A Fine Line

BY GARETH FAREHAM

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I’d persuade my dad to take me up there at any possible opportunity. Once a week was the optimum frequency of visit, and I looked forward to it like little else. Barlow’s of Bond Street was a small independent tackle shop in a red brick Victorian back street of Macclesfield, an old mill town just south of Manchester renowned for its silk weaving trade through the 1800s. 

Barlow’s was a family run shop, usually with Adam behind the counter, as dry and northern as they came, rarely too enthusiastic and with a reputation for it as well. That never put me off though, the allure of the Aladdin’s Cave was strong. There was no air in there, the dark low ceilings offered little, tackle piled atop of itself and racking squashed in wherever it could, gave it the feeling akin of an antique shop, in stark contrast to the clean, regimented fluorescent lit homogeny you might find in your local Angling Direct store these days. 

The carp section was tucked even deeper into a back alley of the shop, and having to wind around behind the counter to access it always felt like you were in slightly foreign territory – the fact you were always in the way when Adam needed to go and collect a pint of maggots from the back for a customer, added to the awkwardness of the experience as well. Once through though, I was always transfixed. Racks of Partridge hooks in crisp paper packaging – The Ritchie Mac bent Z13 pattern, Piggybacks and the Maddocks Grey Shadows; Kryston hooklinks – Merlin, Silkworm and Multistrand; Terry Eustace and Nash Happy Hooker bits, and a peppering of the classic 90s Solar flouro indicators sat hanging on the peg boards amongst the tubing, beads, lead coating powders and other bits of barely adequate carp tackle available at that time. 

A few shelves full of Premier Baits and Rod Hutchinson flavours along with accompanying bags of base mix sat gathering dust, always offering the promise of something new and wondrous, and a path toward the crusty old mirrors I used to see in their catalogues, or ‘comics’ as Premier had coined them – looking back now, the original Darenth and Yateley stock probably had a lot to do with shaping the view of the sort of carp I wanted to angle for in years to come. 

Fish Fodder, Crunt Oil, Milk Spice, Nouvelle and Mulberry. Nothing is quite as reminiscent of that time for me as the black bags of Premier Fish Base, Peach Melba and Black Pepper, and the 500ml Noddoil bottles. I can still smell it now. Sets of shiny black ultracult Optonic XLs lay just out of reach of my paper round monies in a cabinet, and a handful of books sat physically out of reach on a shelf above the counter too – most trips in I’d ask Adam to begrudgingly pass me one down to look at, until I finally got a copy of Bazil’s Bush in 1993 and at thirteen years old, the seed was sown. It is still sitting beside me now on the carp book shelf, like a little time capsule. 

Up until that point, I had been more than happy fishing for whatever came along, whether that was roach and dace on the concrete towpaths of the Macc Canal, the tench amongst the pads at Rossmere, or the single and double figure carp at Sand and Dovemere – it was all just fishing, plain and so wonderfully simple. All of it was incredibly exciting, every trip a seemingly huge adventure, complete with sandwiches, a Coleman double burner and sausages if we were doing a night, and no known outcome or expectations, other than that the sausages would be black on the outside and raw inside – the naivety of youth and the media black hole of the 80s and early 90s providing the perfect, fertile ground for an experience full of blissful ignorance. 

Bazil’s Bush, with all its captivation, wonder, heartache and eventual redemption, changed something for me though; it arrived at a time when I was becoming competent at catching carp, and had seen and heard whispers of more around the periphery, something beyond the realms of the slightly emaciated ten pound commons of Sandmere. Something about the idea of investing colossal swathes of your time in the pursuit of just one or two grand old carp excited me hugely, and over the coming years I followed the roads that led to that path, perhaps blindly at times. 

Exactly what I found so compelling about carp fishing back in the 90s is hard to pinpoint, but I know that at times it completely consumed my thoughts, even though I never got to go as much as I liked. In-between times I would read and re-read everything I had, which back then would be just a meagre one Carpworld issue a month, and the occasional Carp Fisher. Every few weeks, I would knock up a six, or maybe twelve egg mix with dad, and carefully portion it all into little hand labelled zip seal bags containing a pound or two for the freezer, just enough for a night. 

Stringers and a scattering were about all we ever fished with back then. I fished all over with my old man through those early years – Thorneycroft, Whirley, Rossmere, Sandmere, Dovemere, Gawsworth Hall … we had a Horseshoe ticket for two seasons as well, and even made the pilgrimage up to Hawk to hop the fence and steal a walk around one very exciting day. 

When the time finally came for me to make the jump up into the big carp scene, it sadly marked the end of us fishing together, Redesmere held the chalice in the North West and had a notorious reputation, for both the clique and the difficulty, and although I was desperately keen to get involved in fishing for some of the areas most prized and historic carp, dad had no desire for that whatsoever. He just wanted to go fishing, as he still does to this day, and the idea of chasing targets, and following the path to Bazil’s Bush with me was of as much interest as golf. In some ways there lies the crux of it. 

