I watched a dark mass move up the near ledge, ribbons of silver streaks and metallic bubbles passed over her head as I strained to see through the passing flow, a mixture of glare from the surface and refracting light beams breaking the rivers depths, keeping me guessing as she blended into the dark abyss. Off the edge of the ledge she slipped from my vision, for only just a moment. I had lowered onto the sandy plateau only yards upstream, a rise of depth from ten feet onto three foot of fine builders sand. I baited heavy with a mix of fresh maize and boilie, soaked in molasses with a sprinkle of sea salt, all bound together like a cake mix with a powdered fishmeal. This powerful milky scent cloud was being washed downstream in a rhythmical dose, and I knew that dark shapes had shown interest, homing in on the aminos like a shark following a chum-line. Rods strapped to the deck with a bungee, all I could do was sit back and soak up the spring vibes in all her heady glory.
My thin cotton trousers were being drilled by the bloodsucking mozzi cloud dancing around my head, beads of sweat rolling off my shaven head from the heat of the evening sun raising the humidity levels on par with an Indonesian rain-forest. My mind was pin sharp focused beyond these inconveniences, and any other day I would be having a full on hissy fit with the little blood sucking parasites. I watched the tip nodding to the dance of the river, polaroid’s giving me x-ray vision as a shoal of Chublets snatched those yellow grains embedded between the sand and gravel substrate, minnow and Gudgeon amongst the backdrop struggling to ride the waves with the full force of the current. I glanced back to the tip, still fixed and tapping away, as the party was about to be gate crashed by the bully! In came the bulldozer, like the biggest kid in the school playground pushing the runts out of the way, as all the little fish moved left and right, parting the stage for the big dog. Ramming the bottom like a Rottweiler knocking his dog bowl around the kitchen floor, I watched that carp bending and flexing below, all pumped up and in full aggressive feeding mode. Up she rose, white lips chomping and pouting, as I clearly watched gravel, sand and food fragments being spewed back out, as it sieved through the wreckage below. As she bolted there was pause, my eyes looked skywards towards the tip………I paused again for a millisecond as the tip went down and the rod-butt rose up, with my rod rest acting as a pivot point on a seesaw……………..’shit’…. all hell broke loose. The main current has so much power here, it could carry a man out to sea if you were to fall in. Ten feet deep, with a flow rate of thousands of gallons per second, it’s a moving force of clear water that’s hard to comprehend until you hook something as large as a Labrador running into the turbulent flow. Heading downstream quicker than you can run flat out, all I could do was try and keep up with it. Cranking the reel handle while maintaining a decent curve in the rod tip isn’t easy, as your sweating like a glass blowers rectum in full solar blaze. Sixty yards down and I’m still legging it along the hundred and fifty yard stretch of flat bank as it keeps grinding the line from a tight clutch. Getting close to hitting the dead-end, knowing the deep pool with swirling eddies will halt it’s downstream assault, I wasn’t stressing at this point. Boulders & sunken trees could end this fight in seconds, and this wasn’t my first race, I had been hunting the carp in this section of river throughout spring, so I knew two landing nets saved your bacon. One positioned by the rods, with a second at the end of the sprint track.
Ticking from the clutch started to slow like the hands of a clock, time was slow-mowing as she slipped into the deep pool out of the main flow. Winding down I pumped hard trying to gain more line and a upper hand, I had been ragged dolled up till this point and far from being in control of the fight.
A few minutes of plodding she decides to try another tactic to break away from the unseen force holding her back. The tip goes from a twelve o’clock skywards position, switching to three o’clock, then down to four as the rod is flattened out and she’s back in the main current. I could hear the line singing in the wind, a high pitched whistle as she heads up stream against a flow an olympic swimmer would struggle to survive against. Eighteen lb towrope and I’m once again leaning full compression into the fish as it glues itself the bottom like a sack of cement. More whistling and wining as the weight now starts taking line off the spool, heading back upstream…………’leave it out’ I start shouting. Twenty yards north and the fish cannot hold ground for much longer, as I turn the golden flank of scales, rolling backwards she starts to come towards me with the aid of the current. Back into the deep pool and this time she’s starting to give up hope of escaping, as her mouth breaks the surface big enough to shallow a pop-up tub. My hookbait is swinging back and forth on the long hair as I’m praying that hook stays put, it has no reason to let me down, but life can sometimes smash you in the nut’s for no explained reason, extreme doubt and nerves sets in as she approaches the net. ‘C’mon’……keep coming, keep coming’
A massive exhale with arms as wobbly as an octopus’s tentacles, I relaxed the blank as well as my nerves, laying the rod down, staring blankly at four feet of cast bronze. It was highly likely this fish had never been taken out of water by another humans hands, her eye fixed on mine as I contemplated it’s life in this wild waterway. More than ever now it’s that energy of pitting my wits against another creature, man against beast in its raw form, and the absolute respect I have for being able to appreciate such a fish up-close and personal. Like an Ostrich with it’s head in the sand, I covered her eye’s with the sack for five minutes while I cleared the stage and got my head in order, which didn’t last for long as the second rod that was positioned a couple of feet upstream from the first rod, let out a couple of bleeps, then it’s in full melt down. A second common braced the first, not as large or as angry, but it made the moment that bit sweeter as I took a few clicks of the shutter button.
She was mint, pure chain mail flanks of honey, gold and copper, with her gills clapping away, as I laid her out on the mat in a quiet backwater off the main river. Her length was incredible, streamlined and built for the environment. Like a long distance runner is lean…… if it wobbles, you lose it, and this carp was no different. There was no room for a “boilie belly” she was serpent like, all muscles and sinew, and completely spawned out. I could sense her fear……she was tense and rigid, fins all locked out and erect, the fight was over and I felt remorse in some strange way, for keeping her out any longer than I really needed too, it was time to tip my cap and return her back to the underworld……I counted my blessings as I walked the dry river bed through the dark, back to the motor……my mind racing about a return!
Mr E
Summer of 2023
