Fish weights, yardsticks

Over the years, there has been a trend by certain angling luminaries to have lists of fish over certain weights, often giving the captors a certain degree of fame.

I am not talking here about fish records, I am talking about certain yardsticks that have been concocted that have often distinguished the difference beween a very big notable fish and an also ran.Probably the most famous of all these lists has been the one for pike over 30 pounds.

I now give you a scenario which sooner or later will present itself make no mistake.

The use of Imperial units of measurement will be totally abolished and it will become a crime to use them. Pounds and ouncesand any references to them will be made illegal. Don't believe that this will never happen. It did in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia and in time it will happen here.

So as regards fish weights, a new set of yardsticks will start to exist. A 2 lb roach will become a 1 kg roach, and a 30 lb pike will become a 15 kg pike. Now it doesn't take much working out for you to realise that a 1 kg roach is actually heavier than a 2 lb roach and that a 15 kg pike is significantly heavier than a 30 lb pike.

Lots of anglers who in the past have achieved the 30 lb pike status are going to be severely dissappointed that their lifetime achievment has been whittled down to a near miss. Will they burn their rods? Will they commit suicide.

In truth, perhaps the yardsticks set by many are just a load of old codswallop anyway.

What do you think?

I think anglers will continue to use pounds and ounces, even under threat of an ASBO. Why because here in metric Denmark, many anglers refer to their catches and sizes of fish in general in pounds, at least orally. The angling press, of course, has to be PC and use metric. Tradition will win out a least for a couple more generations I suspect. Oh yes and long live the Pint!

What about in France to they use Kgs for their carp?

Andy, they do indeed.

Ron, I think you'll find it's already illegal to sell items by an imperial measurement. The actual recording of fish weights by kilogrammes/grammes will be here within a generation. That's all their taught in school.

My seven year old has no idea what a 'quarter' of sweets are!

Paraman , i think that you are wrong , was it not over ruled recently and we can keep lbs & ounces and the PINT ?

I thought that i saw a bbc report on this last week .

Les you are indeedcorrect, but don't letthe truthspoil a good scare story!

crime?

Just before I retired, my American suppliers started listing all their catalogues in the metric system.

I think the EU has agreed not that long ago to allow us funny islanders to continue using imperial units alongside metric.

I agree metric is easier to calculate and so forth but some things, like fish weight and photograph sizes are commonly known in imperial measurements.

To change a 6x4", 7x5" or 9x6" photo measurement to metric would give you 17.78cm x 12.7cm for a 7x5". Even doing it in mm is untidy (1778mm x 127mm) compared to the imperial.

Not only did the EU abandon it's bizarre campaign to metricate everything, it has also now admitted that it's not even important anyway and pursuing it was really a waste of resources, I believe the man behind the descicion to cease said something along the lines that the matter was a trivial detail.

So, end of that one then. Good job, bloody silly idea anyway.