PB's What value do you put against the venue it was caught?

Peter Bishop · Feb 4, 2007

Have just been watching "Record Breaking Fish" on Sky featuring Matt Hayes and Mick Brown fishing the Monument carp fishery in Shropshire.
Now, either this film was made with the fishery closed to everyone else or it was done before it was open to the public.
In this episode, Mick Brown caught a 44lbs carp, a new PB, on a day session. According to Matt the fish had never been caught before.
Well, apologies if I offend Mick, Matt or the rest of the carp fraternity but this place looks dreadful.
A huge dug out hole, devoid of features(except a monument on a hill inside a fence like dog collar), no bankside cover and just a few trees, and that muddy colouring which is to be found on typical pastie commercial pools.
So here is my question to you all. How important to the value of your PB is the venue where you caught it?
Does it matter to you that the fish has been artificially factory fed for years, then placed in big featureless pool with no snags or features so you can wind it in with relative ease using 15-20lbs line?
Or is the degree of difficulty all important, ie catching it from a more natural venue, laced with snags and all sorts of problems to overcome.

Malc Bason · Feb 4, 2007

"the fish has been artificially factory fed for years,"

.....or one with garlic breath!

Yes, it does matter Peter. I would take more value and more pleasure with a 20 from a difficult water.

Each to their own, but it took me years to catch my first 20, and a great deal of satisfaction was gained from it too. Not for me the 'instants'. Its far too easy for anyone these days to hand over a credit card to a tackle shop and say "make me a carp angler!" They then go to the likes of this place and wham, they have a 40 - a picture of which they can put on their avatar on all the various forums and claim to be the best thing (carp-angling wise) since sliced bread.

scrupes · Feb 4, 2007

Hi Peter, I would rather catch a new personal best wild carp (current pb is 14lb) than catch a new pb common or mirror (best common so far 25.7lb mirror 23.5lb) IMHO the pools where i regulary fish it seems the fish of the 10 - 15 lb bracket are harder to hook and give the best fight these may or may not be true wild carp but they share the characteristics of wild carp .
As far as venues go i cant stand the all too common square pit full of muddy water holes! I would rather not bother fishing these even with the possibility of catching a thirty or forty, give me a more mature fishery with all the accompyaning wildlife, grasses and trees.
Angling for some is all about how big the fish are, but for the pleasure angler it is more an escapism and if the fish arent biting at least you're in nice surroundings and can get distracted by dragonflies landing on your rod tip or float tip etc.
Much better than sitting round a muddy hole blanking!

Malc Bason · Feb 4, 2007

Its not the blanking though Scrupes, its the fact that some places will fill such muddy holes with so many carp and big carp at that. These muddy holes have no natural food, so the carp need to eat anglers baits to survive.

Thats too artificial for me.

I'd rather blank any day on a water where I've got to work at catching fish, when it does come along, then the greater the value attached to catching it.

captain carrott · Feb 4, 2007

" Its far too easy for anyone these days to hand over a credit card to a tackle shop and say "make me a carp angler!" They then go to the likes of this place and wham, they have a 40"

there's a hell of a lot of people that fall for it and do exactly that though.

scrupes · Feb 4, 2007

tis very true! while we're on the subject of overstocking lakes why do lake owners seem to think that anglers only want to catch carp? whats wrong with stocking a diversity of fish ie Tench, bream, roach and perch? this also is a deciding factor of where I'll go to fish

Ron 'The Hat' Clay (ACA) · Feb 4, 2007

Well can you really blame them mate?

In time, any angler will find his own values in the sport. For example I gave up years ago worrying about that horrid thing called a PB, because in time, you will discover it's got nothing to do with how good an angler you are.

These days, I am more concerned with how a fish is caught than how much it weighs. Also I get a lot of pleasure out of catching a fish in top condition too.

Who would you rather try to make love to?

Big fat ugly Jade, or Shilpa?

Many years ago a famous American once stated that an angler goes through 3 stages in his/her life. The first stage is the desire to catch the most fish. The second stage is to catch the biggest fish and the final stage is to catch the most difficult fish.

And I think you will find that Shilpa might be a little more difficult than big fat ugly Jade!

Malc Bason · Feb 4, 2007

Taking that analogy further though Ron (tongue in cheek), I'd say neither!

Reason? Big fat ugly carp or imported foreign carp! Like I said, neither! LOL

......well, alright, but I thought it was funny!

