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Its amazing - the weight of expectation when - at the end of the exercise - the sides of the net raised on stakes a foot above the water level - and its time to start scooping out the fish that are to be returned whence they came . . .
It must have been a reasonably succesful sweep as there were lots of sizeable carp . Ed Brown was really impressed at how stocky and rounded they were for their length - commenting that Tom & I really ought to get down in the water and hold a few - but that was not really practical (in fact - it would have been totally impossible for me - with my next op only weeks away ).
They managed to capture , I would say over 50 good carp, doubles, high doubles - and probably 6 fish over 20lbs, and - three or four in their mid-twenties. Ed commented without-prompting that on the basis of their combined health & shape - a number of the fish he handled would be very likely soon - at thirty pounds . . . . which was great to hear.
I got some of the above on video - but ran out of tape at the critical point towards the end when the better ones seemed to come out - having picked up the video on the off chance as I was going out . Unfortunately - I had to get the footage on the end of my last holiday video.
Personally - I was most impressed with the size and health of the Mirrors & Ghost Commons - and it was great to see the fish we did manage to get in the net this time round. . I didn’t really expect to see more than a few - as when the EA netted - I would say that we saw less than a dozen decent carp - biggest - perhaps maybe 15 lbs in weight. from memory . . .
Unfortunately - you just cannot ask the guys to pause while you count and photograph every fish - as they are particularly concerned at getting the big fish away from of the smaller ones that they are taking away to save aquashing them - but I did get a few minutes of decent footage at least - which I will check the quality of - and try to process so you can see some of the action.
At about 11.30 a.m. Dave Sanford turned up to see what was entailed in the exercise - but by then he had missed all the big carp - which had gone back in about 15 mins earlier.
At least he was going to be able to witness the more important side of the exercise - “seeing what we were to be getting rid of “ - the reason we were here !
Eventually - after a stop for tea and a sarni - and with the tripod scales set up over the lake - the two holding nets were floated- from Peg 9 to Peg 5 - and with oxygen bubbling through the holding tanks on the back of the pick-up, and a relay team set up to get the fish over the fence - the weighing in began.
In Carrying Nets of about 25 kgs in weight per time ( every one of them weighed individually ) Dave kept a written tally, and the two floating holding nets ( about 4ft x 2ft & 10ft deep ) were slowly emptied.
Some 35 full Carry-Nets were used - an a running total came to 892lbs of mixed white fish in all.- most under 1lb in weight. There were some skimmers, and hybrids OVER 1lb and a few bream as much as 3-4lb - but these only amounted to “40 or 50 fish in total”.
Several 1-1/2lb roach were caught and put back together with some Perch of the same calibre. There were hardly any Tench at all but the netsman said that was fairly typical.
What went was - Roach, Rudd, Crucians Crucian Revert, Gudgeon. Perch in their thousands . . . all hungry and greedy little mouths capable of radically reducing the available food supply for our target specimen carp.. . .
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