Big Bass!

Super fish, if id caught it the first thing id have done is get an oil drum, cut it in half, bit of wire mesh and coal and had the mother of all bbqs

Pure poetry! I love it ha:)

Oh man, what a fish that one would be a keeper

WOW, that is some awesome fish to catch, bet it gave one hell of a fight!!
But IMO - A fish like that deserves to fight another day and camera or no camera would have been put back!
Would feel so wrong for killing such a remarkable fish.
Defo agree with SteveCrow, 20+ years under his belt of spawning, lucky to escape for as long as he did

The french must be hungry if u would kill a fish like that just to eat it, lol.....

personally i try to avoid big or small bass and just go for the 4/5lbers... I do love to eat fresh Irish bass!!

The only reason I avoid them is not a notions of C+R, its just that a large bass will spawn a lot more than a smaller one.

However my pb is 9.5lbs and I will keep a fish bigger than that! I keep all my PB. keeping this one big fish more than accounts for all the others i let live...

I have always released my personal bests as a respect thing and kept the odd one or two here or there no matter what the species!

Had a nice 10lb bass last night of st helen.
That bad boy is on the bbq today for sure!
We only take a fish or 2.. Wat about the lads
trawling taking everything?

pain in my arse reading this catch and release crap. any time there is a decent fish posted up the post is just hijacked. is there nothing the mods can do because its getting a but repetitive. if people want to talk about catch and release (even about this fish) it should be done under a different heading or post.

The mods can start deleting posts Samo, everyone knows it's boring and old news but hopefully people are clever enough to not get sucked into posting for the sake of a row!

That said, some say eat it some say release it, there is no right or wrong just opinions and we all have them.

Any nonsense gets deleted full stop, no explanation!

i know but is the same babble every time a decent fish gets posted up. nowhere in the original post does it say would you eat it or release it. it doesn't bother me that much either way but its wasting my time having to scroll through the crap.

what a shame full of spawn by the look of him

Lovely fish, no chance would I kill that though.

Some fish but I reckon I'd keep it and stuff it the bigger ones aren't the best for eating I had a 12.5lbr last year and it wasn't great, if you think about it . . . Would you eat a twenty year old chicken ???????

personally wouldnt keep that fish - picture or no picture

better off keeping a 4/5lb

samo and co go back and count the keep posts vs the c+r posts on this thread and any of the last 100 threads with the c+r issue raised - i guarantee the post count is 80% in favour of keeping fish or denoucing c+r

the "same babble" your on about is mostly in one direction only after an initial post about c+r

so it looks like most anglers on here are of the catch and keep opinion - or those posters are more motivated to post in relation to their opinion and c+r

in my opinion its probably a bit more 50/50 but the c+r opinion has become an "outgroup" in psycologist Irving Janis - groupthink theory

an outgroup is characerised negatively as the enemy, so making effective responses to them is deemed unnecessary. this means they are silenced. members are pressured by threat of dissapproval or ostracism into not expressing arguments against any of the "main groups" consensus views, which then leads to self censorship

everyone is entitled to their opinions on this site as long as they are in line with the charter

personally wouldnt keep that fish - picture or no picture

better off keeping a 4/5lb

samo and co go back and count the keep posts vs the c+r posts on this thread and any of the last 100 threads with the c+r issue raised - i guarantee the post count is 80% in favour of keeping fish or denoucing c+r

the "same babble" your on about is mostly in one direction only after an initial post about c+r

so it looks like most anglers on here are of the catch and keep opinion - or those posters are more motivated to post in relation to their opinion and c+r

in my opinion its probably a bit more 50/50 but the c+r opinion has become an "outgroup" in psycologist Irving Janis - groupthink theory

an outgroup is characerised negatively as the enemy, so making effective responses to them is deemed unnecessary. this means they are silenced. members are pressured by threat of dissapproval or ostracism into not expressing arguments against any of the "main groups" consensus views, which then leads to self censorship

everyone is entitled to their opinions on this site as long as they are in line with the charter

Where is the Like Button around ere!?

On the matter of keeping Bass in all the years i have fished i have caught countless Bass and with the Exception of 4 that i kept for the pan (2 i made the decision to keep.The other 2 didnt survive )All the rest were returned.

Without doubt i would keep a fish of that size as it has spawned enough times to not make me feel guilty in any way.


Its the 5-10 pounders that should be allowed to swim away to fight another day imho.


Going out on the hunt for Bass and Smoothies on Wednesday so hopefully i will have a few nice fish to report


Btw picked up a lovely bucket of 50 or so peeler today not sure if i have enough

cant say id keep a fish that age to eat would you eat a 20yr old sheep or chicken?

Dose anyone think that a bass that size is around the irish coast somewhere waiting to be caught never mind eating him just want to catch him

In short Ray,
id say yes but maybe not in the vicinity of where we live or else somebody would have nailed one with all the recent angling pressure at the usual spots.Have heard from a very reliable source of 2 monsterous bass taken off the top 2 years ago that would have broken the current record easily but fair play to the catchers they kept things fairly quiet otherwise we know what would have happened.
I reckon a huge amount of luck would be required along with an even bigger amount of water craft knowledge .Roll on the summer

Prime example of babble.

Post locked.

I'll let ye plonkers work out the reason why.