The Land Of Opportunity

To the habitual carp fisher, the only possible thought is: “this is my chance for a carp in the snow.”

 

So we need a little background here. 

 

First, what on earth is a habitual carp fisher doing in North America anyway?

 

This is the land that despises the “King of Fishes” almost as much as the Australians do, where it has been illegal to be in the possession of a live carp for decades. 

 

This is the land that has created a rewarding sport out of shooting a toothless goldfish from a vantage point safely out of the way of the danger of being hit upside the head by his flapping slimy flippers. 

 

This is the land where the most popular fish in Europe managed to come 19th in the top 18 most desirable North American species.

 

So let’s start with fishing. 

 

Fishing, like any addiction, is a disease. It has no cure. 

 

As Sheringham said: “One day equals eighteen hours. Eighteen hours equals one potato. Ten years equals one carp.”

 

Coming from London, and a proud Englishman to boot, I was exposed to the dangers of addictive consumption from an early age. Starting out choking perch in the canal with red maggots and a quill float, then progressing to the shining silver beauty of the red-finned roach, the weighty sliminess of the common bream and the terrifying dentistry of the giant pike. From bothering the man next door to venture out into the estuary to pull in undersized flounders for tea, to nagging Dad to fork out for the first outfit for under a dollar. Fishing has been first and foremost for as long as I can remember, and every waking childhood moment was spent either fishing or thinking about fishing.

 

All of this apprenticeship served to feed the affliction, until that glorious day, when the first golden prince mistakenly hung himself to my piece of bread, and the door to sanity and salvation was firmly and finally closed. All five pounds of him.

 

Since then, the pursuit of the largest and greatest carp has filled the fishing calendar, and no amount of seduction from other magnificent species has served to topple the king. Sure, there have been days and nights on the barrier reef chasing up and hauling down monster marlin, bright sunny days stalking the elusive bonefish on the marls in the Bahamas, jungle treks in the wilds of India tracking down the mighty mahseer, but these have only served to make the cravings for more and bigger carp even stronger.

 

Then came America. The land of opportunity. The great republic in the west, still considered a rebel colony by the old buffers in the gentlemen’s clubs in St. James's. The New World where the streets were paved with gold, and ambitious young men could make their fortune and return to the old country to take a wife, settle down and tend to the family estates. That was the idea.

 

But as reality set in, the opportunities had been jealously guarded by the knowing few, the gold had long since been removed from the streets, and the allure of a beautiful princess in Connecticut extinguished all thoughts of a triumphant return to a comfortable dotage in the land of my birth.

 

 

Plenty of it, undiscovered and unappreciated by the populace, and more than enough to satisfy the cravings of even the most incurable addict. Their discovery is another tale, but suffice to say, once discovered, the conclusion that the streets may not be paved with gold, but the rivers were, has been possibly the most delightful outcome. 

 

And so, we come to the present day, and the madness of this pursuit in a freak storm, that brought chaos to three million souls and a disruption to life of epic and biblical proportions.

 

The fishing dock has been witness to many carp captures, and they have been so plentiful and obliging, that we have had to think up crazy ways to catch them. From the straight forward bait fished on a conventional spinning outfit, to 2-pound line on a plastic Barbie rod, to hour-long battles on a three-weight fly outfit, to the insanity of a 32-inch fish on a 30-inch long ice rod. 

 

 

The obsession has developed into something akin to stamp collecting.

 

Every fisherman knows that fishing is more than just hunting and gathering, and it has evolved more recently beyond the bragging rights of wall-mounted trophies. Today's trophies are the collections of stories and pictures that we carry about in our mobile electronic devices, only visible at the touch of a button and shared by the strange practice of making the air vibrate. 

 

The gap in the album was the one with snow on the ground, and it has been coveted for as long as I have been a carp fisher. Until the 1960s, conventional wisdom was that carp hibernate through the winter, and it was futile to pursue them after the end of September, when the sportsman's thoughts turned to wild fowling, deer hunting and freezing to death searching for giant pike. 

 

All of this was overturned by a few foolhardy souls, who proved that carp could be intentionally caught in every month of the year, and so winter carp fishing was born. Over here, we constantly hear about carp being hauled up through the ice, whether intentionally caught or not, they were caught, and the chance of a genuine winter fish is higher here than just about anywhere else.

 

This storm is the first time that the dock has been in the water when it has snowed, which is why I was out there during and after the tempest, until the gap in the album had been filled. 

 

But all this has done is create a vacancy for the next trophy. And then the next. 

 

And, by the way, as I write this, three days after a foot of wet snow fell, we are back to regular fall days of 50 degrees and the snow has gone. We are even hopeful that the power and services might be restored sometime before Thanksgiving. 

 

But I have my stamp in the album, and all's right with the world. -- GS, 11/01/11