"Fury as migrant anglers 'eat the fish'" (Spearos too)

[Mr. X]

Interesting article on P12 of the Sunday Telegraph today (the Telegraph is also worth considering today for for the Jamie Oliver recipes with non-endangered fish in the Stella magazine).

The article talks about migrants taking freshwater fish for food. Poles for example have Carp for a Christmas eve meal (a friend told me they used to keep theirs alive & fresh in the bath!). More worrying for us perhaps is the last section of the article:

"...Hertfordshire police arrested and questioned four eastern Europeans seen with snorkels and a speargun near a lake stocked with protected carp."

[Oldsarge]

Only in the UK would anyone protect a carp!!!!

[Mr. X]

Originally Posted by Oldsarge

Only in the UK would anyone protect a carp!!!!

That bit struck me as odd...especially as it said "stocked". Carp fishing seems to have gone from being an obscure specialisation to a mass appeal pursuit in recent years. Consequently there is a lot of specialist gear available & people are stocking gravel pits & old quarries & charging people to fish there. I suspect this was a commercial fishing location.

We used to catch small crucian carp, small brown but otherwise much like gold fish for our fish pond. The specimens they go for these days though are 20-30lb+.

I reckon the Japanese probably protect there Koi $$$ too!

[miles]

Hiya

Carp fishing in the UK is a HUGE industry. There are mulitudes of small dams, which are cleared of all fish, then stocked with a couple of specimen carp. With so much food, and virtually no competition, these carp are now extremely difficult to capture. This great difficulty in catching them attracts the specimen anglers by the droves. Now, since 30lb+ carb are in high demand, dam owners pay HUGE sums of money for a fish. Can understand why a dam owner would want to protect his fish from spearo's!!! All the fishing is STRICTLY catch and release on these type of waters.

These waters also normally have a water bailiff that patrols the waters edge.

A little off topic: when i worked in London, i stayed with some students. They'd stay close to the city during the week and travel back home week-ends. One of my flat-mates was a ardent angler and we soon planned some fishing excursions. One night we sneaked out to a small dam very close by and started fishing. Less than 30minutes later, the water bailiff came pass and caught us!! After hearing my foreign accent, we started chatting about fishing and it turns out that he immigrated from South Africa many years ago. Needless to say, my friend got fined and i got away with a friendly warning!! It IS a rather small world.............

Here, carp are regarded as pests and anglers are urged to remove them from our local waters. Their feeding technique throws up mud/sand/silt, making the bottom muddy and the water discoloured, which has a detrimental effect on the indigenous fish species. Every private black bass dam owners NIGHTMARE is for carp to find their way into their waters.

They also reproduce at an alarming rate. One of our dams is so overpopulated with carp, that it has stunted their growth. You would rarely catch one bigger than 1.5kg's, with normal catch's being anything from 20-100 carp per angler!!

Earlier in my fishing career, i targetted specimen carp and we have a small dam, that is the outlet to a sewrage works that holds MANY 40-50lb (20kg+)carp. Catches of 10-15 carp all between 10-20kg's was normal for a mornings fishing session. My one buddy has taken a couple over 20kg's on fly tackle here. No-one fishes for them and i'm pretty sure those fish are still there. Takes alot of enthusiasm to fish in a sewrage outlet dam...............

Regards
miles

[Oldsarge]

I love England and think the British are great people but catch and release carp fishing is utterly nutz! The only thing you can say for the scaley uglers is that they get really big and when you're stuck with little water, I suppose that matters. What knocks me out is that this is the same people who for generations have treated Northern Pike as trash and used everything up to and including dynamite to get rid of them. Personally, I think that a medium sized pike out of clold, clear water is the best fighting and best tasting freshwater fish there is. Small carp can be eaten and enjoyed but fattening up one so that people can torture it over and over is just sick.

[Mr. X]

Pike used to be one of the few fish that you didn't have to release on our local waters when I was growing up. At least I think that was the case, as the waters are stocked from time to time. Pike were considered a nuisance (eating the other fish) & people did not generally fish for them. However, I caught one once (I rarely used spinners so must have specifically targeting pike or perch that day) & took it home, cleaned & froze it. No one ever ate it though as they thought it would likely taste muddy, coming from still water -silly waste.

