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Help with weight guess.

Ah but, no but.....do I not get a prize or even a mention for guessing correctly what you were at, and that is was almost certainly a double :D:D

Cheers, Dave.
 
Difficult to say really as some fish look big but don't feel heavy and others look small but are chunky heavy fish. To me it looks a good 8 maybe 9 something but without feeling the net as you lift it out to hard to say. Either way though nice looking fish and as long as it put up a fight doesn't matter how big it is unless it was s pb for the guy catching it.

Edit: just seen that it was 11 something. Wouldn't of called that myself from the pic but fair play. Cracking fish
 
Jon Young said:
Difficult to say really as some fish look big but don't feel heavy and others look small but are chunky heavy fish. To me it looks a good 8 maybe 9 something but without feeling the net as you lift it out to hard to say. Either way though nice looking fish and as long as it put up a fight doesn't matter how big it is unless it was s pb for the guy catching it.

Edit: just seen that it was 11 something. Wouldn't of called that myself from the pic but fair play. Cracking fish
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Different rivers seem to produce fish of different length to weight ratios, of corse this happens naturally in the population but the difference between rivers is often more notable. This seems to apply to most fish spieces to.
Barbel from the Wye appear long and lean, much more so than the Dorset Stour. The first fish I had out the Wye I weighed 3 times expecting it to be around 8lb but it was only 5.5lb. The Chub were similar in build. I have noted however that in the Chub from the Dorset Stour and Hants Avon, Stour fish are longer. Avon Chub are very generally stout.
This is probably due to diet and habitat but throws a huge spanner in the guessing game of weights without even touching on fish health and time of year, spawned out fish are very deceiving and of corse perspective in the photo. In short it's a mine field.
 
Interesting point there Stephen, ...kind of what I was alluding to in my post.
A few of us that regularly fished the Wey for barbel over a period of 30 odd years were convinced that there were two different strains of fish in that river. Some were very dark and long, others stocky and golden.
This could make guessing a weight of a fish difficult.
Whether it was just a natural phenomenon or because man has introduced barbel from Calverton and the Dorset Stour to supplement the natural Thames fish over the past 35 years, ...who knows? ( They're just the ones I'm aware of, could be more)
I suspect there is a fair old mix of barbel DNA in parts of that river, but you would think that all of the different strains would have interbred by now, leaving a population of hybrids as the older fish have died?
So why, I ask myself, does the river still throw up such different looking fish?
Maybe some of the old fish have stronger genes which are passed on?

Apologies for my ramblings Graham,...teach you to tease!:D
 
The fish that are released that have been bred at the the calverton fish farm are sometimes dye marked on the belly.They do this to track the barbel and get a picture of their movements and behaviour.
 
No ramblings at all Dave.

I have said similar things relating to Wye fish stocks in the past.

My view was that Thames (Kennet/Loddon) fish (Also HA/Severn fish) and Trent (Ladysmith from Calverton)
Are present. Longer/leaner and bigger dorsals.

I would also say that of the few large Bristol Avon fish I have caught, none come closer to Loddon fish.

When I get a chance I'll look back to my original comments.
 
Added. Since fishing the Wye I have always been amused at the number of past customers /pals are convinced a fish of 8-9lb will be a double.:)

My joke is that (although not borne out on this weight guess game) that a typical Wye 9lber would weigh 11-12lb on the Kennet!!!
 
I know ' a barbel is a barbel' to most of us Graham, but when you notice different characteristics in the same species it just makes me ask why.
Whether its down to a mix of DNA, different habitat, different diets and food preferences,...no different to humans I guess. :rolleyes:

I was trying to put together a barbel family tree illustrating original post ice age populations and a time line of introductions to other catchments, but because of illegal stockings and re-introductions its almost impossible to end up with anything of merit.

Found this old pic of a wye 9 I caught 10 years ago, and had to admire the sheer muscular makeup of it and the size of the paddle tale,...so different to barbel I,ve caught on some other rivers.

picture.php


Interesting pic of spawning barbel noting different size and colouration between sexes. Perhaps that answers my Wey musings?

picture.php
 
There was some research published recently via the Barbel Society that there were different "strains" if you like in different rivers in the country. If I recall, the testing was done on scale samples.
 
Great pics Dave.

Dan. Having just looked at some of the different varieties of barbel I caught in Spain it does make you wonder if barbus barbus potentially might have consisted of slightly different strains/species at one time.

Maybe less succesful at the breeding game when mixed. Ie. Trent fish into Ouse.
Just ramblings probably!!
 
