Midwinter Thoughts

As the great thinker H.P. Baxxter once put it - "The chase...is better than the catch." For some people out there, it seems that the catch is all there is to carp fishing. I find this philosophy quite blasé. As I said in my earlier blog, the fish after all, are just fish.

I think we all enjoy hearing good stories. That's why we watch movies and read books. Even our lives can be seen as a story, a lifelong journey that could be written as a book (or several). Anyway, there's little point in measuring life by numbers, like annual income, weight, height or number of children. The only people interested in those facts are statisticians.

I am quite sad to see that carp fishing is heading strongly to plain statistics. I prefer stories to numbers. So if I hear a fishes weight before hearing the story behind it, I am not impressed at all. And if you catch the monster of the day-ticket lake, make sure you can tell a story about it. It's sad if the only thing worth mentioning about catching a monster fish is that last time "Betty" (the fat lady carp) was caught, she weighted 2 kilos less. It's not a story, or at least a story to be told to future generations of angling.

Be nice, and catch experiences rather than PBs. If you have a good story, you can always write a nice article or even a book someday!

Oh, and here's an old picture, a real blast from the past. My biggest carp caught on sweetcorn. Too bad I had to stop fishing for carp that autumn, I had a MSc thesis to write... And yes, there's a story behind that carp. Someday hopefully, I can find the time to tell the story.

A nice common caught from a lake somewhere quite close to the arctic circle...