Carping in Australia
Forget France, how about carping in Australia? Walker Burton, son of ‘Piking Pirate’ Gord, tells us about his carp fishing heaven
FUNNY how carp seem to find a way of turning up almost anywhere. I’d spent four years living in Sydney, absolutely loving the lifestyle but always missing my carp and pike fishing.
Then one day, scrolling through a website of some local parkland, I came across a picture of a bloke holding a decent-sized carp, certainly over 30lb.
Now, in Australia carp are classified as noxious pests, and in most instances, if they’re caught, the locals knock them on the head. In some states it’s actually against the law to release them.
Fortunately, these locals aren’t the best of anglers, which leaves us with the perfect environment for carp to thrive and potentially grow large, especially in some of the huge lakes and rivers here.
So here I am, on the banks of a place that I can only describe as carp fishing heaven – completely untouched, in its own undisturbed part of the world.
This particular lake is a fair old size, perhaps a dozen or so acres. It’s shallow, crystal-clear, and clogged top to bottom with the thickest and most difficult weed I’ve ever encountered. As I’ve since found out, in here is a family of common carp, each with its own look and characteristics. They deserve to be shared with carp lovers back home.
On that first lap round, all I could find were countless turtles, eels and bass, but thankfully no snakes or spiders! On my second lap round, checking out a swim with a clear sandy spot, suddenly a gnarly old common came cruising out of one of the weed tunnels, quite carefree.
With bait options being limited, the ever-reliable pigeon conditioner and a heap of salt felt like the way to go. Over the course of a few days, I’d creep down after work just on dark to give them a good few handfuls of the mix, always returning the following day to find the spot completely cleared.
My new ploy was to put bait in several times a day, hopefully increasing the chances of me catching the thieves in the act! As I walked down into the little gap down the bank, I was met with a group of maybe half-a-dozen of the lake’s residents, tearing the spot up.
I got back to the swim covered in sweat, shaking with excitement as I tried to thread a Brazil nut on to the hair. After a few minutes the chance came, and slowly I lowered a rig into position.
A moment or two later, the spool went into meltdown as I joined battle with one of the better ones. On its first run the fish must have stripped 40 yards before jumping clean out the water like a pike! Before long it was wallowing in the net, and a friend and I were looking down at a perfect Aussie bar of gold.
Over the next week or so I caught most of that small family of carp off the golden patch. But the spot soon blew and became devoid of carp. A good friend of mine, Charlie, later went on to catch a string of fish off that golden zone and told me about something he’d seen while on a bit of a recce. He described it as being almost navy in colour – a fish that was almost certainly leagues ahead of what we had seen previously. Our time down at the lake had now quickly become the pursuit of the ‘Navy One’.
Around this time we stumbled across a bit of a game-changer. We’d managed to source a supply of fresh hempseed! With pigeon feed being golden in colour, trying to avoid the abundance of birdlife had always been a pain, never mind the monster eels and turtles. Some of those eels weighed well in excess of 15lb!
We then began to focus on the main expanse of the lake, where we often saw the big ’uns. To paint a picture, the east side of the lake with the golden zone was a little deeper and completely thick with dense weed. Yet the west side was no more than a couple of feet deep, and made up of thick silt – not the type of area you’d expect the carp to be.
To cut a long story short, over the coming weeks I was lucky enough to land maybe a dozen or so carp off the flats, many over the 20lb mark.
With a full moon pending, and ‘Navy’ surely due to make an appearance, Charlie and I decided to settle on the original golden zone where he’d seen her a few weeks earlier. We all know about full moons and big commons!
With the light fading, 10 Spombs of salty hemp and maples went out over the spot. I can remember the first cast as if it were yesterday... the lead hitting the bottom with a rock-hard thud. I turned to Charlie in excitement, saying: “Hard enough to knock a filling out.
A few hours passed before the lefthand rod was away. Unlike most of the earlier fish, which exploded on the surface when hooked, this was a slow plodder, a sure sign of a much better one. A few tense moments passed, but luckily, at first time of asking, it was in. The most immaculate, old chestnut looking common was soon having its picture taken.
The process was repeated the next night. I woke to a single beep, again on the left-hander. Before long, it was away, and the rod took on a curve as a fish exploded on the surface. The second stunner was soon in the net. Two uncaught Australian woodcarvings, back-to-back across a full moon, going about their business in a lake that had probably never been fished before.
It’s now July 2021, the hemp is on soak, hooks are sharpened, and with a full moon coming up this week you can guess where I’m off to... in pursuit of the ‘Navy One’.