Rich_

Interesting , until I caught that and did a bit of reading I wasn't sure how common these two species crossed . I knew the red lesion near the tail would be some kind of growth , just that i never noticed it until i saw the photo .

Maybe even some sort of genetic anomaly ? Had hundreds of chub and roach over the years and you identify them at a glance usually despite there sometimes being a difference in the brightness of the fins and body due to the environment . This is the only one of either species I've had which looked not quite right ?

It was caught in quite turbulent water on the Rother (Yorks) . Hopefully this is a better photo size . Also a similar sized proper chub held in similar pose. Most noticeable is the head shape eye position and deeper curve of the back more like a roach . Something I never noticed at the time of capture, was the small red appendage which almost looks like an adipose fin but may be a cist of some sort . It's on the fish and not background because there's another shot looking downstream and it's on that as well .

Nice looking fish though. Head seems more pointed than the carp . I did catch what could have been a common carp / crucian carp cross many years ago, more rotund than that one At a glance some seem to be what they appear to be , it's only on closer inspection you notice the differences . I thought mine was just a chub initially but something about the head and body shape was not quite right . I' don't come across many hybrids due to the fishing I do most of the time so am not adept at spotting some more subtle examples .

Having read through it all , seems straight forward enough to me ! Does it say anything about my roachy chubby thing in the photo though ?

Just noticed this topic , Anyone know what this is ?

There was a retired guy we met last Winter who had risen to the challenge of spending a lot of his time afloat pursuing perch in the Winter ,we watched him a couple of times trying all the likely spots with his sounder , We haven't seen him since to ask if he succeeded ? As you've said no one you speak too has ever had them between say end of October & March apart from when hearing of the odd ones fluked out .It's hard to believe they stop feeding as some have suggested before .

There's Fred J Taylor too.

Interesting comments from you both. For many years we've often talked about putting a light rod in the boat for when we see shoals of fish deep below the boat in Winter and offering them a worm or maybe even maggots to ascertain what they are and maybe find where the perch are, but talking about it is as far as it gets. Doesn't sound as though we've missed out on much though, and the perch fishing is confined to the summer months for me also.

I've noticed over the years they seem to form big shoals comprised of mainly run of the mill sized fish during the late Summer / early Autumn, when they are often seen on the surface on calm days feeding on fry like mackerel do, sometimes well out in the lake. I've had them pass below the boat just below the surface and there seem to be scores of them in the shoals. They must move out into the deeper water for the colder months into specific areas along with the bigger specimens?

I often end up with the odd pike on worms as well ! On the big natural lakes in my own area things seem to be different to some parts of the UK where the perch is seen as a Winter quarry. Here the perch seem to be prolific during the early Summer through until about the end of September, but fishing for them through the Winter doesn't seem productive? Wonder if it's the same in the big lochs in Scotland? Small lures and worms seem to account for perch of all sizes in my fishing.

think it would have been protesting a bit more than that if it was alive, and would likely have freed it's self when it came ashore. Probably dead when the pike picked it up as someone mentioned above.

Just wondering if anyone who uses Bullguard security on their machine is having this site blocked as a source of malware distribution recently? It's also flagging the site up with the same warnings in search results on google etc.

Stayed here once a long time ago Yarwell mill (it's near Peterborough)

Yes there's no denying , I've seen some pretty poor form myself by home grown "anglers" over the last few years. Admittedly it could be anybody, without seeing who lifted the lines you won't know who the culprits are for sure. It's just that we are out just about every week all year round weather permitting,and I have never came across set lines, especially crude affairs like these, (they weren't even anchored well to hold them in the area) during many years, nor do I know anyone else who has. We showed this stuff to another angler who arrived and he knew of a similar set up which had been found nearby, and there have been a few foreign anglers fishing the general area recently, in fact I arrived to fish one early morning last year and there were some who'd been sleeping in a car over night . Again I suppose that proves nothing, but whoever it is, if you see any they want removed, because the way they had been set, birds were likely to get tangled in them and anglers are likely to be blamed when a passer by finds them.

To turn a blind eye to it as anglers, and not report it to the EA is worse I think , Ken, we have to be seen as not condoning this type of activity. It's obvious who's doing it, we never saw this sort of thing until recent years, and set ups like this are a danger to all wild life. I see what you are saying though, and whether anything will be done about it is another thing.

Just a note to anyone fishing in the area. We found a couple of crude set lines baited with snap tackle type rigs obviously intended to catch pike last night. They were set in about 5 or 6 ft of water with about 40ft of nylon attached to clear plastic bottles on the surface. Fortunately nothing had taken them, also with that amount of line on the float, birds or animals could have got tangled in it and anglers would get the blame! It seems similar set ups have been found elsewhere in the region too . I reckon any bottle or such like not drifting with the breeze is worth checking out if you can get to it...

An old stone quarry not far from us which was abandoned during the 1980s and soon filled with water, is full of perch now and has been for some years, as well as some minnows despite there being no obvious streams running into it.

I've often driven past full car parks on man made commercial venues & had a full stretch of nearby river to myself between June 16th & March. Anglers who fish commercials & ones who fish rivers are looking for different things in their angling I think.

I remember the power cuts . We used to think it was great when we were kids, candles and cooking on a camping stove and making toast on the coal fire. Imagine what would happen now, can't even survive without an internet connection these days. Never liked reggae though.

I suppose everybody knows what bear baiting involved, ( not the same thing as bear hunting) and badger baiting was probably banned along with it 150 years ago or what ever. Whenever the media covers badger baiting , they show badgers being dug out and killed. I have to admit that because of this I had not thought about the obvious differences between the two practices until now. You'd think the BBC's flagship outdoor programme would be a bit better informed though !

Indeed, If a fair percentage of their food is made up of trout which they have access to all the time, they'll potentially put on more weight than fish that , at best have only a dwindling seasonal supply to hunt down. I'd be surprised too, if a new record pike came from a big natural loch/lake in the UK these days.

I think what phone says about genetics and the more limited diet is the more likely explanation, The other species are omnivorous and pike eat fish, there's maybe a limit to how heavy they can get on the fish diet that's available to them. We judge the size of our fish by weight rather than length too. I wonder how many fish longer than the record pike have been caught but were a pound or two lighter?

I was using a hook length of about a foot to 16", maybe going shorter would have been something to try as mentioned if it was finicky barbel? The 2 chub I managed to catch from another swim did give confident bites which I had no trouble hooking

This may explain the bites I was getting the other day. During the late afternoon I was expecting to catch chub, but in one particular swim where I have often caught barbel during the Autumn in the past. I was getting quick solid pulls on the tip using decent sized bits of luncheon meat as bait which I just couldn't connect with. I tried using small size 12 hooks with small bits of meat but the bites stopped until I changed back to the bigger baits. I actually felt one fish on the end for a couple of seconds before it let go, it seemed decent and I assumed it was a chub , but now I'm not so sure?