We return with Part 2 of Terry Dempsey's epic, 'Nothing Without the Magic'. We left just as the Darenth days started, and it here we pick it back up. The fishmeal revolution, Geoff, the demise of Longfield, hand rolling bait on the bank, living on a shoestring... this one has it all. Flick the kettle on and sit back for more epic old tales from one of carp fishing's true characters
Sub: Was that where you met Geoff and Terry Pethybridge?
TD: I’d met Geoff at Yateley, actually, but yeah, I met Tel at Darenth. I loved Yateley, it was absolutely beautiful. First time I saw the place I had actually gone to California Country Park with a mate, but purely so that I could go and see Yateley at the same time as it was nearby. Paul and Kim had told me loads about the place, stories about the Copse and Match and it just sounded incredible. Funnily enough, the first time I met Geoff was over on the North Lake, we’d somehow got a tip-off from one of the bailiffs on the other side of the road that they were going to go and raid him later that night, as they’d heard he was using six rods, so we beat them to it and tipped him off first!
'the first time I met Geoff was over on the North Lake, we’d somehow got a tip-off from one of the bailiffs on the other side of the road that they were going to go and raid him later that night, as they’d heard he was using six rods, so we beat them to it and tipped him off first'
Sub: Was he using six then?
TD: Na, it was probably eight, knowing Geoff!
Sub: Was it Geoff and Tel that got you on to the fishmeals, then?
TD: When I met Geoff I was well into my baits. I was still on the milks but I was sourcing really good ingredients and I was catching well on them. I’d caught Pilgrim, Scar Bar, Scaley… so a lot of the good’uns out of Darenth Tip that first year, using the milk proteins, but we just couldn’t afford to use it properly. I just knew that if you could find a way to put in a lot of bait then you could really hold the fish. That was what we used to say back then - it was all about how long you could ‘hold’ them, but even with the Sluis I just couldn’t afford to put enough in to hold them.
Geoff showed me my first fishmeals. They were big and dark and oily, and I loved the look of them and I just knew they were on the right track. I’d started hearing stories on the quiet about anglers doing really well on them, and in the end I decided to go with it and got a load in the close season. Not all the lads were as keen as me. A lot of the Darenth lads thought we’d never catch anything. Geoff had already been using them up there and hadn’t really set the world on fire with them, although to be honest, they’d used them in the cold water, to be fair, but people just weren’t convinced. I just knew it was right, in my heart, I just knew.
They were proper baits, and I could sense that they were right and would do the business. Even now, I think that is something you can develop over time, that sense about whether a bait is right or not. That is certainly something Geoff has developed, and other people that I know who have worked closely with bait for years. The baits back then were so different to the fishmeals we have now as well. I haven’t really seen a fishmeal like that since; they were really coarse, they had big chunks of bone, or fin, or whatever, in there, and they were really hard to roll. You could never have put them through a machine, they were too rough, but they didn’t half work. We got really good at it in the end, but it took us a while to get the mixes right so that they rolled properly.
Sub: What were the first mixes you were using? Can you remember?
TD: I was knocking my own up, but I’d spent a bit of time that winter fishing with Terry Pethybridge and he’d been into it for a year or so, and had been fishing some of the lakes down Geoff’s way so he had a head start. The chapter Tel wrote in the book is about one of those, which was why I wanted that particular one in there because those fish made a big impact on me at that time. Tel had given me a few pointers which I took on board, but as usual I did my own thing as well, so I listened to Tel and took that in, and then knocked up my own versions which had a few tweaks. They came out really well in the end.
Sub: One of the legacies of that era is the big increase in baiting levels. Did you go in with them heavy straight away?
