Specimen fish

[Vagabond]

As far as I am concerned, a "specimen" is a fish that I feel particularly pleased with when I catch it.

 

....but for many, a "specimen" is a fish half-an-ounce smaller than their "personal best"

 

 

 

...but Chesters, Budgie and the "lads up norf" are quite right - it is all relative to the water the fish came from.

[Anderoo]

His other weights are

 

Tench 7lb

Carp 30lb

Pike 30lb

Roach 2.5lb

Dace 12-14oz

Grayling 2lb

 

I'd bring the pike down to 20lb personally. I'd accept 25lb as a compromise! And I reckon that a 2lb roach is still a specimen.

[Dick Dastardly]

Some interesting replies so far I hope more to come.

 

I certainly think JW's 30lb Pike and 2.5lb Roach are over the top. I also think that Chris and Anderoo have made good comment and would revise my list to 4lb Eel,120zs Dace and 2.5lb Grayling.Im undecided over the Chub though.

 

Medway try the tidal side of the Medway at Allington for Dace but I dont think they go quite that big!

[Comus]

Would we still consider a 2.5 lb Perch a specimen?

 

Lots of talk about large Perch in our waters due to cray fish etc.

 

Plus of course recent reports of a new UK record.

 

Would a new course fish record impact on what makes a specimen?

[Dick Dastardly]

Like I said its a very subjective subject Commus.Given the boom in big Perch over the past few years I would still stick with my 3lb weight.

 

Out of interest once this thread has ran its course I will publish a list of what was generally recognised as specimen weights when I first started targeting big fish back in the mid 70's.Hopefully a few of our more "senior" members could do the same from their era! i reckon it will be interesting to compare them with todays,which in general we seem to be in agreement with.

[sam-cox]

I can remember when a 3lb tench and a 15lb carp were concidered specimins.

[Dunk Fairley]

I remember the days when the real "Specimen Hunters" were the angling heroes. The likes of Phil Smith, Alan Smith, Des Taylor, Terry Eustace, Jim Gibbinson, Neville Fickling and quite a few others. Now all we seem to see in the press, are same old faces, often catching the same old fish.

 

Of course, there are quite a lot of those type of anglers still around, but the general "Specimen" scene, seems a bit dull (in the press at least, I know there is still a strong under-curent) at the moment. Now, we see a lot about "Specialist" anglers.

 

Although I love my Carp and Pike fishing, I also set my stall every year, to catch a few "target" specimens.

 

A lot of the, so-called, specimen fish listed, are far larger than anything I'm likely to catch from the rivers I fish. But I'm more than happy to set myself a target of say, a 5lb Chub from the Medway, or a 4lb Chub from the Len (which is a much smaller river).

 

I've fished a Carp lake this year, where the fish are just breaking the 30lb barrier. I was delighted when I caught my 22lb fish, even though it was well below my own PB, which was twice as heavy.

[Steve Burke]

As a rough rule of thumb, I don't reckon you'd be far wrong if you consider a specimen as being half the record weight, be it the record for an area of the country or for the UK as a whole. With top of the chain predators like pike and catfish you may need to round down as there are relatively few of these compared to shoal fish, and thus you'd expect to catch fewer specimens.

 

One enigma is a species I used to fish for a lot in the days when perch (of any size) were scarce. That's chub. Here the record weight is I believe still under 9lbs, which is only a little up from many years ago. Yet the average size of chub has markedly increased. In my days in the Chub Study Group a 4lber was considered a specimen. In fact in one year in the early 80s my fish of 5-01½ headed the group's list until the last few days of the season! I think it fair to up the national specimen weight to 5lbs now, but no further. despite it being easily attainable on some waters - this is still well over half the national record.

 

I'd be unsure whether to set the tench specimen weight at 7lbs or, as Budgie has suggested, at 8lbs. We both live in Kent where 8lbs is not a difficult target, but on balance I'd again be inclined to go for the lower figure on a national basis.

 

I used to write that I considered a 2½lb perch a specimen, but now the population has recovered from disease I'd certainly increase that to 3lbs, more or less wherever in the country you live.

 

Barbel and bream I'd both put at 10lbs, although in my part of the world (East Kent) bream grow bigger than barbel but are harder to catch. There are only a few waters that are likely to break the national barbel record, but quite a few that could break the bream record - hopefully it'll come from my own at Wingham!

 

Roach and rudd stocks have been decimated on many waters due to cormorants. I'd be content to leave both at 2lbs, a figure that has held for many years.

 

Certainly I'd up the national specimen weight for carp up to 30lbs now. Even the odd commercial in the south-east is producing carp of just over this size.

 

On the other hand I consider setting 30lbs as the specimen weight for a pike as pie in the sky! Such a fish is far harder to catch than a 30lb carp. For the reason I mentioned earlier I reckon 20lbs is a much fairer weight.

 

Apart from barbel, these are the species I have most experience of, so I'll leave it to others to fill in the gaps.

Edited March 2, 2006 by Steve Burke