Motorway traffic was soon behind us and the head bailiff loomed at the gates to Woking and District Angling Association. A warm welcome as always and we parked up brimming to discuss our fishing options. Steve Renyard had been on Article duty and had banked a nice 30lb mirror the day before, he was packing his car with a smile and the weather was looking game on.

We had camp set up in a flash, the rods, rigs and bait were assembled to catchable status, fishing two rods for carp, one with plastic corn / boilie combo in trap one on the gravel and the trusted Medusa of Maggot rig set amongst a PVA bag placed on a sand drop off to the side of deep silt rivet. A rod for catfish with pellet / Paste at under arm distance in what is known as a moon crater with a roach head n search of a margin Eel on our 4th rod under our right hand bush on a bed of sunken oak leaves.

The quiver tip was awash in midday sun, as was the two meter whip and after bashing out a couple of tiddlers from Powell’s pool; no main rod action meant it was time for fish and chips. Sucking on a soggy chip dipped in red sauce, I told Daniel of the number of 50lb monster catfish that lived under our rod tips. ‘I’d love to catch one of them’ he said tugging at his saveloy and a couple of bleeps on the left hand rod had us looking out across the lake like barn owls.  As the leftover chips were wrapped up and placed in our bin the lake surface was as calm as a sheet of glass and working its way round towards us from Langman’s was the dim light from a head torch, we were due a visitor. Our guest for the next half hour was a local angler who has got hooked on cat fishing with some half dozen under his belt to over 50 lbs from the lake we sat patiently looking out over.

Catfish were introduced to the association’s waters before I was a teenager, they were introduced to cull the crayfish population in one of the lakes and a couple of years later we were netting small ones and took two babies back home for the fish tank. Having Wels Catfish in a tank is not to be a long term love affair, a diet of fillet steak and tench soon saw ours back to the lakes having had a great start but watching their movements and habits was fascinating.

I was to join the Associations fishery committee and learn fisheries management through the IFM, the clubs work parties in the last twenty years have just got better, from being given a lift on the dumper truck to driving one, we have rebuilt swims, put in paths and ensure all members get good accessibility to areas of river bank and lake side and still give some sanctuary to the fish, be up to our necks in flotation suits with big carp left, right and centre in the nets as a young man instead of climbing tree’s, feeding ducks, the odd shart, picking my nose before packed lunch at one o’clock in the car park with the lads every other Sunday during the close season as a young boy.

The club is well run and well structured, the committee and its respective fisheries and bailiff groups worked as one for the common good of the members. Although described as clicky, the core of the club was built on good foundations with fish welfare and gentlemanly conduct of prime importance. Those that bent a rule usually did not get a second chance, harsh on some cases but best for the club on others and with carp of 50 years old and in lady like condition who would blame the safeguard.

I had many good seasons’ fishing on the other club lakes whilst cutting my carp fishing teeth before getting my Langman’s Night Ticket. The specimen lake Night ticket was like the Holy Grail for the clubs Carp anglers, a lake that had been shrouded under a veil of carp fishing secrecy for over 75 years. Many great anglers have fished it and first bank side impressions conjure the scene of rubbing enthusiastic hands. To catch a carp per month was previously a good season whilst growing up and hearing the stories of Langman’s of old, a lake that had changed much from the time I toddled round parts to setting up stumps in the end dugout. On getting the green light to go I had interrupted study, lost part time jobs and long term girlfriends to the lure of Langman’s.

My first winter was long, hard and cold but I managed a small fully scaled from a frosty corner one sunny spelled January morning, it was seeing this fish and knowing that they go to over 40lbs that made me dig in and start an apprenticeship in patience. The nature of the lake and the anglers it attracted gave good opportunity to mix with a variety of characters and I most enjoyed the social morning food fests every Sunday morning throughout the harshest weather condition. All fishing the lake would gather in a swim at agreed time with various amounts of ingredient for a munch and good chin wag before afternoon pack up and Sunday roast before the new week started again and you were seeing the same familiar faces again during the weeks over nighters. The season that I really got the bug I hardly slept in my own bed, I would do a day’s work at the time at the Central Vetinary Laboratories in Newhaw and be itching to jump into the VW camper and a familiar smell of wet nets to then bomb down the ponds, setup before dark and get a nights fishing in before back to work and was a more than regular occurrence to the extent that I lost a long term girlfriend and gained an inch of bum fluff on my face.

If you were to catch a dozen fish from Langman’s in any one year you were deemed a very good angler, shallow, full of natural food you needed to be at one with your water craft to maximise any fishing time spent on the banks of this lake. My second season was the best with 24 fish from 30 takes, a season that saw me visit the banks nearly every night to either watch or fish its waters and it was not until 1997 when love was in the air that I was to close the car park gate behind me for nearly ten years.

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