TD: We did, yeah. I’d always had this feeling about using a lot of bait and at the start of that season we put a lot in. It killed it for a good few days, but we just sat tight. I knew it would work, and it did. When it did kick in we were just reeling them in, we even caught a few of those fish more than once that session. We were really fortunate that year. At Darenth there was always a draw for the start of the season, on June the 15th, but back then everyone always used to say it was a fix. Out of the first ten from the hat eight of them would be bailiffs, the ninth would be his best mate and then maybe they’d let a token ‘normal’ angler in there as well, so it didn’t look too obvious. That year, first out of the hat was my mate, Tony Moore. He didn’t really know where he wanted to fish, and I’d sort of rolled him into the whole fishmeal thing as he hadn’t fished with us that winter, but he thought they looked the bollocks so had agreed to come in on it with me. We hadn’t used the bait anywhere else either, so it was a gamble really, but I was just convinced. I knew it was the one. I had a lot of faith in Geoff and Tel’s opinions so it was calculated, and I knew in my heart that it was right.
Sub: Were you rolling it all on the bank?
TD: Oh yeah, almost everything we rolled was done on the bank back then. The day before the start at Darenth, me and Tony had sat in my backyard and made up a big 100-egg mix, but for the rest of the summer, everything was rolled on the bank.
Sub: Did you enjoy the bait rolling?
TD: Oh I loved it. That was all part of it. It was just something you had to do as well, there wasn’t really any other option, but we were just so chilled back then. The rods would be out, you’d have the low chairs out and the kettle on, a smoke rolled and then you’d knock up a great big bed of bait - it was great. We used to play around with some of them as well. We used to carve the names of the fish into some of them for good luck, to talk them into the net. We were getting through loads of the stuff at Darenth. Every day we’d be rolling a 12-egg mix at least, and then every so often it’d be a 48- egg’er when we felt it needed another big hit. We knew what we were doing, though, we weren’t just piling it in thoughtlessly. If it was slowing down we’d put a big 40-egg mix in to get things going again. We’d be working out what was breaking down and when, what the weather was doing, all those things, and working it out from there. We had the lake on such a lock-down with the baiting that first summer that it just emptied. There was hardly anyone left there because they just couldn’t compete, so we almost had the place to ourselves.
'The rods would be out, you’d have the low chairs out and the kettle on, a smoke rolled and then you’d knock up a great big bed of bait - it was great'
Sub: Did no one else decide to try to get on the fishmeals?
TD: That first year no one really knew what they were and what was in them, and they were only really coming from Geoff, so no one else could get them, and we certainly weren’t singing and dancing about what was in them! We probably swapped a few for a few bacon sandwiches and sold a bit for some baccy and supplies, but even that was only to our close mates who we’d want to see catch anyway.
Sub: You two were only young, and there must have been a pretty well-established clique on Darenth at the time. What was the response to your approach and results?
TD: Oh there was, yeah, and they were shocked, but then to be fair I’d fished it the previous year and caught really well then. That first season, I’d had over twenty 20s, and a lot of those were through the winter as well, so they’d got used to me catching. I think they knew what was coming, but I don’t think they expected the results to be as drastic as they were.
Sub: Did you realise straight away how much you could get away with using? Obviously you were seeing the bait being passed on the mat and into the sacks, which was a relatively new thing wasn’t it? Actually seeing that level of digestibility right there in front of you?
TD: I think we knew it could be done. I’d baited heavily with the milks the year before so I knew it could be done and they’d respond to it. It was much harder to judge with the milks, though, and I’d always tended to bait heavily at the start of a session, whereas with the fishmeals we were putting big hits in, as well as topping up after each fish, so we were putting loads in every day which was a pretty new thing. Once or twice I think we did have too much out there, but that was necessary as we saw it, to hold and draw in more of the fish. You didn’t always just want the ‘perfect’ level to get a bite out there all the time, or you might have had just a few greedy ones out there cleaning you out each day. So, you’d sacrifice a bite one day to get maybe three or four the next, once some more numbers had turned up. We were just topping it up all the time, and then every so often we’d give it these huge hits. It was a special spell of angling, that’s for sure.
Sub: Where to from Darenth, then?
