The Carp Connection site was originally setup by
Basil Hayes and launched on 2nd May 2003, on this
page Basil discusses the past, present and future.
If you'd like to see earlier versions check out the
web archive database.
Concepts & Realisation
The concept of the Carp Connection was pretty
simple, as living in Essex and fishing waters both
in Essex and Norfolk, I thought it would be a good
way of keeping in touch with old friends, and
hopefully being able to keep a note of what captures
where happening and fish movements.
This was made easier by the inclusion of a
message board, which was free and quite frankly not
that pretty! The main part of the site was to be the
gallery pages though, allowing people to see other
fish captures and log them against their own (for
weight gain and fish health observations).
Although quite time dependant, this seemed a
popular way of doing things.
The Next Level
The message board was soon to be updated to a
Forum, where users where required to log in, and had
much more control over their online identity.
Whilst the new members on the forum have been a
trickle rather than a flood, it has ensured that the
right people are using the resource, and as such
there has been very little moderation required. Most
of the people using the forum are there upon
recommendation by other users, so there has never been a need to
push the promotion of it.
There were a few new additions to the second
version of the site, including the Carp Cafe pages,
originally designed to be based upon bait, however, with the
socials that were going on at the time, and the food being
knocked up by everyone, it seemed a much better idea
to have some of our recipe's online.
There was also some articles included in the
site, which make for some amusing reading and
reminiscing.
Carp Connection Cup
In 2005 a new web site was commissioned for
Cobbleacre Lakes. This led to a contra deal being
struck that gave us free use of the venue for a
social weekend, I decided that a charity fundraiser
may be a nice touch, and would give the weekend a
good objective.
It was decided that to add a bit of spice to the
event, that it would be fished as a "match" of
sorts. With the Carp Connection Cup going to the
captor of the largest fish, with another prize going
to the captor of the most fish.
Money was raised through entrance fee's, a
raffle, a casting competition and a hog roast party
on the Saturday night (which I'm sure you can
imagine went down pretty well!). In total the event
raised £838, which was not too bad for the first
event!
To cut a long story short, the fishing (which
took place over two lakes called Mario's and Adam's)
was fairly slow on the specimen Mario's. The winner
of the Carp Connection Cup 2005 was Luke Buttle from
Lenwade, fishing on Adam's with a fish of just under
14lbs!! The winner of the most fish caught was
Nathan Highley (who was christened with his nickname
"Mr Bump" over the weekend because of the amount of
fish he lost), with 11 fish caught.
The Future
With this new website being launched in June
2006, the emphasis is on moving the bar that bit
higher. It is intended that the venue files receive
a large re-vamp and include streaming video footage
"show reels" of some of the venues available to
anglers in the area. If you'd like your venue to be
featured in this way
please
contact us.
Other improvements include new stories featured
as "In
Session Articles", and all the details of the
Carp Connection Cup 2006,
which I hope will raise much more than we managed
last year!
Rather than remaining static, it's hoped that the
content of the site will be added to on a regular
basis, with the emphasis being on you the site user
to help with this, so if you'd like to submit an
article, pictures or recipe for the Carp Cafe, then
please
get in touch.
