How many specimen Carp anglers fish tournaments

Do any of the forum members fish specimen Carp tourmanents? Or know of any such competitions?

I love specimen carp fishing but now and again I would'nt mind some competition to test my limited skills.

How many of you would be interested?

What format do you think would work for you?

Have a look HERE

Thanks for link ****y.

What I'm thinking is a competition that anglers of all abilities can enter where they can fish when and where they want. All you need is a camara and a fishing rod.

To enter you log onto a website and order unique code which is issued the day the competition starts. You catch a fish and take 2 photo's, one next to official measuring stick, the second holding the fish. When you've get home upload the images to website.

Weekly prizes of £250 in each region. National leader board and £3000 prize.


Here is how it works
1.After your images are uploaded to database, they are imported into the Forensics software.
2.The software first detects the image’s authenticity to ensure it is the original photo.
3.Using the human eye and other reference points in the photo of you holding your catch, the software verifies the accuracy of your ruler.
4.Finally the length of your fish is measured and validated from the image of the fish and ruler.

All sounds great in theory, even appealing to my competitive side
BUT
where money gets exchanged, cheating will occur.

Take my club lakes, I sit it out on the runs water for 24 hours, have a good session banking six carp of between 14 and 24lbs, including 3 twenties.
Next day do a session on the specimen lake, another good un, taking two carp, first going 18lb and second 26lb.

Which is the better bag of fish??
I know which one is harder to achieve but then this where the cheating elementcomes into play, if wishing to gain points an angler could say he was on the harder lake, with his bag of 'easier' carp from the runs water.

Matches need to be held on one venue, improvements could be made to level the playing field, like a handicap scheme where the better swims are penalised.

Really though specimen fishing (for any species) only really lends itself towards one type of competition, the biggest fish prize.

But why would many join in if the top-end size of fish in their chosen water is only modest??

does'nt go on the bag of fish or weight, its the length of the fish. Accepted that where monies involved there's cheating.

This system is fool proof. The forensic imaging prevents counterfeit images.

The code is issued on the morning of tghe competition and must be shown in the uploaded photo's. The competition end 12.00 midnite so the codes are invalid after that.

I know its worked for some time in other countries with great effect. They also run a record fish comp where the winner gets £1000,000 if they break the record. That would be difficult in UK but it does give an element of fantasy.

I can understand the logic behind using length as the measurement unit rather than weight, infact the practice is common place even in the UK, sea matches are determined this way.

But how do you think it could be scored because a 80 cm fish from Clattercote is less of an achievement than a fish of the same size from the Oxford canal etc etc

If it's done on total length of fish ..all you have to do is go to one of the commercials where it's practically a fish a chuck......