TD: Back then you used to fish loads of different lakes – that’s how it was - and because of the distance involved, we couldn’t always get to Darenth either as it was always via a lift. Although we did buy a car actually, even though none of us had a licence! Me, Tony and Larry had chipped in and got an old one and Larry’s brother had given us some pointers, put your foot there, do this with the clutch. It was only about a 40 minute drive, but far enough when none of you can really drive. We went back to a few of our old lakes, like the Chase, with the fishmeals and did really well, usually not for any other reason than we just loved our fishing, and if we couldn’t get to Darenth we needed to get out somewhere. Even when I was fishing Longfield, if I couldn’t get there you’d find me on one of the park lakes. It didn’t matter to me really, we were anglers and a lot of the time it wasn’t about catching the biggest fish, we just wanted to angle. I think it was good for our fishing, though, as well, fishing so many different lakes. We fished the whole shebang, from estate lakes and gravel pits, to weedy waters, clay pits… that taught us a lot as well.
'It didn’t matter to me really, we were anglers and a lot of the time it wasn’t about catching the biggest fish, we just wanted to angle. I think it was good for our fishing, though, as well, fishing so many different lakes'
Sub: What prompted the move to Longfield? Where did the inspiration come from? How did you feel moving on to a water with that sort of reputation?
TD: We were still young, I was only 19, and it had the ultimate reputation because of the people who were fishing it, and also the number of them; it wasn’t just one or two of the names and good anglers, it was the whole lot. You were hearing stories about one carp a year being a right result, and fish that could get rid of your rigs all day long.
The year before Longfield, though, I’d fished Johnsons which taught me a lot as well, and in many ways was very similar to Longfield. It was very deep and clear, 20 foot of Canadian in places, full of naturals and it was rock hard – proper granite hard. It was another place where you could list the who’s who of carp fishing and most of them struggled, it was tough going. I met people like Johnny Allen on there and he’d fished Longfield; Steve Briggs was someone else we knew from Darenth that had done a season over there, Pete Jones and Travolta… and they’d fished Longfield as well, so we’d met a few faces and we’d heard all the stories, but really no one would tell us anything. Everyone was proper staunch and tight-lipped when it came to Longfield, even lads that we regarded as our mates; even though we were high up the pecking order on lakes like Darenth, that meant nothing when it came to Longfield. There was some brilliant angling going on. It was only a small place, and it was busy, so the last thing anyone wanted was anyone else over there, especially us with our reputation and the time we had available.
'Everyone was proper staunch and tight-lipped when it came to Longfield, even lads that we regarded as our mates; even though we were high up the pecking order on lakes like Darenth, that meant nothing when it came to Longfield. There was some brilliant angling going on'
Sub: How did you feel about that? Did that make you keener to go and find out what it was all about?
TD: To be honest, I found it a bit off-putting because I didn’t feel welcome. In many ways I suppose I’d kind of got used to that, though, pretty much everywhere we’d gone we’d got a cold shoulder to start with. It happened at Hainault, and it happened at Darenth. Until you’re in the clique and you’ve done a bit of time and you know what the score is you’re never really in it, and it does take a while to get accepted, but that’s just carp fishing. Like I said, with Longfield that was heightened even more so because I knew there were lads like Secret John and Booker on there, who were pretty much legends at the time, and also Longfield was a long way from where I lived, it wasn’t home turf. I wanted to fish it more than anywhere in the world though, so you just had to chin up and get on with it.
I’d really wanted to fish Yateley as well, and in hindsight, I wish I’d spent more time over there, but in some ways that was partly because Tel (Pethybridge) was over there piling the fishmeals in at the time and I didn’t want to go over there on the back of all his hard work. The plan was to fish Longfield with Geoff that year, he was a full-timer as well, and we were going to fish it alternate weeks. We were still on our fishmeal but with a birdfood in there too with some Robin Red. Tony had gone back for the Hainault fish that year with the fishmeals. He baited the granny out of it and practically lived there - and he caught them all, including the big one and then he came over to Longfield after that.
Sub: Were you fishing full-time still? How many hours were you putting in?
TD: I was, but not in the way the people fish full-time these days, because I couldn’t always get there. When I was there, though, I’d be doing huge stints because often I couldn’t get back home, and that was more the reason.
Sub: How much preparation did you put into that Longfield campaign? What was your game plan?
