“Stop the snobbery over our record lists” - Des Taylor

Angling’s never been the most organised of sports, and even after 50 years of doing it there are still things about it that really confuse me. 

Take our rod-caught record list. On it we have pumpkinseed, golden orfe, brown goldfish and bitterling. All these are from overseas and about as non-native as you can get, but new records for these species can still be accepted. Yet Wels catfish and grass carp, which have been here at least as long and in some cases far longer, are treated very differently. The records for both are frozen, and no further record claims will be accepted. Does that make sense?

I love fishing for catfish – they’re great sport

I know lots of serious anglers who spend thousands of hours trying to catch catfish and grass carp and have landed numerous fish over the frozen record – and yet neither the fish nor their captors get any recognition. I don’t know anyone who intentionally fishes for pumpkinseed and the other foreign imports. I suspect that any future record contenders will have been caught accidentally, yet these captures will be officially recognised.

There’s only a handful of anglers – me included! – who seriously fish for golden orfe, and yet these are also active on the record list. To add to the stupidity, that list includes zander, so why are the EA and many angling clubs still trying to eradicate the species from their waters? You couldn’t make it up.

I love fishing for cats. They’re a great sporting fish, and even though I know some have been stocked at huge weights I know of others of 100lb or more that have grown on from doubles.

Let’s draw a line under what’s happened in the past. These fish are here to stay, so let’s accept their presence and their right to a place on the record lists.

Exactly the same can be said of grass carp. Grassies are beautiful fish, and the big ones some of us are targeting in this country should get due recognition.

And while I’m at it, why zander are still being removed from some waters I have no idea. You only need to look at the Lower Severn at Upton to see that a healthy head of big zeds can live in harmony with the silverfish. Anyway, many specimen predator anglers in this country now rate a big zander as highly as a big pike, and rightly so.

This 18lb 11oz zander from the River Severn is as much a prize as a big pike

I think we should just revert to the original rules governing any record fish, which are that it has to be caught by fair means on rod and line. For me that’s it. Whether it’s been living in a wild water and never been fished for, or stocked the day before capture, it still has to be caught!

There’ll always be the knockers who try to devalue record fish. We need to be very careful we don’t allow the coarse fishing record list to become the same as that of the game world, where we have ‘wild’, ‘natural’ and even ‘cultivated’ records, and where many records, for whatever reason, have been frozen out until further notice.

Too many fish are being caught at the moment that are being lost to angling history, and that’s not good at all. 

This 21lb 2oz trout was taken the day after it had been stocked, but I still had to catch it