The best part of ten years ago I was convinced that there were at least two very distinct strains of fish in the Swale. I've caught very long, thin fish that are a pale gold colour and a much shorter, stocky fish that tends towards being almost brassy in colour. The former would generally weigh a good couple of pounds lighter than the latter of similar length. I've not noticed such a stark difference for a year or two. I'd guess that it might have been Calverton stock fish and "native" Swale fish. Slowly but surely, with the amount of stocking that goes on, if there are strains, they are likely to disappear or become homogenous.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that it was often Swale fish that were introduced into many of the non-barbel rivers before the establishment of Calverton. Now it's likely to be Trent fish, or their progeny, that are being spread around the country.
 
Chris is it possible that the shorter stockier fish in the Swale were those that had swum up from from the Ouse? Leading on from that, does the flow of a river effect the development of the fish?
 
Anthony Pearson said:
Chris is it possible that the shorter stockier fish in the Swale were those that had swum up from from the Ouse? Leading on from that, does the flow of a river effect the development of the fish?
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Anything is possible. However, if you accept the premise that barbel can move freely enough to get from Ouse to Ure to Swale etc, I'd doubt that there would be significant genetic differences between native barbel from the entire Yorkshire Ouse river system. Without genetic differences, I'd not expect to see stark colouration differences between two fish of the same species that share the same stretch of river for any length of time.
 
Of corse it's totally possible that our native Barbel is slightly different to the ones that have been bread and introduced over history. As your all no doubt aware taxonomic identification is a complex science. Scientists have been arguing for many years if the common clownish (nemo) is actually two separate species or not, amongst other debates. Visual exterior differences are often misleading and autopsy is often the only reliable method of identification.
On the subject of cross breeding and assimilation It's also worth considering the age of sexual maturity. A period of say 50-100 years is very little across two similar animals to fully assimilate. Take Roach and Bream, known to cross breed and hybrids are common, yet both Bream and Roach still exist as separate species. It could take 1000s of years to loose the two to the hybrid without external factors, such as disease subseptability to change this. It's more down to recessive and dominant genetics.
I would think I'd far more likely that environmental factors cause local variation on the same species and that there are mixes of geographical variations due to introductions. Scientifically they are all probably Barbus Barbus.
 
Anthony Pearson said:
Fair point Chris. I wonder if the colouration of a fish varies throughout its lifespan?
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Most likely. I couldn't say that I've seen it in barbel though. However, I've seen carp, tench, bream and pike change colouration over time and in response to changes in water colouration. As a general trend, I'd suggest that fish tend to get darker with age. A local gravel pit is normally very clear water. The fish tend to be fairly vividly coloured in there. A few years ago the water flooded badly and remained coloured for 12-18 months. Recognisable individual fish became much lighter in colouration during that time.

Stephen Crowhurst said:
Scientifically they are all probably Barbus Barbus.
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No doubt about it. However, that doesn't preclude there being different characteristics in barbus barbus from different regions or rivers. Every human alive is a homo sapiens, but no one is going to disagree that there are rather distinct characteristics within the species. I don't look much like the average bloke from China or Africa. Even without going so far away, I doubt that anyone would mistake me for a stereotypical Scandinavian.

Even with regards to fish, there are blindingly obvious strains of carp. All are cyprinus carpio, but they exhibit different colourations, scale patterns, body shapes etc. It's fair to say that, in many instances, man has tinkered with carp to breed certain characteristics. However, I believe that there's evidence to suggest that more natural, long term, populations of carp can show regional variations.
 
Slightly controversially Chris every human is indeed H. Sapien however Geographically there are different strains, this is caused by the assimilation of other Homonid's such as in Europeans H. Neandethal. Over the last 100,000 years this has been diluted out so that those characteristics are tiny. Virtually every animal alive is a hybrid at some stage becoming refiened by natural effects and pressures.
They will all of corse be Barbus Barbus, however I think what's being suggested is that some cross breeeding will have occurred over time. It's s bit of a mess of corse because of introductions, many "Barbel rivers" didn't have barbel naturally and who knows where some of the early fish were sourced from. They maybe have been hybrids of different species. Unless we went to great expense and time to sample and test genetics of populations all you can say with any certainty is they vary geographically, which they would without genetic factors in any event to some extent.
It's interesting stuff, to us. I doubt the scientific community would find it interesting or indeed relivant unless stock levels become dangerously low. Of corse this has the potential to be the case the way our rivers are going.
 
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