TD: You couldn’t fish anywhere in the close season back then, everywhere was shut. In those days, all us East London boys would go on tours looking for lakes during the close. We’d all meet up early in the morning and whoever had a car would pick us all up. We’d each chuck a fiver in for petrol and we’d just drive out looking for lakes, and that was how I first got to see Longfield. Because I knew I was going to fish it, though, I always used to take a big bag of bait with me, or I’d take my double burner and all the kit with me and when the lads would head of for a walk around I’d sit there and roll a 12-egg mix just to put into Longfield. I used to get the train up there as well if I couldn’t get a lift, and it was a whole day’s journey, just to get up there and put some bait in.
'I used to get the train up there as well if I couldn’t get a lift, and it was a whole day’s journey, just to get up there and put some bait in'
I was working on building sites by then and any free time I had between work, I would be desperately trying to get to Longfield. I don’t think I’d have made that kind of effort for anywhere else, but it was Longfield, and I would’ve done anything to have caught those fish. I probably only managed about half a dozen bait-ups that close, but that was a monumental effort because of the distances and everything else involved. Pre-baiting had been something I’d always done though, ever since the Perch Pond days. It was part of the carp angler’s calendar in that era. In April you’d start preparing and rolling your bait and start pre-baiting ready for June. It was one of the best bits about carp fishing, if not the best.
Sub: I know you said the lads were tight-lipped about the place, but did you even know exactly what was in there, because you were obviously pretty well connected to the big fish scene at the time?
TD: I didn’t, no! That was the thing. There was just no information about, so the only things you knew were what people had actually told you or what you’d seen with your own eyes. It was only when the Famous Five publicised their captures that it came out. I’d only really ever seen a few pictures of Longfield fish, I’d seen the shots of Ian Booker with Jack, and Heart Tail and I’d seen a shot of Ritchie MacDonald with the Leather, but I didn’t know the names of all the fish, I didn’t know how big they were, how many were still in there or anything, really. It was all still magical. I saw a lot of them for myself that close season though, and the first one I actually saw was Jack, that’s why in the book I call him the ‘one with the orange belly’, not Jack. I didn’t know them by name. I didn’t know that was Jack, so he just got called ‘the one with the orange belly’, and the ‘one with the linear scales’ turned out to be the Lady, and so on. The only one I did know was the Parrot, actually. Someone had flashed me a picture over at Darenth, cloak and dagger style from inside their jacket!
Sub: Did all that make it more exciting?
TD: Oh, by a mile, by ten miles! We didn’t have a clue. I was just watching these huge mirrors waddling around in the clear water, after hopping the fence in the close season, and we had no idea what they were, and that was so exciting. I guessed that we’d seen 15-20 different fish that close season, so we had a bit of an idea of the stock by then.
'We didn’t have a clue. I was just watching these huge mirrors waddling around in the clear water, after hopping the fence in the close season, and we had no idea what they were, and that was so exciting'
Sub: Did you have any idea how the other lads were fishing the lake?
TD: All we knew was that they were on fancy rigs. We’d heard that there were rigs being used on Longfield that just hadn’t been seen or used anywhere else, and we’d heard that Maylin had been piling in the birdfoods. Like I said before, you never heard much, just tiny snippets that you pieced together. Information was precious back then. When I was still fishing on Darenth you’d have lads going off and doing the odd trips over on Longfield, and it was funny because it was like they returned as different anglers. It was as if they’d seen something, or been exposed to something. They’d be hiding everything, and wouldn’t tell you anything, something changed them, and I wanted to know what! We were catching loads, and we had so much confidence, but seeing these lads come back with a completely new outlook on carp fishing, I just had to find out what it was all about, I wanted some of that magic.
Sub: Did you have a game plan?
TD: I’d heard about this gravel bar, out in front of the Secret Swim, so I knew there were some shallower areas out in the middle. My intention was to go over there, find some decent, small spots, the shallowest spots I could find out in the middle, and fill them in with fishmeals as accurately and tightly as I could - that was the plan. There were no gulls about back then, they were still at sea, so you could ‘pult them out one by one really accurately onto these tiny spots. I’d fished like that a lot at the Tip Lake, fishing the little gravel humps and bars. The fish did show at Longfield, so finding them often wasn’t a problem, but the big problem was that they spent a lot of their time living in the snags. One of the first things I learned over there was ‘don’t bait the snags’. Some people would be putting bait in there, to watch them, or get them used to their bait or whatever, but it would just hold them in there.
