DES TAYLOR “Leave your comfort zone”
The ‘good old days’ are gone, let’s move on
IDON’T know why, but there’s a growing divide between river and stillwater anglers – well, stillwater carpers, at least.
River fans say things like “carp are just mud pigs” or (a favourite one, this) “I couldn’t sit there behind buzzers all day”.
Yet lots of river anglers will happily use buzzers for barbel, the only difference being that their rods point up, not down. The rods, reels, rigs and bait used are the same.
River anglers will tell you that being out in the country, walking the bank with a bag and a trotting rod, is far more rewarding than sitting on a commercial. But that’s an unfair generalisation – some stillwaters are beautiful places to fish.
Then, of course, river anglers will insist that trotting a stick float is the most skilful tactic of all when in fact, as in all styles of fishing, it’s how you feed that’s the real art form.
I fish rivers as well as stillwaters for carp, and I can tell you that a guy who can find clear spots with a marker float, bait up accurately at 100 yards and then cast a rig on to that spot can sure as hell learn how to put a stick float down a swim.
The irony is, most of the river anglers I talk to “used to love trotting a float”, yet haven’t held a float rod on running water in the last 20 years – funny, that!
And contrary to what some would have you believe, carping isn’t all about buying a case of Stella and falling asleep over the weekend until a fish hangs itself. Catching big carp consistently is hard and skilful work.
What of those who reckon it’s best to start fishing for gudgeon in the local canal and build yourself up to greater things? That’s how it happened years ago, but just because a kid these days starts on carp doesn’t mean he can’t still become a brilliant all-rounder.
I’d go so far as to say today’s youngsters are far better anglers that we ever were, because there’s more opportunity for them to learn from the internet, TV shows, videos and YouTube.
In my youth you basically taught yourself how to fish, or you learned from someone who thought he could – usually a family member who also made himself out to be the best soccer manager, politician and boxer in the world. Viewing river fishing through rose-tinted specs and harking back to the old days can make you very narrow-minded.
I’ll carry on putting myself out of my comfort zone and meeting other anglers, learning new tactics and fishing for different species, and I don’t care whether I do this on a river, a lake, a canal or on the open sea.