The Parrot: What other celebrity fish are in the giant carp's league?

As a greengrocer, Dean Fletcher knows the weight of things, so when an alarming bend showed in his rod earlier this month, the veteran angler knew something significant lay at the other end. How significant remains a matter for the British Record Fish Committee to confirm, but few would doubt the figure that Fletcher's scales showed, moments later, on the shores of a lake in Berkshire.

The Parrot, a mirror carp named for its beaky mouth, weighed in at 68lb 1oz, a new record for a freshwater fish caught in Britain. If you don't do pounds, try almost five stone, 31 kilos, or – to use the unofficial alternative standard for comparing weights in water – almost half a Tom Daley.

In the buoyant carp angling scene, the big catch, recorded at Cranwells Lake on Wasing Estate near Reading, is big news. "Carp anglers have waited a long time for a fish to take that crown," says Thom Airs, editor of UK Carp and carp content editor at the Angling Times. "The last record was a carp called Two Tone who came from a lake in Kent."

The reaction to Two Tone's death, two years after its then record catch in 2008, at 67lbs 8ozs, revealed as much about the singular devotion of anglers to their carp as the buzz that has followed The Parrot's landing. Men cried at a memorial service for "the marriage wrecker". There were reported attempts, ultimately doomed, to have him stuffed and shipped to the Natural History Museum.

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The most elusive fish often gain the greatest affection. Anglers had camped out for weeks at a time as they tried to catch Two Tone, aware that the fish had probably taken on record weight. For Fletcher, 53, the search for The Parrot had lasted for 10 years, including the seven-year wait for a permit for the lake. "All the time I was waiting, I kept hearing about it getting caught," he says on the one day of the week his job and girlfriend allow him to fish. "A friend of mine caught it about 12 years ago and it was 37lb. Then it was 50lb and I was like, 'blimey'. It took me three seasons to catch it and I knew it was going to be big."

The relationship between man (it tends to be men) and carp can appear strange from the outside. The fish can live to be 60, and grow steadily on a bottom-feeder's diet of worms, insects and larvae. But they also eat protein-rich feed balls known as boilies, often thrown to them so that they might tip the scales further when caught, weighed and photographed. Some fish evade capture for a decade, while others are hooked several times a year.

"Anglers really get to know the fish," Airs says. "Some can be named after the way they act once they're hooked, and some anglers know the fish they've caught before they've even seen it. Other fish have personalities and become famous." Most names tend to be descriptive, Airs adds: "One was called Arfur because it had half a tail."

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Most anglers – and according to Sport England, a million of us go angling at least once a month – have no chance of catching a fish as big as The Parrot. "Your personal record can mean so much more than a national record," says Airs, who once caught a 44lb carp in France. "Many anglers will be over the moon to catch a 20lb carp." And it's the time between catches that appeals more to many. "I just like being outside and love spending a night under the stars," Fletcher says.

Animal welfare groups are less enamoured of a sport that involves the introduction and feeding of fish for the purposes of repeatedly puncturing their mouths with sharp metal hooks. After Two Tone's death of old age, Peta put up belittling posters at his lake. One featured a fisherman holding a bent rod and the slogan: "Are you overcompensating for something?".

Airs accepts that a hook in the mouth "might not be the nicest thing", but, he adds: "Everything else around that is geared to providing an environment that is beneficial to carp." And within angling, carp fishing is booming, he adds, as improved technology and more stock boosts demand for permits. Now The Parrot has been caught at record weight, record chasers are pointing their rods at the handful of similarly massive specimens. The Big Girl, perhaps the biggest, had a claimed weight in 2014 of 66lb. She may well be even bigger by now.