I have caught the odd fish like that, and I certainly am not proud in having done so.
I feel all of us must re-appraise what we believe to be a specimen fish. Have any of you seen the huge carp many believe will be England's next "record".
The poor thing looks totally obscene, utterly hideous, and a travesty of what a true specimen fish should look like. It even has its eyes bursting out on stalks.
Come on guys, it's time for a re-think. Do you really want to catch such monstrosities. Is an obese, overweight, ugly ogre of a man, a perfect specimen of humanity?
Perfect? Who said anything about perfect? Who said anything about "specimen fish"?
You really do go overboard Ron. I strongly object to the question you pose in the last sentence.
I stalked the fish for about two hours and finally tempted it from a reasonably difficult position under a tree. If I had had a good enough sight of it to see it's "condition", I would probably have left it alone. As it was, all I had to go on was a big shadow, slowly cruising a relatively small area, in about 10 feet of water.
A second almost identical weight rainbow came from virtually the same spot 8 hours later and was a "mug" fish taking the fly at the first time of offering. This one conforms to the sterotype some people think is a "good rainbow".
Both came from the same egg supplier. through the same breeding regime and were about the same age - 3 to 4 years old.
I'm intrigued how a process that is supposedly fool proof, is designed to stop rainbows going into breeding condition and was mainly devised to enable stocking into non native waterways (thereby not potentially adversely affecting any resident population through hybridisation), patently did not work on that particular egg!
