Stuart Court - Savay Lake Part One

Stuart Court relives his time on the legendary Savay Lake in the heart of the Colne Valley.

The very mention of Savay lake has the hairs on the back of any informed carp angler's neck standing on end.

Located in the heart of the Colne Valley, it's a venue that had been at the forefront of specimen carp fishing for almost as many years as I've been alive and despite the numerous books and magazine articles that have been written about the lake during that time, its a place which remains soley in most anglers imaginations.

Since the syndicate was formed at the beginning of the 1980's the total number of people who have been lucky enough to be accepted onto the syndicate and therefore into the ranks of either The Toads or The Loonies rotas are relatively small, meaning there is still a very strong sense of mystery surrounding this unique lake.

My obsession with Savay started when I was just 10 years old. In 1982 the very exclusive syndicate had not been running for long, this was territory for serious carp anglers only, however, anybody was able to buy a day ticket for a few pounds from the local shop at the top of the road and could then we a line there.My first memories of Savy are still extremely to this day. My dad buying the tickets from the paper shop while it was still dark outside, the walk from the car park, round the North Bay and along the Canal Bank as the sun was coming over the trees with the mist rising from the water. Lines of bubbles littered the surface as far as I could see and the odd strange character was camped under an umbrella dressed all in green, his swim smelling distinctly of tutti-frutti. Even now wwhen I catch a whiff of a Richworth Tutti it takes me back to those distant days. My fishing back then was purely focussed on catching as many small Perch on my float rod as I could in one day; I had absolutely no knowledge of carp fishing whatsoever, I don't think I'd ever seen one except in Mr Crabtree book and I certainly had no idea of the seed that this beautiful place was planting in my young brain every time I visited. I fished the lake many times during the early eighties but when the day tickets cease to be available from the shop, I forgot about it somewhar and concentrated on doing thigs that lads in their late teens/early twenties do.

Fast-forward to 2006 and I had the irresistible desire to walk through the gates of Savay once again.

My passion for carp fishing had grown immensely during the intervening years. I'd spent a good number of them cutting my teeth on some tricky venues ranging from intimate lakes like Tolpits to large wild ones such as Burghfield. The likes of Tolpits and Burghfield had taught me a lot and I'd had some success, so now, with the base of knowledge and confidence that I'd built up, I at least had an idea of how to catch a carp.

The day my application for a day-only season ticket on Savay was accepted was a very happy one to say the least. I'd have gladly paid double the annual fee just to walk round the place without even fishing but once I'd made my first visit back I couldn't wait to return with the rods. What amazed me the most was how little it'd changed from my childhood memories. Of course there were differences: new swims had appeared, some old swims had grown over, but in essence it was very much the same magical place that I remembered.

Most of the days I spent fishing on there were either floater fishing or stalking, which meant that much of the time I didn't even have a line in the water, I just enjoyed being on the banks. The nearest I came to making contact with a Savay carp while on days was when whipped a piece of bread crust out of the mouth of a good mirror while stalking the margins along the road bank during summer, extremely frustrating but thoroughly enjoyable all the same.

A few years went by and I never considered for one second that I would be in the running to get a syndicate place and plans were made to fish Fen Drayton that coming summer so when my phone rang during the close season and the name Tom Bankes' flashed up on the screen I expected him to just ask if I wanted to renew my days ticket. I was absolutely speechless when he offered me a place on the Toad rota. I felt as though I'd won the lottery or something, obviously I accepted gratefully!

My first ever rota was a nervous affair. I didn't know a single member of the Toad rota so driving into the syndicate car park for the first time was daunting to say the least. I needn't have worried though as everyone was very friendly and helpful, which was a real breath of fresh air having been used to the cutthroat circuit waters I'd previously been fishing where any information was a closely guarded secret.

My first rota week couldn't have been scripted any better really, I managed to land a lovely old mirror weighing in at 35lb 2oz, and to add to the magic it was a fish that had some serious history behind it. It turned out that this fish had been the cover star of the very first issue of Carp Fisher magazine from way back in 1981, held up in that iconic banjo pose by none other than Savay pioneer Mike Wilson, who'd caught it some time in the late seventies at a weight of 30lb. What an amazing welcome to Savay. It blew my mind that I'd caught a fish that had been recorded at 30lb in the late 1970's and was therefore probably getting on for 60 years old. I thoroughly enjoyed my first season despite the fishing proving to be quite tricky. Just getting to know the lake and the lads on the Toad rota was an absolute treat that I'll never forget. I did manage two more fish that season though, an ancient looking, upper-twenty mirror and a fish known as The Little Tailed Leather, which weighed in at 43lb 8oz.

Stu's first fish also adorned the coverof the first Carp Fisher magazine in 1981.

