Gardner Tackle Website

This brand new site includes a host of useful and informative features, such as vastly improved product descriptions and images of the whole Gardner and Sufix ranges,  helpful media and ‘how to’ video clips, special hints and tips offering loads of advice to customers on how to get the very best from their great range of products, along with general hints to improve your own angling direct from Gardner’s team of top in-house and sponsored anglers.  

There is also a very helpful page that is designed to help anglers locate their nearest stockist by using a unique ‘Google Earth’ map page that shows all of the Gardner stockists  in the UK. This page also offers links to all those shops with internet sites, email and postal address details and telephone numbers to help customers get in touch with their local retailer.

Have a look at www.gardnertackle.co.uk

This terrible 'blanking' afflication that Ben has picked up since joining us here at Carp-Talk  seems to be catching. He was even spotted looking at a golfing website in the office last week - perhaps he's thinking of taking up another sport. On the basis of his present angling form the golfing world has nothing to fear...

Well I've really not had chance to get out on the bank over the last two weeks. I've been catching up with my son having not seen him for over three weeks whilst in France. I really wanted to get out on the bank but sometimes other things are more important. I did manage to go on a few baiting sessions which will hopefully help me put a few on the bank over the coming weeks. This weekend just gone I attended an adult carp tuition weekend organized by Reece Bird via the NCFF (Northern Carp Fishing Forum). The event took place at Newbridge Lakes which is located just east of Hull. There were ten tutors who were each assigned a pupil for the weekend. Dave Fox was the unlucky pupil to

Century/Steve Neville Distribution Deal

Century and Steve Neville have announce an agreement that Century will take over the manufacturing and distribution of Steve Neville's stainless steel products from 15 October 2007.
Steve has developed a cult following for his brilliantly-engineered, stainless steel carp angling products. Steve's demand has always exceeded supply so by using Century's engineering facilities the intention is to make the supply more accessible and allow Steve to concentrate more on development of new ideas in this field. Steve and Simon Chilcott of Century want to stress that Steve will still be responsible for the alarms side of his business and this continues as usual.
Century will be distributing Steve's ranges through specialist tackle dealers. www.century.gb.com

Map of features at Little Horseshoe

Little Horseshoe can be a rather tricky venue as its bottom is like a egg box, thick weed covers a good part of it, which makes it very difficult to find the clear areas with a marker float or even to lead around. When I started to do this map I thought my echo sounder would be a big advantage. But I was proved wrong as the weed just showed up on the screen as the lake bed, making it hard to see the contours on the bottom. So with major help from Geoff Simonds, one of Watermarks bailiffs who has fished the five acre venue for over twenty years, we came up with this map to help all of Little Horseshoes anglers. This will hopefully put them on the right spots and help them to put a few extra fish on the bank.

Lee Pollard

Lee Pollard asked us at Carp-Talk if we could publish this map to help the Little Horseshoe members

Website: www.watermarkfisheries.com/coarse.htm

Split Cane MkIV Rods

Almost every week we get an enquiries about the famous Richard Walker split cane MkIV carp rods - either how much are they worth or the person has seen one on eBay, what do we think, etc, etc.

Between October 1952 and 1966 (when production ceased) some 15,000 MkIV’s were manufactured by the foremost supplier of the time, B. James & Son. The MkIV carp rods you see the most at auction or on eBay are last model design (1962- 1966) by virtue that more of these were manufactured than models before.

After seeing and handling hundreds of James MkIV’s over the last 30 years our advice is don’t buy the first one you see. There are many around and good examples can still be purchased complete with the original rod bag.

The one big thing that has changed is the price: expect to pay around £250-£300 for reasonable conditioned versions and upwards of £500 for much earlier good examples. A pristine mid-1950’s James MkIV ‘Onion handle’ version in unused condition last week got sold on eBay for £550! Use one or buy as an investment… the choice is yours.

Don’t blame it on the weather man

Last year I can remember being out on the bank in the middle of November when the temperature was 18-degrees and blowing the most perfect westerly you could imagine. It was t-shirt weather and lovely carp feeding conditions. I was on the lake yesterday and was surprised to see that almost half of the trees had not turned yet, with many still very green. Although catch reports are coming in thick and fast here at Carp-Talk, if you’re one of those anglers who tends to slow your fishing down come the beginning of November, then maybe you should think again as winter looks set to be late yet again. The autumnal winds haven’t arrived and I suspect we’re going to see some tremendous carp catches from around the country before the end of the 2007.

Simon Crow

This stunning 34lb 5oz ghost mirror was caught by Lloyd Sanders from Basildon during a five-night session on Essex Manor Farm Lake.

Still dreaming of those stunning Cassien carp.

spend the weekend with me. Unfortunately the event was a complete blank for all, this on a lake that has quite a large head of carp. Things were clearly not right with the lake as a number of carp  

have passed away over the last couple of weeks. I hope this is the end of the carp deaths as the lake is truly stunning with an impressive stock, which over the last few years have grown on very well.

This year has seen many carp deaths up and down the country. There has been little in the way of a diagnosis. The only link with the majority of deaths is a sudden influx of water. Whether this has prevented the carp spawning, brought in disease or simply weakened the carp’s immune system leaving them vulnerable to something that they might have already been carrying, I have no idea. I hope somebody gets to the bottom of this and we never have to witness carp deaths on such a large scale again.

Back to the event at Newbridge; on Saturday afternoon a large group of us gathered around a television for an afternoon of sport. And what a result - England winning both the the football and rugby and as the majority of us were from Yorkshire, Leeds beating St Helens was simply the icing on an already very sweet cake. Overall a very enjoyable weekend and hopefully everybody went away having learned a thing or two. I would certainly get involved in an event like this again should the opportunity arise. I would like to congratulate everybody who gave up their valuable time and focused their efforts towards helping others for a change. And a big well done to Reece Bird, Phil Sainty and Danny Fletcher for organising such a excellent event.

This week I intend to sneak in a couple of overnighters where I can hopefully put an end to all this blanking. Whatever happens I'll let you know about it next time around.

Tight lines,

Ben Wales

World Record

A fish of 89lb has been landed from Luke Moffatt’s Gravieres fishery. The huge mirror known as the Scarred Mirror was caught by Birmingham angler Paul Meredith. The full story and amazing pictures will appear in next week’s Carp-Talk issue 685.

FISHERY MAP - WATERMARK’S LITTLE HORSESHOE

The use of a marker rod was a subject I covered at great length during the tuition weekend