Kevin Nash - Memoirs of a Carp Fisher

32
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Tuesday, november 20, 2012
Places to fish
this weekend
CATCH 22, DAY TICKET LAKE
THE Day Ticket Lake is a mature gravel
pit of 20 acres that is over 40 years old. It
has 33 spacious swims, including two that are on
an island and only reachable by boat. This allows
anglers to cast towards the out-of-bounds nature
reserve area. Ten of the bankside swims are
doubles, with room for two people.
Depths range from 8ft to 24ft and it boasts many
features including islands, bars and plateaux.
Most of the stock is of commons, but there are also
a few mirrors and leathers. The carp average
around 25lb and the lake record stands at 44lb.
Contact: 01603 872948, www.
catch22fishingcentre.com
Location: Catch 22 Fishing Centre, Bunnetts Loke,
Lyng, Norwich, NR9 5BQ
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BLUEBELL LAKES, SWAN LAKE
HOME to some of the biggest day-ticket
carp in the country, this water is definitely
worth a visit if you want a personal best.
The lake has produced two mirrors over 50lb and
numerous forties and thirties.
At 12 acres you need to get your location right,
and the carp can often be found in the quiet areas
which receive the least angling pressure.
Contact: 01832 226042, www.bluebell-lakes.co.uk
Location: Tansor, Oundle, Peterborough, PE8 5HP
WYRESIDE LAKES, SUNNYSIDE 1
THIS water gives you the best chance of
catching at this popular Lancashire
complex, with around 170 carp in three acres.
Depths range from 3ft in the shallows down to
8ft and the biggest fish reported is a 33lb
specimen known as Pecs. In front of the swims on
the Road Bank there is a channel at 50 yards range
which a lot of fish are caught from.
Contact: 01524 792093, www.wyresidelakes.co.uk
Location: Wyreside Lakes, Sunnyside Farmhouse,
Bay Horse, Near Lancaster, LA2 9DGH
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TODBER MANOR, BIG HAYES
BIG HAYES Specimen Lake was opened to
the public in May 2007. The lake is
8.5 acres and stocked with around 750 commons
and mirrors from 10lb to 34lb.
There are 18 well-spaced wood-chipped swims
with parking bays behind. The lakebed is clay,
with an average depth of 5ft dropping to 9ft by the
overflow.
Contact: 01258 820384, www.todbermanor.co.uk
Location: Manor Farm, Todber, Dorset, DT10 1JB
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HORSESHOE LAKE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE
HORSESHOE is renowned for its stunning
fully-scaled mirrors. The lake consists of
two main ‘arms’, Summer Bay and Winter Bay.
Depths vary from 4ft in Summer Bay to 11ft in
Winter Bay. It is a weedy water, managed as
necessary throughout the year. It is estimated
that there are 80-100 30lb-plus carp and literally
hundreds of double and twenties.
Contact: 01367 253959, www.thecarpsociety.com
Location: Horseshoe Lake, Burford Road,
Lechlade, Gloucestershire, GL7 3QQ
My Eureka
moment
leads to
a deadly
new rig
blow-out is
born from
watching
carp feed
MEMOIRS OF A CARP FISHER – THE DEMON EYE
Head for the deeper Winter Bay in cold weather.
Star Lane’s biggest
resident fell to a blow-out
rig shortly after casting it
out for the first time.
Priced at £29.99 including
free postage, Kevin will sign
your copy and write a
dedicated message of your
choice.
To order go to the website
www.tunarollpublications.
co.uk or call 01702 233 232
COMPETITION: To be in with the chance of
winning one of two signed copies of Kevin Nash’s
new book just answer the following question:
What was the name of the lake where
Kevin tested his blow-out rig?
Send your answers to: Kevin Nash Book
Competition, Angling Times, Media House,
Lynchwood, Peterborough, PE2 6EA
Subscribe now at: www.greatmagazines.co.uk
K
EVIN Nash’s much anticipated
book ‘Memoirs of a Carp
Fisher: The Demon Eye’
charts the legendary
angler’s journey through
the pioneering years of carp fishing.