Now, however, I am told Pike are strictly catch & release. The season is also limited to the winter months (tradition, because in the past they needed to wait for the weed to die down - no longer an issue). Perhaps, with so many anglers, they want to keep a reasonable size gene pool going. There is something healthy & wholesome about hunting for you own food ... as it becomes ever more difficult to hunt here, I fear we will loose what little contact remains with nature, & become "soft".

Miles, SA is going to get a reputation like the Texas at this rate (they have everything, only bigger!). 50lb carp! Saw some huge carp on the Fox River in Illinois, USA -- the local posh restaurant used to feed them all their leftover bread. The carp would compete with the ducks for it, quite a sight.

There are a lot of SA folk here now, so I am not that surprised that you bumped into one. I live in a fairly remote area & even here there are several SA families nearby. The lifeguard at my local pool is SA. (Not sure what the attraction is, the cold, wet weather or the high taxes).

[miles]

Hiya

but fattening up one so that people can torture it over and over is just sick.

Reminds me of some fishing competition held in some heavy polluted river. The organisers were taken to court, by the tree huggers, for causing distress to the fish, even though it was catch and release..............

I'm starting to wonder about this whole :"do fish feel pain" theories. We went fishing on Saturday on a commercial line fishing boat. My friend caught a small shark, of about 6kg's. He removed the hook and put the shark back. About three minutes later, i landed a similar sized and looking shark. When i tried to remove the hook, i saw the hook marks of my friends hook. I removed the hook and released the shark. Five minutes later, another guy on the boat lands the SAME shark, now sporting two hook holes in his jaw!! Thats the SAME shark, captured THRICE in under 15minutes!! I've seen small sharks caught twice, but not thrice!! Food for thought............

Regards
miles

[spaghetti]

May I say with no offense for anyone that I'm with Oldsarge all the way? Pike tastes delicious!
....and Catch and Release is not as fair as some people believe. I would have red carded the C&Rers, and let the spearos dive the lake to get their dinner.
Just me.

[miles]

My wifes going to kill me when she finds out that i'm discussing carp on the forum!! She HATES them!! She spent more than 10years JUST catching carp!! Simply refuses to go fishing in ANY waters that contain carp!!

Carp are extremely tenacious buggers. We sometimes fish the estuaries/tidal flats of the rivers for Grunters at a place called Breede River. (sort of like bonefish fishing) And quite often you'd hook and land large carp, anything from 5-15kg's, on prawns drifted over the banks. This is in very salty water, less than a kilometer from the mouth of the river!! And in this particular river, the saltwater pushes up more than 10km's upstream!! AMAZING how well the lowly carp can adapt to its environment.

If you really want some exitement, try fishing for carp in fast flowing rivers!! They're like dynamite!! These aren't your slow moving, heavy, and fat carps found in dams, but fast. streamlined bundles of muscle!! They have to be very fit to survive and feed in the rapids. HUGE fun on 3kg line, even though they tend to be smaller, with 2-6kg's being the average size.

Unfortunately for us, or fortunately for the carp population, its illegal to hunt in freshwater or estuaries here. Since we have the ocean so close by, with very good fishing, very few people bother the carp population.

Regards
miles

[Mr. X]

Originally Posted by miles

... Five minutes later, another guy on the boat lands the SAME shark, now sporting two hook holes in his jaw!! Thats the SAME shark, captured THRICE in under 15minutes!! I've seen small sharks caught twice, but not thrice!! Food for thought............

Jeez, what bait were you using that day?!

[mundial]

hi
we are fishing carp also here
a hugh indestry on that a lot of anglers are learning to catch carp

we have also a club that catch n release carp also

BTW
fresh water spearfishinf is prohibited in israel

nice item MR-X

[Shadowkiller]

Heres some details on the British and their beloved carp...

http://forums.deeperblue.net/showthr...highlight=carp

[Mr. X]

Interesting to see that the Sun coverage is somewhat better & more detailed than the Sunday Telegraph!

[stuckinsurrey]

I used to do alot of carp fishing, its the boom industry with regard to fishing. It was very much a specialised sport at one time but now everybody is trying it and much of the competition angling takes place on heavily stocked carp lakes. Many of the big carp in England are given names and regarded with much affection. The record (broken now) for a long time was a fish was called 'mary' and there was great sadness when she died - true! A 20lb carp used to fetch around £2,000, so there was also alot of thefts of fish and illegal importing of carp.