There were consistent anglers back then, who were always there, it seemed,every time that I was. One such character was an old boy called Dennis whofished for bream when he felt like it, and there were literally thousands of themthat did became a right pest, but he also fished for the carp. He was goodcompany on those freezing winter days, but what I especially liked about Denniswas that he was always inventing things, and his rigs were great. Where he gothis ideas from I will never know; there were bits of tubing and plastic all over theplace, with a hook and bait somewhere among it all. Quality!Keith Sullivan (They called him Snoz but I don’t think he liked that), was oldschool. He was the one in the Yateley video when Ritchie Macdonald had Heatheron at the Car Park Lake in March. It was freezing and Ritchie’s fish had goneround a big marginal tree, so Keith stripped off down to his boxers, went in on aLilo, and more or less swam the rod back round so that Rich was able to play thefish again. Bloody hell! Keith deserved a medal for that.There were loads of characters; Kodak, Poser Pete, Trigger, Craig Lyons, LeroySwan, Terry The Boxer, John Elmer and Piccolo Pete, to name a few, andsomething was always happening. It was brilliant. One day, Piccolo Pete wasfishing further down on my left in the High Point swim, when we heard a great bigsplash and wondered what had happened. I ran down and found him crouchedat the edge of his swim, with his elbow on his knee resting his chin on his hand. Itlooked as if he was just scanning the lake. “What was that great big splash?” Iasked him.“What splash?” he replied, as if nothing had happened.He was saturated, soaked through to the bone.“Okay, then,” I said, puzzled, and went back to my swim.Later, he told me that he had fallen in and gone completely under, but had got outas quickly as he could and had just got back on the bank as I arrived. He was tooembarrassed to let anyone know. Everyone did though, because I told them!Because the lake was small, everyone knew everything that was going on. If afish showed, everyone was aware of it. These fish were pressured and, as I saidbefore, it was as if there was an atmosphere in the lake and all the fish wereaffected. From just after 4am, when the gates were opened and we all startedwalking the banks to our chosen swims, the carp knew what was coming. Attimes, nothing came out for ages, and we just knew we were not going to catch.One day, I was talking to Steve Edwards as he was fishing a swim called thePea, and we were chatting away when his right-hand rod signalled a liner.
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Catching Memories
As I said, Sutton is a small lake of around three acres and we found out that itheld something like 70 carp, a fair head of fish for its size. With such a largenumber of inhabitants, at least 20 of which were over 30lbs, we thought, ‘here wego then – let’s get it on!’ Oh dear, how very wrong we were. I realise now inhindsight that it was one of the trickiest lakes I have ever encountered. Smalllakes do seem to be very hard, well, the ones I’ve fished, at least. I think carpsense the angling pressure quickly, and that unrest is soon spread around asmaller lake so that nothing seems to play ball. In addition, we all had to leave forthe night, just at the time when, I would suspect, the carp would have their feed.Then there were other anglers to compete with. We had a draw each morning at4am and sometimes, midweek, we were disappointed not to get the swim wefancied. Then, at 5pm, all the evening anglers would turn up and start to castabout. Yes, Sutton was a head job! A gang of good anglers already fished Sutton. Steve Edwards was the headbailiff, a member of a group called the Sound and Round crew, and these guyswere all into their Richworth bait, which had ruled the roost over there for the pastfew years, or so it seemed. Steve was a very good angler and I was to pay a lot ofattention to him. He knew the lake well, and he took a liking to us Essex lot.For some reason that I can’t remember, we stayed away at the start of that veryfirst season on Sutton. I think we decided to let all the regulars get stuck in,hoping that perhaps it would calm down a bit. This turned out not such a goodidea because by the time we did get on, most of the lake’s residents had beencaught. However, we found out a lot more about the stock of the lake. Therewere so many good fish to go for; Heart Tail, and Blind Eye were both doing40lbs now and another fish, called little Gertie, was close behind at 38-39lbs.There were also two good commons. The Big Common was fast approaching40lbs, and close behind that was one called Haswell’s Common that had done38lbs. That’s not to mention other fish that were well on our list; such as the BigFully Scaled at 37-plus, the elusive Brown Fish, over 35lbs, the Beast, theUnknown, Searcher, and the Little Fully - all good 30s - with other 30lbcommons to back that lot up. No one can deny that’s an impressive list of fishfor any water, and we are talking 15 years ago now.Sutton became an obsession, and all four of us got down there as much as wecould. We got to know some of the characters that were also fishing the lake,and looking back, I realise that was a big part of the place; there was a right lotof banter, and it was competitive, to say the least. A load of bait went in and notmany got caught, but the bait was getting eaten, because the weights of thefish were on the increase.
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Chapter Five - The Struggle at Hone, Sutton
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