Many of the tackle items and rigs we use
today were developed by Kevin, and in the
first part of the exclusive Angling Times
serialisation of his book he reveals how he
invented one of the most popular modern
day carp presentations – the blow-out rig…
STAR LANE:
THE RIG
REVOLUTION
“I had a rig theory
to test out that
was so massive, it
was like having a
secret
that
you’re bursting to tell all your mates about,
but can’t.
When I’d been on Waterways in
Cambridgeshire, something happened that
changed my whole thinking. I’d put a couple
of rods out; one in the margin and one out in
the middle, over weed. This was a courageous
move in those days. We didn’t go after the
carp in the weed because we were scared to.
On a previous visit to Waterways I knew
that I had carp in front of me but couldn’t
figure out why I wasn’t catching, and so I
climbed up a tree to watch.
One mooched up the margin to my nearside
bait. Upon arriving at my baited area it
immediately tipped up and started feeding. I
watched it suck in my hookbait and then
heard the bite alarm bleep so I began to climb
down from the tree, and then, because the
alarm had ceased, I stopped my urgent
descent. I looked down and could see
that the carp was still over my
bait, but I was amazed to
see
the
hooklink
entering its mouth.
It just sat there,
huffing and puffing,
and I could see its
gills opening and
shutting
vigorously.
Then it blew the rig, hookbait and
all, out and waddled off unconcerned. I
was gob-smacked. I’d just seen a pricked up
carp get rid of the rig, but I was more
astonished because this carp hadn’t panicked
on feeling the lead and being pricked by the
hook. It was clear that it knew what it was
doing, and it did it without panic, as if being
hooked up had become an occupational
hazard.
As an engineer, I became fascinated with
how that carp had ejected my hook. Then, I
had my first Eureka moment. I figured it
wasn’t the hook but the boilie – the large mass
of the boilie helped the carp to blow out the
hook.
It was my second Eureka moment, though,
that changed everything. I visualised that
pricked-up carp blowing against the bait,
which would try to exit the mouth, but the
hook anchored in the mouth would prevent
this, so the only way the carp could eject the
bait and the hook was to first remove the hook
point from its mouth. I realised how they did
that was by sucking, and that was why the
Waterways carp appeared to be huffing and
puffing so much.
There began an obsessive time of rig
experiments, and it was painful. I became a
Tuesday, november 20, 2012
Kevin Nash
AnglingTımes
33
The Knowledge
The Pioneer of rigs and baits –
read him in your AnglingTımes
self-harmer, digging hook points
into my hand, mimicking sucking
and blowing carp and assessing the
effects. Quickly, it became apparent that one
element that aided the carp to rid themselves
of the hook was fixing the hair to the shank. I
realised that I needed to be able to present the
boilie properly by way of retaining an anchor
point for the hair up the shank, but then, if I
hooked a carp, I needed a mechanism to
change the anchor point and get the boilie out
of the way, and this is how the ring blow-out
rig was born.
I tied the hair to a ring directly opposite the
point. If a carp was pricked and sat tight,
when it tried to blow the bait out the ring
would slide down the shank and over the eye,
making it very difficult for the carp to use the
mass of the boilie to rid itself of the hook. If it
sucked, the ring, which was now below the eye
of the hook on the hooklink, was prevented
I became a
self-harmer,
digging hook points
into my hand,
mimicking sucking
and blowing carp
from sliding back up the hook shank to the
anchor position, opposite the point of the
hook where the carp had learned, with a bit of
jiggery-pokery, to rid itself of the hook. When
it sucked, the hook would pivot on the point,
preventing the carp from achieving the
correct angle to suck the point of the hook out.
the perfect water
Star Lane seemed to be the perfect water on
which to test my ring blow out rig. A big fish
had come through and a cracker at that,
around the mid-30s. My old friend, Dave
Potter, who was manager of Penge Angling,
Rayleigh, was fishing on Brickfield Point
when I arrived. The main water in front of
Dave was flanked on the right by an island
which stopped some 30 yards in front of him,
forming a bay to his right. It was that island
margin we had our eyes on, and two or three
times carp rolled but unfortunately, Dave
This is the line aligner I
was using with tubing on
the hook before I invented
the blow-out rig.
didn’t get as much as a bleep.
