Gossip

[Rob Brownfield]

Peter Webber, the trout farmer u speak of uses infra red lamps to warm the trout as they grow but the water remains cool..12 degrees if my memory is correct. He stated in Trout Fisherman magazine a few years back, that to grow an 80lb Carp would be so easy and would only take 3 years and that 50lb fish had been grown by himself as an experiment. 40lb Rainbows were regularlt put in his water, only to swim around for a day before getting caught.

Some of you may be aware that the Trout records for the UK were in a complete state and that there is now seperate Wild and Stocked records. Quite how a Rainbow can be classed as wild is beyond me...but thats another issue!!!

My main concern with imported whackers is the fact that these poor fish are placed in a climate where it is highly unlikely that the food source available will be enough to sustain those high weights. Is this fair to the fish?

Maybe the answer is to artificially feed the fish, as they did at Catch 22 in Norfolk (Dutch fish)on carp pellets. I can remember Phil Gray going out in a boat and dumping a 55 lb sack of pellets in my swim.

I would hate to see any coarse fish stocked in at a record weight, only to be caught a few days later and claimed. Which leads to another point. What happens if a record Tench is stocked into a water and tagged. That fish dissapears for a year and is then caught ...but still at a record weight. Is that fish a stocked or wild fish now? According to the Trout record list, it would be wild.

Geeeez....this is a minfield!!!

 

[DAVE COOPER]

Andrew

I accept what you are saying, and I didn't mean to infer that Mary was an import. I have no idea and frankly these days little interest. The point I was trying to make was on foreign fish that attained weights in a different environment to which they are currently stocked. This to me is artificial.

The Redmire fish that broke the records were stocked in to the lake, if memory serves me right, in the 1930's. It is feasible that Yate's carp was 50 years old. A record today could go to a foreign import that is only a few years old, reared abroad and caught within a season of being stocked over here. What kind of British record is that?

That's one of the reasons I have lost interest in carp records and would probably lose interest in records of any kind if the same were to happen to other species.

 

[GrahamM]

With you all the way here Dave, which is why I say forget the records, forget where they come from. What I'm interested in is:

Are they healthy?
Can they fight?
Are they hard enough to catch to make it interesting?
And are they lovely big lumps that will make my rod bend and my heart pound?

If the answer to those questions is yes than I don't care if they just swam off the nearest flying saucer.

 

[andrew jackson]

I am sorry but I can't at this moment in time, see the validity of your argument. The current record is a genuine English fish with a known and documented history. True that the previous record was at an obviusly over inflated weight, however it was a true brit. If a future record claim is of unknown or dubious origins i.e. (eau de garlic), then belive me I will feel just the same as you. Until that time as far as I am concerned, and I am sure that the majority of the carp world is of the same opinion, the current record is more than credable. Why limp before we have been kicked.
Can't argue with Graham's ideals however, If we ignore where they come from, how do we know they are healthy? Please do not miss understand me, legal documented imports I could live with. Its the back door trade wich has the potential to damage not only the sport, but our current stocks of fish.