Often, out of a week’s session, there might only be one day when they’d actually all be out in the lake. The rest of the time they lived in the woodwork, and there was shitloads of it at Longfield. From the Pier right around to the Goose Pool it was just thick nests of sunken wood and snags. You’d go in there at first light and they’d be sitting in the wood; you’d go in there just before it went dark and they’d still be sitting in the wood. At times, you’d see nothing for days out in the main lake, but you’d go around to the Goose Pool and they’d be up and down under your feet. So often you were fishing a lake devoid of carp for long periods. In my eyes that is what made it so hard, and then when they went into Horton that was why they got bashed up and got caught so much; there was nowhere for them to hide.
Sub: Were there any spots that covered the snaggy areas, or spots you could safely fish to?
TD: Well no, that was one of the things again that made it so hard, and why I think Wraysbury can be so hard, as well. You have the shelves, which are four-foot deep and completely covered in woodwork and then it drops straight off to 18 foot and into shitty, smelly, gunky, God knows what at the bottom of the shelf, and the nearest spot they’re going to feed is a mile away. People used to cast tight up against the Goose Pool snags, but they didn’t realise that they’d be 15 yards away from the fish still, and they’d just swim straight out when they left, so you’d have to wait for them to swim that mile. Fishing the snags was just a waste of time.
Sub: What was the atmosphere like, with captures so few and far between?
TD: During the time I fished there, there was only a handful of fish caught, and that first season I don’t think even half of them came out. It was cliquey to start with, but there were a few new anglers on there that season, which I think helped split up the existing clique a bit, so we weren’t the only new faces. Bernie Loftus had started the same time as me and we became friends quite quickly. We were into similar things and he was doing a lot of time back then as well, ten-nighters and that kind of thing. I hit it off with a few of the lads and we all got on well.
Sub: How does it feel looking back on that capture of Jack now?
TD: Oh, it will always be the best capture of a carp for me, always. I pretty much stopped carp fishing after that. I didn’t stop immediately, but after Longfield was closed and the fish moved, it was hard to get up the enthusiasm again for a long while.
Sub: How long after your capture did that happen?
TD: It was the same season. I didn’t even get to fish a full season on there. We’d not fished the first few weeks because we knew it’d be so busy and then suddenly, it was closed. I went on there in the July and I caught Jack in the August. That was my seventh fish. I’d had one the first trip, then I had one and lost one the second trip, then I had three the next trip, and then I had Jack and the Blind Common the trip after that. I didn’t fish for a while but got back into it in the autumn, and then just after Christmas that was it, they closed it down.
Sub: What was the general feeling like between the lads who were fishing there at the time?
TD: We felt like someone had stolen our fish, simple as that. It was like someone had turned up and nicked our fish, and nicked our lake - and it happened overnight. We turned up to fish and there were heavies at the gates, almost like bouncers. I mean we were still just kids really, so anyone would have looked big, but they were big blokes. From then on, I just found it hard to get back into anything. I couldn’t find the motivation, and I was probably a bit burned out as well, looking back. I’d been living and fishing on a shoestring for years and had just caught what, in my eyes, was probably one of the greatest carp that has ever lived, so with Longfield being closed and the fish being moved to Horton and the bad taste that came from that, I was just blown out.
'We felt like someone had stolen our fish, simple as that. It was like someone had turned up and nicked our fish, and nicked our lake - and it happened overnight. We turned up to fish and there were heavies at the gates, almost like bouncers'
Sub: I can’t imagine what that must’ve felt like. So what then?
TD: I didn’t really carp fish for about six years after that. I did a bit on the Cons with a mate, on a guest, the following year, and I tried to fish Savay. I only had a day ticket, though, and without a car, and the three-mile walk from Denham train station to sleep in a field and just do the days, it didn’t work for me, but I loved it there. It was nowhere near as hard as the likes of Hainault and Longfield. There’d be bites most mornings on Savay, but on the days, with no car it was just too much.