32 pound Thames Pike!!

[Newt]

Exactly how big is 102400 characters moderators?

On average you will probably have 6-7 characters per word with a space before and after (those count in the total) and since most writing gets about 250 words on a usual size sheet of paper, you probably get around 2000 characters per page.

 

102400 should allow you 51 pages.

[slodger]

I think the trend that sees our specimen fish getting noticeably bigger, ( All over the country. It's not just applicable to the Thames), in both rivers and still waters, is attributable to three things:

 

Less overall densities of fish stocks- i.e more space per individual fish.

 

Large volumes of good quality feed being introduced by anglers. (Admittedly a factor on only some waters.)

 

and lastly, but most importantly IMO, climatic changes.

[Graham Elliott]

Slodger. My thoughts use to be very much as your own however...

 

1/ The fish grow pretty big in those puddles where they are side by side

although 2/ will have an effect I think this factor is very minor.

 

2/ Yes, no doubt on small, low density waters the bait factor has an effect.....but on the Thames? With all those fish where one Bream shoal can polish off a hundredweight of feed in an hour or so. Also in general over the past 10 years on avarage each angler on the Thames has had about a mile of the river each.

 

3/ Yes, must have had an impact, but in reality global warming is not a decade thing, although the winters have been very mild for a long time now and no doubt this has had an influence.

 

30 years ago I was catching near 2lb roach in dozens on the Kennet, at last they are coming back with fish over 1lb in the lower reaches now appearing. I suspect that we will see a gradual decline in Barbel over the next 30 years or so. Nature loves it's cycles.

 

I think one of the key changes must be the general improvement in fish handling by anglers allowing more fish to mature to a greater size /weight. many of todays big fish are caught frequently and not taken home as a trophy or a cookup!

25 years ago the idea of dressing fishes wounds would have been laughed at. Mind you will still see those fish crushed into keepnets for the photo shoot. Just not so often and more with "Commodity" fish.

 

 

 

Graham

[Charlie Bettell]

I am glad that you like the picture Lee, thought that you might have recognised it!

 

Yes, it does look 'pedunkle', but it actually accompanied a delightful piece on rudd fishing. Rudd fishing circa Crabtree being a feature of the Broads, alas, no more. Venables was not a great artist, but sure as heck he was able to capture the very essence of 'real' angling like no other artist before or since.

Changing the subject, can you spot the 10 differences?

 

 

Have fun!!!

Edited October 23, 2005 by Charlie Bettell

[slodger]

Slodger. My thoughts use to be very much as your own however...

 

I appreciate what you've said Graham, but the fact that these fish grow bigger in small puddles is, at least in most instances, directly related to large volumes of specifically designed food stuffs, and also I think, in a lesser way, improved knowledge of fishery management.

 

On waters such as the Thames I agree it probably isn't attributable to the same factors. I'm not sure about the fish handling idea, although I'm sure it does help, albeit it in a small way, on specific waters. However I can recount instances where waters that receive little or no angling pressure, that have also shown these trends for an overall increase in specimen size.

 

Perhaps the species that demonstrates the greatest degree of growth on a countrywide basis, at least in my experience, is the Perch. Just about every water I know that holds this species is now capable of producing 3 and 4lb specimens, and good numbers of them to boot! Now I'm fully aware that they suffered as a species in the fiftys with this virus, but they made a recovery, at least in my locality, long before this sudden upsurge in individual specimen size.

 

The only single factor that I can hold up as being a plausible reason for the escalation of size, in a wide number of species, is the climatic one. I can't claim to know why this should cause such an increase, but I'm convinced it has. Perhaps one species that corroborates this theory is the pike. Pike, you would expect, should actually be one species that would not fare well from an increase of mean temperatures. I think the longevity of the current record, and an overall dropping off of individuals of leviathon proportion bares out the evidence that temperature has affected our resident fish populations.

 

Of course, as in most of my school exams, I could have it completely wrong...

Edited October 23, 2005 by slodger

[Graham Elliott]

Sloger

I don't think we are far apart in our views on the factors.

 

I was taking your example 1/ in isolation. and quoting the example of where it doesn't hold true..in isolation.

 

What is true is the handling factor and not mentioned before but included regards advancement in angling practices.

 

Take barbel as an example. 40 years ago Col Crow, RW et al reported seeing barbel around 20lb at (I think) Ibsley on the H.Avon. The fact is the Barbel records x3 held at 14.6? for many many years were pretty much caught by salmon anglers with proper tackle. Even when I Pike fished (Nearly said pedunkle there...) standard tackle was 6lb line. We lost some monsters!!!

 

Expertise is much greater now and so is the tackle used. For example a big barbel that comes out of The Kennet at LBenyons probably accounts for at least 30 Kennet anglers trophy shots....yet how many times would it have been damaged and ultimately killed in the standard keepnet practice of 10-15 years ago, if ever landed with the standard 2lb bottom on the float 15 years ago.

Tackle Advances etc. give a false impression to a degree.

 

Still the original Thames question. was their also a mini heatwave 100 years ago when the Thames anglers had 1000 lobs put in a swim to catch shoals of barbel for food? They didn't have much chance to grow.

 

Perch

I never look anymore but when were the last 3 biggest Perch records established. Methinkspossibly a fair time ago. But I might be wrong. Didn't a few biggies come out about 30+ years ago to FJT and RW when the Arsely bomb was developed?

 

Graham

Edited October 23, 2005 by Graham Elliott

[Steve Burke]

I don't think that there's just one reason why fish are growing bigger. Instead I reckon it's a combination of factors, many of which have already been mentioned.

