Best swims in the world PT1

NASH KNOWHOW

#Best Swims in The World

#Best Swims in The World PART 1

Carlsberg don’t make swims, but if they did… globe trotting legend Steve Briggs delves into a few of the most amazing swims he’s fished around the world.

Black Mirror Bay – The Mere It’s almost impossible to write about any of my most memorable fishing without including The Mere. It was the hardest fishing I’ve ever done in my life and the captures on there were few and far between. There was one small area on that big, weedy lake that became more special to me than anywhere else. The Mere on the whole was very deep, very weedy and very tough and just seeing a fish was often a result – let alone getting one to feed or having any remote chance of catching one.

I baited, monitored and fished many different areas during my time on there but right down in the southeast corner was a little bay. There wasn’t anything that made it immediately stand out, there was one fallen tree that had been there for many years with its trunk lying horizontal about three feet above the water, which you could walk out on and scan the area. The margins dropped away sharply and after that much of the bay was inevitably filled with weed from top to bottom. For much of the time the water in the Mere was gin clear and you could make out every little stone and piece of weed down to about ten feet. This made it ideal for baiting small areas all around the lake and keeping an eye on spots. Many times you just couldn’t find the fish and even if you could then the chances of actually getting them to feed were even more slim in a lake

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packed full of natural food. But every now and then when things were just right the fish would pick up a few baits, in fact one of the first times any of my bait was eaten was in that bay. I remember rubbing my eyes in disbelief as I peered in to the depths to see all of my baits gone and just a clean circle on the silt-covered gravel where the culprit had fed sometime earlier. That night I had a rod on that very spot but the moment had already passed and my baits remained untouched.

After many days and nights on the Mere (63 in fact) I found myself back in the small bay peering down at the spot where my bait had once again been cleared from and with a sizeable common down there looking for more! I raced back that evening with my gear and only used the one rod on that tiny spot and I was so confident of getting one that I slept in my chest waders! Sure enough at 4.15am the tip slammed around, the alarm screamed and I was soon looking at my first Mere carp, a lovely wild-looking common of 20lb 8oz. The feeling was hard to describe but I’d broken my Mere duck!

“…a stunning old common of 34lb – one of the Black Mirror’s best friends – I knew I was getting close!”

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NASH KNOWHOW The thing with the bay was that there was no actual swim as such, it was actually right off the narrow pathway around the lake. There was only enough room just to hideaway one rod amongst the reeds and brambles but it was a place that the carp visited and obviously could be caught from there too. My next chance came the following year in the spring when I watched a group of five carp circling around the fallen tree – and one of those was the mighty Black Mirror. I caught one of the five that night but it was a fat common of 34lb, still a great result of course but after seeing the main prize there I did have my mind fixed on that fish more than any other.

Just a few weeks later and after keeping an eye on the bay most days a group of three fish returned – two decent commons and again the Black Mirror. Some

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of the bait was gone and again a rod was placed on the spot with high hopes. A fast run early the next morning saw me doing battle with a stunning old common of 34lb – one of the Black Mirror’s best friends – I knew I was getting close!

On June 18th I returned to the Mere once more. I’d baited up the bay two days earlier before leaving and when I arrived it was the first spot to check. I peered down and there before me was a fish known as the Twisty Common feeding on my bait! I was quite shocked to be honest but hastily assembled a rod and placed a single bottom bait on the quickly-tied rig. As I peered over the reeds the fish had moved off and it was my chance to lower the bait on to the spot before gently pushing a bank stick in and resting the butt of the rod on the tree trunk. I stepped back out of sight and thought I’d send Joan a

text to tell her what I’d seen, but within seconds the alarm burst in to life and the phone was launched into the brambles as I just jumped in to the lake, grabbing the rod on the way. The fish fought hard, taking me through several weedbeds and of course I presumed that I was playing the common I’d just seen. Imagine my surprise when it came up to the net and it wasn’t a common at all – it was the Black Mirror! My brain went in to meltdown as I jumped up and down shouting like a little kid, even though no one was there to hear me. I’d landed the fish of my dreams.

It was probably – well, actually is without a doubt - my greatest moment in carp fishing and that little bay with its fallen tree will remain one of my favourite swims I’ve ever fished.

A carpy morning looking out to the swim 18 island

Swim 18 - Rainbow Lake Rainbow Lake really hit the headlines in the early 2000s and went on to produce both world record commons and mirrors.

If there’s one swim that stands out it would have to be Swim 18. In the early days it had a reputation for being one of the tougher swims, where a blank session was always possible but it was a swim that could produce some of the biggest fish. That appealed to me, both the challenge and the chance of something big.

At first glance the swim doesn’t appear to be anything special, it’s got less room than many of the others, the water in front is mainly deep, with fewer features and it’s also close to the road which runs around the entire lake. But the main attraction has always been the snaggy margin of the island that runs parallel to the bank around 90 yards away. Over the years several trees have fallen from the steep, sandy banks in to the deep margins to form havens and hiding places for the Rainbow monsters.

looking down on the very spot where the Black Mirror was hooked

Black Mirror Bay 3

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Fishing always had to be done undercover

Tackling Swim 18 meant fishing as close to the trailing branches as possible, but using tackle and tactics that would enable you to get those fish away from the snags safely. The deep margins only started to shelve up quite close to the island itself and so it was always the balancing act of placing baits close enough so that they

would be in areas where carp could be tempted but also where the odds were still in your favour of landing what you hooked.

