Big Carp Magazine Big Carp 234 Back Issue

Merry Christmas to all our readers!

As we approach Christmas and river carp fishing is all but finished for another year but for the hardened few who will stick it out through the cold weather, I thought it was a good opportunity to look back over some of this year’s river highlights in this, the second of our River Carping Special Issues. It's been a fascinating year for me as records were broken with some extraordinary catches. More and more carp anglers sought their first river carp and a taste of what carp fishing used to be like before every carp was named and there was always an element of the unknown when you went fishing.

After an uneventful start other than reports of a few Thames thirties being banked by some of our regular writers, it was only a little later that I received news of a new river record. This time the River Lea had been smashed by over two pounds. At first I thought it must be the same fish that Terry Hearn had targeted. A chapter in our river carping book featured a partial linear at 42lbs, the largest River Lea carp on record, but when I finally received the photos it was not that fish but a totally new almost leather, very deep in frame and almost 45lbs in weight! We are very lucky to have the exclusive on this capture, as Simon Scott has not published his catch anywhere else. Unbelievably this was Simon’s first ever river carp!