Catching Up With The Monkeys Part III

Tom Clark

Been at sparsholt college you get to meet carp anglers from around the country that share the same passion for angling as I do. Its fantastic to meet anglers that share the same passion for carp but have different views on fishing for them. Since been at sparsholt I believe I have become a better angler as I have been shown a totally different style of angling by many different anglers. At sparsholt there are anglers like my self that specialise in fishing the lower stocked larger pits, fishing for particular fish and not stopping until that is achieved, there are anglers such as Alan Padget and John Earl who are true haulers and specialise in fishing over large beds of bait at range and adapting there rigs, hookbaits etc. This comes from fishing waters such as Horseshoe and the prolific Linear complex. When we all started sparsholt at the beginning of September we all had the same problem, were to fish! This was soon resolved as we had a cracking little club water on our doorstep, it holds nothing spectacular in size but the fish are stunners. Three of us visited the pit for a couple of nights, basically for a social but we all hoped to nick a couple of the low 20’s which we knew resided in there. At the end of the session we ended up taking eight carp between us, I had four, Sam had two and Padget had two. Four out of the eight fish were stunning low 20’s and all taken on the Pro-Fish over particle in the margins.

This small water was fine for a few nights here and there but I wanted a water that I could really get my teeth into and after along discussion with my good mate Stuart Prosser or as we call him ‘Chimney’ it was decided that one of his local pits would be the perfect place to concentrate my efforts on, it’s a 30 acre mature gravel pit with a good head of big fish with no less then 6 carp over the magical 40+ barrier, a lot of the fishing would be at range over a lot of bait as these fish did like there food, this suited me fine as I liked a challenge and it wasn’t really what I was used to. We decided to do a few sessions before winter to get me ready for next spring, as this was when I decided that I would really start to do the time on the pit. The first few sessions really opened my eyes to the southern style of angling, it really was totally different to, t’up North. However this suited me fine as I hoped my style would be a little bit different to the other anglers on the lake. I didn’t expect anything to happen on the first trip as it really was just a recce session, I spent most of my time with a marker rod looking for spots and assessing swims to be honest, so I wasn’t surprised when we walked a way after a blank session, the next session however would turn out to be a little bit more interesting but more on that next time.

I just wanted to recall a session before I went to sparsholt college, it was on one of my local gravel pits near hull. Its renowned as a tricky little venue which holds some stunning fish, there aren’t that many in there so when me and my good friend from back home Luke Berzins took two of the bigger residents in a short over nighter it really was special and I’m sure you will agree they really are stunning old warriors. All the fish I have taken since been at sparsholt and back home have been either over a bed of the fantastic Sc25 in mixed sizes or the new Pro-Fish, with hookbaits been the awesome critically balanced dumbells in both flavours which in my opinion really does get you that extra fish on the harder waters.

Right well I guess its time for that lecture… Until next time

Slack Lines
Tom Clark