My Story - Dave Rothery

My Story - Dave 'Frothey' Rothery T-Rex's 'Metal Guru' was No.1 nine months before I was born. That explains a lot! My earliest fishy memories were of cold, blowy winter's days with my dad fishing off the beaches of Norfolk and Suffolk; places like Southwold, Aldeburgh and Pakefield - well, my dad fishing and me and my brothers running around trying to find enough wood to burn. My dad even cunningly arranged a fishing (or was it hockey?) trip whilst my younger brother was born, a trick I wasn't able to do with my two kids! We soon moved to Cavendish, famous for its Suffolk pink cottages and a lovely little bend in the Stour below a weirpool - this was my first real introduction to coarse fishing - but first it was a little feeder stream that ran outside a friend's house that captured me. Many hours were spent with the clichéd garden cane and bent pin catching little perch and gudgeon that lived under a little bridge, but then a cousin of my dad's, who was a river bailiff around Camberley, sent a box full of tackle that he'd recovered from the trees on the rivers he bailiffed - real river here I come! Young Dave Rothery fishing from the beach at Southwold Dad showed me how to fish the stretch in the village - shallow glides for the chub under the willows, deeper runs on the bends for the roach and dace. Later in the year we went walking on the long slow stretches through the fields, using big lobworms for the perch that lived in the neglected spots. I even remember him catching perch on a slowly retrieved Redgill - I tried it for ages afterwards and never caught anything, but then my dad is a jammy git - just ask the blokes he goes boat fishing with! After a year or two, the water authority carried out some 'improvements' to the river, probably to stop the occasional flooding, but totally ruining it in terms of the fishing and its looks. So we moved onto the three LAA lakes and the river at Glemsford, at the time quite famous for the carp as Len Head (or his brother) had produced an article in the Angler's Mail Yearbook. It was my first introduction to lift method fishing for the tench, something I love doing and wish I had more opportunity do now. We also fished Bures lake, where I caught a 5lb-plus tench, a biggy back in those days (early 80's) and about a pound bigger than my dad's PB! We then moved to Bury St Edmunds, and the fishing moved to Ickworth Park where I remember having a massive catch of perch with a couple of school friends - easily 50 fish between us! At the top end of the lake we used to see these big shapes moving around……. carp apparently, but as they were un-catchable we had no interest in them. Well, not until one day when I saw an angler catch a couple on dog biscuits. Imagine that! Not long after I caught my first carp on mixers, I remember it so well as the bailiff seemed a bit miffed that a 'kiddy' had caught a carp, so he demanded my ticket as I was playing the fish - wouldn't even help me land it! It was about this time I had my first introduction to fly fishing, my uncle having bought me a Shakespeare fly outfit that I still have till this day. Dad, being the 'sport billy' that he is took approximately 18 seconds to master casting, and then approximately 18 days to teach me - lucky we had a big garden! Dave fly fishing at Narborough Lakes in Norfolk The first trip was to Narborough lakes in Norfolk and was a big success, fish after fish coming to a Muddler stripped across the surface. Dad wasn't quite so impressed as it was catch and kill and he had a hefty bill to pay! We later fished Grafham from the boat on a windy day, the problem was we decided to take a row boat and at the time I was too little to row. Around the same time I also got to fish the Nene in Peterborough a few times for the bream whilst visiting relatives, which was an eye-opener, and was the water my dad 'grew up' on. On the carp front, I started fishing Rushbrooke lake - probably at the same time as Jim Shelley! It was where I first heard the whispers about 'the hair' - no carp magazines around then, so you had to be in an 'inner circle' to hear about new things, not that I was aware of things being about 10 at the time! I actually figured out what it was, but couldn't believe it would work so binned it, well until the first time I saw a friend try it! I had also spent all my savings - about £3 - on a bag of magic orange balls…Richworth tutti frutti. Dad wasn't impressed, but I reckoned a bag would last a season or two - how times change! I progressed to fishing a bigger water, West Stow Park, for bream and roach, and I also hooked the occasional carp there, but never landed one as the carp gear was the same as the roach gear. I also had some of my best tench fishing at Hardwick Heath in Bury, with classic weedy tench swims, though I hear it had a fish kill a few years back and is/was closed due to the low water levels. Shame. I also saw some photo's recently, its much smaller than I remember…. When I was growing up most of my summer holidays were spent in Devon, just down the road from where I now live. Apparently when I was five or six I told my parents I was going to live here, I don't think they believed me! Dad being dad ensured we still got our fishing fix, either on some of the trout waters, or fishing the rocky gullies and sandbanks for bass - something I do as often as I can now. I was then told we were moving to Canterbury in Kent, I think my parents were worried about moving me away from my friends: I was overjoyed as every puddle in Kent contained huge carp, or so it was said! Dave's first carp, 11lb, from Fordwich Lake in Kent The village we moved to was Westbere, which contained a 120 acre gravel pit which I was more than a bit intimidated by, though I did fish it a bit for the bream and tench. But it was Fordwich down the road that really