June 22nd/23rd
Why did I start this? Looking back through diaries from previous years, it soon becomes apparent that the period around the full moon is particularly poor for night fishing. Coupled with a still night and high air pressure, there is probably more chance of catching a carp on the local football pitch. So why did I go? One reason is that a week earlier, a new Nene record carp of 41lbs 10ozs had been caught only a few miles away. My chosen venue was the short stretch of the Nene opposite the camp site at Yarwell; yet again, the night passed without incident.
There are numerous gravel pits throughout the Nene valley, many of which were completely inundated by the river during the floods of recent years. Some of the stocks held in these places have been legal imports of large continental carp, although recent findings of very large dead carp, dumped in the river at Ringstead, suggest that there is also a thriving trade in fish smuggled in by other means. These carp have been brought in by ruthless profiteers, who, by ignoring all disease checks, have introduced the deadly SVC virus, thereby wiping out several fisheries. Sadly, there are commercial fishery owners who seem only to eager to take the risk of knowingly buying these fish. They know that many anglers who are willing to pay elevated ticket prices to beat their personal best, regardless of its provenance, ignoring the relative merit of catching one of these naïve and disorientated fish.
Luckily for the native Nene stocks, SVC does not survive easily in running water and no river fish have yet been reported to have suffered from the disease. The new Nene record carp was of the fully scaled common variety, whereas many of the French imports are more likely to be the partially scaled mirror carp. Although continental carp are genetically identical to the British strains, certain varieties are relatively rare in British waters. There are continental strains with mouths which seem to extend further than those of their British counterparts; another recent strain has a distinctive humped back, which is also a possible indicator of an imported fish. Of course, neither of these signs are conclusive, but it is now possible to prove the origin of a suspect fish by means of a DNA test. If these continental imports breed amongst themselves in this country though, future tests of this nature would obviously be inconclusive.
So was the Nene fish an escapee? It turns out that it was the same fish that was caught twice last year, supposedly at weights of 38lbs and 34lbs. On those occasions it was unusually pale in appearance, but has now reverted to the colour of the native fish. It seems unlikely that a fish descended from the original stocking in the early 1960s could have reached this weight, as you would then expect a great many other fish of a similar size. As it is, thirty pound Nene carp are a great rarity, although twenty pounders are common enough, being usually dark, brassy-brown, thick bodied fish. The really huge Nene carp of recent years seem to exist in very small, highly localised groups, usually in close proximity to a stillwater carp fishery. A ghost koi that I caught from Sutton was certainly a newcomer, but I wonder how the bright orange ten pounder I spotted came to be in the Welland.