On June 16th 1980 Chris Yates caught his record carp from Redmire pool on a few grains of sweetcorn. On that very same day hundreds of miles away I was on Todds pit my local pond catching my first carp on the same bait, sweetcorn.
Having read Still water Angling by Richard Walker (the man who invented modern carp fishing) the previous year, 1980 was the start of a whole new world of fishing for me, something that has now consumed much of my life since.
Now if you are wondering why I a holding the carp in a towel I can tell you. We used to think (as it was said by some) that our hands were too hot and might burn their skin... It was also said that they were near impossible to catch... well I guess that's partially true at least :-)