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    Big Carp Legends: Lee Jackson
    Big Carp Legends: Lee Jackson
    Big Carp Legends: Lee Jackson
    Ebook233 pages2 hours

    Big Carp Legends: Lee Jackson

    By Lee Jackson

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    About this ebook

    Lee Jackson

    Lee was delighted to be chosen for the series and actually took the time to rewrite his whole book so it depicted perfectly his amazing carp fishing career.

    Starting in the 70’s, Lee fished locally on the famous Kent waters of the day – Dartford, Horton Kirby and Sutton, and he soon earned a reputation for being a very successful and consistent catcher of big carp. Brooklands and Darenth were next on his list, meeting some great and lifelong friends such as Colin Swaden, Curly Hatchman, Martin Locke and Kevin Maddocks, each one bouncing ideas around and putting together those ‘early day’ jigsaws. His affair with that famous Kent carp, She, is legendary, but it was his capture of the unknown 40 from the Colne Valley that sprung Lee into the headlines. Savay was next on his list with considerable day ticket success, and whereas his campaign on Springwood would last over a decade, most of his captures have never been published, until now.

    The Blue Lake, Longfield and Cotton Farm became his next obsessions. That was until he found Conningbrook, where he was one of its most successful anglers ever, catching over 20 fish topped by a new British record! Lee is without doubt a true legend, but he is more than that. Lee has never let his fame go to his head. He is, and always has been one of the sport’s real gentlemen, a great ambassador for the art of carp fishing, and genuinely an all-round nice guy. Now here is your chance to read his life story.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBigCarpMagazine
    Release dateNov 12, 2014
    ISBN9780951512760
    Big Carp Legends: Lee Jackson
    Author

    Lee Jackson

    Lee Jackson is an Award-winning Motivational Speaker, Author of 13 books and a leading Presentation Skills Coach. He is also the a past President of the Professional Speaking Association in the UK & Ireland. For more information visit http://www.leejackson.org or on twitter @leejackson

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      Book preview

      Big Carp Legends - Lee Jackson

      Epub cover

      Contents

      Big Carp Legends – Lee Jackson

      First published in 2010

      By Bountyhunter Publications

      © Bountyhunter Publications 2010

      All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

      system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission of the copyright owner.

      ISBN 978-0-9515127-5-3

      Printed in Great Britain

      Foreword by Rob Maylin

      One of Harrow’s finest that I christened ‘Veiny’.

      Lee Jackson is one of the most highly regarded carp anglers this country has ever known. He began his carp angling career in the early 70’s fishing the Kent ‘hot beds’ Darenth and Horton Kerby, then tackling the great waters of that era, Brooklands, Sutton and Walthamstow. His obsession with ‘She’ is legendary and makes riveting reading, but it was his move to the Colne Valley in the early 80’s that really brought him into the headlines with the capture of the unknown 40 pounder from the notorious ‘Hertfordshire Club Lake’ where he went on, over a ten year period, to capture some truely awesome specimens, as can be found in these pages.

      Lee had a brief affair with Savay and was successful as a day ticket angler, but it was always the Hertforshire water that beckoned him back. As an integral part of the famous Tackle Box fishing tackle shop in Kent and long term consultant for Free Spirit, Lee has always been on top of his game. He used all his knowledge to good effect taking gold medal position in the finals of the British Carp Championships.

      Lee has always been heavily involved with the BCSG and the Carp Society and has not only attended just about everything, but organised most of it!

      His six year affair with Conningbrook lead to over 20 captures from this testing venue, culminating in the capture of ‘Two Tone’ at the new British record weight.

      These days Lee is taking life a little easier, sharing good times with his wife Jane, doing a little carping now and then and devoting much of his spare time to his own syndicate water Cotton Farm.

      One of the true gentlemen of carp fishing, Lee became one of the carp anglers favourites. A great ambassador for the sport and I am glad to say, one of my true friends. I am certain you will enjoy a trip down memory lane with this truely special angler.

      This is the one I christened ‘Dearmans’.

      Introduction

      – Into the Valley
      I fished for about a year without actually catching a carp

      Gazing into the pond.

      Looking back, although it has all gone in a flash, it seems as though I’ve been fishing since Noah was around; I’m off the Ark now, they only allowed two animals on there - Pete Springate and me!

      Basically my fishing started at a real early age. I lived at New Cross in South East London and out in our back garden we had what originally was an old bomb shelter, and after the war, my Dad caved in the roof and filled it up with water and that was our garden pond. I can remember probably way back to when I was about two or three years old, having a fascination for looking in the pea soup green coloured water to see if I could see any fish. I would spend hours out there, and my mum or dad would drag me in to feed me, but I just spent hours and hours by that pond, just staring into the depths, intrigued as to what lurked below. As I got a little bit older and found my feet a little bit more, I progressed to a little bamboo fishing net over at Blackheath ponds or in the Surrey Docks Canal, fishing for sticklebacks, newts or anything that came along really, all of which usually got taken home in a jam jar only to die a few days later. In the school holidays it was a boys’ adventure time and usually we’d to go down to Blackheath on our bikes and ride around like loons on a hilly bit that we all knew as ‘Cowboy Land’. We’d usually play silly buggers over there for a couple of hours, get fed up with that, and then get the nets out in the pond, that’s if we didn’t end up down A&E at Lewisham Hospital due to crashing the bike that is!

