Snape wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2017 4:23 pm
Jardine wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2017 4:16 pm
Snape wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2017 8:41 am
Jardine wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2017 6:16 am
Nice fishing Gurn, was just wondering whether the fish you caught were all commons or are there some mirrors or leathers being caught?
It seems that the fish are reverting back to fully scaled fish, is this the case?
Best regards
Mem
Mem, The fish in Redmire have been reverting to commons for a while and in the last couple of decades fewer mirrors and nearly no leathers were caught. One of Les's plans was to reintroduce mirrors and leathers by having Redmire fish bred at Sparsholt college and the mirrors and leathers selected and reintroduced. About 7 years ago around 30 small fish were released into the pool.
However due to the problem with ghost carp in the pool which have been there for at least 10 years any fish which do not pre-date their introduction may need removing.
Carp genetics is interesting stuff and I wrote a piece explaining it and why reversion occurs some years ago here
viewtopic.php?f=70&t=355&p=2180
Thank you for the piece on carp reversion Nigel, you must have put a lot of time into it.
Any idea what the biggest mirror or leather carp in Redmire weighs?
Best regards
Mem
The biggest mirror to have come out in recent years (although not official, but via a reliable source) is the big linear which was apparently 42lb a few years ago. Thought by many to have been Dick Weale's fish but not so as revealed by JPC here
viewtopic.php?f=70&t=14425&p=321532
Interesting thread, and a great piece on carp reversion by Snape, thank you. However my understanding of the original stocking was that Donald Leney stated that all the fingerlings stocked were either mirrors or leathers, no commons. Leney believing that Walkers fish was one of an early spawning by the original stocking. Kevin Clifford doubted that all the fingerlings were mirrors or leathers and questioned Leney on the subject. After several discussions Leney conceded that maybe a few commons were in the original stocking and possibly Walkers fish may have been an original. So pretty sure it wasn't a 50/50 stocking. The other statement I would doubt is that "a few lovely original mirrors" are still swimming in the pool, I would think they died out many years ago.
The fact that that the fish spawned in the lake are reverting to commons is something that has been happening for many years, certainly long before I first fished there. What is interesting is that back in the seventies you could net a bunch of weed in high Summer and find twenty or thirty tiny carp in it, and it would often be an even mix of mirrors and commons but it seemed that hardly any of the little mirrors survived the upcoming winter whereas quite a few of the commons did !
During the years I fished there we reckoned the mix of the twenty pound plus fish was about 60/40 in favour of the commons to the mirrors and leathers (most of the so called leathers did have the odd scale or two, only the "nude leather" was devoid of any scales). However the smaller, under twenty pound fish seemed to favour the commons at a rate of ten to one, it was very rare for a small mirror to be caught.
In the early eighties most of us in the syndicate reckoned the Pool held around thirty five twenty pound plus fish and perhaps a similar number of smaller fish (quite a few had been removed and sold to various parties over a number of years, with the owners permission and with the appropriate paperwork).
Sadly towards the end of the syndicates control and over the following two years several known twenty pound plus mirrors and commons "disappeared" from the Pool and found their way into other waters, best I say no more.
Going back to the smaller fish, they seemed to spend a great deal of their time feeding in the shallows, I and my predecessors always tried to dissuade new members from fishing for them, they were (realitivly) easy to catch and we didn't want them damaged or made any more spooked than they already were. Obviously if the bigger fish ventured to the shallows to feed then that was different. On a few recent visits nothing seems to have changed and old habits die hard and I still won't fish the shallows for the smaller fish, just doesn't seem right.
As to what the pool holds now I wouldn't like to say, last year we saw several ghosties and a lot of small fish, this year (this last week) we saw very little because the Pool was so coloured, very dark green, algae bloom, yet we still caught.
If it does hold a forty pound mirror and a four foot long common, great, but I struggle to accept it I'm afraid, but I would love to be proved wrong.
