SO MANY MORE HAPPY RETURNS

The days of record fish ending up stuffed in glass cases are over – and I’ll drink to that!

THE adoption of almost total catch-and-release has been crucial.

Just imagine the impact if every fish caught was taken either as a trophy, for the pot, to put on the garden as fertiliser, or just because you could!

Quite often in his column the man many regard as an angling saint, Dick Walker, would feature recipes. I remember the perch one particularly, and he spoke about eating a chub as like “...chewing cotton wool stuffed with needles”.

Think about carp records and you’ll probably not realise that the first record recapture was ‘Mary’ from Wraysbury, first caught at a weight bigger than the then record – Chris Yates’ 1980 fish from Redmire – in 1996 by Terry Hearn.

All the old record fish are in glass cases somewhere or other.

Now we all know where the current record fish live!

Here’s one ‘old’ record that was returned – Chris Yates and The Bishop at 51lb 8oz.