All england championship & LAA size rules

[flightliner]

I have recantly finnished reading a book where the auther describes the day when the old "all England Championship" was fished on the river Trent immediately after the second world war. Unless I read it wrong he says/infers that the guys from the London club/s adhered to thier size limits when taking part in the match, so, any fish that was (I think) under seven inches long was returned to the river without being wieghed. Could anyone out there say wether or not this is correct as ,if it were true, the outcome of the competition could well have been very differant.
This is one for you guys who have a large library of angling books that lean towards match angling- I would be gratefull if anyone could provide an answer.

 

[peter crabtree]

I think the limit was 9 inches and the fish over that were called goers. ie roach ,dace etc.............

kinel thank goodness they don't apply today, otherwise there would be a few dry nets.

 

[Mark Wintle]

The LAA team did adhere to their local size limits even though they did not apply on the venues concerned. Different species had different size limits and these size limits did change with time. I only fished about two size limit matches circa 1975 when as far as I can remember the size limits were 8" for roach, 9" for perch, 12" for chub and bream. There were limits for all species including bleak and gudgeon.

Just checked one of my books: Bill Taylor - The Upper Thames 1968
Barbel 16"
Bleak 4"
Bream 12"
Carp 12"
Chub 12"
Dace 7"
Gudgeon 5"
Perch 9"
Pike 18"
Roach 8"
Rudd 8"
Tench 10"
Trout 16"

It's possible that 20 years earlier these limits were slightly different.

 

[geoffmaynard]

Different species had different lengths. A goer roach was eight inches I thing and a dace wad 7 inches as I remember. All Efgeeco green seat-boxes had a rule running the width of the seat with the various lengths for species were recorded.

---------- Post added at 20:22 ---------- Previous post was at 20:21 ----------

'thing' 'wad' ??? That's me!

 

[Jeff Woodhouse]

I remember Frank Guttfield telling me of a big national match he fished, not sure when, but possibly 60s, and as he was a LAA member he too stuck to the size limit rules and returned all fish below those sizes. He reckons he would have walked the match had he kept those fish in his keep net, but as it was, he came soem way down the field. Even now he says it was stupid of him, but were he found out he could have been excluded from the LAA in future.

I also saw a LAA match about 15 years ago in Little Marlow where no one weighed in even though many had caught fish.

 

[Alan Tyler]

Eventually the roach in the Thames learned to stop growing at seven-and-three-quarter inches, and the matchmen grumbled so much that the LAA had to bring the roach limit down to 7".
Within two years, every roach in the river was 6.75"....or so it seemed.

---------- Post added at 20:26 ---------- Previous post was at 20:15 ----------

Come to think of it, I suspect what killed the size-limit rule may have been the plague of bleak that hit the Thames in the mid '70s. If you thought someone who'd caught a bleak a minute for five hours had cheated by slipping in a couple of slightly undersized ones, then 300 bleak would have to be sedulously checked until you found one of the naughty ones. No-one would have gone to the next match for fear of drawing the scales...

 

[geoffmaynard]

I thought it was an excellent rule though. It stopped immature fish being mis-handled by being poured into those death-trap wire-mesh metal trays with lids where they would shed scales by the billion... Never did get the 'any-size' match fishing, the Goer system was a much better one for the fish in my opinion.

 

[Alan Tyler]

I think designing a better weigh-sling-thing would have been better - it'd save immature fish being unhooked far too hastily and flung back as nasty, bait-stealing timewasters, rather than handled like next year's goers...pointless to speculate, though; the old LAA might change (a teeny bit) in the face of imminent extinction, but run an experiment???

 

[Windy]

wasn't this rule largely related to the fact that in the 1940's and 50's the majority of the catch would be taken home for the pot at the end of a match ?

 

[Graham Whatmore]

"I thought it was an excellent rule though. It stopped immature fish being mis-handled by being poured into those death-trap wire-mesh metal trays with lids where they would shed scales by the billion... Never did get the 'any-size' match fishing, the Goer system was a much better one for the fish in my opinion."


Stupid rule made by stupid committees, once a fish is caught what is the difference when it is placed in a keepnet? Nobody is going to convince me that a fish measuring six and seven eighth inches is going to die as a result of being in a keepnet whereas a seven inch one will survive. Labour councils throughout the country make stupid rules like that and we mock them whereas people such as Geoff Maynard accept the same misguided rules as perfectly acceptable. Judging by his comments on how fish are weighed he is quite obviously anti match angling so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. The anti angling brigade must really love you.

 

[Mark Wintle]

The size limits date back to the 19th century when they were smaller than those I quoted and keepnets didn't exist.

In the mid 70s we got the knotless keepnets and the Oxford and Swindon anglers, many of whom fished waters like the Bristol Avon, stopped fishing to size limits even though they were legally bound to do so. It was the LAA clinging to them but eventually the law changed for the better. I fished an open in 1979 that certainly was not to size limits though whether the law had changed by then I don't know. Many top London match anglers left the LAA so that they could fish elsewhere without the size limits. I believe the LAA rejoined the NFA in about 1976 and fished a national without the constraint of size limits.

There is some sense in not putting very small fish in keepnets when pleasure fishing. No need to measure them but anything less than 6" should go straight back regardless.

 

[Dave Burr]

'9" is a goer anything less is thrown back'

I knew a girl like that once.......... but not for long

 

[Colin North the one and only]

Match fishing has changed beyond all recognitian from the days when all the matches I fished were fished to local size limits. Todays match anglers' tend to expect to catch 70/100lb every time they go out, whereas in my early days of size limit match angling, most matches would be won with bags 10 to 15lb, with the exception being if someone sat on a bream shoal, when it might be 30 or 40lb.

Kent had very slightly different size limits to Thames. Different River Authorities had different size limits.

 

[flightliner]

Dave, A question David-- I think it was in the sixties that a Dave Burr won the all england on the Huntspill/king sedgemoor drain while fishing for Rugby. He smashed the old match record made on the same venue by dear old Jack Carr from my old town of Sheffield, are you one and the same guy ? Looking at your address maybe not but am I right?
ps, If that match and the format enjoyed by many in those days was to be reintroduced I would be tempted to dig out all my match gear and have a go for old times sake. points system and sponsership did more harm than good IMHO. there, got that off my chest!--

 

[Colin North the one and only]

Dave, A question David-- I think it was in the sixties that a Dave Burr won the all england on the Huntspill/king sedgemoor drain while fishing for Rugby. He smashed the old match record made on the same venue by dear old Jack Carr from my old town of Sheffield, are you one and the same guy ? Looking at your address maybe not but am I right?
ps, If that match and the format enjoyed by many in those days was to be reintroduced I would be tempted to dig out all my match gear and have a go for old times sake. points system and sponsership did more harm than good IMHO. there, got that off my chest!--

I have already asked Dave that same question some months ago, and he answered that he is not the same Dave Burr