I packed up in the morning to get to the office
and left lucky Dave to enjoy the blissfully
sunny summer day, but I was back about the
same time that afternoon when Dave was
packing up because he’d blanked and had
enough.
As Dave got into his car and drove off, I got
into mine and went to the car park nearest
The Chimney. Carp had been showing down
at the island for at least 24 hours, so a
different line angle was called for. I soon had
my rods out, and the right-hand rod directly
in front of me and cast just a few feet off the
island margin had my new ring blow-out rig
on it. To lessen the odds of a potential blank
the other two banker rods had normal line
aligner rigs on them.
It couldn’t have been more than 30 minutes
after casting out the right-hand rod along the
island margin before the alarm bleeped
spasmodically as the bobbin effectively
trembled, then lifted an inch, dropped an
inch, lifted half-an-inch- and then stopped. I
waited a moment for a run to develop, but it
didn’t, so I chose to hit this tenchy-looking
occurrence anyway.
I was into a heavy fish which roared off from
the island, hell bent on taking me around
Brickfield Point and into the bay.
I piled on the pressure, only for it to turn and
rocket towards me and one of the most
dangerous snags in the lake, the chimney.
I kept the rod at maximum compression but
was recovering line at the same time, to reduce
the angle. The carp swirled just four feet off
the chimney and then I had her around it and
safely in front of me. Carpet Steve, one of the
old members of Star Lane who I’d known from
years before, netted her for me.
“Kev,” he said. “You jammy b*****d. You’ve
been on here one day and you’ve caught the
big ’un!”
Jammy maybe, but I could make a case to
the carp gods that I had earned this result. I
had committed myself to moving swims to
change the line angle and, most relevantly, I’d
caught one of the largest carp in Essex – and
one of the most rarely caught – on my new ring
blow-out rig. The strangeness of the take, the
trembles and twitches, were clear signs of a
carp that was used to picking up rigs and
sitting tight on the spot until it rid itself. This
time, though, a clever fish had been caught
out. It was the carp world’s first-ever capture
on a blow-out rig.”
Don’t neglect zig rigs, which still work in the winter.
Keep using zig rigs
ZIG RIGS are considered by many to be a warm
weather tactic, but anyone who stops using them
now will definitely be missing out on fish.
During the winter, carp will spend the majority
of time up in the water in the warmer layer of
water known as the thermocline. Factors such
lake depth and wind direction will affect the level
at which you will find this thermocline, so it is
worth experimenting with different lengths of
zigs until you start getting bites.
Washed-out baits will not arouse the suspicions of wary carp.
Washed-out baits
IF YOU are fishing a busy water where the carp see
a lot of boilies, then using washed-out baits will
help you trick a few of the more wary fish.
By soaking your boilies in lake or rain water 24
hours before your session they will become a lot
paler in colour. Once they have been put out in the
lake they will resemble a bait that has been in the
water for several days and therefore be seen as
‘safe’ by the more cautious carp who may steer
clear of more brightly coloured baits.
Worms
THEY might not be the
most ‘fashionable’ big
carp bait, but lobworms
are rich in amino acids,
which are attractive
and beneficial to carp.
When bites are hard to
come by, a switch to a
worm might get you a
bonus winter carp.
Try hair-rigging a
bunch of them and
fishing them on their
own or with a PVA bag
of chopped worms and
a few maggots.
Glugging makes worms
even more attractive.
A dunk in flavoured glug will
pep up your worm baits.
