The Sweetcorn Kid wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 11:55 am
I revisited briefly a week or so ago, just for an afternoon. Those old carp still live there, and yes, they are just as spooky as they always were. I packed up fruitless, yet happy to know the old place still thrives and those old fish still evade capture.
In the mid sixties I took my Girlfriend to WW. Well, as she had the wheels - a grey ex GPO Morris Minor van - I suppose she took me. We stuck it out, been married now 52 years!
I caught a few Roach, the Carp were roaming the surface and taking floating bread.
As long as it was not attatched to a hook and line!
I had caught at that time five Common Carp, all wild fish, three from Tooting Bec Common, one from a tiny pond at Bracklesham Bay, now part of the Pond Barn Restaurant. There is story about that tiny pond for another day. The fifth one was from an overgrown bit of the Chichester Canal. Biggest, from Tooting Bec Common on opening day 1963, 8lbs 8ozs. Taken on boiled wheat flavoured with Golden Syrup. No sweetcorn in those days.
I was using good-for the time-tackle. We were very carefully positioned with the high bank behind us, were being very quiet and unobtrusive and I presented the bait in various ways in my attempts to get a take.
I was flogging a dead un. My crusts were ignored, floating, tethered to the bottom with a vertical line, even cast over the lilies and the crust pulled alongside so the line was over the pads.
The realisation it was going to be hopeless came when a good sized specimen inspected the crust alongside the lilies from three directions during a ten minute period.
It then came up underneath it like a surfacing U Boat, knocked the by now swollen and soggy crust off the hook and ate it.
My wife said " I dont believe it - fish cant be that clever! "
She now knows they are........................