BEATEN BY THE SUN
Faced with scorching weather, even our best-laid plans can end up cooked. Dom Garnett takes shelter and tries old-school tactics for carp
FORECASTS of scorching temperatures probably shouldn’t be a big surprise. The ‘Britain about to melt’ headlines arrive most summers, after all, while it’s a rare pleasure to whinge that it’s too hot to be outdoors.
Baking hot days rarely lead to great fishing. The cold beer in Garrett Fallon’s creel might be an admission of this as we make our way to three secretive ponds, somewhere south of London.
I follow him down an entrance I’d have missed a dozen times, along a road that looks too overgrown to be a road.
Our plan to catch tench seems optimistic as we make a lap of the largest pool. There are hordes of small rudd and racing dragonflies, but no signs of bubbling, bigger fish. After an hour or so, we’re opening a beer and talking rubbish rather than fishing.
But there are signs of hope in the crusty, bottom pond at the end of the fishery. Invitingly overgrown, this pool looks like it could be stuck in 1985. The dizzying haze of summer and Garrett’s classic gear – a thirty-something-year-old Daiwa match rod and Mitchell reel – only add to the impression we’ve entered a time warp.
After a rough couple of weeks’ work I’m half tempted to just find a shady spot and fall asleep. A few dog biscuits might just wake things up, though, reckons Garrett, while I’ve already concocted Plan B. In a tight, shady swim, I forego the Pedigree Chum route for a fly rod. To my surprise, the fish respond instantly to a flying ant pattern, and after daydreaming through two missed takes the rod hauls over to a pretty mirror carp.
Garrett’s swim takes longer as we pepper the water with a few mixers and dodge the now brutal sun. The carp display a mixture of lethargy and basic cunning, but by trickling baits in one and two at a time, lips begin to appear.
With the fish well out into the lake, casting proves the biggest
barrier, the old rod and creaking reel not quite projecting his bait far enough. But tantalisingly, while I take the Mickey and Garrett makes a flat but further reaching cast, a couple of dark shapes creep into range.
If the next take is a languid yawn, the following seconds are pure tension as line plunges away. His eighties throwback rod bends dramatically full as the old reel grinds and we grimace.
A small eternity later and the carp is only just tiring. Garrett sweats like a Dragon’s Den contestant as the net is sunk under a dark near-leather carp. A fine fish, at least by 1985 standards.
Sport is hardly electric in the hours that follow. We agree that it is too hot to be fishing, but still refuse to leave the sunny ponds.