In reply to Post #1
Plenty of stately type homes/estates with Redmire type waters that will never be accessed, some real whoppers in a few I know of so there must be plenty around.
An hour on Google maps always shows a few interesting bits of Blue

I know an old pit in Essex where I used to live that was no fishing which held some really old carp. People used to poach it in early 90's and a few got moved before they they all died (the owners pumped salt water in). My memory is a bit sketchy as it's going back a long time but there were fish to mid/upper 30's in there which were uncaught I believe (which was a massive fish at the time) I always wonder what would have happened if the lake had been left unfished...

In reply to Post #31
Really, many stately homes/estates are now in the hands of the national trust or English heritage and through my work I have access to them. Both of these organisations support the introduction of otters and are anti non indigenous species. Very few original Leney stock fish left and the vast majority that did have them have been restocked with different strains often to the detriment of the leney stock.

In reply to Post #33
Really, what about the ones you dont have access too!! the ones owned by foreign national's, foreign governments and the UK's wealthy and famous.

Bye the way everyone has access to the Nat Trust etc via membership.

But you'd be right about the Nat Trust etc but you never know. Would be nice to see something unknown show up.

In reply to Post #34
Nat trust membership doesn't give access to all they manage. The ones that now belong to rich individuals and organisations may well hold the odd monster but research into them and any stocking records will be the way to go rather than trying to get access. Some of the ones owned by foreign nationals have extremely high security including armed guards. Would any of these people actually be interested in stocking any carp other than ornamentals?

In reply to Post #35
You're right about the armed guards bit and stocking. The place I know that fits that scenario is on the edge of London, the carp were put in long before the current Arab owners turned up. Originally put in to improve water quality for trout. The trout pegged it but the Carp lived on.

Saw a few pictures once of a 40+ common 30 ish years ago, from a private estate with a lake of around 7 acres, lad who showed me was an estate worker none angler, he said there were fish in this lake half as big again but not so nice looking as they didn't have many scales (mirrors) . They had part drained the lake to fix a leak and only took a few pics for a laugh.

One thing to bear in mind is the reintroduction of the otter by fair means or foul would mean a lot of very quiet places would be very easily predated ,and I'm willing to bet a lot of those fish would be killed without anyone knowing about it..I'm talking about stately home type of places..

I see leneys are mentioned a lot ,there were places that Donald distributed his fish from I'm led to believe,and extensive paperwork would have been kept which detailed much of his delivering...Chis Ball and Skeff ,come to mind I'm sure..with this info ,it's not underground info..

All of Mr Leneys fish are of the Galician strain,

I'm lucky to fish a water equally significant to.Bernithian court,no one is entirely sure where the originals came from,other than when the big bypass was built back in the 70s splitting another history water in two..some fish got transfered.

All I can say is Peter Mohan ...! Cypry the carp...

(There's a lot more I know but don't want to bore one and all)
And most likely of no interest to the modern carp fisher,but I find angling history completely fascinating..

In reply to Post #1
What an interesting thread this is.....

I left the UK in 1996 when mystery still existed in a number of accessible waters. The carp were not all monsters of course......

And 25 years on I find myself fishing great big lakes where it is impossible to know the maximum size the carp go to. Access limitations and low angler pressure means that it will probably always be so.

Think if I was back in the UK I might struggle to find all that mystery unless I was very fortunate indeed...

In reply to Post #37
An interesting post.
Obviously there was Donald Leney's stocking notes and paperwork for fish purchases. Didn't that get passed onto Chris Yates?

Then we have the what is now illegal, practice of moving fish to stock new waters, some of these were Leney's, yet there were Italians, Dinks etc.
I know that after very successful spawning years at Redmire some fish were sold onto various waters around the country. Cheshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and I reckon just about every county benefitted from them.

A lake I know very well has fish that were removed from a nature reserve lake and quarry in Suffolk where no fishing was legally allowed. At least one of these has never been banked.

I also know of some fish that were in a garden pond which flooded and got down the stream that flows into the lake. Again at least one of these has been seen but never caught.

In reply to Post #37
Chris yates I am told has leney's stocking records but Chris Ball had them at one time and I have spoken to him a few times and gone on to investigate what's left in some of the ones that aren't now commercial waters but most now seem to hold stunted commons. There are still a few originals that can be fished for but these are extremely old fish now in club or syndicate waters that have been re stocked with other strains.

The London water yes I know of a few private houses but some are owned by Russian's with armed guards and you'd be foolish to attempt fishing them.

In reply to Post #40
Yes ,

And back along I tried to find out if a certain lake I loved had leneys in there ,or what was left of them due to predation..

I took a photo of evey fish I caught over a 7 year period and sure enough,those much more knowledgeable than me said ,they similar to the Surrey trout farm fish..

I'll never know though,as no records of that stocking could be found ,and that's with Chris and Mark (Skeff) looking for me..

That lake ,is another collation on my predation list now sadly ,but it had some beauty scale patterns ,no other lake I have fished in the Southwest had such lovely carp.

I will never know....

In reply to Post #1
Didn't the great Rod Hutchinson mention in one of his books that he thought there would be some huge uncaught fish in the large trout waters? I would agree with that.

I suspect there are uncaught fish in a lot of waters, even heavily fished ones, some fish just seem to rarely, if at all, pick up anglers baits, maybe they just feed on naturals.

Natures reserves and trout waters would be my best bets.

In reply to Post #42
I agree 100% there are uncaught fish even in heavily fished waters
My French PB a 68lb fish I caught in 2009 according to the owner was a completely unknown fish it pooped out a very large handful of crushed Zebra shells and a crab claw the size of my thumbnail 3 weeks after I caught it it came out again exactly the same weight since then it comes out as much as the other fish and is now well in excess of 80lb apparently
in my opinion up until I caught it probably just feeding on the massive amount of Zebra muscles and crabs etc

In reply to Post #41
Also as we all know carp get caught and moved, sometimes a long way and put into unfished secure lakes. Never moved a fish personally but I do know a few that have but this was purely because the fish was getting old and being well known was a target for some full timers, can remember one in particular doing two autumn's to catch it but the following season he turned up and watched them spawning and didn't see his target so never returned, was tempting to tell him it hadn't been in there since he started to target it but purely by chance I was fishing a local river that I rarely saw anyone fishing and there was someone on there and we struck up a conversation and it turned out he was a mate of this named angler so I tlod him the location of the fish and when it had been moved. The named guy did come back and have a look around the lake and may well have caught it but if he did he never published it.

In reply to Post #43
I agree 100% there are uncaught fish even in heavily fished waters

Second that, they don't need bait, I also believe they have different preferences and feed from different spots