34 AnglingTımes
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Tuesday, November 27, 2012
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Birth of the
safety rig
Kevin Nash
Former decathlete Dean Macey’s ten-year wait for a ‘fifty’
came to an end when he bagged this mighty French common.
Olympian
snags his
first ‘fifty’
AFTER nearly 10 years of trying Dean Macey has
caught his first carp over the magical 50lb barrier
– this 51lb 2oz common from Lac de Premiere in
Northern France.
The specimen was the highlight of a 37-fish haul
for the former Olympic decathlete which included
eight thirties to more than 35lb from the venue
owned by Everton footballer Tony Hibbert.
“With the weather turning cold and having
already had a couple of hard frosts, I thought that
with the four nights ahead of me I would be very
happy if I could winkle out just a couple of fish
every 48 hours,” explained Dean.
“I started off in a swim which allowed me to cast
towards an out-of-bounds area. My initial plan was
to spend the first 24 hours in this first peg and then
move every night if I wasn’t catching to try and
find the fish.”
After a few casts with his marker rod he had
several spots sorted for all three rods and baited
up with around 3kg of Mainline Baits Cell and New
Grange boilies.
“Rig-wise I opted for simplicity and strength in
the shape of a Korda size 6 Wide Gape X, 9ins of
20lb N-Trap coupled with a running lead clip and
18ins of Dark Matter tubing all on the ever faithful
15lb Subline with a snowman hookbait.”
The first night produced a string of fish to more
than 30lb but in the early hours of the morning he
received the all-important take.
“I lifted into the fish and straight away turned to
Keith and said ‘this could be a kipper.’ As it kited I
was able to gain line but when she turned and
wanted to go, I didn’t have much say in the matter.
“I was holding up quite well until I saw the
length and girth of the fish for the first time – then
my legs went to jelly. Eventually I managed to
slide her into the net and, as we looked down and
parted the mesh, I knew I had cracked it.”
A snowman hookbait
accounted for Macey’s
51lb 2oz giant.
N
The Pioneer of rigs and baits –
read him in your AnglingTımes
owadays lead clips are
commonplace and much has
been written about the
importance of using safe rigs
and ditching the lead. This is
largely thanks to the work of Kevin Nash
in the 1980s and in this extract from the
Advanced Lead Discharge chapter in his
new book, Memoirs of a Carp Fisher: The
Demon Eye, he reveals how he made the
first commercial version of this now
popular tackle item…
Advanced Lead Discharge
The Safety Bolt Bead was radical in that it
didn’t require the mainline to pass through the
bead as it discharged the lead, but my first
design attempted to reconcile both issues.
Not only could the lead pull off the bead, but
the hooklink swivel which was plugged into the
front of the bead could pull out, so that a
severed mainline could pass through the bead.
At the time, this design was necessary
because the bead was going against the
established angling practice of mainline
discharge, rather than lead discharge, and it
certainly took a long time for anglers to get
their heads around it. The most difficult
element to get across was actual lead discharge
and, even today, many anglers just do not
want to lose a lead every time they get a take.
On waters without snags I can see where they
are going. After all, if you can safely land the
carp with the lead attached, why waste a lead
every time you catch one?
I can give you one reason; rigs that discharge
leads on the take can be a massive edge in
dealing with riggy carp. Carp that are pricked
on a rig with a fixed lead attached have learned
to sit tight on the spot, to manipulate their
mouths, as well as swing their heads violently,
and use the weight of the lead to bounce the
hook out, more often than not without the
angler having any idea that there was a carp
hooked up at all. At best you may get a bleep or
two, which most would put down to liners or
wind etc.
Several instances made me rethink the
original Safety Bolt Bead, and the hooklink
discharge element.
Lead discharge
is absolutely
essential when you
are fishing in weed
I realised it was important to put all of the
energy into discharging the lead, which is why
I came up with the idea of pinning the hooklink
swivel into the bead. This way, you can always
guarantee that the lead discharges, and cannot
snag. Equally to the point, line discharge
through the bead is now recognised to be
detrimental, as I have explained.