      My dad wasn’t ever a fisherman, but having said that, he never held me back in anything I wanted to do. He was a keen footballer and used to encourage me to play football too, but if I wanted to go fishing, he would take me down to the lake.

      I can remember my first ever fishing trip was to Keston Ponds near to Bromley in Kent. We went down there in my dad’s old but immaculate Ford Anglia; I must have been about five years old at the time. No one else was fishing and I can remember hanging out this tree trying to tempt these tiny jack pike. I was using a great big bobbin float and 18lb line, which at the time I thought I had to use, you know how it is, I was completely naïve about fishing and thought that you needed to be using ‘big tackle’ to catch big fish! I was desperately trying to catch one of these pike when all of a sudden this fella, who put me in mind of the Ranger out of the TV programme Yogi Bear, as he wore a brown suit and had a brown hat on with ‘Ranger’ written across the front, said, The fishing season doesn’t start until tomorrow so you’ll have to pack up and go. My dad had a little bit of a row with him, saying, We aren’t doing any harm, but the Ranger said, No, sorry, I can’t let you fish, the season doesn’t start until tomorrow. So we had to pack up and go home, and I thought to myself at the time, how unlucky can you get; you don’t know anything about fishing, you don’t know anything about the seasons, and the first time you go proper fishing and its June the 15th and you get thrown off!

      From there really I suppose it progressed to fishing with mates from school, bearing in mind that when you lived in Deptford and places like New Cross, going out to Dartford Lakes and Horton Kirby was like going out on a trip to the country, because in comparison, it was. We were surrounded by tower blocks and Dartford at the time was still quite a nice area. We used to go off on the train, get a train from Deptford station, the first train down to Dartford, and I suppose really most of our early fishing was on Dartford Lakes, fishing for anything that came along. You couldn’t help notice along the way that there were these mysterious looking characters fishing, with floppy hats and all that, fishing very quietly and keeping themselves to themselves, but we never really used to take too much notice of them, and to be honest, they would never talk to you even if you did, they were like a little secret service. I suppose at the time it was people like Jack Hilton and co, but we would sit there, merrily fishing away with our little floats, catching loads and loads of roach and what-have-you and not really care or take too much notice of what other anglers were doing.

      My best mate at the time was a boy called Ronny Angel, and he was really good at all sports, and in particular boxing and was the schoolboy champion of Great Britain for two or three years on the trot and also good at football and most other sports. But, the one thing he couldn’t beat me at was fishing and there was always a little bit of competitiveness between the pair of us. Then we progressed to fishing further afield to Horton Kirby, which is still fairly near Dartford but involved getting a bus from Dartford railway station.

      Horton Kirby at the time was probably the hot bed for carp fishing, and we started seeing quite a few people fishing for carp, and occasionally catching some as well. What really gave me the bug was when I was fishing the bottom lake at Horton Kirby one day and I heard a bit of a commotion going on up on the other lake. I went up there, saw this guy catch a 14 pounder, and I was really impressed with the way it fought. I went back to my swim on the bottom lake, and about half an hour later, he caught another one; another 14lb pounder as it happens. I went back to my swim after seeing that, and my float went under, and I thought, what’s the point, it’s another two inch roach. So after that, I nagged my mum that I wanted a carp rod and reel, this would have been around about 1966-67, no sorry, it was a little bit later than that, probably about 1969. Anyway, I nagged my mum for a carp rod, so she got the Bennett’s of Sheffield catalogue and bought this Davenport and Fordham Farstrike glass carp rod. In actual fact it was a carbon copy of the Gerry Savage rod, but it was a honey yellow colour whereas the Savage rod was green. I also got a Mitchell 324 reel, and off I marched down to Horton Kirby and Dartford, all the gear but no idea, and I think I fished for about a year without actually catching a carp. I would cast the carp rod out in hope that a carp would come along, and continued to float fish with the other rod, but that really was a mistake, because I wasn’t paying full attention to the carp rod. I think I hooked a couple, but in that first year I didn’t actually manage to land anything on the carp rod. Anyway, the following year, which by now is 1970, I decided that I was going to go for the carp properly, so my Mum sent off for another rod. This time I had the stepped-up version, which was probably about 1½lb – 1¾lb test curve, and I was going to have a serious go at it, but again, I failed really. Bear in mind that our season was probably June 16th up until the end of the school holidays, and then after that we would do the things that normal boys do at that age, and terrorise girls for the winter.

      One day, I think it was the following year, 1971, myself and a mate of mine, Mark Ilbury, were up on the top lake at Horton Kirby, fishing an area called the ‘Long Chuck’. It was probably about 60yds, but at the time it was a long cast. I think the bait we were using was Kit-E-Kat mixed with Pomenteg ground bait and various bits and pieces sprinkled in to make it more attractive - great

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