World Carp Classic - Offical Global Website
Lake Bolsena 3rd - 9th September 2012
| Telling Tales! |
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The first of my two tales is a very brief version of my first experience as a competitor in the WCC. That took place on Lac Amance in 2001 when my partner for the match was a young friend of mine, Danny King. On drawing a swim deep in the forest section, we set up and began our spodding campaign in earnest – the match was due to start at 9:00AM the following morning, but pre-baiting was allowed. As the light faded and the creatures of the forest began to stir, a gruff, eerie sound penetrated through from the depths of the dark forest. Instantly recognising the creature responsible for creating the somewhat startling noises, I was rather taken aback by my young friends’ response “what the ‘heck’ was that!?” The colour had totally drained from his face and, seeing an opportunity for a wind up, I replied “It’s a bear Danny, they are pretty scarce nowadays*, but this is one of the few places in France that they can still be found” Well, his reaction was classic. He didn’t know better, so he had little choice but to believe my convincingly portrayed (but untrue) story of how an angler was mauled by a bear in this very spot in recent years. |
Steve Howard’s WCC blog (part 3)
The following morning it was a very bleary eyed Danny that emerged from his bivvy, but as the competition was about to get underway, no mention was made about the ‘bears’, not at that stage, anyway. Later that evening, however, just as the light began to fade, old bruin was back and louder than ever. Dan, bemused by my ability to remain calm in the face of imminent death, was by now desperate to discover what, if it wasn’t bears, was creating such a horrific sounding noise. I was sorely tempted to tell him, as it was now becoming extremely difficult to keep a straight face, but hey, it’s not every day you get the chance of a classic wind-up like this, is it? 
All at once, the ‘bears’ took out our lines in their desperation to vacate the area and, Danny, hearing my scream and believing that I was now having the flesh torn from my bones by a beast of the night, began simultaneously screaming like Ned Flanders (The Simpsons character). This strange cacophony of noise was forest-penetratingly brief but, once it had subsided, it was quickly replaced by fits of uncontrollable laughter; it took me all of 10 minutes to admit to Danny that it had all been a wind-up, whilst gasping for breath in between bouts of rolling-in-the-mud, rib-popping laughter.
