OUR MAN ON THE BANK DES TAYLOR
Back in the day, any carp was an achievement… and memorable for being so. How things have changed!
ON JUNE 17, 1977, I caught my first 20lb carp at 20lb 14oz. It took a ball of liver paste that I had made myself. That year I had easily my best carp season to date, with 17 double-figure fish topped by that twenty.
I was 26 years of age, and at the time it was hard enough finding a water that held any carp, let alone a 20-pounder. Mine was from Llandindrod Wells boating lake, bang in the middle of a Welsh town.
Few of my local waters contained carp, which is why I was making the 140-mile round trip to achieve my goal. Lots of others travelled there for the same reason, including Chris Yates who, like me, caught his first 20lb carp from there – so rare was the species in those days.
Can you believe that back in 1977 big carp were still a rarity in the UK? Nowadays it’s hard to find a water without them!
In 1977, if you asked a tackle dealer what was the most popular rod he sold, he’d say a 12ft or 13ft float rod. A typical carp rod was 1.5lb test curve and a stepped-up rod for really big carp was 1.75lb. Anything above that was classed as a pike rod.
Nowadays it’s rare for an angler to buy a carp rod with a test curve less than 3lb, and school kids have caught bigger carp than I had by the time I was 30. I still very much enjoy my carp fishing and boy – have my catches rocketed!
The other day I caught 17 carp for over 300lb, and seven of these topped 20lb. Back in 1977, had you said this was going to be the future of carp fishing, you’d have been told to book in with a shrink pretty damn quick!
Success wit
