Truly great Carpers.

[peter mccue]

I feel a bit sorry for the modern giants of the game, because I think all the innovative & ground breaking techniques & baits had all been pretty well done & dusted by the mid eighties.

 

This obviously left thin ground for the the present day heroes to work on, consequently their reputations are built to a large extent on captures of fish that are merited by time & the sheer bloody mindedness that needs to go with it.

 

Mostly your average angler has other priorities that hold him in check.

 

That a lot of these top Carpers today are superb anglers is not in question, but are they truly 'great'.

 

Is there the opportunity nowadays, for the top Carpers to become truly great & revolutionise present day carpfishing other than on a commercial basis?

 

This just cropped up when I noticed a few modern names being classed as 'angling greats'. Are they? or are they just very good & very committed anglers.

[shooter]

I agree with you Peter, there is no such thing as a great angler, there is, however, such thing as 'lucky sod' anglers who can dedicate all of time to fishing and not have to go to a job every day.

 

I am of the opinion that if I had that much time to dedicate to it, and I was fishing lakes with huge fish in them, then I would indeed become a very profficient angler who caught large carp, compared to your run of the mill angler who can only do w/end sessions once in a blue moon.

 

I do have a mild sort of respect for these so called 'great' anglers but it is tempered with a touch of jealousy and realism.

[Steve Burke]

Fred Guttfield:

And put it this way.... would you actually be happy fishing 5 days a week. I certainly wouldn't!

I've twice retired (I went back to work through boredom), and to begin with I fished 4 full days a week for a whole winter. But by the end of the season I was back to my long term average of 2 half days a week.

 

However I do have the luxury of choosing when I fish. This depends on the weather, and I also rarely fish weekends in term time - my wife's a teacher and I prefer to see her then rather than go fishing.

 

The history of specimen hunting in particular is littered with full-time anglers who've burnt themselves out and given up fishing altogether.

 

I had the chance to become a full-timer but turned it down, and I'm very glad I did. It sounds good, but for me there's more to life than fishing.

[peter mccue]

Fred,

 

I readily admit that we have some talented Carpers out there, I did say in my post that they were superb anglers. However I do think that their catches are enhanced to a large extent by their ability to lay siege to their targets. I do agree though that there are profile anglers who succeed with limited time available.

 

What the post was getting at, was whether or not they can be classed as greats because at the end of it all, what they've done is basically exploited present day knowledge. The question is have they revolutionised Carping, turned accepted theories upside down & generally shook the sport at it's roots, the sign of true greatness.

 

Is there anything left for them to revolutionise? which is why I feel a bit sorry for them at times.

 

I agree entirely with you & Steve, no way would I like to be a full time angler, even though sometimes I might wish it, my limited time keeps me keen!

[Peter Sharpe]

It's very difficult to compare carp anglers of the 60s with those of today for a number of reasons.

These days it is very easy to pick up cheap tackle that is far more efficient than the best that was available at that time. There are also infinitely more carp in the country than forty years ago.

 

In those days anyone who fished for carp full time would have been considered either a lazy sod or mentally ill.

 

These days is is, to a large extent, possible to buy success if you can afford, or are given, huge quantities of bait that would have been unthinkable years ago. There is certainly more to catching carp than that, but it certainly puts you at a huge advantage.

 

Perhaps a more accurate assessment could be made if it was possible to create a scale to adjust the size of fish caught by anglers in different eras, and most importantly, to calculate true success according to rod hours per fish. I have a feeling that the latter statistic would mark down some of the modern carp anglers considerably.

 

Having said all that, can you measure the greatest carp angler purely in terms of fish caught? Someone who has put in countless hours of theorising and experimentation is surely a far greater carp angler that someone who has used that angler's groundwork to bank a far greater number of big carp.

[peter mccue]

Shooter,

 

Sorry mate, I think you slightly misunderstood my post. There is such a thing as a great angler, my query is do any of the modern Carpers merit such a description.

[peter mccue]

Quite so Fred, every generation tends to feel that their particular pursuit has had all its major breakthroughs & maybe thats the case with Carp fishing.

 

Then along comes a genuinely great angler, who proceeds to show everybody the way home & we all realise there was another level to go to! I wonder if there's one in the wings.

 

I have the feeling that today we have a tendency to create 'great' anglers for media & commercial interest.

[Peter Sharpe]

Fred, are you any relation to Frank Guttfield?

His book of his fishing diary was a great inspiration to me. I just wanted to know.