About Richard Stangroom

I started fishing at the age of 9 following a family canal boat holiday, where I fished every evening for a week without catching a thing….but I loved every minute of it…and on the last day my mum caught a 50lb roach – or that’s what it seemed like to me – I was spellbound!

For a couple of years after, I fished local rivers and park lakes until I was old enough to join Barnet & District Angling Club at the age of 11. It was on their fishery ‘Shepherds Way’, that I caught my first carp…and from that moment I was hooked on carp fishing.

A couple of years later in 1983, I moved onto fishing at Stanborough lakes (AKA – the cracker factory), where over the next two seasons I had a lot of success and where I caught my first ever 20.

In 1985 I started fishing at Horseshoe Lake and also joined a local carp syndicate in Hertfordshire called Hook Lake where I spend most of my school and collage summer holidays, only leaving the lake to go to work on a Friday and Saturday night. By 1989 I was the head bailiff and in 1994 when the opportunity arose to buy the lease from Fourways Fisheries, who had run it since the mid 70’s, I put together a consortium of existing members to buy the lease, and today, along with two other original investors, we still run the syndicate – www.hooklake.co.uk.

In the mid 90’s I had short spells on Wormleyberry and Horton Church Lake. It was during my time at Horton in 1995 when I meat anglers such as Dave Lane and Ian Chillcott, amongst others, who introduced me to Mainline Baits.

At about the same time I had started to work in a voluntary capacity for The Carp Society, initially helping organise the Spring and Winter conferences. Forward wind 2 years and I was employed fulltime by the Society as the Commercial Manager.

In 1999 I left the Carp Society and set up a website design company building the first websites for many businesses in the angling industry, such as: Solar Tackle, Korda, Trakker, Aqua, Harefield Tackle, Johnson Ross, Simpsons of Turnford, Leslies of Luton, Danson Angling, Big Carp Magazine, Angling Publications (Carpworld & Crafty Carper) Kryston, Cemex Angling, Mirror Pool Fisheries and of course, Mainline Baits – to name just a few.

At around the same time I’d got married and had two sons, so on top of running a new business my fishing was extremely curtailed and remained so for the next 15 years.

However, I made sure I got out at least a couple of times each season, and then in 2015 I was invited by some friend to go fishing to France for a week. Combined with my family and work life becoming easier, this was the catalyst that got me back into fishing.

With the exception of a season on Horton back in the 90’s, I have never been interested in chasing big carp, instead preferring to fish pretty, uncrowded lakes…hence the reason that almost 40 years on, I can still be found stalking 20’s out of Hook Lake.