angling
Summer’s Coming! NORMALLY, FOR THE SEPTEMBER EDITION I GO ON ABOUT THE COOLING TEMPERATURES STIMULATING FEEDING, AND SPECIES SUCH AS CARP AND BARBEL PACKING ON THE WEIGHT PRIOR TO THE LEAN MONTHS OF WINTER By Clive Kenyon
A
s I write this in late July I am still waiting for the summer to start, let alone end! This year has been a disaster fishing-wise so let us hope that the next three months can rescue the situation. The Carps With No Name The British Record Fish Committee has recently rejected a claim for a 73lb 8oz carp, named ‘The Marshall’, that had been caught by 14-year-old angler from Holme Fen Fishery. The reasons given by the Committee were that in their opinion the additional weight the carp had taken on since its stocking into Holme Fen would not have been feasible in a natural environment. The implication therefore is that the fish are being artificially grown on using supplementary feed. This is not the first time that record claims from this Cambridgeshire fishery have been rejected by the BRFC. In 2016 ‘Captain Jack’, weighing in at 68lb 1oz, failed to impress the committee. The fish
36 etcetera
published in 1486 and mentions carp stating that they were not common in England at that time. A hundred years later Leonard Mascall, writing anonymously, cheekily tried to give himself credit for having introduced carp into England. Mascall must have been aware of the mention of carp in The Boke of St Albans because he quotes from it in his own works, but he may have had a point. The Boke of St These foreign-reared captors Albans is almost The Boke of St Albans is have created a great deal of certainly a controversy within the carp almost certainly a translation from a fishing and wider angling translation from a French manuscript community. Common carp are French manuscript and so it may be not actually indigenous to the possible that the UK or indeed France. They references to carp do not actually relate to originate from the Danube and it has been English rivers. said were imported to France and England Now carp are found worldwide having by monks. It is known however that the been introduced legally, and illegally, into Romans farmed carp long before that and many countries beyond their natural may also have introduced them. The stew range. In parts of Australia and North ponds at monasteries were used by monks America they are regarded as vermin and to rear fish that could provide meals on a threat to natural species. In parts of the Fridays when their religion forbade them Far East however they are an important to eat meat. The Boke of St Albans was had been imported in 2013 from Israel at a weight of around 41lb and the fishery had been supplementing the lake’s natural food by the introduction of 150kg of pellets per week. In 2020 ‘The Marshall’, another Israeli import, had been caught and recorded at 75lb 2oz. The captor chose not to pursue a record claim due to the negative publicity given to previous record claimants.
