I couldn't help but notice of the recent Drennan award winners, how many came from the same area of England, that is the southern gravel pits. Let's face it if you want to catch many outsize coarse fish, you must go to a southern pit, or nothing.
Yet fly fishers don't think like this. Most are happy to catch small wild brown trout of moorland streams along with the big trout of some stillwaters and reservoirs. A 1 pound wild brown trout is often regarded as a more creditable capture than a reservoir 10 pounder.
But the vast majority of coarse fishers would not rate a 5 pound canal tench against a 10 pound pit fish. Many would not even bother to attempt to catch a 5 pound canal or drain tench, or even a 10 pound river bream when 20 pound pit bream are being caught.
But how do you rate your catches. Is it weight at all costs or do you have a sense of proportion like many of the fly fishermen?
Weight is only for the best (or "better") fish you catch if that's your personal criteria.
I think most anglers fish "local" to themselves and either enjoy just catching regardless or target the best they can achieve for the waters they fish.
Very few have the ambition, the time and the petrol £'s to chase fish up and down the land.
At the moment I'm fishing a very hard "southern pit". A small handful of carp (and some very big tench and bream) in a very large acreage. The Head Bailiff asked me today why I didn't fish an easier lake if I wanted to catch carp. He doesn't understand that sometimes it's the sheer unadulterated challenge of the task at hand and the weight of the capture, if you manage one, is relatively unimportant. Any fish is a good fish.
The point with this is that you're fishing for "wild" fish that are largely unknown, rarely caught and have to be seriously worked for.
Not everyone's cup of tea, but you certainly learn a lot by doing it.