A Quest for Canal Carp - 10,000th Cast

It's three-thirty in the morning and I've been home an hour. The first blackbird calls from the top of a nearby holly, the air is cool and still, and the distant motorway is as hushed as I have ever known. My trousers are sopping wet from the knee down from kneeling down on dew-soaked grass, my eyes are gritty, my scalp is itchy, and my body needs a bed. My head however, seeks no pillow, my fingers seek out keys, and while you sleep, I'm going to write this down, and kick it out the door, before I lose the moment to dreams.


At one O'clock in the morning I arrived at the place on the canal I've been visiting regularly over the past few weeks in search of an elusive carp. I'd witnessed this fish whilst fishing for silver bream. There'd been the sighting in the distance, of a large bow wave coming fast along the towpath revetment, and when I peered over the parapet and actually saw what it was that caused it, was astonished to see a very large carp at the head of the vee.

Ever since I've pursued it and hoped that of the many runs I've had to baits cast after it, one would turn out to be from carp. And to begin with, any carp. But so far I've only encountered a more tench than I ever knew were there, including two consecutive personal bests for the canal, an overall personal best for silver bream, a lovely pound and a half roach, a hybrid that convinced me for a time that it actually was a two-pound roach, and a handful amongst a lot of skimmer bream, of what are for this water, very good bream.

What a terrible disappointment it has been to have such fun...

I've kept the faith though. I've made ten-thousand casts into this canal and never once have I hooked carp, by neither accident or design, but I've always known at some point, one of these rare and almost invisible fish, would surely come along, even if it took a half a lifetime and a million casts for one to find my bait.

The full moon talks to a lone lamp in a leafy lane

A dead still night this. The sky moonlit, streaked by glowing stratocirrus, and the water a perfect mirror disturbed only by the lonesome reflections of passing planes and orbiting satellites. No waterbirds. No dimpling fry. No porpoising roach, bream or tench. No sign whatsoever, of carp.

I cast my baits with some sense of urgency, but also a nagging feeling that the usual fish weren't going to show because their usual signs were entirely absent from the scene. An hour passed by but nothing happened at all. No twitches of the bobbin, no sharp rising and falling of the same as fish passed under and brushed the line. Not a single indication that fish even lived here, any more.

Then, at five past the hour, the right hand rod's bobbin twitched once, then twice, and then twitched about as a small fish made off with the bait. There was nothing there. Soon after, the left-hander sprang into life, but this time on a fast run, but once again - nothing there. Most peculiar.

Another half-hour passed by. Still nothing moved. Then the left-hander sounded out again. I picked up the rod and leaned into a heavy fish. This was going to be a really large tench, solid and slow moving, but surely about to wake up at any moment to its predicament, and kick hard back. But, it never did. It kited to the bank like a bream, albeit a very heavy bream, and then, right at the net, it turned into a branch...

Two missed runs, and a stick! It really wasn't going very well at all.

Undeterred, the bait was cast back to where the previous bait had been picked up, and a handful of fresh corn tossed over the spot. I knew it wouldn't be long before a bream, for that was what it must have been in the first place, found it.

Sure enough, twenty minutes later, the left hander was off again. I picked up the rod, leaned back, and...

Holy frickin sh..

"CARP!!"

Its initial run was as devastating as I'd ever experienced from any fish in my life. It was headed for, and almost under, in what seemed an instant, the primary snag, a boom dividing canal from marina. Once far under this, the fish would be lost for certain, because beyond was not a straight channel, but a lily filled pool where the fish could turn around a corner and have me dog-legged.

I heaved as hard as I could bear and stopped it dead, two or three yards beyond the boom, inside the marina, but not so far that all was lost, yet. A massive boil and a crash of water erupted on the other side as the fish turned about itself, and to my relief, headed back to the relatively easy problems of the canal proper.

It got under the second line on the way back and the alarm sounded. Then it tore straight at me. All went slack, me furiously peddling the reel, then all went bent again as the fish made off toward the north star. The alarm sounded again as either a second fish picked up the other bait, or this fish ripped line off the other spool, I couldn't tell which, but it was not possible to do anything about it. I just hoped that if it was another fish, it hadn't gone into enemy territory.

For I had to beat this one, before anything on earth could be done about that one.

I'd sunk to my knees when the fish had got under the boom, in order to pile on enough low side-strain to stop it. I'd stayed there ever since, like a prostrate disciple attached to a raging angel. I remembered Danny Everitt telling me about this problem with wild canal carp, How I'd not land my first, nor my second, or even my third, but would have to endure the pain of breakage over and over again, till I'd mastered the art of taming the beasts with sheer skill.

Now it was out in open water and away from snags I remembered him saying, 'walk the fish.' From my knees I began to do the next best thing, which was to follow the fish around with the rod top under half power. This had the immediate effect of calming it, and it began to wallow about safely mid-canal. However, getting its head up was another matter, but I found that if I lifted at the end of a swing, it would rise up of its own accord. Only trouble was, every time it did, it would then make a savage lunge for the bottom again.

I must have been on my knees praying for the fight to come to a close for a full twenty minutes before the fish began to tire noticeably. It was only a matter of time now, before the hook-hold failed, the wire straightened out under the pressure of an unstoppable surge on an ever shortening line, or the fish was in the net.

When I finally had it wallowing on the surface, and making fewer and weaker bids for freedom, the net was pushed out as far as I could manage, and with a great thrashing and plume of spray, my first ever canal carp was safely enmeshed...

Good grief!

I knelt on the handle, and let the net retain the fish in the water, still hooked, whist picking up the other rod, praying that there wasn't another carp at the other end of it. Thankfully, the only carp it was attached to, was the one I'd just beaten, and I wouldn't have to deal with another, who could have been round the corner, and out on a hundred yards of line by now.

The mess of lead and feeder, beads, swivels, lines and hooks, was a sorry sight, but it tells the story of the epic fight very well. Quite how the fish managed to create such a mammoth tangle is anyone's guess, but given the fish's extraordinary strength and acrobatic attempts to escape, close-up, it's no surprise that it did.

How?

But it was in such a terrible mess, and the night had been such a success, that I certainly wasn't going to retackle and try for another. I'd been there just a few hours and day had only begun to break, but I'd finally had that all important first, and trying for a second seemed pointless now, so it was time to go home.

Looking at the pictures now, this fabulous fish seems to be what I hoped it might be on the bank. A proper feral carp, or 'wildie'. Not a true wild carp as such, but one that is the result of progressive reversion over many generations back towards the true type. Long and lean, tremendously powerful and muscular, with a sharply forked tail, grey fins, and without a belly or a hump back to speak of. If so, then it is one of the most sought after carp of all, and quite a specimen too.

I think it's going straight into my top three fish of all time. I cannot remember ever getting into such a tangle with any fish, not even the double-figure salmon that straightened my size-fourteen on the Itchen. Danny was right all the way, except for the fact that I did bank it, after all. Just as he said it would be, this fish was simply astonishing in its ferocity, remarkable in its tenacity, if not incredible in its sheer agility, and I'm really glad that I stuck it out and resisted the temptation to fine down for the tench, bream and silvers I was becoming to accustomed to catching. For if I had, I would certainly have lost it in the first few seconds.

I'm getting back into carping. Canal carping, river carping, wild carping, proper carping, any carping, but commercial carping.

Now where's that big girl I once saw?

And where's the pillow...