Calm down okes hahaha it is just fishing..Don't limit yourself. JC you are pretty much correct so chill bra.. Getting emotional and all hot under the collar won't get you invites from the real specimen guys that come back with 200lb yellowfins in the hatch.. I think specimen carpers are just a little insecure that's all, having spent all that bucks on all that gear and having spent all that time preparing feedsites and rigs, they might be scared to have a pleb show up and outfish them, or be scared of the realization that there is far more fun out there to be had than what is found in just one extremely limited facet!
Let me tell you about when I grew up..I guess I was a specimen angler without even knowing it. I chased those big fish I could see swimming around that I could not get to eat anything..Tried all the fancy stuff from the overseas mags I got at the kiloshop.. Did ok..Big carp were these super smart illusive creatures I thought. Cut to many years later in my 20's in cape town and my mates showed me that to get fish you need to go to where the fish are..and when you do it does really matter what technique you use, except that which works! My most fun in those days was taking a plastic canoe from my club in germiston lake, finding where the HUGE grass carp were basking on the surface in clearings in amoung the reeds, you could only reach them with a little polo kayak. I'd take a flyrod and a little green nymph and drop the "piece of algae" in front of their noses and tweak it a little and watch them inhale it and then all hell would break loose..I never came close to landing one..but you cant describe how much fun..If I was using any bait technique I would not even be aware that fun like that existed.
Ja since I then caught most of the large carp that I've caught in my life on my bass rod, with 20lb braid and with no sinkers or terminal gear but a van der merwe hook and a can of mielies. The hook covered in them and handful out as lokaas. Fishing not more than 10m from the bank, monster fish after monster fish..thats how I was shown to fish for those fish by those who had worked it out, each waterand their fish will be different.
But its all relative, I'd rather be on a rock on a point casting into the green water or be at sea, be it in the blue water, behind the backline or over the reefs. But that said, from catching strepies or mullet for livebait, to sonvissies, to carp to a bass or barbel..I don't really care, I love it all. Fishing is fun if you are a fisher(wo)men, it does really matter what form you are doing or how you are doing so long that you are having fun and not F@#king up someone elses' day, fishing spot or fish stocks.
I still can throw a flyline with a tight loop after all these years of no practice and can now proudly cast a multiplier with ease after so long of being limited to a grinder.. When I get invited to go to the deep, I know my way around a harness and a 80w international or tiagra.. When I first joined this site many moons ago under a different nick, a leervis was my dream catch and I was driving around with a scooter and a flyrod trying to find them with no idea what fishing lay just over the horizon in my future, now years they are a bycatch for me as much as I love em.. and I've caught hundreds. There is much fun to be had when you are not fighting with your peers or getting stuck in a box of someone elses definition. To the OP, go have fun!
We go fishing so we don't get as uptight as the guys above haha!
