The Traditional Fisherman's Forum

out this morning , to a place l have never fished
had a look round the lake last night , baited 2 areas, sweetcorn , spam
anyway this morning fished it ,great fun , 6 wildies
just wanted to know , what size do they get too
l always thought 8 lbs was a big fish ,is that correct
pictures of some of them, they fight like mad, and all in fine condition





T.C

True wildies rarely creep far into double figures but there's always the big question of when is a wildie a true wildie? Can I ask, is the pool you caught these fish in shallow?

A big debate this one but true wildies generally slope down off the head not up, almost barbel-like.

These fish are (edit - probably) long (wonderful) commons in my humble opinion.

lake is very shallow in places but would have been a lot deeper years ago , has got deep holes ,lake is 2 acres
these were caught in the shallows , 18" water , 3' mud !
it is an old monastery pool ,has big Rudd , and huge Tench ,in it.
l would go as far in saying , the Tench are bigger than the carp ,

These look more like lean common carp due to the rounded shoulders and size of the hump - still great to catch though.
Wild carp have blunt heads with small mouths and short barbules.
Feral carp which maybe called wildies will be somewhere in between.

see https://www.fennelspriory.com/rural-lif ... nel-hudson

A recent outing with Gary Bills produced a Sazan type wild carp and a wildie.

I think Phil and Snape have hit the nail on the head. Put commons in a shallow pool and they become streamlined thus looking like wildies but were they subsequently placed in a bigger, deeper environment they'd soon fill out.

These are by no means lesser fish. Playing bullet shaped commons on light, balanced tackle is one of life's greatest pleasures and I envy your access to such a water.

The wildie debate has run long and in great detail on here before. Kevin Clifford (an all time great and scientific carp angler of great repute) claims that there are no longer any genuine wildies in the UK.

Welsh wild carp and wildie




West country wildies






This wildie (5lb) turned up in a Gloucestershire estate lake stocked with king carp. It fought unbelievably hard.
Note: rounded shoulders, lack of hump and small mouth with short barbules.

All very strange , the old chap who has the lake on his farm ,says , it has never been stocked with fish ,his grandfather fished it for eels in the 1930's-40's
get very cross because he would catch these carp at night ,they were used to feed the pigs !! or sometimes eat them .
just got off the phone to him , he also says it's 15' in the deep bit , to be fair , l only looked at the bit of the lake l could get too through the vegetation
but will ,go there when l can.
maybe these are the young fish of MONSTERS ,

You could find that the fish were not stocked but found their way there by other means. This could include flooded streams and rivers. If there are none nearby, possibly carried inadvertently as eggs by something like a heron. I've heard lots of stories of fish appearing in lakes where they weren't stocked. Our club lake now holds an increasing stock of perch which were not present when the lake was created, nor have they been stocked. However, the lake is regularly visited by geese, herons and other birds. Maybe a possibility.

I have gudgeon and roach in my garden that I never stocked. They appeared as young fry one year and it had probably been 5 or 6 years prior to that the last time I had ever introduced any plant life or whatever to it.
I didn't want to disappoint but they certainly don't look like the last wildies I caught in the 80's before the final ones in the water succumbed to old age.
There are a lot of almost wildie looking fish around though that fight like hell compared to modern strains of an equivalent size. I enjoy catching these fish myself. In fact in this particular water the carp leap whilst being played. In my 42 years of catching carp I had only previously had 2 other carp leap whilst being fought. These ones are truly wild when hooked but not wildies.