Book Review: Tackling Carp with Ian Chillcott

This is a book that the beginner to carp fishing will find very interesting and it could be a good gift for someone. It’s easy to read, unpretentious and has a friendly style. The author comes across as a really nice bloke and he obviously knows his carp fishing inside out.

It’s a rather basic book however and just skims the surface of carp fishing, so don’t expect any in-depth cutting edge stuff about methods or rigs etc, nor riveting stories. This is not the Carp Strikes Back nor Carp Fever but it doesn’t make any allusions to be so. There is a fair bit of useful info about tackle however – perhaps the title has something to do with that. The author’s writing style comes over as authorative and knowledgeable but without seeming to be a know-all. That’s a difficult line to tread – and rather rare in carp-fishing circles. The experienced carp angler will find little in this book that he doesn’t already know but the newcomer or pleasure angler wanting to widen his knowledge of the game should benefit. There are 300 pages here but the use of large typefaces and too many irrelevant photos mean it could easily have been compressed to half that size.

I’ll be honest. What really hacked me off about this book is that it looks like a catalogue for Fox tackle. So many images depicted in the book show items from the Fox stable; sometimes page after page after page of them. And the bait chapter is all Mainline bait photos. I know the author is a Fox and Mainline consultant and there is nothing wrong with that, nor with those companies products – but this book is too much of an over-the-top product branding exercise for my taste.

I’m a 57 year old grumpy and I know what I like. This book is not for me. So I gave it to our youngest, Ollie who is aged 19 and fired up with carp-fever. A few days later I asked him what he thought of it. His response “Wow. What a great book. Cheers Dad”

So there you have it. It’s just me. The new breed of carp anglers will love it. Humph. Now where’s my cocoa?

Quiller Press and Stackpole Books have it priced at £19.95. ISBN 978-1-846890-00-0

Review by Geoff Maynard

TACKLING CARP WITH CHILLY CHILLCOTT.

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