My Story
My Story
The Backyard Leney Carp Farm
My first memories of Leney, or Galician carp, were during my early carp fishing experiences.
At 15 years old I caught a 15lbs zip linear from Patching Pond, which was local to me, and had spent 2 years trying to catch it. I have fond memories of finally tricking it in the margins on chickpeas.
I then started fishing a group of gravel pits in Chichester, and had heard stories of a twenty pounder that was a Leney carp.
At this time around 1983, there were only 2 fish over twenty pounds anywhere in the area.
This leney carp, called Blackspot, had been saved in a drain down of another pit, and had been moved some years ago to its new home, the lake I was fishing.
I didn’t catch this fish until a few years later, and when it finally crossed my path, I caught it twice in two weeks at just under 30lbs.
I was stunned by its shape, colour, scale pattern, big fins, and fighting ability. It looked simply incredible when I slowly released it into the clear water of the gravel pit.
I had also marvelled at pictures in the CAA magazines of beautiful Leney carp, especially Andy Little’s Frensham (Burton) fish, Rod Hutchinson and friends with Savay fish, and of course Redmire and its history.
In the early 1990’s, I saw some leaflets on the counter in the local tackle shop.
I picked one up and took it home.
It was advertising the sale of small Redmire carp, and was called the Castle Carp Company.
It was based at Knepp castle, a big private estate not far from my home.
I straight away phoned to offer any free help when it came to draining or netting the lakes, and was thrilled to be a part of it all.
I got on very well with Les Bamford and Dougal Gray who were part of the operation.
Les, I knew, was chairman of the Carp Society, and had been successful with his Optonic ‘Bamford’ bite alarm conversions, and Dougal was a bailiff on the famous Savay lake, and was part of a fish supplier and netting company.
Les was running the fishing at Redmire pool and was supplying the fish to breed from, and Dougal was the muscle when it came to cropping the fish.
I got to see, and be involved, in the whole process of stocking tiny hatchlings, to draining ponds and lakes, netting, and selling the fish.
The business was reasonably successful , and most fish were sold in small batches to various lakes around the country.
I remember one day standing in a large shallow tank, grading the fish, surrounded by Redmire commons and linears. For me at that moment I was in carp heaven, and I was ridiculed for picking up and studying each one as they swam past my feet.
I knew right then that I had to find my own Leney carp and try to breed from them.
There was no way I could get any fish from Les, as at that time it wasn’t appropriate to have asked for some.
So I built a large tank out of old floorboards and wood from rubbish containers, in the small garden of the cottage I was living in at the time, and also managed to fit in a pond.
I then phoned all the fish farms I could find and asked if they had any Galicians.
A few said they might have had, but they had been crossed with other strains years ago, and nobody had any pure bloodlines. It seemed the only 100% guaranteed source of these fish was Redmire Pool.
I wanted to learn more about fish farming and breeding, and it was whilst talking to another fish farmer, Reg Henley of Wychwood carp farm, that he dropped a bombshell!
This elderly gentleman, turned out to have been friends with Donald Leney, and he still had original Leney carp on his fish farm in Odiham, Hampshire.
He was intrigued by my interest in Galician carp, and agreed to let me help out on the farm once or twice a week.
At that time Reg and his family had stopped breeding and selling carp and were developing their waterlillies business, so I spent most of the time helping to build block pools to grow the lillies in. He was a remarkable man, and his knowledge on carp and carp farming was second to none.
We would talk for hours about his carp and his friendship with Donald Leney.
Whenever I got the chance, I would take a walk up to the furthest pond from the house where he kept the Leney fish.
I would watch them for as long as I could, studying their incredible scale patterns, trying to pluck up the courage to ask Reg to sell me some.
It was probably a year later that I finally pulled up on my driveway with a tank of Leney carp.
I carefully unloaded them, and put them in the tank and pond in the garden.
The fish were quite small, and I had to wait another year before the females became sexually mature and I could breed from them.
During this time, I managed to rent 6 ponds on a private estate not far from Knepp Castle.
This I planned to run as a fish farm, and I had dreams of selling Leneys to great estate lakes, gravel pits, and any other special water that I felt deserved them.
I had to learn how to syphon down the ponds on my own, as I rarely had any help.
Les was kind enough to lend me pumps and nets when I needed them, and I had a great time just being there with my collie Sam.
I would spend days and days up there, feeding the fish, planting lilies, climbing trees, shooting, then just walking round and round with Sam observing the fish.
