun starts to rise until sitting over the big oak, when I can clearly see my float. Only then is it time to make my first cast of the new season.
Having had a nice break, I will take a slow walk around the pool, taking in all the sounds and smells of the countryside surrounding me. No doubt there will be several swims that take my fancy but I can only select one. Having picked my swim, I will then move all my gear into this chosen spot, where I will no doubt be at the waterside for a 24-hour session or more. No bed-chair, ‘bivvy’ or umbrella will spoil the scene. My lightweight chair will be put in a position where I can comfortably reach my rod in its rest on my right, with my landing net on my left, resting on my damp unhooking mat.
Just behind me, on a flat piece of grassy bank I will have a freezer box containing my food, baits, milk, cups, plate. My jet-boiler, with a gallon size water bottle will be close by, as I will often be making a brew, either for myself or other anglers who might turn up. Hopefully, my friend Bill’s wife will make a fruit cake without any sugar. I doubt I will start fishing at midnight but will wait until I can see my float in the first light of day. Should the weather turn cold and wet, I will put on my waterproofs and cover my food box with a groundsheet. I will no doubt have a snooze in my chair during the dark hours.
Tackle baits and ground baits
After an early tea of salad with a fresh baked roll and a couple of mugs of tea, I will start assembling my tackle. The rod I will be using is an Andrew Davies eleven-foot Kennet Perfection, a much-improved rod on the original Kennet Perfections which I thought were on the soft side, ideal for smaller species but not for tench when you are fishing weedy waters. Ted Oliver’s tapers enabled the building of a much better rod with a stiffer action. I will match this with a 4½” X 1” centre-pin reel known as the ‘Atom’ (a strange name for a centre-pin) holding some fifty yards of eight-pound breaking-strain line. Having put on a float-stop, I will thread the line through one of Micky Erend’s sliding quill floats with a crimson tip which is made to take five BB shot. I have a selection of these excellent sliding floats and my reason for using a sliding float is that ‘Crabtree’ is quite deep in some placesand the slider makes fishing a lot easier. Depending on what bait I decide to use I will tie on a barbless hook between size twelve and size eight, using a Palomar knot.
Micky Erends with a fine tench
Most places where I fish for tench there is often a gravel bottom but in ‘Crabtree’ it can often be silty with gravel and clay, so I will use a small plummet to check the depth of water but not my usual heavy one, as it would sink into the soft silt formed over many years. Having checked the depth, I will add a few inches of line between hook and a BB shot, then lightly pinch four BB shot halfway between the float and a single BB shot four inches from the hook.
Baits and Ground Baits
I expect I will then no doubt have another brew before raking and baiting my swim. I have sharp, curved blade that I can screw into my landing net handle and using this I will cut some of the weed in the area, where I hope to draw any tench into my landing net.
Baits for tench are numerous: worms (lobs and redworms), gentles, casters, stewed wheat, sweetcorn, bread crust and flake. There are also various types of paste, king prawns, mussels and cockles without these having been soaked in vinegar. Sausage meat paste has been a good bait since I first used it in the early 1950s; it is still good today, a bait my grandfathers used.
My job in those far off days was to keep turning the mincer until the sausage meat was soft and smooth. My grandfather would then add fine bread crumb to make the sausage meat firm enough to stay on the hook. I often asked why he didn’t use sausage rusk and his answer was “You don’t get such a smooth mixture”. Luncheon meat in small cubes or at times large pieces has also proved popular. I will often use an apple corer with this bait, resulting in a sausage-like shape. This idea can be used on rivers where the chub and barbel get wised up a square piece of meat. Mini-boilies in various flavours have also been used successfully, the list is endless.
Depending on the venue being fished, I would often start with chopped lobworms as an attraction coupled with a big lobworm with some air injected in its tail as hook bait. On another water, I might fish with sweetcorn or stewed wheat. It is rare for me to start with gentles unless I have plenty of dead ones to use as ground bait. Bread crust fished on a two- or three-inch link is certainly another good bait. Often a crust hook bait fished two or three feet off the bottom can bring a surprise fish when nothing else is working.
Martin with another fine tench
Back in the late 1960s I often used freshwater mussels but stopped using them in the 1980s as I was concerned about the damage I might be causing mussel numbers in our still waters. Then, late in the 1990s, I got to hear about New Zealand, green-lipped mussels that were being used in the catering trade. A friend in Hampshire had been using them with great success for carp and tench so I gave them a try; on some waters they were excellent, while on others, after a few were caught, the fish seemed to ignore them. So, it’s just a case of trying these and seeing what success you have. I used them last season with success so I will use them again this season. If you have a water holding tench, why not go and angle for these beautiful fish? Try it in the old traditional way rather than with the modern powerful rods, bait-runner reels, buzzers, bait boats and simply casting to the horizon. I wish you all the best in your quest.
