British Canal Records - The New Canal Royalty

*Please note, records have been updated in the light of information received after publication

Just recently I've trawled the Internet in search of the largest specimens of the fifteen main coarse species ever caught from the British Canal system. It has been both a labour of love, and a labour of utter frustration! For a time, many lucky people are going to be British record holders without knowing it...

I hold two records myself! For both roach and tench, because I simply cannot find any reliable reports, anywhere, that document any larger than mine. Of course they aren't the biggest ever, a 2lb roach and a 6lb tench simply must have been caught in a canal, even recently, but if they have, then I can't find them.

Now I've done this, because I see that canals are not recognised as legitimate specimen fish venues, and that is entirely because there are no reliable records kept, and therefore there are no targets to chuck a bait at. Every single large fish caught from a canal disappears into the black hole of the British Record Fish List, because none are never quite so big as to worry any of them.

The British system of record keeping for record fish is so narrowly focussed upon the biggest ever caught anywhere, that the biggest caught somewhere particular, is completely glossed over. Only those really interested in certain species, the Tenchfishers club, Barbel Fishing World forum, and carp fanatics too, keep extensive and useful records of the biggest fish caught from particular places. The Tenchfishers, for instance, keep a list of the 50 largest tench ever caught, which is a very useful resource, and the BFW keeps lists of individual river records, which is also, very useful. However, neither have any record whatsoever of canal fish.

So for my purposes, when compiling a list of the largest canal specimens, they yielded no information whatsoever, because no canal tench enters the top 50 list for tench, and the barbel that have been caught from canals have been inexplicably missed out, and no records kept for them.

Luckily, The Specialist Angler's Alliance keep top ten lists of lots of species. And that is a credit to them, for that's where I found the best eel. However, they keep no lists for either crucian or silver bream, which is odd, but true. And, the carp and barbel lists are little use as they seem to be listing serial recaptures from the same strict localities.

The BRFC is the worst offender though. They are the official keepers of the crown jewels, but unfortunately, every time a new claim to the crown is made, and in time, plonked on a lucky angler's bonce, the old crown is dumped in the bin like some tacky tiara, and carted away to landfill never to be seen again. The BRFC don't even have their own website, which is an appalling state of affairs. For gawds sake, they only have a guest page or two on the Angling Trust website, and there only allow us to download the current records in pdf format, but have no historical records to speak of, or if they do, then no publicly available archive that might be useful to researchers.

They should, in this day and age, be keeping extensive records of all the largest specimens caught in individual river catchments, because that is important scientific evidence for the health of the fisheries in those catchments. Personally I think the overall record list is all but redundant, and firmly believe that the important records should be those kept by river catchment, including all the lakes and ponds and drains within them. It makes perfect sense to see fishing in catchment terms, because ultimately, all water courses and bodies within a catchment, are related, one way or the other, and that's because the water that falls from the heavens into the catchment, isn't joined directly to others across the tops of hills and cannot be linked, unless by sea...

The Record fish list even includes fish from Northern Ireland. That's crazy thinking. The only link between Northern Ireland and the British Mainland is a political one. The fish that live over there are simply Irish, not Northern Irish! To their credit, the Irish dissolve the political distinctions between Ireland and Northern Ireland, keep records for fish caught in the entire of Ireland, and don't seek to compete with English, Welsh or Scottish fish either. Presumably that's because they have their heads screwed on, and recognise that the Irish Sea sea presents something of an insurmountable barrier to coarse fish, unless they get there by ship, as did all their roach.

The Scots keep their own records too. But the English don't have any records but the UK records, choosing to keep none that aren't contaminated by fish from across political borders. So, the whole system is in disarray, and it's no wonder that the crowns are somewhat tarnished when a Northern Irish roach has supplanted the true English record set by Ray Clarke on the English Dorset Stour. I mean, we're part of Europe and have been for decades, and that's as much a political union nowadays, as 'The Union' ever was, so if were going to keep records based upon political allegiances, and ignore real geological distinctions, then why not scrap the British Records altogether and subsume them in the European records?

Back to canals. Of course canals do cross catchments, and they are the only waterway that actually can because we built them to do precisely that. They link rivers together in a way that rivers can't achieve on their own, therefore they are a kind of conduit between fish in one catchment and another.

For instance, there's an outfall on The Coventry Canal just around the corner from me that empties into the River Sowe, and another a mile North that empties into a tiny tributary of the River Anker. The Sowe flows into the Warwickshire Avon and then the Severn, the Anker into the Tame and then the Trent. The Severn runs into the Bristol Channel and reaches up into the Welsh hills, and the Trent runs to the North Sea and reaches up into the Peak District. Those two local canal outfalls are the tenuous, but direct water link between one side of the country and the other.

That's where zander got into the Avon, no doubt, and it's how signal crayfish will get there too, and to complicate things further, the Oxford Canal joining the Coventry Canal nearby, joins the Thames and therefore, much of Southern England, to both the Trent and the Severn catchments, hereabouts.

Canals are very interesting watercourses. That they stitch the land together with watery seams that run across both distinct and separate geological divides, and historical political divides too, seems a good reason for a proper list to be put together for them. I think it would be of scientific interest if they were. But it would also be of interest to anglers and give us all something new to aim at.

I can't compare the silver bream I catch from the Coventry canal to those you might catch at Mill Farm in Surrey, because they are entirely unrelated except by dint of their specieshood. However, I can compare my silver bream with yours from almost any canal you care to fish, because the vast majority of our canals are linked together.

The problem is, I can't find any genuinely large canal pike over twenty pounds! The information out there is so garbled, and angler's reports so unreliable, that I've left it open, as I have with dace, grayling, and rudd. The rest are the best I can get. The barbel is decidedly iffy with a weight given in gross pounds, though it's clearly a double-figure fish, and the zander, though pretty damn big, does not look near fourteen pounds to me, and I see the TCF journalist has used some cleverly practiced language to avoid actually backing the claim. Pictures though, are deceiving things, but the chub? Hmmm. Don't know. The picture is so bad I can't tell if it's five pounds, or seven.

Hardly any are verified, and some not even verifiable, except those caught by the blogging community, because their reports are backed up with diary accounts, good pictures, exact weights in pounds and ounces, and a level of honesty, frankness and accountability not found anywhere else, I'm afraid. Not surprisingly, bloggers between them, hold a lot of records because they can be trusted.

Not many will last long though, if I can find better, or you know of better? Till then, those who are newly crowned Royalty of the Canal, enjoy your reigns, while they last!

*Please note, records have been updated in the light of information received after publication