ED (The ORIGINAL and REAL one) · Feb 4, 2007

In your case Ron --you'd have to have Jade !!
And it would be her who'd think she was getting the rough end of the bargain ....

Frothey · Feb 4, 2007

mind you, after ****y at least Jades a step in the right direction.....

...or maybe not!

Frothey · Feb 4, 2007

its still a pb - the biggest. whether its the most meritous or not is another thing...

Peter Bishop · Feb 4, 2007

For me there were also three stages as an angler.
1. Great potential.
2. Never quite made it.
3. Good committee material.

Interesting thread though I hope.Lets not allow it to be sidetracked with a debate about who, Jade or Shilpa, we would all give one to if the unlikely opportunity arose!
Agree totally with Mal and Scrupes. A 15lb wildie on fairly light gear from under a sunken tree trunk or branch on a beautiful wooded, lily covered lake is my idea of an angling achievement.

Ron 'The Hat' Clay (ACA) · Feb 4, 2007

Personal biggest or personal best?

One is not always the other.

Let me give you an instance.

The biggest rainbow trout I ever caught in my life weighed 18lbs. It was a horrid thing with only 1/2 a tail and came in like a sack of spuds. This fish was certainly NOT my personal best.

The best rainbow trout I probably ever caught was a 4lb 3 oz wild fish that ran off over 100 yards of backing, jumped several times and was the colour of a bar of platinum with not a mark on it.

And I caught that fish after a 3 mile trek on foot in which I climbed over 2 thousand feet.

And I've caught hundreds of trout bigger than that one.

Frothey · Feb 4, 2007

even if it was full of wildies? quite a few wildie waters are full of "hungry" fish - they have bred in the waters for years and they can be full of stunted fish. not exactly difficult to catch.

what about a thirty from a heavily fished, low stock water?

it depends whether you value the aesthetics or the challenge.....

Ron 'The Hat' Clay (ACA) · Feb 4, 2007

I would value both.

But I would want that 30 to be as bright as a new pin, fight like heck and not look like an overgrown football with fins.

scrupes · Feb 4, 2007

my fav wildie water is stocked with around 200 carp, around 10% of which are wildies, the rest a mucky mix of little fat greedy commons and mirrors which eat anything and everything and give good sport on light tackle wheras the wildies go like stink and give a much better account of themselves but are much harder to catch in the first place. the lake sees plenty of action in summer but spring and autumn there might only be 4 or 5 anglers on a lake of 4 -5 acres.
so yeah it must be the challenge i value more than aesthetics.

During spring - summer months the tench in this lake are my favourite quarry and the lake has produced some cracking near doubles in the last few seasons.

Roll on april!!

scrupes · Feb 4, 2007

not that the size counts you see, it's just that they are getting bigger!!

Mark Wintle · Feb 4, 2007

I thought 'wildie' was an obsolete term? There are so many strains of carp in this country yet they are all the same species. There are old strains of carp around that don't grow especially big perhaps 15lbs and fight like stink but I seem to remember the term wildie being clinically disected some years ago when it was shown that it was impossible to show what was or wasn't one?

As for PBsI experienced it years ago when Loudmill pond near Dorchester was stocked with 36 big grayling - thrilled by tales of 3lbers I went and caught my first 2lb grayling but there was little merit in it, the fish having been netted from a private stretch of the Frome. Martin Hooper briefly held the record from there, and when I fished it a second time he turned up with AT & cameras. The reporter took one look, and said "It's a bit 'F***ing' small isn't it" - he was right, I seem to remember it was 1/4 acre. That finished it for me - shooting fish in a barrel, and ten years later I had a 2lb grayling from the tidal Frome where they are rare I discounted the Loudsmill one.

matt · Feb 4, 2007

For me the absolute joy on mick browns face is what it is all about.
You may get your kicks from fishing picturesque lakes in secluded surroundings. At the end of the day it's the pure joy on micks face that is what we all crave.
Fishing is many things to many people. Please don't distract from someones Else's capture just because it doesn't conform to what you regard as a worthy fish.

Malc Bason · Feb 4, 2007

Normally Matt, I'd agree with you. Its what each individual regards as worthy.

But do you know much of the lake that Peter Bishops uses in his original post to this thread?

But that aside, as far as I can see, Peter only used this as an example; the thread theme is all about individual values.

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