Well Jimmy - most of the stuff is in the Redmire Carp book, where Maddocks said he had "no doubt that Redmire is finished as Britain's premier carp water..." Kevin Clifford also writes that, during the 1976 drought, when not a great deal of angling was going on, he spent time fish-spotting up trees and saw now carp larger than the "38", the fish that became "The Bishop" a few years later. I remember a good Chris Ball article too, on the Redmire monsters, where Kevin's views were discussed. Kevin's argument, as I recall, is that a large fish in a dwindling pool would need at least as much oxygen as a smaller carp, probably more. If so, why were no really outsized fish seen in 1976? In a way, both Yates and Clifford were right - the largest carp in the pool in 1980 may have been The Bishop, and Yates of course landed it as a new record and the UK's first fifty pounder!JimmyBobkin wrote:tell me more about this?FarliesBirthday wrote:Maddocks was saying there was nothing big in Redmire, Kevin Clifford said there was no record in Redmire, based on his 1976 drought year observations...the capture of the Bishop really was a game changer for Redmire. I remember my delight as a schoolboy, hearing the news. It put Redmire back on the map and it was, once again, the place of dreams for many anglers.Julian wrote:..... On the other hand if CY hadn't caught the Bishop in 1980 on cane rod, vintage reel and simple method and bait, would interest in Redmire have dwindled? and more to the point would interest in vintage tackle and simple methods for carp ever have developed ,and therefore would this forum exist today
All that, of course, is a very long time ago, and I'm still to fish the pool! Perhaps next year...
I know folks say you should fish Redmire for the atmopshere, but I still have fantasies about hooking the fabled big linear, or perhaps that huge common which St John saw last year...
On the other hand, I'd probably blank!
Now, of course, we are entering the debate about the Redmire Monsters, and I leave that to folks who have fished the pool!
As for my schoolboy memories - well, some of the more pessimistic views on Redmire reached the Angling Times etc, as I recall, prior to Yates' record, and some of my fishing friends took these opinions on board and absolutely believed those views. When Yates caught the Bishop, they were amazed. I remember a group of us looking at the Angling Times report, by the school's tennis courts... I was 15 then! Times flies.