West Australian Coarse Anglers Club

I regularly receive emails, PM’s from forums and Facebook messages requesting information about carp fishing in Perth, and the rest of WA.  Which has prompted me to write this blog, to try and help promote awareness of the existence of WA’s only coarse/carp club.  To some extend I’ve become a bit of a contact point for carpers migrating here from the UK.  Who, I’m always happy to advise and help if I can, but with extremely limited waters and resources available here it is very difficult.  Although, no where as difficult as it was back in 1985, when I lobbed up here as a smelly backpacker completely green and naive.

After a rather bumpy start to settling here, I spent a long time in what seemed a wilderness, a veritable carpless desert – as I often jokingly refer to Western Australia.  WA, is an acronym which is known colloquially as ‘wait awhile‘, and it certainly made me wait in terms of getting onto any coarse or carp fishing.  I think I’d lived here in Perth for about seventeen years, before I hooked up with anyone else that was interested in carp fishing as a sport, and not just killing them pointlessly!  Sure, I’d done a lot of searching around, and dabbling here and there.  But I’d not found anything like the waters that I’d grown up on in the UK, and that was what I missed the most.

It  was quite by accident that I came to find out about the club.  Up until that point I was only aware of one freshwater fishing club in WA, that is a fly fishing club (which in sheer desperation I became a member of for about four years).  Suffice to say I was, and still am, crap at fly fishing!  I’d just bought my first home computer, a Dell Pentium 486 – which I embarrassed to admit I still have (although it’s on its last legs).  Being let loose on the web from home opened up a whole new world for me, in terms of fishing, and perhaps the possibility I may one day find a really hot water locally with big carp in.  In the inimitable words of Terry Hearn – I’m, “Still Searching.”

After regularly putting in a gazillion Google searches, such as: ‘Australian carp fishing’, ‘carp fishing in WA’, ‘West Australian carp’, etc, etc.  One day a link to WACAC appeared, and I almost fell out of my chair!  A coarse angling club in Perth!  I could hardly believe my eyes as I opened the link to their site (this, the original site was decommissioned a couple of years ago, pending a complete rebuild) and saw some pictures in their gallery of some pretty sexy looking koi, and other carp, that I first thought were either small commons or crusians, they’d caught during their club matches.  The latter unfortunately turned out to be goldfish, or hybrids with the koi. The below photos are examples of what I mean – hence the great deal of confusion concerning reports of ‘carp.’

Without hesitation, I got on the blower there and then, and spoke to the founder and club president at the time, Simon Bedden.  I can’t tell you how weird it was to talk to another ex-pat carper.  Up until that moment I thought I was the only one here, never having come across anyone else carping European style during any of my watery expeditions.  Meeting Simon made me feel like what Robinson Crusoe must have felt when he met Man Friday for the first time.  Instantly, I’d been liberated from my carping solitude!  Joining WACAC was a defining moment for me.  Although the club is small, they are all ex-pats, and I suddenly found myself fishing among up to a dozen of them on certain matches.

Admittedly, I’m about a good a match fisherman as I am a fly fisher.  But the matches weren’t my motive for joining the club, it was solely to associate with other like minded English anglers.  I was recently reminded of this fact, when I attended the clubs AGM at Golden Ponds to catch up with the chaps for a social.  What with all my bashing about the globe fishing for big carp over the last few years, my interest in matches had dulled to a degree.   Although, I maintained ties to the club as an associate member.  Seeing a lot of the old faces again was brilliant, and it has motivated me to renew my full membership to the club.  Like I said, it’s a very small organisation, and I wish to try and help them as much as I possibly can.  During my eight or so years with them I’ve had some very memorable moments due to their camaraderie, as well as some very fortunate catches, which I would not have had otherwise.

So, if you are migrating to Perth, or have lived here a while and have left you kit in the shed, and you want to get your rods out again? Or even dust off your pole!  I’m sure the club will welcome you.  To find their contact details, you can click on any of the WACAC hyperlinks, or their link at the right of the screen under ‘Cool Links’ or phone or SMS the president Simon Blackburn on: 0400 505 102

Happy hippo hunting

Niblet

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