An angler from the UK caught a “proper lump” of a common carp on a recent trip to Hungary. Weighing 105.4 pounds, the obscenely fat carp stands to break a world record, according to the managers of the lake where it was caught.
“It really was a dream come true,” the fisherman, David Knock, commented in a Facebook post about the catch. “Best moment in all my many years fishing.”
Knock landed the big carp on or around May 6, according to that post. The British angler was fishing Euro-Aqua Lake in Hungary, a private pay lake that is well-known in European carp-fishing circles for kicking out some of the biggest bottom feeders in the world.
Euro-Aqua is also where Polish angler Kacper Stępień caught his 104.5-pound common carp, another world-record class fish, in September. While there is no immediate way to confirm this, there is a chance that Stępień’s fish and Knock’s fish are one and the same. We know Stępień released his fish into the waterbody, a common practice at private pay lakes like Euro-Aqua, and it’s possible that Knock re-caught it this month after it had gained just under a pound.
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Speaking to Angling Times in the UK, Knock said he and his friend had long awaited their trip to Hungary after booking it 18 months out. He spent at least some of that time researching the lake and practicing his long-range casting.
“There’s really nowhere else that compares when it comes to big carp fishing,” Knock told the outlet, referring to the well-known private lake. “The anticipation that the next fish to take your bait could be over 100lb is hard to explain.”
Knock’s preparations continued when they got to the lake, where they used a boat to scout their spots and plant “marker poles” in areas they wanted to target. The anglers then baited those areas with 50 pints of maggots, along with 2 or more pounds of boilies and stewed buckwheat. They fished there through the next couple of days and nights, using hookbaits that matched the bait they’d left out earlier, but after catching a couple 40- to 50-pound fish in the first 24 hours, the action slowed.
Knock was exhausted from lack of sleep by the time he hooked the kind of carp they were after. He’d just landed an 80-pound fish, a new personal best, and had offered to switch spots with his friend, who declined.
“[He said] that if he landed a big fish on [one] of my rods, he’d feel too guilty,” Knock said. “With that, the middle rod positioned tight to the marker pole ticked off slowly.”
Roughly 20 minutes later, they had the huge carp in the net, and the owners came out to help weigh it. Their scales registered 47.8 kilos, or 105.4 pounds, which the owners said was a new world-record. Some social media users have questioned whether the carp was weighed properly, but several others who said they were onsite during the weighing say that number is legitimate.
As for the world-record claims, it’s unclear what organization (if any) would certify Knock’s 105.4-pound common carp as a true world record. That weight would obliterate the standing IGFA all-tackle world record for the species, a 75 pound 11 ounce carp caught in France in 1987. But the IGFA, the world’s de-facto keeper of fishing records, does not accept applications “for fish caught in hatchery waters, sanctuaries or small bodies of water that are stocked with fish for commercial purposes.”
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Both Stępień and Euro-Aqua also referred to Stępień’s 104.5 carp as a “world record common” when he landed it Sept. 16, and Knock’s fish clearly outweighs his. Although Stępień’s fish might have been accepted by another record-keeping organization, it is not currently listed in the IGFA record book.
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