Savay is truly unique. The layout of the lake, the history and heritage of the fish and the anglers both past and present combine to create a true one off venue, which will never be replicated. The rota system runs beautifully and has been exactly the same since the very beginning in 1981. I can't necessarily see it working on most other waters but on Savay it's a perfect fit. The layout of the lake is amazing with every conceivable carpy feature an angler could want. It actually feels like there are four separate lakes. You have the Cottage Bay, the North Bay, the Canal Bank and the Colne Bank. Each area is very different, requiring a different approach. You can be stalking in the margins one minute then casting to a small spot at 140 yards the next. It takes a long time to get your head around these extremely contrasting techniques and get your tackle honed to be able to cope with all of it but I quickly realised that you need to be as versatile as possible on a place like Savay.

My second season on rota was, in terms of numbers of fish caught, an improvement on my first, which is all you can hope for really. In total, eight fish came my way, which was fantastic as the lake fished very hard for most members that year. I struggled for much of it too if I'm honest, my eight fish weren't well spread throughout the season as five of them came in a frantic 48- hour spell during the first week in October.

This hit of fish culminated in the most amazing morning of my angling life when I somehow found myself with two landing nets resting on the sleeper at the front of my swim, one containing a mirror known as The Long Leney weighing 40lb and the other containing my most desired Savay fish... The Wimbledon Common weighing 45lb 10oz. I couldn't have asked for much more than that, a true brace of Savay forties. Even the backdrop in the photographs made it something very special with the stunning red and orange leaves cascading down behind the swim, these are the kind of occasions you tend to remember for your entire life.

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The Long Leney weighing 40lb
The Wimbledon Common weighing 45lb 10oz

Season 3. Everybody seems to have their ups and downs on Savay, it's very difficult to be consistent with your catch rates year in, year out. You can go from having a great season catching well one year to struggling for a single bite the next; it has little to do with your angling ability, it's just the nature of the beast on there. Nobody ever kids themselves that they've cracked Savay because the game is ever-changing and the wary old carp are the ones writing the rules. Suffice to say I struggled over the entirety of my third season landing three carp, which while not a terrible return, felt as though it should have been better. No matter what I did, I always seemed to make the wrong decision. My swim choices just didn't work for me, I couldn't get on the fish at all and when I eventually did they'd move off very quickly and end up in areas which were occupied by other anglers, leaving me no chance of moving with them. I started questioning my baiting and my actual bait, along with my rigs. We all know that this is a terrible place to be with your angling and can be impossible to dig your way out of as it feels as though the harder you try the worse things become, like trying to escape from quicksand. Luckily, I'm a very stubborn so and so when it comes to my fishing, if things get hard I will keep trying harder and harder until they improve and as the 2013/14 season ended I vowed that things would be different in 2015.

So I felt as though I needed to refine and streamline my approach completely. I wanted to have just a couple of very simple, reliable rigs that would cover me in any situation I found myself in. Firstly, intended to make use of the new Korda Heli-Safe clips. They were new to market so hadn't been used on Savay before and offered the first sensible option to be able to fish a naked chod rig at long range. In the past it had been impractical to use a chod at range for a number of reasons. There's a leader ban to start with so no leadcore, this means you'd have to go naked if your mind was set on using a chod.

Then there's the weed levels, which can be quite heavy at times, and the fact that you'd need a big lead to get the distance required in many swims while using thick 0.40mm mono straight through. The last thing you want in a weedy lake is a 4oz lead dangling inches below a hooked fish's mouth at range so you can appreciate why the chod hadn't been the most well-used rig on Savay in the past, it just wasn't practical.

The Heli-Safe clip changed the game as far as these problems were concerned because you could now safely use a 4oz lead to get you the 140 yards which is sometimes required, while having the lead detach as soon as you hooked a fish leaving you in direct contact and alleviating any problems bringing them through moderate weed. These little clips were to be something of a revelation for me, especially early in the season. My second simple rig was to be a variation of the ever-faithful multi rig. I'd used it to good effect in the past on various waters, including Savay, so I already had inbuilt confidence with it. I knew it never tangled when cast hard, it always reset if it was messed with on the bottom and it sits nicely on a variation of lakebeds after a bit of tinkering with its length. That's all the rigs I needed, my head would now be clear to think about more important things.

My observations the previous season watching Savay carp feed up close had got me thinking about how I was baiting. I had been using a fairly large amount of hemp as the base of my spod mix along with a good helping of corn and boilies. This was ok and would undoubtedly work on its day, but I had noticed that the fish I'd watched feed many times the previous season were far more attracted to boilie than they were hemp and corn sol decided that I'd commit to using boilie only for the new season. Not only that, I was changing baits to a proven catcher of big carp in Trent Baits Freshwater Shrimp, a bait which I had absolute confidence in from day one, after seeing first-hand how effective it has been on what I'd describe as natural big fish waters across the country. A boilie-only approach also suited the rigs I'd settled on so all aspects of my preparation seemed to be slotting into place nicely.

The 2015 season couldn't come fast enough for me; I was so keen to prove to myself that last year was just a bad patch and that l'd turned the corner. I thought of little else in the runup to the start.

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The Little Tail Leather capped off a fine season at 43lb 8oz.

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