It was around December last year, having spent much of the year in a very dark place, struggling with the effects of almost a year spent out of work due to lockdowns, and adjusting to the bleak covid world that just seemed to be dragging on, I started to focus on the river outside my home in C.London.

At times when your world around you appears to be falling apart, I often realise how fortunate we as anglers are, to have fishing in our lives. Getting away from it all, immersing yourself back into the natural world, just switching off from the bullshit and focusing on just going fishing, has at times got me through some bad storms.
As far as the London carp scene goes, I’d really lost the love for it in recent years, urban carping had largely become a trendy fashion, and at times I’ve struggled to see what the true motivation is, for most of the anglers running around after these precious lesser known London carp, fishing for carp or fame?

Putting all this to the side, I quietly went about my shit, heavily baiting areas of the river each night where I’d found warmer water, from days and days of thermometer tests the previous winter.

Between December – Feb I got through 700k of particle. I couldn’t believe the carp were still feeding it was so cold, but each night I’d keep this bait going in and that is vital in keeping the runs coming in winter. I massively believe that despite plummeting winter temperatures if you make the effort to locate them and feed them as you go into the depths of winter with absolute consistency each day/night, you can to some extent prevent their metabolism from fully slowing down..

Through some of the coldest weeks, and wading through a number of smaller carp, I went on to have a hit of big river fish that was beyond my wildest Carpy dreams….Some big old city lumps that may or may not have been caught before, who knows, it’s matters less these days…
I learnt to love fishing over here in the UK again, and to not waste time focusing on what’s happening in carping around me, but to just switch off and go fishing again, and that got me through some challenging times last year….We are lucky to have fishing #carp #fishing

Sam Jefferys