The Traditional Fisherman's Forum

Fishing the shallows yesterday (thursday) I had some of the larger redmire fish mooching about and picking up scraps of bait. There was one that I couldn't see clearly due to pool being muddy, that looked pretty big. It was staying down in the water and was always on the outside of groups of fish that had there heads down. At this point rob fox turned up to say hello. I told him that there was a pretty big one out there and at that point it crused past higher in the water Mine and Rob's eyes popped. At a conservative guess I'd say very high thirty, rob said easily 40+ and he's far longer in tooth than i!! It was around 3 and a half feet long give or take and utterly incredible. Rob and I watched it in the rain for half an hour till rob left and I stayed there behind my rod for three hours, seeing it circle every 5-10 minutes. In the many hours over the past 4 years I have spent staring in redmires waters I have only seen fish that are high twenties and l thirties, and was beginning to doubt the tails of 'the long common'. Now I know that they are true. Doubt me if you want, it's in there. And I did cast for it (a fame cast as rob called it). The bait landed 5 foot in it's path.... And was ignored. It did pick up some free offerings after a lot of dallying (about an hour dissing out one patch I recon) but there is no way that an angler will catch it by normal means. I'll tell you more at a later date and gateleaner- elaborate please.

I believe you Sin mate, I hope I get to at least see it as well. :thumb:

Was it a common and not a big linear?
Did Rob think it was the long common or another unknown big fish?
Very exciting!

Ask rob! I haven't seen it before. I thought originally that it was a fish I saw twice in the close season, but when it came up in the water it dwarfed it. It was a common so not the big lin. Whether It was the long common or not I don't know. It wasn't thin like the long common is described as. After rob went it came down the pool towards me and I saw how wide it was. It was a big fish.

Maybe you should have lobbed out a gudgeon deadbait!
Emailing Rob for info now!

It took it over an hour to pick up about two or three freebies and would not go near my float, but swam over my bottom bait a few times... With out stopping. I hope I see it again when The water is clear so I can be sure of the size.I'm not the best at guessing length, but it us irrelevant in this situation-it utterly dwarfed fish around it- the largest being mid to high twenties. I say a high thirty at the very least in that it is definitely that big and I'm certain much larger. Although not 'round' it had a considerable girth but importantly did not look fat-in fact it appeared rather streamlined...but the water was muddy so who knows. Another thing I noticed was that from the top view anyway it looked in really top condition.

Did it have my name on it Sin.

I do wonder if it was this beauty - 7 years on and quite a few pounds heavier than the 32lbs here.
http://www.redmirepool.biz/gallery/main ... itemId=279

Snape wrote:I do wonder if it was this beauty - 7 years on and quite a few pounds heavier than the 32lbs here.
http://www.redmirepool.biz/gallery/main ... itemId=279

Maybe. But this one was longer.

I feel sure that there are carp in Redmire that feed to a large extent off the gudgeon and the energy density of troughing gonks would allow a fish to grow to huge proportions. It could lie at the bottom of the central channel hoovering up gudgeon whenever it felt peckish and never having to even look at an angler's bait.
I once had a tropical fish tank and put an assortment of fish in it which included little tetras and some larger fish. I also put in 2 algae eating bottom feeders which, I was told, would help keep it all clean. They looked a bit like barbel. I noticed that after a few months one of them had grown to twice the size of the other and then three times bigger! At the same time the number of tetras diminished greatly. These were not carnivorous fish but presumably sucked up the odd tetra and developed a taste for them. By the end the big one was the size of a fat gudgeon while its companion was like a small minnow. Surely this happens in nature too esp as carp are omnivorous.