Time to enjoy a little ego trip!
What a wealth
of different species of fish anglers have to seek out from freshwater fish in
the British isles alone, not counting sea fish.
As an all round angler for a great many years I have counted my own score with
different fish and allowing for a few unusual species, I was surprised to find
that I had caught no less than 40 different kinds of fish from British freshwaters.
There are the usual species including barbel, carp (of various kinds) crucian
carp, chub, dace, eels, perch, pike, roach, rudd, tench, zander, plus hybrids
including roach, rudd and roach/bream hybrids.
Then the game fish, brown trout, rainbow trout, arctic char, American brook trout,
hybrid brook trout, rainbows, sea trout, salmon, landlocked salmon and grayling.
Also golden varieties of rudd, orfe, trench, golden rainbows and blue rainbows,
to say nothing of the small fry species like gudgeon, loach, bullheads, minnows,
sticklebacks, ruffe and bleak.
Some freak fish too such as a foul hooked lamprey, and fish from rivers that have
swum up from the sea including flounders and dabs and mullet.
Add in a few puzzling fish that were probably obscure hybrids and it adds up to
a surprising list.
Readers might like to compile their own list of species caught just to enjoy a
little ego trip.
And all this without counting the many kinds of fish that you and I have probably
caught from the sea.
To make things even more complicated try counting how many fish you have landed
that weighed at least half of the record weight for that species.
More than a few, considering the huge weights being reached nowadays, and you
will have cause to feel very proud.