The current World Record Mirror and Common Carp.

Are you looking for the 2008 World record Mirror? if so click here

Or the World Record Common Carp? if so click here


If you read my last post you will know that The world record article I wrote got allot of readers. Whilst I was exploring all the different web sites that linked up to my story, as they published the news of the capture to their readers, I noticed a few errors, wrong weights and dates etc, so I just wanted to clarify the current record situation for Mirror and Common.

World Record Mirror Carp 38.4KG (84lb 8oz)

Gary Hagues - Fishing the Rainbow Lake in France landed a world record mirror carp of 87lb 2oz to beat the previous record by Pete Fitzsimmons (84lb 8 oz) which had stood for just three weeks.
This was a repeat capture for Gary as he had caught the fish the year before from the same swim at a weight of 83lb 8oz.

Gary with his 2005 capture of the record

World Record Common Carp

New World record Common Carp captured by Dieter Markus Stein on the 17th December 2006 at 38.15kg (83.93 lbs)
Dieter was fishing with the new Vpop white popups glugged in Carptrak amino dip, both from Imperial Baits.

More World Record Fish?

World record Common Carp gets 12,000 hits this month

After riding my first long tail wave it´s left me hooked on blogging.

The evening of January 8th 2007 saw me posting an article on the recently captured New World Record common Carp, a fine specimen of 38.15 kg (83.93 lbs) - see that post here.


Nothing much happened for a week as you can see from the graph taken from my Google analytics account, then on the 15th, off it went like a true screamer!

The first couple of big traffic sites to link to the post are pretty cool; neatorama and uniquedaily - both kind of daily news sites with a twist.
I couldn't believe my eyes as the figures kept going up.
I only started blogging in October and regular readers of catsncarp will know I started it prior to a big fishing trip to the Ebro - I was accustomed to 20-30 unique visitors a day.

Catsncarp hit a visitor high of 2,533 on Wednesday17th then slowly declined throughout the week. I was just thinking of perhaps going to bed before sunup and getting some much needed sleep, when whollop - the Japanese moved in.
elog-ch linked to the post and bingo I´m back up over a 1000 unique a day. Another couple of all nighters saw me trying to back link instantaneously as the Japanese forums all picked up on it with the biggest traffic coming from jyouhouya3







So as I sit here, knackered, hyped and frazzled but very happy with my performance and my newly tested ability with all the blogging tools Ive been setting up over these last few months, what conclusions can I draw from this very special little long tail wave?



From a cultural point of view; why are the Japanese so interested in the European Carp record? My guess would be that they are fanatical breeders of the Koi carp, a distant strain from our common carp, and secondly, they love eating Carp, its a delicacy in Japan.
When you think about that it´s a little bit scary.
Imagine loads of Japanese business men offering huge sums of money to Ninja fisherman to come over and Ninja fish Cassien or Raduta, I mean these guys will pay $50,ooo+ for a piece of Tuna. Please no!

and from a blogging point of view; what have I learned?




Without doubt MyBlogLog stats were the fastest way to see who had linked to my story, Technorati worked well but it was slow, only giving me the links after a day or so, with MyBlog Log I was getting live figures and could practically back link minutes after the story had been posted.
I also used Icerocket (free) for the first time and that threw up a few links that had escaped me somehow with Technorati (free) and MyBlogLog. (paid)
To be fair to Feedburner I didn't use their paid service on catsncarp, but I am using the paid service on my newest blog Jooster, which is getting good traffic at the moment, but I still don't think it comes close to MyBlogLog.

So I would like to say thank you to everyone thats helped me, from fellow bloggers like, DaveO Andy and Paco, .
To all the great companies involved in Web 2.0 and making it so easy for us to get out there and blog - its been a ride, but now I´m going to bed so for the love of big Carp - DONT link to this post.

Hanford Catfish declared new species

What was once thought a radiation-provoked freak of nature has now been declared a distinct species by the National Academy of Sciences. Says one NAoS spokesman:

"We had previously believed this to be a sterile mutation, but have since discovered that - if the female is absolutely swimming in beer - mating and reproduction are theoretically possible...."


Thanks to KDC for some beautiful PS skills.

Read the story of how this catfish was captured here.

The old and the new world record common carp

Here is a twango slide show of 10 photos, 5 of the old World record common Carp caught by Christian Finkelde on 25th of October 2005 and weighing 34.65 kg (76.7lbs)
and the new World record Common Carp captured by Dieter Markus Stein on the 17th December 2006 at 38.15 (83.93) both were caught from waters in Germany. Could they be the same fish? comments appreciated.




More world records? click here.

New World Record Common Carp at 38.15kg

Want to see the current World Record Carp? - click here

The world record common Carp was hooked and landed on December the 17th 2006 by Dieter Markus Stein, fishing a German water.




The weigh in of the fish was witnessed by 14 different people from local Carp fishing clubs.




Dieter had targeted this fish as his target for 2007 but a short trip to the water gave him this stunning common as an early Christmas present.





Dieter was fishing with the new Vpop popups in white glugged in Carptrak amino dip, both from Imperial Baits.












Thanks to carp GPS, fish madrid, carpones and imperial baits.


Would you like to see photos and videos of the World Record Mirror Carp?

What happens when you get the camera angle just right?

Thought these were worth sharing....

Thanks to Ryan Wagner for the link.

A broken resolution and photo shop antics

I had made a new year resolution to go fishing, sometime after Christmas and through the New Year, but somewhere in between all the feasting and fun a plan started to form and the fishing trip was put to the side.

I think the impetuous of the plan came from a phone call around the 29th of December. The insurance company wanted to book an appointment for the plasterer and painter to come in and fix up my cellar, flooded the month before in torrential rain, whilst I was flooded out in my Bivvy on the Ebro. Read that story here.

I had recently gutted the damp cellar and chucked out all my water ruined possessions in what turned out to be a rather depressing few days work. The cellar is accessed from my back garden patio, down a set of twisting stairs and through a door into an area of around 3 meters by 4. Perhaps seeing the cellar empty for the first time germinated the seed that grew swiftly over the next couple of days into a short idea and finally now on the 5th of January, two insurance paid workmen are plastering and painting my project into reality.

An Underground Photo Studio, or the Studio, as I hope I will fondly call it in the near future as I snap away at another batch of items ready for uploading to eBay.

For over a year now I had realized that my amateurish photo skills and almost complete ignorance in the Photoshop department were holding me back. So whilst I can hear the scrape of plaster applied to brick and the reassuring noises of workmen creating, I'm going to do a bit of surfing and see if I can learn some new photo editing tricks.

This video is inspirational.