COLIN HIGGINS: Redmire Carp and Goblin

One of my favourite guest blogs is that of Colin Higgins from Yorkshire, who - incidentally - was the winner of the compy in January's `On the Track`, where he won my everlasting admiration by recognising Surabaya Johnny by the ever lovely Marianne Faithfull. He also went on the lash with Shane McGowan back in his student days, and is obviously a very fine fellow...

To traditionalists, Carp are synonymous with country house lakes where beneath a canopy of weed and lilies they can grow to enormous size, unseen and largely un-fished for. The reality today is more likely to be stocked commercial pools with numbered pitches containing named fish which emerge a few times a season to give their captors momentary notoriety as ‘The Fat Lady’, ‘Two Tone’ or ‘Benson’ put on a few ounces under an onslaught of high protein ground baits.

The most famous of the former idylls is undoubtedly ‘Redmire Pool,’ a secluded three acre lake near Ross on Wye that came to national attention under this pseudonym when Richard Walker smashed the British record in 1952 with a fish of 44 lbs. Chris Yates went on to break the record again in 1980, his 51 and a half pounder coming from the same lake.

In spite of the prodigious nature of these Redmire fish, Walker, Yates and one or two others were given a glimpse of a fish that dwarfed their own captures, a carp of unspeakable proportions known as The King or simply The Monster. If the monster existed as anything other than a hallucination from too many hours on the bankside it was never landed, though estimates place its weight anywhere from 70 to 100 lbs.

Redmire is also famous for its ghosts. Rumour has it Chris Yates attempted to hold an exorcism after events he has alluded to in print and various anglers have written about strange incidents at the lake, their names being shouted, the sound of a phantom cyclist on the bankside, locomotives heard where there are no lines, sudden inexplicable winds, frost covering the contents of their bivvies in midsummer, locked car doors slamming and most frighteningly, a horrible goblin like creature that reduced two grown men to abject fear before being found cowering in the corner of their tent by fellow anglers. Other carp fishermen have admitted, guardedly in a sometimes macho world, to seeing the same staring-eyed thing.

Whatever the nature of this entity Redmire’s secrets have yielded to commercial pressure and the lake has become a sort of heritage site where, for a price, small groups of anglers can fish the same pitches their heroes once trod. Future records are unlikely though, Leney’s original stocking of fifty Galician carp having died out and their offspring showing none of the same tendency for enormous size. Whether the spooks have also departed now this quiet fold in the Herefordshire hills has gone public remains to be seen.