If there is a snag obstructing the mainline
behind the bead, then your mainline cannot
pass through the bead, and if a fish can pull
your hooklink out of a snagged bead and lead,
then you have that nightmare situation
whereby all you can do is pull the fish back to
the snag, but can’t necessarily release the lead.
The key to proper lead discharge off your
bead depends upon how tight the rubber is
located over the clip. Some of the most popular
copies of my safety bolt bead are, in my humble
opinion, a step backward in carp safety and
they can be possible death traps.
I am referring to the types of bead where the
hooklink swivel can pull out and there are
ridges on the spigot to enhance the grip of the
tail rubber. The angler is tempted to jam on the
tail rubber as tightly as he can so there is never
sufficient energy to discharge the lead before
the hooklink swivel is pulled out of the bead.
I have gone as far as I can with my present
bolt bead designs in producing carp-safe rigs.
There are two versions. One is a compromise,
for anglers who really don’t want to lose a lead,
so we have done our best to keep it in the clip
unless the lead is entangled in a severe snag.
This standard Safety Bolt Bead ensures that
the lead will take heavy casting pressure and
not eject on the take but, because it is pinned,
should a carp swim into a snag it has the
opportunity to pull against the snagged bead
and discharge the lead.
This clip should only be used in snag-free
waters, or those with what I would describe as
Fix the lead with PVA
tape so it doesn’t
come off on the cast.
Kevin nash reveals why his
clever rigs are better for
anglers – and the carp
A stunning
mirror from a
large, snaggy
water in France.
‘hard snags’ such as roots, trees, large rocks,
flints and swan mussels.
The other bead I have designed is the Weed
Safety Bolt Bead, designed for fishing weedy
lakes. There is a balance going on with this
design because I want the lead to eject
immediately on the take, but ensure that when
the carp straightens the hooklink, bringing the
lead into play, there is sufficient force to prick
the carp properly. The tail rubber pushed fully
on to the spigot provides that necessary
resistance to guarantee that a carp is properly
pricked, but not so much resistance that the
lead cannot eject on the take.
If there is one situation where lead discharge
is absolutely essential, then it is in weed. I am
amazed at how many anglers do not
understand that it is crucial that you can eject
the lead on weedy lakes. If the lead remains on
the line then you will certainly lose carp.
A mono ‘weak
link’ should be
used in weedy
waters.
There is still a place in my armoury for
break-off leads, using a weak link of
monofilament, especially when fishing weedy
and/or snaggy lakes with a chod rig.
A few years back I fished a lake with the
choddie where there was no dense weed. But I
did know the bottom was layered with blanket
weed and, despite my total awareness of the
advantages of break-off leads, on this
particular lake I became what I would describe
as lazy. I talked myself out of going to the extra
trouble of tying up a weak link for my choddie,
and fishing it hook-discharge-style in the same
way as I’d discovered at Harefield.
Instead, I took the easy route of clipping on
the lead, only to lose the biggest common I
have hooked in my life when it bored into
blanket weed until I had such a weight of weed
on the line the fish was unmoveable and lost. I
have no doubt that if I hadn’t been lazy, and
the lead had snapped off when that carp took
my chod rig, I would have immediately got it
up in the water and away from any danger.
One other experience regarding break-off
leads may help you to put a bonus fish or two
on the bank. In the early 90s Nigel Botherway
and I fished a massive French reservoir and
we took a swim off Dave Plummer, who was
guiding a party of carp anglers. Dave told us
that the swim had proven very productive. A
lot of fish had been hooked, but many had
been lost in a submerged forest of tree stumps.
As we talked to Dave, while watching his
crew pack up, one of them had a take and,
within seconds, the carp had gained the
sanctuary of the tree stumps and was lost.
Immediately, I saw the answer; my Harefield
break-off lead rig. I showed the concept to
Nigel and that’s how we fished, landing every
fish we hooked.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
AnglingTımes
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