Floating crust and flake for carp
My other summer fish is the carp. I caught my first carp back in 1944 from a small farm pond surrounded by apple trees. If it was a hot summer the pond would virtually dry out except for a liquid muddy bottom. What was amazing was to discover that when the rain returned and the pond filled up, we found the carp were still there; nothing big, but to us boys these common carp weighing perhaps a pound plus, were giants, far better than catching small perch rudd and eels from another larger nearby water. We caught these fish on bread paste, worms and floating crust, the latter being the most exciting tactic. Our tackle consisted of a cheap cane rod with a rubber handle; no cork in those days for us boys, cork was for the rods of my grandfathers and uncles.
In 1946 I progressed to fishing with proper fishing tackle given to me by grandfathers and uncles, several of my friends were also given the right tackle. I was then given a book to read entitled The Fisherman’s Bedside Book by ‘BB’. I still have a copy in my possession with a red leather-bound cover which i greatly treasure and still often read.
One chapter that captured my imagination was “Floating Bait For Carp: By Flt/Lt Burton” on page 292. He writes: “Carp fishing, in my humble opinion, is one of the most exacting and exciting branches of the piscatorial art. It is always said by most writers on the subject that carp are the hardest fish to catch. In my opinion they are the easiest to hook but not always to bring successfully to the net. The cardinal point to remember with carp is to be quiet and keep, if possible, out of sight.” These comments were written during the Second World War. How true these thoughts are when it comes to catching carp on floating crust or flake. If you can, please try to get hold of ‘BB’s book. There is a more recent book by ‘BB’ called Confessions of a Carp Fisher published in 2003 by Merlin Unwin and on page75 there is the same chapter by Flt/Lt Burton.
After the end of the war, we now began fishing further afield, in fact as far as we could cycle. A venue we fished was a group of waters near Cobham which held perch, pike, rudd, roach and carp. It was the latter fish that got our attention and we put in action Flt/Lt Burton’s ideas on floating baits. We would catapult a few bits of crust out towards the centre of the pool, then watch the crusts as they drifted towards the rhododendron bushes. Sometimes the crust would be taken in the open water but not often. As the crusts started to get in close to the rhododendrons we would see carp moving about and occasionally we would hear the slurp of a carp taking a bit of crust or just see it disappear in swirl of water. We would then sit quietly talking among ourselves for a while, until all the bits of crusts were gone.
After baiting our hooks with a cube of crust or piece of flake, a cast would be made towards our chosen spot and, if we were lucky, the bait would drop on the water close to the rhododendrons and slowly drift into the dark secretive areas underneath. Here, if you were lucky, the silver paper would suddenly shoot up into the rod-ring. These carp weighed around two to five pounds but a fish that size was very rare. These fish were probably the wild carp that we can still seek today. We never did see any other type of carp, such as mirrors or leather varieties.
When we were in our teens we did start to catch bigger fish. I was probably about fourteen years old when I caught a carp of 8lbs from Mereworth Castle lake in Wateringbury. This water was very private and we would hide our bikes behind a hedge some distance away before creeping inside using a set of wire-cutters to make a hole big enough for use to wriggle through. There was also a pool close to the village of Teston in some woods which was known as the ‘Witches Pool’. We could buy a ticket for one sixpence in those days to fish and, again, floating crust was the best bait.
Cane rod, a centre-pin reel and a loaf of bread
For the past few years I have been returning in time to my youth, when we had good quality tackle, no weights on the line; just simple ways of catching fish. Our baits were lobworms, potatoes, bread crust, brown bread and honey paste. When we fished at night we used silver paper as a bite indicator; sometimes, having often dozed off, we would be suddenly be woken by a screeching reel. Later, before the ‘Heron’ bite indicator became available, we would balanced a penny on the spool of our Mitchell 300s, with a tin plate placed below it, so if the penny fell onto the plate it was supposed to wake us up.
A classic summer common
For the past few seasons, I have been fishing several stillwaters that are rarely fished by carp anglers. They regard the fish as not big enough and these anglers are not allowed to fish at night. At one of these waters I am often the only person there. I will spend the day slowly walking around the venue, armed with rod, reel and tackle for fishing a free-lined bit of crust or flake. Often I come across a weedy area then, by creeping close, see a carp no more than six feet away in two or three feet of water. This is when I bait with a piece of flake pressed a bit more firmly on the hook, then walk backwards from the spot to another area where I can dip the flake in the water. Then it is back to the carp…
As quiet as a mouse, I move into position, allowing the line to roll off the reel and as the flake enters the water it slowly sinks. Often, within no more than a minute or even less, a fish will intercept the flake, I set the hook and the water boils in a frenzy. The carp creates a bow wave as it heads for the deeper water; this is as exciting a fishing moment as you can get, it even equals bone-fishing the flats.
Why not, in this new season, give this approach a try? Apart from the tackle in my small shoulder-bag, I have my Jet boiler, a bottle of water, a sandwich, some tea bags, mug and milk. As you carefully make your way around your chosen venue, you will be surprised at what you see and learn.
Writing & Images Martin James MBE – Late Spring 2026
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