Break it down …

To quote the late David Bowie: Fashion! Turn to the left, Fashion! Turn to the right, We are the goon squad and we’re coming to town. Beep-beep.

In this case, “we” are the carp squad coming to a lake near you with our fashionably camouflaged gear; bivvy, bags, buckets, butts, banksticks and braid.

What kicked off this quick blog was the new, ‘coming soon’ Fox International Camolite License Wallet.

Slim shady …

Do you really need a camouflaged wallet for your precious fishing license, syndicate ticket, club ticket, and emergency tenner? And if you do, should it be camouflaged; come to think of it why should any of your gear be camouflaged?

Drop your new wallet in the bankside foliage and you’ll be buggered when the bailiff appears.

Perhaps put it in a larger bag, one of your camouflage bags – won’t lose it now, eh? Which begs the question what is camo gear really for? As Bowie says, Fashion! Carpy fashion.

Stop for a moment and think about the type of carp fishing you do:

Long range, big pits: at 100m the carp won’t see you so who are you hiding from – the other anglers? Take Darrell Pecks recent Korda video, his day ticket sessions. He was zig fishing at 120m and sleeping in a shed! The lake was surrounded by sheds! Camo or no camo the carp will be dancing to their own tune.

Mid-range, club water: for arguments sake let’s say 50m, the answer to camo is still no. Reversing Adam Pennings ‘ocular’ calories and apply it to the carp. The carp won’t be wasting energy looking for you when feeding is the order of the day. And when Mr Carp does ‘show’, popping his head out the water, I guarantee he won’t clock you!

Talking of clocks, if most of your sessions are over nighters and bites come at dusk, dawn, generally in the dark; has that camouflaged kit saved you from a blank?

Short range, margins and stalking: about 5m, and in this case it should just be you, the rod, the bait and the landing net. Your Camolite wallet won’t help you here as we all know it is noise and vibrations that will scare a wary carp off the spot. You’ll be the one reacting to the rhythm of the carp. Much like ESP‘s Terry Hearn in Tunnel Vision chewing tiger nuts, not wearing tiger stripes.

So there you have it, the choice is yours. Whether you want to look like a Belgium paratrooper, classic woodland or urban DPM, the carp cares not for your sense of fashion.

To end with Bowie – They do it over there but they don’t do it here. Beep-beep – and that’s sums up Carppuzzle, camo won’t be happening here, now was that the alarms. Beep-beep!

Tightlines and fashion lines.