captured me, about 40 acres, and it contained a 28lb carp! Once I got to know a few of the lads, my carp fishing came on massively. More than a few of the lads fished the circuit waters, and some famous anglers fished it (a certain Mr Gibbinson has a few pics of it in a couple of his books). A lot of the fishing was at range, so the tackle was rapidly upgraded, but my first fish came from an island swim no more than 20yds out. At 11lb, it was huge to me, and a few of the lads though it was funny I'd waded all the way back across to get a pic! Just before the first '20' came along The first twenty came along a little later, two or three days after the hurricane that ravaged the country. I was also lucky enough to be fishing the lake at the time that the Premier Baits lads were doing a lot of development as it was their local water, so was able to pick up some hints and tips from Geoff Bowers - the daddy of all 'bait barons'? The next summer I had my first multiple catch, three fish in two days, which blew me away at the time. People started leaving lumps of foam in the swims, wrapped in bin liners to protect the fish. How bizarre, it'll never catch on. The first '20', caught in floods The following June 16th I fished my first 'session', four days I think it was and I put a lot of effort into it. I pre-baited for two weeks beforehand with a mixture of peanuts, chickpeas and tigers - probably 10kg dry in total plus 5kg of homemade boilies, and was top rod for the week with 13 or 14 fish. I felt like a dog with the proverbial two appendages for weeks, well, at least until my parents were called into school to find out why I'd missed a couple of mocks, which I don't remember being scheduled! The trout front was mainly fishing the local waters with single nymphs and stalking tactics; great fun. Sixth form came and went in a haze of pub smoke (well, at least I was talking to the teachers in the pub!) and I caught a 6ft beauty that I still keep trying to return but she still likes the bait. Strange thing, but then she is from Yorkshire! Out of school and into a job and I had the ability to buy a car, so it was off to a new water that had just opened. Linear something it was called, not sure what happened to it. First trip I had two fish, but went back a couple of weeks later and had a 'shedfull' on the newish Grange bait I'd rolled. Two blokes seemed quite impressed and had a chat, it wasn't till a few years later I realised I was talking to some well known anglers that had become famous on Horton. It was their social trip, and a good time was had by all…maybe they weren't quite so impressed after all! The last fish in the north sea! Due to work, the fishing tailed off for a couple of years - to be honest, I'd lost the carp bug. I did more sea fishing than anything, mainly from the chalk ledges around Thanet and the beach at Deal, along with a few boat trips out of Folkestone. I also had a couple of trips between the sandbars off Margate in a friend's dinghy where I was introduced to uptiding. But me and waves don't get on (I can get sea-sick surfing!) I had productive trips, but I spent all my time between fishing barfing over the side! A trip to Bewl Bridge for trout spoiled the trout fishing for me, as it all seemed so, well, artificial, and easy once we'd found the fish. But a chance meeting with a 'Carpworld' magazine got me going again. I was bored on a lunch break and bought it on a whim, but after reading it I was amazed at the explosion in carp fishing. Bedchairs at £300? Big pit reels?? 4oz leads? And so it started again… A summer on Fordwich got me back in the swing of things, with the new Nash Pursuits and Big Pit reels, swims that I could only dream of were now in range. One of my best sessions came as I was shutting down a store, left alone to do the auditing and close down the systems. This allowed me to get to work, roll some bait in the canteen, do my jobby thing, then go fishing and repeat the following day without having to deal with any staff or customers face to face. My brother, who worked for the same company, dropped in, not for long as he couldn't stand the smell of the bait - or me! The week was a wet one, so after drying out the gear in the shop during the day it was a bit 'ripe' by the end……I blamed the drains! The (by now) fiancé moved to Surrey to finish her training, so it was time to bite the bullet and leave home. House buying took longer than we thought, so for about six months we lived in a one room flat in hospital accommodation - fishing gear and all! It was hell, waking up to lots of student nurses wandering around in their underwear….. Fishing was mainly done on a few of the RMC (now Cemex) waters, but we could only stick a couple of years of the lifestyle, getting up at 6.30 to sit in a traffic jam for two hours to get to work, to then spend two hours getting home just to go to bed lost its appeal. I used to cycle the 12 miles or so to work quite often as it was quicker and I got my 'adrenalin junkie' rush fighting the traffic, but you wouldn't believe how quick I got through filters for the smog mask….. So we took the decision to finally move to Devon and here I am. The carp fishing isn't quite what I grew up with but the surfing in warm(er) waters and the lifestyle more than makes up for it - 10 minutes from the beaches, or 20 from the Moors. More importantly about five minutes from work and two from the pub! And let's face it, I wouldn't want to bring my two kids up anywhere else. Well, apart from France, or maybe Australia. Canada possibly, and of course New Zealand. Maybe its an option when the mess the rest of the country's in finally catches up with us in the South West! Dave will be writing a writing a regular carp column, 'Starting Carping', for FishingMagic. The first in this occasional series will go on site next week. Don't miss it!