18lb fish reported yesterday from somewhere near Ross by Jon Jagger.


Lovely to be on the river today. Superb conditions but little,salmon action. Well none at all actually!
Burst's of early Grannom in warm sheltered spots this afternoon so hatches should increase from now on. Little surface activity from trout or grayling.


We had this today on the internet from one Stephen Marsh-Smith.
"
Charlie

Thank you very much for all that you've said in this post and elsewhere. I wanted to keep the whole issue quiet and certainly had no intention of doing more than posting the details anonymously as I did on the WUF website. The photograph is as you say not great and unless one holds the fish by hand for another to film, it is difficult to show off the fish in any meaningful way. In the bottom of a boat when there is pressure to get the fish back quickly is not the best place for photography. "

I have received some many very kind and of course some very witty comments, cards, cartoons and the like, as well as the rather dull and predictable negative stuff from the Ghillies Gestapo. Thankfully there are so many generous Wye salmon (trout and coarse) fishers who more than make up for them, otherwise we might have given up years ago.
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 I realise he wishes he had never posted the photograph, or let Simon do it for him but  - to blame everyone else for any question marks over the fish is ridiculous.  He calls us the Ghillies Gestapo -because I suppose we don't always agree with the spin that WUF often emit on a regular basis, or the claims they make which are often unsubstantiated. I never realised he was such a sensitive soul but we never said anything about his fish which was not obvious to everyone else, Was I not one of the first to congratulate him.   We were not responsible in any way for the media frenzy that must have been so humiliating for him.  I promise we will never mention it again. OK!.
However I have to agree that comments like the one below on the Internet are completely uncalled for;

 Originally Posted by Dan Dare 

Looks bright enough...and big enough, to me, and I would have been over the moon to have caught him.
One day maybe.

bright enough??? that's the dirtiest spring fish (if it is) that I have ever seen, given the fact it was caught early march, fish at this time of year, don't colour up quick, not quick at all, proper springers stay silver and fresh and don't look like that till they have been river fish for months, that fish, looked dodgy from the start, the size, even with all the different theories looks grossly exaggerated, I mean come on? its put in the book as 35lb, the some bright spark claims it should have been 43lb, it has the look of a rawner, colour of a rawner, and size in scale of the wader boot of a fish under 20lb, a typical wye springer, doesn't look anything like that, why wasn't there a head pic? it makes you wonder? pound to a penny, it had disease on it, and not the typical small distinctive head of a true springer, fish with that look/colour used to come into the coquet , that time of the year, swim round dazed looking, in the shallows, and were not true springers they were rawners, sorry for being so negative, but fresh springer of 43lb ha ha not in any way convinced sorry,