Lee
I don’t know whether you know or not but the Trent has had carp in for a very long time. In the late 60s through to early 80s I use to go on all the works club and another clubs matches. They match fished I fished for the chub, specialists style, wandering the lengths empty pegs using bread mainly. On lengths like Holmes Marsh, Collingham, Winthorpe, Newark dyke, Hoveringham and other that I can’t remember the names of, all had carp in them. Most were commons of 5-10lb. I once remember wandering down to the last pegs on the weir field at HM just above the weir where there was a large bed of rushes in the water and saw a shoalofcarp, up to a hundred in number, very few were mirrors or leathers.
Some of the match lads on the matches would target these carp even then, towards the end of the match, to boost their match weigh.
You like me, have seen the Trent in a good flood, when it’s several fields wide and up and over into the numerous gravel pits along it length. Many of those pits from the mid 70s onward had been stock with carp Walter Bowers pits at Muskham being a case in point. I remember one winter league match, where the river was lapping the edge of Winthorpe lake!
Lee Fletcher (that should wake him up…..Hi Mate!) once told me about him fishing the pits for barbel, which had got there through the floods. The upshot of this being and given the longevity of the life of a carp, many of these fish could well be those fish of those days.