It was snag fishing on a totally different level to anything I’d done before and my tackle and tactics moved up a gear.

Locked-up, hit-and-hold-style fishing was a must and so 25lb Bullet Braid with strong 50lb mono leaders became the norm. Reels had to be cranked down so as not to give an inch of line and rods needed to be locked into rock solid set ups. If there was a weakness anywhere then it would be found out in that swim!

The strongest rig components were needed, typically size 2 Fang Twisters, 40lb Cling-On leader hook lengths with 10 or 12oz leads to hold everything in place on the steep shelves. It sounds crude – but it was necessary.

The interesting thing was that with this gear I didn’t receive less action but importantly I did land most of the fish I hooked.

When a fish was hooked the rod would buck and bend in the rests and I had to be quick on them – within four seconds day or night! It was edge-of-your-seat fishing and very tense stuff.

My first big fish came in April 2005 on my second session in the swim, when on a drizzly Thursday morning I latched in to a fish that nearly pulled me off my

“There was one spot in the middle of the swim where you could go in a bit closer to the snags if you were brave enough.” feet. I hung on for dear life until it was away from danger and after a huge battle I landed a monster for the time, my first 30kg carp at 68lb 4oz. This was the first known capture of the mirror that went on to break the world record at 94lb some years later. Swim 18 was also the scene of my first capture of a carp over 70lb.

There was one spot in the middle of the swim where you could go in a bit closer to the snags if you were brave enough. I had the confidence that I could get the fish out from there and in 2009 I hooked three big fish in a week from that spot.

The first was a monster and I got it right to the margins and saw it roll in front of me before the hook pulled out! I was still licking my wounds a few hours later when the same rod went off again with a 68lb 8oz mirror. But it was later in the week when the rod went off for a third time and yet another monster of 70lb 8oz came rolling in to the net!

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NASH KNOWHOW I had lots of great sessions and great results in Swim 18. One time I had six carp over 60lb in one trip and a couple of times I had more than ten 50-pounders in one stint. My last visit was December 2015 and once again it didn’t disappoint, I managed a small common on Christmas

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Day and a much larger one of 69lb 4oz on the 29th.

Of course the swim has changed a bit over the years, the pressure on those same spots has been immense and those spots have changed too with some trees

just rotting away and new ones falling in but the memories of those action-packed trips will stay with me forever.

The Shepherd’s Cottage – Lake Raduta Romania’s Lake Raduta arrival on the carp scene came like a breath of fresh air. The big waters of France had dominated the continental fishing for many years and the discovery of a new venue, and one that held lots of big commons into the bargain got everyone buzzing. I couldn’t wait to get out there and had to fly for the first time to fish.

On my third or fourth trip I was with Pete Jones, but we teamed up for the first night with Simon Crow in the Graveyard swim as he’d lost his hand luggage with all his important gear – camera, phone etc. It was a bit cramped in that one swim so the following morning Pete and I took a wander down the bank to our left. It was just a long grassy bank leading up to the Shepherd’s Cottage before heading in to a narrow channel that led to Robert Raduta’s hotel. Robert himself wasn’t too keen on us moving down as he said there were more snags there and no one normally fished the area, but on closer inspection it looked right up our street. It was quite clear for much of the area in front but as we approached about 70 yards out in the boat we could clearly see branches sticking up towards the surface all around us.

These were the tops of the trees from one of the old orchards and it looked a perfect holding area. If we fished sensibly and a bit short of the trees then it would be a great swim.

We awoke to a cold, drizzly morning for our first full day in the Shepherd’s Cottage. The breeze was blowing in to us and it looked perfect. It didn’t take long before my closest bait in just 5ft of water rattled off and after a tense battle Pete lifted the net around a good common. Just as that happened one of Pete’s rods was away too and I was able to do the honors for him. Two cracking commons weighing 44lb each – we knew straight away we’d stumbled on a good area! We went on to catch a load of fish that trip, none of the real Raduta monsters, but Pete did have a 46lb common, which was the biggest carp he ever managed to catch.

“Two cracking commons weighing 44lb each – we knew straight away we’d stumbled on a good area!”

My first big swim 18 carp - a carp that would one day be a world record!

The daily routine in the Shepherd’s Cottage swim

My very first carp over 70lb

You needed to get as close as possible to the trailing branches 5

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#Best Swims in The World

After that I fished the Shepherd’s Cottage on several occasions, sometimes on my own and other times with friends. Catching carp was never a problem really, although having fished Rainbow years later I wish I’d had some of the tackle and tactics back then, which would have definitely helped me to fish more effectively. The one big thing that held us all back in those days was the lack of bait we could take with us on the plane. When we finally got it all sorted to send pallets of bait over in advance I had already moved on to other swims and was doing much better. But Tim Paisley showed us what was possible when he went in the Shepherd’s Cottage for his very first time on the lake and caught the biggest common in the lake along with other good fish. Of course Tim is a great angler but it showed what was possible with the right gear and bait. Looking back it was a case of what might have been but it was great to be a part of those pioneering trips and my fondest memories are of my days in the Shepherd’s Cottage.

Pete Jones in action in what were perfect conditions for the swim

TOLD YOU… GAME CHANGER! Lake Raduta was a remote but atmospheric water

I missed out on the real big ones but landed plenty of decent fish 7

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