 

However I strongly suspect the most important factor is climate change, especially warmer winters leading to fish feeding harder in winter than they used to. If you look at the species whose records have jumped in recent years you'll find they all have one thing in common - they're nearly all species traditionally not linked with winter fishing. Good examples are barbel, carp, tench and bream.

 

A further factor is lack of fishing pressure. As the old saying goes "big fish thrive on neglect". That's why I won't allow much pressure at Wingham - I feel it's one of the main reasons why the venue nearly broke the bream record even though the bream are far from fully-grown.

 

Pressured fish get pushed off the best areas of natural food by good anglers. Rod Hutchinson pointed this out in an interview in Tim Paisley's book "Big Carp", and cited it as the main reason why carp grow big in countries like Poland despite the cold winters. More importantly perhaps, pressured fish are wary about what they eat. They thus eat less in a given time and therefore don't grow as big.

 

It's certainly not HNV baits at Wingham that's causing the fabulous growth rates - hardly any bait goes in! It's not just Wingham either, other waters that are almost totally unfished are producing much bigger fish than years ago. So whilst I agree that HNV bait is a contributory factor in growing big fish, I don't think it's the main one.

 

Turning to perch, there are a lot more big ones being caught than 20 years ago. Amongst the reasons are:

 

1) No major outbreak of Perch Disease (that often wipes out 99% of the perch in a water) since the last one in the mid 80s. This was even worse in many areas than the better-documented epidemic in the late 60s/early 70s.

 

2) On certain rivers the perch have benefitted from the explosion of signal crayfish in recent years.

 

3) The huge growth in commercial carp waters since the 90s. These make excellent perch venues. See http://anglers-net.co.uk/authors/steve01.htm

 

4) In a smaller way, I like to think that the founding of the Perchfishers and, in particular, the publication of "The Book of the Perch" has led to more anglers fishing for the species and thus more big perch being caught.

 

Despite all these factors though the perch record has gone up by only half an ounce in 20 years! Could it be significant that perch feed well in cold weather, and thus haven't benefitted as much as other species from warmer winters?

Edited October 23, 2005 by Steve Burke

[slodger]

Great stuff from Graham and Steve!

 

All I know, regarding big perch, is that when I was younger a 2lb perch was considered a real milestone, and now, without meaning to disparage what is still essentially a superb fish, they are virtually as common as jack pike in most of my local waters.

[trent.barbeler]

Dear Graham,

 

Would it be fair to say that akin to the Severn and Trent, the Thames remains the one of the big three yet to be fully explored? By this I mean not that many anglers along her banks actively searching for big fish?

 

I've always been told that not many take on the Thames as it has a reputation for being quite hard and as such, a lot of anglers try their luck but quickly move on to other rivers where the fishing is easier? I'm talking about big fish here.

 

Although I've only fished the river twice, I'm certain the Old Father contains truly massive fish. Good luck to all who fish there because at times, big river fishing just isn't that easy.

 

Regards,

 

Lee.

[Dick Dastardly]

I wonder how much the predation on smaller fish by cormmorants has heped,yes helped! the over all big fish situation.The simple fact that the thinning out has left a lower density of fish to amount of food?

 

A few years ago I would have laughed at the mere sugestion of this but allow me to tell you a little story then draw your own conclusions.

 

As most of you know I used to work for Luke Moffat of European Catfish Trips.The end of my last season in France coincided with the purchase of the lake at Brognon. This as Im sure most know is the water that this year produced a new world record carp. Before returning to the UK for the winter I spent a few weeks (after closing down our Catfishing season) on the lake. Rather than fishing for the huge carp that we knew were in there (and had indeed caught) I decided to target the water in a more general way to try and see what else it held.It was known to hold some large bream,tench,rudd,perch and even barbel! long with a small smattering of pike and zeds.

 

The water was a very clear some what strange turquoise colour.Admitedly conditions werent perfect (full moon for a portion of the time fished) but after trying my normal bream/tench/general specimen tactic of multiple rods fished with worms over groundbait during the evenings and nights and light floatfishing tactics with maggots during the day,my results were to say some what poor! In fact after two weeks I had caught 1 small perch on worm,two sunbass on float fished worm and a couple of Reggies and Ronnies on the light gear!

Well I know Im not exactly Ivan Marks or Dick Walker but I can normally fare a bit better than that on any water!

 

It was simply down to the fact that there were no small/medium (well not many any way) fish to be caught. All the food being left available for the big carp etc to eat.Didnt give it much thought as to why this wasas I had come across similar waters before andvarious reasons such as pollution,extreme weather conditions or even simple poaching/over fishing had caused entire year classes to be missing.

 

Never saw that many cormorants to consider them a problem (ie their predation making any great impact to the fish stocks).Luke decided to arm himself and regularly shoot the back monsters so they wouldnt have the chance to become a problem.Sounded sensible at the time.

 

After returning to the UK it was a rather unexpected gap of two years before I returned to the lake.When I did I was suprised at how cloudy the water looked. Luke told me that there had been that big a growth in the bream,rudd etc population that as well as them now dirtying the water it was impossible to now stalk the carp with baits like corn etc asyou would imediately have a skimmer pick the bait up! This in only a few years. He (and Im in total agreement) puts this down to his extensive culling of the cormorants allowing the fish to breed and thrive! He now regrets shooting any bird at all!!

 

Maybe they have to a degree been resposible for the situation we now have on the UK rivers?

 

I certainly agree that the other factors mentioned ie climate change,more food going in/being available etc have also been factors.

 

Also before some one takes me to task Im quite aware that cormorants can take large fish as well,(Ive seen countless birds taking stockie trout big enough to stop them from taking off on the trout res's)

 

What do you guys reckon?

Edited October 24, 2005 by BUDGIE