I managed to spawn the carp at home after a couple of attempts, and these were stocked into the ponds to grow.
I also obtained some ponds on a golf course, and a beautiful 10 acre estate lake in Hampshire.
I sold some lovely fish to people that wanted Leneys, but the problem I had at this time, was that most fishing clubs were mainly interested in buying the 'faster' growing German Dinkelsbuehl strain.
After several years it became clear I was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and I gave up the fish farm.
I stored my Leney broodstock in the golf course’s irrigation reservoir, and left them there on their own for a few more years. I knew they would be safe and undisturbed there.
Nowadays everyone appreciates the heavily scaled Galicians, and the demand is once again strong.
All the suppliers that have Leney carp seem to have crossed them with some other bloodline to try and ‘improve’ them somehow.
Ive seen them crossed with all sorts of other strains, and most in my opinion have been a failure. Why would you want to change something that is already perfect!..
Time moved on, and after getting married and fathering two boys, we moved to a house with a decent sized garden.
We put an extension on the side of the house, and whilst the digger was trenching the foundations I asked the driver to dig a pond.
My wife went out shopping, and by the time she was back, it was done!
She looked a bit shocked at the size of the hole that had very quickly appeared in the garden, and the massive pile of earth piled up round the front of the house that she had to climb over, just to get to the front door!
But I had a plan, and once I’d rendered the hole, lined and planted the pond, I went back to the irrigation reservoir on the golf course, removed my broodstock, and brought them home.
It felt great to have the fish so secure, and I could look out of the kitchen window, and see carp rolling in the garden!
Before spawning the carp, I had to add another pond and a tank to allow for the hatching of the eggs, and the rearing of the fry.
The garden basically became an outdoor laboratory, with everything meticulously cleaned and double checked.
The carp spawned every year on spawning ropes put in the pond as the weather warmed up. I got some amazing looking fry, and I loved grading them at the end of the growing season, and keeping the best and biggest for myself.
One year I gave 32 of the best fish to Les to put into Redmire. These fish included zip linears, fully scaled, and leathers.
I drove them up there at the same time a netting of the pool was taking place, and it was very satisfying when Les and Chris Ball checked the fish and gave them the thumbs up.
One season at Redmire, Les was asking anglers to put any smaller fish in a keep cage, as Redmire was becoming over run with excess fish.
I went to see him one winter, and he said to put a tank in the back of the car, so I could bring some home.
Les took me to the barn on the estate where he was storing the fish once they had been removed from the cage in the lake.
I took my time, and picked what I thought were the best fish, and loaded them into the back of the car.
Following Les down the frozen country lane, he suddenly braked to allow a car coming up the hill to pass. I braked gently but the car slipped on black ice and I went skidding down the lane. I turned to the left as I didn’t want to go into the back of Les, and hit the grass bank, which flipped me over, and sent me sliding on my side for what seemed like an eternity, until I came to a crunching stop.
I had to push the passenger door skywards to get out, which was easier said than done, and climbed down to the road where I heard Les shouting to see if I was ok.
Unbelievably, my very first thought was to save the fish that had been thrown out of the tank and were flapping about in the back of the car!
Luckily, they were fine, and as the car was a write off, Les, being the star that he is, very kindly drove me and the fish all the way home to Sussex.
So now I had some carp from Redmire mixed with my ‘Henley’ fish, and the combination of two totally reliable Leney sources produced really good, strong, fast growing fry.
I soon got into a good rotation system in the garden, holding the broodstock in one pond, hatching eggs in a heated tank, and rearing fry in the other pond.
In recent years, I have injected the males and females with carp pituitary hormone to produce more milt from the males, and release eggs on demand from the females.
This method is more reliable and allows you to choose the exact males and female combination. When previously spawning naturally in the pond I would use more fish as you never really knew which females would spawn first, or which males would fertilise the eggs.
For an example using the hormone injections, I spawned a stunning zip linear female with 3 males; a scattered mirror, a near fully scaled mirror, and a Redmire common. The fry from this type of spawning gives me so many wonderful scalings its hard to choose any to get rid of, as I just want to keep them all!
So this really brings it all up to date, and here I am in the unique, privileged position of breeding the mighty Leney carp in the back garden.
I keep a detailed diary of everything I have ever done, and its called ‘The backyard Leney carp farm’. And when I flick through it and study the notes, it is rewarding to think I may have gone some way to preserving this unique, extraordinary creature.
A carp, that in my opinion, was the best, most beautiful strain ever to have been imported into England.
