ARTHUR’S ARCHIVES Inside fishing history
Keith takes a look back in time to ask why the size of specimen tench has rocketed
“Even Dick Walker had a tench personal best of just 5lb 14oz”
WHILE some anglers are quick to point the finger at ‘foreign’ carp and ‘wrong-’uns’ when outrageously large fish are caught, there are two species that have increased in size even more than carp but are definitely native – bream and tench. Let’s look at tincas.
Until 1963 the British tench record had stood at 8lb 8oz for 13 years, and the previous record was barely 7lb! Anglers believed there were 10lb tench to be caught, but nobody had ever achieved the feat. Even the great Dick Walker, one of the ultimate big-fish catchers of the day and an ardent tench enthusiast, had a personal best of just 5lb 14oz. Expert Maurice Ingham’s take on the subject cited various reasons – that big tench were vastly outnumbered by small ones; that big tench rarely left their weedbed habitats; they conducted most of their activity at night and they could survive happily without anglers’ bait by eating ‘minute vegetable matter’ throughout their lives; and finally, big tench were too strong for most anglers’ tackle.
So why has the official record jumped by nearly 80 per cent in less than 60 years, far more than with any other native species?
The 10lb barrier was first breached in 1975 but in 1981 things started to happen with the remarkable Alan Wilson, who virtually lived on the Tring Reservoirs, catching a tench of 12lb 8oz 11dr from Wilstone. Could it be that the reservoir’s catfish had thinned out the tench population? That would give credence to Maurice Ingham’s first theory.
Then – and this is my theory – along came boilies. Phil Goriah blew the thing apart in 1987 with a fish of 14lb 3oz from Wraysbury, by then a big carp water with lots of bait going in for not many carp. The top 50 tench list of all time contains the names of many well-known carpers with tench from wellknown carp waters, so I think that carp have inadvertently been responsible for the current crop of huge red-eyed monsters.
My dream as a teenager was to catch a ‘four’. The equivalent today would be a ‘double’… a feat considered impossible when I was that young man.