The MasterBlanker

Education not condemnation – the motto of ECHO, the English Carp Heritage Organization. Recently I have found myself fishing several semi public waters and have had a plethora of anglers of differing abilities and nationalities, from English to Polish and even Chinese. It would be easy to ignore them or to just mutter darkly under my breath when you see them fishing without an unhooking mat, or for pike when it is banned will the 1st of October ( not that I personally agree with this but rules are rules). However the approach that I have taken is one of friendly advice. Confrontation will get you nowhere however a friendly chat and then a discussions about the merits of unhooking mats and rod licenses in my cases at least seemed to have worked. In many cases some of these anglers do not know what they are doing is wrong and when it is pointed out to them ( well the 3 I have spoken to this week) it seems that they do take it on board.

So next time you see someone doing something silly, against the rules or just plain wrong. Remember that they may not know what they are doing is forbidden and a quick chat may make you a friend for life.

Of course it doesn’t help when “official” news sources like the Russian news paper “Angliya” print instructions on where to fish for food in private UK lakes… thankfully they have been corrected but only after lake owners spotted Russian anglers with copies of the news story. Actually this post reminded me of an incident where I had to step in to try to get an Amsterdam group to stop an event where they were going to fish for, kill, cook and eat carp… their Flickr feed of the event shows what they did catch in the end oh well at least they abandoned the carp is all I can say. By the way although the article states they they were going for Snoek ( pike in Dutch) the original title was “Stalking the Urban carp and wort” and there was some amusing back peddling when they realised that what they were doing was illegal (I have screen caps somewhere and if I can be bothered they with the emails that were floating back and forth make amusing reading).

almost the 100 - Pic from the DailyMail.co.uk

Well hot on the heels of Solar Head Honcho, Martin Locke’s, 94lb carp from Rainbow comes this one from Les Graviers.  It is the well known fish called “Scar” due to the massive scar that you can see around the fish. The scar was caused by the fish getting tangled in a rope when it was small and was released unknown if it would live… well now it is the largest carp in the world. My congratulations to the captor, Ambrose Smith for this new record which is tantalizingly close to the 100lb mark. As I reported earlier in the year “  When will the 100lb barrier be broken ? Will if be from France or from elsewhere ? Will the 91 from Luke Moffats Les Graviers take the title again ?” well it turned out that my prediction was true, the fish from Les Graviers has taken the record.

Ok, prediction time again.

1, There will not be another record this year

2, It will go to an unknown German fishearly next year

Lets see if I am correct

What do you think ? Am I right ? do you have another opinion ? Have you seen a larger fish and want to share ? Post a comment and let me know