New record barbel may be related to 1970s Ouse stocks - Keith Arthur

That new record barbel snuck in under the radar didn’t it! Despite many predicting the old Great Ouse fish would be dethroned, I shouldn’t think many would have guessed the new title holder would have come from a ‘southern river’ in which barbel are not indigenous!

Some were introduced by the National Rivers Authority, predecessors of the Environment Agency, in the late 1960s/early 1970s when they were stocked - or re-stocked in many rivers where they’d either disappeared or never been.

Who knows, it may have been related to the Great Ouse specimens responsible for basically re-writing the record books.

I believe fish live for far longer than the years they are attributed with: big bream in the Thames for example. I’m certain the ever decreasing numbers of bream in the lower and tidal river were spawned in the very early 1970s. If I find another dead spawning casualty washed up by the tide in spring I may remove a scale or two and get an estimate from someone with a microscope.