ABOUT TIME TOO!

Five months after Dean Fletcher caught a 68lb 1oz carp, ‘The Parrot’ has been ratified as a record. But it took too long, he says...

HE British Record T Fish Committee has ratified the country’s first new carp record in eight years – and says it’s doing all it can to speed up future claims. Dean Fletcher has been presented with a certificate to confirm his capture of the Parrot at 68lb 1oz, eclipsing Oz Holness’s 67lb 8oz record set in August 2008. However, Dean told Angling Times the five-month wait between landing the fish and having it confirmed as the record was “absolute rubbish”. The Berkshire greengrocer said: “The fish has been caught three times since I had it, and I was just lucky that I took it at its peak weight. If I’d caught it at a record weight in November rather than January I could be the official record-holder but someone might already have beaten it. It makes sense to verify the record as soon as possible, especially with carp, that can fluctuate in weight.”

Dean submitted his record claim within days of catching the Wasing Estate mirror and got his scales officially checked less than a fortnight later, but the British Record Fish Committee meets only twice a year to rubber stamp new records.

He said: “I think it’s absolute rubbish. They said it was up to me to get the scales verified and they would get the stuff done as quickly as possible, but then said they wouldn’t be having a meeting until June.

“It doesn’t take too much to get a few people in a room one evening. I think the record should

be confirmed as soon as the scales are verified.”

They said: Mike Heylin (right), chairman of the BRFC, said he sympathised with the frustrations but said that committee members come from all over Britain and cannot be brought together every time there is a new claim.

“We were really pleased to approve this record as it’s a new fish after Two Tone had bounced in and out of the records,” said Mike.

“In this instance, the freshwater sub-committee communicates electronically so there

was a provisional record within a

couple of weeks before the whole committee met to make it official. It used to be all done by post, and could take forever.” Mike said scales checks caused most delays and cited the dwindling number of councils offering the service, the use of metric weights to test imperial scales and the frequent failure of officials to follow the BRFC’s strict procedures as key factors. He added: “If I could find another way of doing it I’d bite the hand off the person who offered it. We are getting the claim process to where we want it to be, with a provisional record accepted within two or three weeks.”