30 pound Carp and Cookies
It was the summer of 2005 and I was off to my local syndicate broad water for a look round to see where the majority of the fish were showing as it was a hot sunny day.
After a 10 minute drive I w.jpg)
as on the car park, as I pulled up I noticed this real tall geezer unloading Carp Fishing Gear out of his car. This geezer turned around and to my surprise it was Cookie.
I hadn’t seen this guy for over 20years, this was so cool as we did a lot of Carp fishing together back in the 80s and had some good times as he was a top bloke and Angler and still is, me being a complete idiot ran straight at him jumped as high as I could and launched my self straight at him and ended up hanging round his neck, saying guess who and he hadn’t got a clue till he turned round totally gob smacked.
Long story short we ended up arranging a fishing session on Broadwater a couple of days later.
The couple of days were soon up and I arrived at the lake seeing Cookies car was already there so I left my Carp fishing tackle in the car and made my way round to Cookie the sly old dog had setup in the overflow swim.
Little did I know Cookie had been taking quite a few fish from this swim over the past few weeks?
I ended up in the letterbox swim a swim with plenty of cover but with all the comfort with freshly mown grass plenty of room for the bivvy without being seen by passing fish.
(The letterbox swim proved to be a good move)
We both had a lot of catching up to do, when I had set my traps Cookie come over with a sample of the Carp bait he was catching on, it was the mainline NRG.
So I wound a rod in and baited my rig with NRG and dropped it at the bottom of the margin drop off with half a kilo of Betaine pellets over the top.
Me and the Cookie had a great evening catching up with a couple of beers thrown in. At around midnight we was about to turn in and one of Cookies rods rattled off, and he was in. .jpg)
We didn’t think the fish was that big, as it came in like a wet sack. I netted it for him with ease till I tried to lift the net, I actually thought the net was snagged and when I checked it wasn’t so I lifted and shouted 30 wicked! And my god it was, I was so chuffed for my old mate. The fish was known as the Oxford Fish and weighed in at over 34lb. (Cookie with the Oxford Fish)
After the excitement it was time for bed and I was thinking where my bloody fish is, and went off to sleep, to be woken by the high tone margin rod it was the faithful NRG Cookie assured me, it was daylight thank God and my big pit was going into backward overdrive.
I picked the rod up finger on spod not wanting to flip the bait runner on the front of the spool as this fish was moving fast I finally managed to slow the bugger down get him close and he was off again he did this to me about 4 times with up to 80 yard runs.
I was consumed with excitement at this point and jumped in the drink up to my bits, and landed the Fish after a
bout 20 minutes I had a good look in the net and shouted 30……. Wicked Cookie was raving on, calling the fish the Minter and saying this fish can go 30plus and it was the fish called the minter, 30 pound 4 ounce fighting fit Common Carp well we ended up celebrating and I took a day off work I will never forget that night with Cookie top geezer and angler.
(Uncle Fester with The Minter)