Catching The Client By Ben Morbey

Posted SPECIAL FEATURES at Nov 01, 2010

Two months of continued hard work finally paid off for Ben Morbey as one of his target fish, The Client, was banked at 47lb 4oz. Here's his account of how he caught this magnificent looking carp.

The last two months have been very eventful. Firstly I had two waters on the go, one was a local Northamptonshire Pit and the second was the mighty Fen Drayton in Cambridgeshire. Both of the lakes are difficult waters for their own individual reasons. My local pit gets a lot of angling pressure and is quite weedy. Fen Drayton is just a different story, it's a big pit with a low stocking of fish and finding the carp is hard enough, let alone catching one!

At the start of the campaign I chose a bait that I felt would give me the best chance of catching a carp. Due to many anglers using a red fishmeal-based boilie I decided to use a favourite of mine, Chocolate Malt & Tiger Nut. They're different in colour and have a birdfood base.

Due to work commitments I couldn't fish Fen Drayton as much initially so I started on my local pit, introducing two-kilos of 15mm boilies twice a week to get the fish used to my baits. This continued for three weeks before I decided it was time to get my rods out. Just an hour into the first session I had my first carp, and had a further three more in the next few hours topped by a linear mirror of 29lb. It was one fish I knew about and really wanted to catch. Not a lot was going on anywhere else on the lake so I was really made up. The extra effort and 'new' bait had really worked! All of my carp were caught on a flying chod rig. It's a free-running chod rig set-up on ten feet of lead core with the beads set about eight feet apart so the hook link can run up the leader away from the lead once I've cast out. This means the rig always sitting properly and I'm confident that it will result in a bite. I use a size 5 Stiff Rigger hook and a short length of curved bristle filament.

Going to Fen Drayton was a different prospect altogether, although I was buoyed with confidence after catching very quickly on my local pit. I had six nights where I never saw a fish in the middle to late September. I kept introducing some 15mm Chocolate Malt boilies in an area where I knew the fish liked to go at certain times. Several of my friends were questioning why I was going with no sign of a result but my answer was very simple. There are some awesome fish in the venue and I wanted to catch them, one in particular was a liner-cum-fully scaled-cum-mirror carp called The Client.

For my next session, I arrived on Sunday afternoon, and spent three hours just looking at the lake trying spot any signs of a carp. The only fish I saw roll was quite close in on a spot known as The Launch. Nothing happened in the night, and I was up at first light, still looking across the lake for a fish. A couple of my friends turned up and we had a brew talking about the next move. There was a big south westerly wind coming in so we felt there would be some fish on the end of it and with that we had to go and have a look. Well, we didn't see a thing! So it was back to the drawing board and that day we walked the lake and observed for the best part of six hours!

Then as I got back to my bivvy I saw a fish roll a long way out, closer to 200 yards than 150 yards. Nobody else saw it but I knew it was a large fish. My friends all dispersed back to their own rods and I got sorted out to get my rods back in the water and I added a fresh 15mm Chocolate Malt pop-up to the chod rig. I waded out as far as I could on 'The Launch' as there was no boat available and it took five or six casts to get the rig positioned exactly where I saw the fish. The lead dropped and it felt like it had dropped on the silty gully at the bottom of a known bar. I fed a kilo of 15mm Chocolate Malt boilies over the top and positioned two other rods shorter of the mark with a few boilies around them. I had a couple of mugs of tea and went to bed as it had been a long, hard day! The next noise I heard woke me up at about 11.30pm and I scrambled out of my sack towards the rod. I had a bite! I got to the rod quickly and the reel was screaming – it just had to be a carp! And as I tried to gain control I knew it was a big fish, it was still stripping line. After about 20-minutes of nerve-shredding moments it was in the waiting landing net, and by this stage I was up to my chest in water with no waders on!

One of my friends nearby had heard the commotion and came to see what was going on, he took the net off me as I got out of the water and put it on the mat. At that point the light shined on the fish and he shrieked 'The Client!' At that point I went to jelly and took a few minute to sort myself out and weight the fish. It registered 47lb 4oz and was every bit as good looking as I thought it would be. My friend Matty helped out massively here as i was still in shock!

My mate Oli turned up at 5am to take some pictures and keep me company – I just couldn't sleep! We got some great images and also some footage before releasing her back to the might Fen.

All I can now say is that it was a dream fish and maybe one day I could better it? The whole event will stay with me forever. I have returned to fen Drayton on three more occasions but nothing has happened and with work getting busy I've spent more time on the local pit. I've banked a couple of very pretty 30lb carp along with some smaller ones so the Chocolate Malt is certainly doing the trick.