There are so many beautiful aspects to angling, everything from the immersion in the outdoors and witnessing the changing of the seasons on a very intimate scale, through to the challenge, politics and complexities of chasing particular fish, and to the friendships and camaraderie that carp angling in particular so naturally seems to bring along with it. Angling has given me a lot over the years; it has been a compelling and at times obsessive pursuit, and something that I feel I have perhaps sacrificed too much for at times, but it has also been the source of some of my fondest and most precious memories – from sunsets and sunrises in the most incredible of places, to being chest deep in the pouring rain and pitch black with a carp thirty years older than myself in the net, close to tears. 

As the years progressed, and the seasons ticked by, I chased progressively harder targets – in my teenage dreams still headed towards Bazil’s Bush, I suppose – fishing for carp that were either bigger than the last, or had some sense of history and prestige about them. More than anything it was the books, stories and photos that stoked those flames and although the idea of the unknown was always exciting, the history carp had garnered the spotlight. By nature the stakes gradually became higher, the buzz even bigger, challenges became greater, the distance down the motorway longer, and the investment of time and focus ever more pressing. I bounced from water to water, on something of a big carp wild goose chase, full of the keenness of youth and an unshakeable confidence, but struggling to accept the limitations of the time I could offer, and often ending up often a little disillusioned with the results. The dream wasn’t quite living up to reality. 

As responsibilities and real life commitments stacked up, the juggle became ever harder, to the point where eventually I realised, begrudgingly, that one would have to give, and naturally of course that would have to be the carp. For a long while I did wonder if it was just a glitch in my personality traits that seemingly made it impossible for me to tow a middle line, and to just enjoy carp angling for what it was – just fishing, but over the years I’ve met many others who have struggled in the same way – it seems that big carp fishing perhaps just attracts the like and single minded and I don’t know too many big carp anglers who haven’t burnt out over the years for one reason or another. 

Finding the ‘middle way’ seems tricky, but is perhaps the answer. In Buddhism it is the way of moderation, of balance and of equilibrium – no traits that I could ever manage to find whilst targeting big carp in a single-minded fashion; it is a fine line between success and failure on those terms when it is just one that you are chasing. 

Whilst I loved the vast majority of that time spent chasing big carp on the circuit, made friends for life, and did catch a couple of ‘mantelpiece’ carp along the way, looking back now I can see that the deeper I went down the rabbit hole of chasing those big targets, in some ways the further away I got from the essential things that used to make up the experience of carp fishing in the early days that I fell in love with. The contradiction is that the rush from the eventual capture of one of those big, grand old carp seemed, for a few years anyway, to outweigh the struggles of getting there… Big carp attract an equally big amount of pressure, and so more often than not I found myself simply competing against other highly competent, highly driven anglers, all after the same slice of the pie. That lies at the heart of what I struggle with these days in big carp fishing, and why in recent times my focus has shifted towards a different style of angling, and something maybe more balanced and sustainable. 

For almost ten years now I have traded the week in week out campaign fishing for a handful of trips overseas each year, and winters on the rivers chasing the roach, dace and chub. Whether I am trotting a stick float, touch ledgering some paste, or fishing the public waters of Europe, those situations allow me to tap straight back into many of the things I enjoyed so much as a naïve teenager, as well as to preserve my energy, efforts and enthusiasm and to channel it into more manageable timeframes, whilst still angling for big, beautiful carp – each and every trip overseas being something of the unknown, having no targets, no expectations, and no real idea about how the trip will pan out, always transports me back to that time spent as a kid, with my dad – just fishing.

With no targets to chase, I find there is an entirely different state of mind that can be achieved, and the most important aspect becomes the experience of the trip itself, and how it feels. Hanging on, at all costs, to those essential elements of immersing myself in the surroundings, keeping some sense of mystery, having the space to angle and finding a little freedom have become more important to me than anything these days. The not knowing everything, is everything. 

In a modern carp world, obsessed with content creation and Instagram likes that is all too often centred around efficiency, target chasing, and success being simply marked by how many you have caught, or how big they are, I would argue a strong case instead for the man that has enjoyed his season the most as being the most successful – no one would ever suggest that the most successful reader out there is the one that has simply read the most books – it is surely the way those books have been read, and what enjoyment and knowledge has been absorbed from them, that matters the most? If carp angling is simply a pastime, that we do to indulge ourselves and no one else, then why do we judge and document it on the basis that we so often do? 

Although I still struggle to keep a lid on the bounty hunter desires at times and have a hard time living up to the expectations of the modern social media content creation sphere, it does feel like a shift towards something different to be angling as I am now, and a journey made towards the full circle – ‘looking sideways from the view ahead’, as a friend once said. Fishing is still just fishing, regardless of what is happening elsewhere, and what anyone else is doing. For all the drones and bait boats and flash technology, all the glossy films, the sponsorship deals and 70, 80 and 90 pounders floating around – I believe those simple essential elements will always be there to tap into, if you dig deep enough to find them. It is nothing even vaguely revolutionary to try to strip it all back, and is simply how my dad has always angled his entire life, and continues to do to this day – happily flicking out a float or feeder for whatever comes along – it just seems to have taken me a little longer to figure out what is at the root of what I really love about it all.