The Fishing Coach

Welcome to visitors from the Carp Anglers Group Forum!

A couple of years ago I took Robert Green out for a day’s float fishing for barbel on the river Kennet and taught him to use a centrepin reel to trot a float. Great fun was had by all and a few fish were caught as well.

If you think carp fight, wait until you hook one of these in fast flowing water!

As I have mentioned most of my fishing for pleasure is done on rivers with the exception of some early season tench fishing, so when I started coaching young people, the first question my students asked was “what’s your biggest carp?”.

At the time it was a twelve pound common from the river Thames caught on chub tackle, an achievement in itself, but this did not impress these lads . They had been brought up on a diet of “big fat twenties” in the angling press and although their ability to guess the size of a fish later proved flawed, were convined that many of them had achieved that magic figure. Desperate times require desperate measures, so I went and sought advice from Ian Welch of RMC who suggested trying Split Lake on their Yateley complex. The result was a twenty two pound grass carp on a floating dog biscuit and a twenty one pound mirror from a real ” bird cage” of a swim on float fished boilies. Even on the fifteen pound line that I was using I would never have landed a barbel of the same size from that swim.

These fish gained me a little more “street cred”. I was very fortunate to have such fishing on my door step.

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