The Loss of a known common- Patch
With cold weather and a hard frost, all of our lakes froze completely over for a good week, unfortunately when the ice melted and Spencer found a rather large common dead in winter bay on Leacroft pool, a few of the bailiff team attended and the fish was weighed and buried, thinking it was the big common as the fish weighed 46 pound (we understand that fish weigh more when dead as they take on water). However, the next day Spencer went to Leacroft dug the fish up and scanned the fish for chip.
Sean (who holds all the chip records) confirmed it was not the big common it was a fish known as patch, named by Adam a member who first caught the fish at over 30 pound. We believe this fish had only two known captures, it was a Ed Matthews common stocked in 2017 at 17 pound and reaching mid thirties at its last capture. Still a real loss to the club as a 30 pound fish to replace would cost a lot of money, but what it does show is stocking smaller fish and letting them grow can be as just as effective! This also shows the importance of chipping fish if you catch a fish over 30 pound please contact the team so we scan and chip the fish if needed.