Are Carp Any Good To Eat?

[Sharkbyte]

QUOTE(Sharkbyte @ Apr 13 2006, 08:29 PM) As a keen Perch angler in the winter months I am here to blatantly rally a little support against this act of vandalism as I see it and would appreciate any of your comments on the discussion thread and maybe a vote or two, whether you are for or against.

Sharkbyte - sorry but I seriously doubt that you would appreciate any comments that were seriously pro eating carp or any other fish you happen to like.

 

Based on your comments on the currently running batch of perch topics, I'm sure you would enjoy feedback from those who agree with you but not from any who were barbaric and wrong headed enough to disagree.

 

So what are you saying? I shouldn't have posted.

 

How do feel about members who still have some fire left in their bellies?

[Guest Josh Iddon]

Not sure if its just me but its all geting abit boring now! lol

[UK-Fishing-Tackle.co.uk]

At hunstanton sea life centre I think (don't quote) - they have a tank of stock carp about a foot to 16 inches long, and a note about how there is serious consideration in breeding carp to replace both cod and haddock in UK chip shops.

 

We will almost certainly reach a point when both the above species become unviable for chippes because of the economies of scale (less fish means higher prices, means less people willing to pay!).

 

They will definitely need a fallback, and it might be that carp - especially leathers - which are obviously ideal due to the lack of scales (I once read that leathers were selectively bred by monks to produce fish ideal for cooking).

 

You can grow carp quickly and cheaply - assuming it didn't taste like crap I'd have no problem eating one that had been farmed in captivity for food. We eat trout - I visit two or three local farms a week, and it is just an accepted way of producing cheap edible fish. Why not carp??

 

By the way - we are not talking about murdering a 35lb mirror carp from a french lake and lobbing it on the BBQ - obviously I'd be against that kind of practice.

[Paul Boote]

Pretty dreary stuff to eat, carp. I ate some, sometime way back in the last millennium, when I was going out with a lovely North London Jewish girl whose parents were to say the very least a tad worried by a long-haired Gentile (hence "gentles"...?) angler. They ate carp at around the time of the Passover, I seem to remember, and guess who was slightly reluctantly invited to dinner? Let's just say that the stuff was edible - if you like a million-and-one fine bones and not much taste. Makes me wonder, what a boilie-fed carp would taste like? The prospect of Monster Crab flavoured, needle-y cardboard, somehow, doesn't appeal.

 

PS - Anyone used to fish Cutmill Pond (Farnham AS) in its heyday? I did in my early teens. I remember that the private, unfished, upper pond, which flowed into the head of Cutmill, was kept "by Jewish people who eat the carp..." At least that was the slightly horrified gossip among the brollied and tarp'ed, hardcore early carpers seemingly perma-camped among the reeds...

Edited April 17, 2006 by Paul Boote

[Andrew Burgess]

I got no interest to eat or trying eating one even if it was given to me to eat.

[Tog]

http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/English/e2005/e200507/p83.htm

One carp that looks very tasty.....

Prepared properly the carp is a very tasty dish, but out of a mud puddle - I think I would decline.....

[MJB]

Anything will taste good in a curry.

[Dick Dastardly]

If I remember right it was reccomended to keep a (live) carp in a barrel of water containing vinigar for a few days to help remove the muddy taste............

[dogfish]

Carp were originally introduced into the UK as a farmed food fish.

 

Interestingly, I remember a few years ago the Thomson and Morgan seed catalogue used to sell the equipment and the small carp for you to grow on in your garden as a food source....not sure if they still do.

[rambo]

No not good, boney and nasty.- would not recomend. Why is it cruel?

Wild fish taste very good, in particular pike and perch, fried gudgeon good but too figity, i have heard that that Zander is considered top delicassy. Only fish that matches a freshly grilled perch is marckrel straight form your rod to a pan, no i do not fry fish alive.