ESP consultant Terry Hearn spent the start of the river season on his dad’s boat on the tidal Thames, an annual ritual that Tel loves. After a tricky start Tel kept plugging away and was ultimately reward with a real biggun. Here’s the full story:
Fishing the start of the river season aboard my Dad’s boat, ‘The Lady Pearl’, has become a bit of a tradition over the last few years. I can only think of one year out of the past seven where neither of us has been sat on the boat eagerly awaiting the stroke of midnight on June 15th, and that was due to freak summer floods. This year was to be no different, and for a month prior to the start of the season we were regularly driving back and forth, baiting up at every opportunity.
Every spring there’s lots of maintenance work to be doing on the boat, and so most of the time it was simply a case of scooping in my usual mix of boilies, tigers and maize, before cracking on with whatever work needed to be done. This always gave us something to watch whilst tinkering around on the boat, and by the time that the new season was just a couple of weeks away it was clear that the carp were visiting the area. More often than not they’d be on the bait within an hour of sticking it in, and it was great watching them roll as they moved upstream on the scent trail, before sending up great plumes of bubbles as they settled down to feed.
The thing is, when it looks that good there’s always the worry that they’re going to do the off before its time to fish, and during a spell of hot weather during the last week of the close season thats exactly what happened. Instead of carp we now had a huge shoal of bream congregated off the back of the boat, giving themselves away by constantly rolling on every change of the tide.
Still, a few bream weren’t going to put us off, and midnight on June 15th saw Dad and I casting out a rod each. Rig wise we went for our usual snowman set up, and this year I’d been sent a new ESP coated hooklink which I was keen to try out. I’d been sent two different types of coated hooklink materials as it goes, both of which I was mega impressed with, but the one dad and I went for on the 15th was a 25lb tungsten impregnated version. It’s everything I like in a coated hooklink.
The braid is highly resistant to abrasion but at the same time still supple and silky, with none of that wiry, stringy feel that I’ve often noticed with other coated braids. The colours bang on, nice and drab, exactly as it should be. It sinks well, and the coating is extremely durable. I like to be able to straighten out my hooklinks with my fingers, without the use of steam, and with this stuff I’m able to run my fingers up and down it until its warm, with no bunching of the coating at all.
The other thing that was instantly noticeable whilst dad and I were sat there tying up enough hooklinks to last us the night, was the way we were easily able to tie loop knots in the end of each link, with no breakage or separation off the coating at the knot. It looked and acted perfectly, now it was just a case of seeing how it performed in a real world test.
I don’t think the kettle had boiled for the first brew of the new season before we’d been breamed on each rod, and long story short, that was the trend for the remainder of the night and the following morning. By 8am we’d caught over twenty bream but were yet to have so much as a sniff of a carp.
Dad only fished the first night with me, but I carried on plugging away, fishing overnighters before heading home for a few hours shut eye each day, as the bream were making sleep impossible whilst I was actually fishing. I squeezed in six nights fishing that first week and by the end of it I was starting to see bream in my dreams! Seriously, I don’t normally mind the bream and on the right kit it would have been a lovely bit of fishing, but when your trying to target carp they can get a bit frustrating.
Towards the end of it all I finally had a breakthrough and managed to catch two carp, a small common and a 19lb mirror, and both were showing signs of spawning. I’d already guessed that spawning was the reason for the carps untimely disappearance, but now it was all over I reasoned that they could well head back for a feed up. The thing is, if I was to get through to the bigger carp I’d first have to find a way of getting around the bream.
I’d already tried bigger baits and tiger nuts, both of which made no difference at all, and so after a little thought I decided to try something completely different – I’d stop feeding them. Carp will often return to a spot they’ve found food in for weeks on end, even when there’s nothing left, but bream on the other hand are much more of a shoal fish, and once the food has gone they tend to move on to graze somewhere else.
For five nights and days I stayed away, not returning until Thursday 26th June. Straight away it was clear that the bream had dispersed, no bubbling, no rolling and no constant plucking of the rod tips. I still managed to catch a couple of them, but I also managed to winkle out a 16lb bull-nosed common and a barbel of 7lb’s, and I felt sure that there were more carp in the area. As I was planning on heading back for another try the following night I risked priming the swim with a couple of kilos of mixed boilies before leaving.
When I got back the bream were once again conspicuous by their absence, and for the first time since the start of the season I was able to get a couple of rods out and relax. It must have been gone 1am when I climbed into the sleeping bag, and the next time I woke it was first light and I was holding a buckled over rod with line fast disappearing from the clutch.
As I came to my senses I noticed that the flotsam was drifting up river and it dawned on me that the tide was coming up. Not only had the flow reversed, it’s strength was now triple what it would normally be. Thames carp always fight hard, but with the added force of a rising tide they can fight exceptionally hard, and for the next twenty minutes I done battle with what was clearly a very big fish. The thing is, even when the fish was just resting in the flow the rod was still doubled over way beyond its test curve. It was as though the rods ‘starting point’ had been set, and if I’d eased off at all the carp would have simply drifted with the tide until the spool was empty of line. I could feel every lunge and head shake, not through the tip but beneath the reel seat, and with the added depth it kept diving down real deep too, regularly taking me by surprise as it slammed the tip down beneath the surface.
It was one of those battles that felt like it had gone on forever, way beyond the point where I was praying for it to stay on, but eventually I got the upper hand and managed to guide it into the net. I breathed a sigh of relief as I shuffled my prize towards me for a better look.
It was a special one alright, 36lb 6oz of Thames mirror, more than big enough to make all the pre-baiting and driving back and forth throughout the close season worthwhile.
Tel
Terry will be visiting ESP HQ in the next couple of weeks as we take delivery of his next batch of sample ‘MK-3’ rods. We’ll keep you updated with a full report as new product development with Tel’s input continues apace!