PART 2.

Commercialism and carp records come under the spotlight as we conclude our colourful and insightful interview with the ever-forthright Simon Crow…

AN INTERVIEW BY THOM AIRS

PHOTOGRAPHY THOM AIRS AND SIMON CROW

AS A PREVIOUS MAGAZINE EDITOR, TACKLE- COMPANY BOSS, FISHERY OWNER, CONSULTANT AND TUTOR, SIMON CROW HAS SEEN CARP FISHING FROM ALL ANGLES. HE’S PIONEERED, FISHED MORE VENUES THAN POSSIBLY ANY OTHER ANGLER (OVER 400 AND COUNTING), AND UNLIKE SO MANY OF TODAY’S CARP ANGLERS, HE’S NOT SWAYED BY TRENDS—HE STILL TIES THE SAME RIG THAT HE DID IN 1993, AND HAS NEVER EVEN ATTEMPTED TO TIE A RONNIE… SIMON CROW REALLY IS THE PERFECT ANTIDOTE TO INFLUENCER CULTURE.

YOU RAN THE NEW YORK MA RATHON AND FISHED CENTRAL PARK. OBVIOUSLY YOU WEREN’T FISHING FOR GIANTS THERE, BUT DO YOU, PERHAPS, ALWAYS TAKE A ROD ON HOLIDAY?

“Not always. Lucy sometimes doesn’t let me! In 2018 we both ran the Chicago marathon and the day after I dragged her round Lake Michigan looking for carp. She wasn’t best pleased so I have to balance things.

“I get enjoyment from fishing different venues. I might not have caught as many biggies as some lads, but I guarantee I’ve caught carp from more waters than most. Only the other day, I walked my dog in a local forested area. They’ve opened it up with a car park and a picnic area, and you can walk off the beaten track. I came across some ponds, and in one there was a carp basking in the margins. The pond was only about a quarter of an acre, but this carp was about five pounds. I’m going to go and catch it, eventually. I didn’t that day, but I will do, because that’s the angler in me. I like catching fish and I like fishing new venues. If you fish only one water, then you’re only good on one water.

“I remember, years ago, when we were putting magazines together, if you wanted an article about how to catch big carp, you didn’t go and ring someone who’d caught just one, you asked someone who’d caught quite a few. I always think that if you want to be a good carp angler, it’s not about being a good carp angler on only one lake. You want to be capable of catching carp from anywhere, like Terry Hearn. There’s not a big carp in the world that Terry Hearn couldn’t catch, and it’s the same with Briggsy, Laney, and people like that. There’s no water in the world with carp in, that I can’t go and catch from, simply because I’ve fished all sorts of environments. Whether it’s a canal, a river, a reservoir, a pond… if I see a carp there, I want to go and catch it.”

WHAT ARE YOUR STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES AS AN ANGLER THEN?

“My biggest strength is how much I love fishing. That’s the thing about my generation of carp anglers. I’m not putting anyone down or anything, but I’m going to say this… if you go on social media, you see people who are setting themselves up as anglers, just for attention. They have these pages, and there’s no passion for carp fishing there, it’s about attention. With my generation, most of them are passionate carp anglers. They’ve been in and around the industry for thirty or forty years, and they love carp fishing for what it is. That passion is in me, and it’ll never go. Of course, there are days when I don’t want to go because I’ve done two weeks on the Orient and just want to sit at home and watch telly. That fades very quickly, though, and the next day I want to go fishing again. I just love being out there.”

I’ve dragged my missus round loads of places looking for carp, including Chicago after we ran the marathon but she does put her foot down on occasions

DOES THAT PASSION MANIFEST ITSELF IN YOUR WATERCRAFT? YOU’RE KNOWN FOR KEEPING THINGS LIKE RIGS PRETTY SIMPLE, SO WHERE DO YOU EXCEL?

“Confidence. If you’ve fished for a long time, it doesn’t necessarily make you a good angler… you could have been carp fishing for forty years without processing things properly. I know quite a few guys like that, those who don’t quite understand carp.

“I remember Hutchy saying to me that carp fishing only got difficult when the industry got involved. Before then, it wasn’t hard, and it kind of sold me the idea that you need to be confident in what you’re doing. As a result, I’m very confident inside. I think that’s my sporting background. I might not be able to run a sub-three-hour marathon yet, but I have to believe I can. I’m the same in fishing. I’ll think, I’m going to catch that carp. Whilst I might not catch it, I’ll still believe that I can. That confidence comes with experience too. I’m super confident in what I do and how I fish, even though the industry’s telling me that my rigs are crap. I know my rigs work, and I can take them anywhere. That rig I use came from the day-ticket series and the World Carp Cup which Rob and I won. We wanted to go from water to water, confident in what we were doing. We developed what we called the Uni Rig, because it was universal. You could take it anywhere and catch carp with it. Even nowadays, it might not be the best rig to use on a particular lake, but I know that I’m going to catch a carp on it eventually.

One of Crowy’s favourite carpy photos is this one taken in Central Park, New York City in 2018

A fifty-plus from the ultra-demanding Orient. After two weeks on that place I sometimes want to sit in front of the telly for a day

“I don’t go to waters thinking, I want to be the top rod and out-fish everyone else. I go to waters and think, I want to catch carp, and I’m super confident in my rig and what I do with it.”

SO HAVE YOU USED THE RONNIE RIG?

“I couldn’t even tie a Ronnie Rig! When I was editor of Carp-Talk, I’d get an article and look at it and think, What a load of crap! There was the Margin Rig, the Long-distance Rig… and a How-to-fish-close-to-thatbush Rig! There’s a rig for every different scenario. I’m not saying that rigs aren’t important, because they are, but if you got the world’s ten best carp anglers to show you their favourite, you’d have ten different rigs! That tells you that there’s no wonder rig out there, and it tells you that it’s about confidence.

Simon has been tying the same rig—the Uni Rig—since 1993!

On stage with Terry and Rob at a late 1990s Go Fishing show at the NEC

“The industry throws up a wonder rig every few weeks, and I understand why it happens. Everything has fashions, everything changes and evolves, and nothing stands still. I’ve welcomed a lot of the inventions over the last few years, because they’ve made carp fishing safer. Another positive is you can go into a tackle shop and find every single item you want, to make up your favourite rig. However, there is an element of over-commercialism with rigs. If you’re a beginner and you’re in the shop, your brain gets frazzled and there’s a lot of confusion. Newcomers can over-complicate things, and this might result in dangerous rigs and tethered fish. I have reeled in a dead fish, a fish which had been tethered to a rig which wasn’t safe at all. It’s not a myth that carp have died when tethered to rigs; it does happen.”