What's with the Carp hating?

[gozzer]

It's not just the leases on the rivers that are in danger, it's the rivers themselves.

 

The number of escapees from these overstocked puddles, will I feel spread this 'disease' to the rivers.

I caught my first river carp back in the 70s, from Walter Bowyers stretch of the Trent at N Muskham.

This was a surprise and a novelty back then, taken from a river that had a diversity of species and sizes, that could be caught by many different methods. Over the following years the number of carp that showed increased, in both numbers and size. I was broken on several occasions while catching roach in matches, as were many others. The smaller species seemed to decline over the years, so much in fact that rumours were rife that it wasn't worth fishing anymore. Look at the river now, there are many that fish it exclusively for carp as well as the large barbel, but the vast shoals of roach etc are absent.

This has happened on some of my local waters, but not to the same extent, (yet).

We had a report from a commercial water last year, where the owner was bemoaning the fact that several thousand catfish had escaped during the floods. We all know that this has happened in many more places around the country, and will happen again. Some of these fish will die, but some will find their way into the river systems, and upset the whole ecosystem of the waters.

 

These aren't just the ramblings of an old git that longs for the 'good old days', I can accept any changes that occur due to 'natural' events, but this is done deliberately on a large scale by anglers and angling 'businesses'. The very people that call themselves ' The Guardians of the Waterways', 'conservationists' etc.

I hear complaints about mink, signal crayfish, and the alleged culinary preferences of European 'immigrants', but very few about the invasive nature of so many 'alien' species being released into our waterways, it's just accepted!

But as Dave said on another thread, to some, "it's a fish innit?" and the more 'fish' in a water the easier they are to catch, and that's what counts.

 

John.

[poledark]

"top one more natural" give it a few years, and a few trees and you won't recognise it. Even Wingham looked like a soulless moonscape at on time, look at it now!

 

Fishing is what you make it, the lake I am fishing mostly was drained and enlarged 6 years ago, ugly, windswept, not a pretty sight. Management planted rushes and willow shoots, and the Alders self seeded and now the willows are up to 25 feet high, dense between swims. The Alders are creeping up and the rushes are filling the edges.

 

Mainly carp stocked, but some tench which are multiplying and the other week I caught a Roach 13" long . The Rudd are getting up to a pound or more, and the eels go to 6lb+. Oh yes, the carp are running up to mid thirties.

 

The bird life is pretty good too, kingfishers, a bittern visits, reed buntings, reed and willow warblers,herons, goldfinches, dunnocks,chaffinches,tits of all sorts, cuckoo, green and spotted woodpeckers, woodies and crows and magpies and grebes, both Crested and Little. Sparrow hawk does an evening run and Owls in the field behind. Cettis warblers (at least 5 pairs), and the usual coots, moorhens and probably quite a few I have missed.

 

Oh yes, there are also a lot of carpers every day of the week and the place is packed at weekends.............

 

 

 

I never quite know what I am going to catch, I am geared up for big carp, but that does not mean I don't enjoy getting the smaller fish.

 

As I said, fishing is what YOU make it.

 

Den

Edited May 20, 2008 by poledark

[ColinW]

The problem with carp is that, in the kinds of numbers we see nowadays, they adversely affect the water to the detriment of other species and the detriment of the fishing. In the days when we had proper winters they would very rarely breed in the UK, so we had clear waters with many ten or twenty big carp that the "eccentrics" in the bivvies could fish for while the rest of us did "proper fishing". Now as well as the ten or twenty big carp, we will have a thousand small ones, grubbing up every last vestige of vegetation and turning the water into the usual mud-hole.

It might be hard for some to understand, but some of us don't WANT to floatfish with four pound plus lines. We actually enjoyed using 1.7lb mainlines and 1.1lb hooklengths and trying to fill a keepnet (horror) with roach etc.

It's got nothing to do with "jealousy". I'm no more jealous of a carp angler who catches a big carp than I am of a chimpanzee with big knackers. They may be big but only a chimp would be proud of them.

[bingo]

Yes very good point Den. All waters look raw when new. But it's the stocking policies that concern me. The water will always be chocolate coloured in the new pond and the carp will always be stunted in these pools. No chance of a 30. Not much chance of any myths or mystery.

 

You're right, fishing is what YOU make of it. Just look at the huge perch in a lot of these 'puddles'. Horses for courses, swings and roundabouts etc.

[poledark]

A lot of the muiness in the water is due to the bottom. If you dig a hole in a field, probably clay based, then fish will disturb it and colour it up. Doesn't happen on gravel pits (obvious really) but has always happened at the Kentish weald ponds I used to fish as a young man.

Yes they do go clear, but usually due to weed growth acting as a filter.

 

Den

[Tony U]

Den

Or you could introduce Zebra Mussels that would do the trick

 

Tony

 

Actually being serious,if Swan Mussels were re-introdused in many lakes;then as filter feedrs they would improve water clarity to some extent and act as a food source for Carp,Tench etc.

Edited May 20, 2008 by Tony U

[poledark]

Fishing and fisheries go in cycles. In the late 50's and early 60's, I used to fish the upper R Eden below Oxted and mainly around Crowhurst. Superb little stretch of water. Small weir pools every couple of hundred yards, gravel runs, twists and turns and deep (2 or 3 ft) pools at each bend.

 

Resident stock of brownies, superb dace and quite a few chub to about 2.5lbs. Usually one or two in each pool.

 

River is subject to violent flooding, there was a saying that if a horse pees in the river it will be over the banks

 

All these little weirs/sluices were man made, whether to control the flow or to increase the fish holding areas I will never know, but over the years the sluices (brick built with drop in boards) fell into disrepair. Some collapsed and the pool created below silted up again. Then the EA decided to manage the flow and ripped out what was left and the river reverted to its "natural" state.

 

Result? hardly any fish, any fry that does hatch is swept away in the winter floods, long sections barren of fish. Where the weir pools were, only a ring of willows remain to show where the pool once was.

Likewise, the Ashdown forest. Vagabond will know this well. Quite a number of small streams were dammed and lakes created, probably for fish to eat. Times changed and one after the other the dams broke down and the lakes dried up. Many only remain as slight overgrown hollows. Fortunately some were maintained, mostly now carp fisheries.

Without the commercial interest of the carp, some of these lakes would disappear as well, owners won't maintain dams just for the love of it.

 

So, some fisheries come, created mainly for food, some come for monetory gain from carp anglers. Those that are not viable will disappear, even some great fisheries get filled in and built over.

 

Carp fishing has and will remain for a long time, the saviour of coarse fishing. Without the huge slice of revenue from carp anglers (quite a number who only fish commercials) the EA would not be viable. You won't get much from the few who fish rivers; clubs have seen the reduction in the numbers who fish rivers; nothing to do with carp, everything to do with modern society.

 

Den

[Vagabond]

Likewise, the Ashdown forest. Vagabond will know this well. Quite a number of small streams were dammed and lakes created, probably for fish to eat. Times changed and one after the other the dams broke down and the lakes dried up. Many only remain as slight overgrown hollows. Fortunately some were maintained, mostly now carp fisheries.

 

But Den, it was AFTER the dams broke down (because of neglect during and just after the war) that these streams reverted to some of the best trout fishing there has ever been on the High Weald in my lifetime. The trout fishing was probably brilliant before the dams were ever built, but there are no records back that far.

 

It is the dams that were repaired and filled with water and carp in damn near equal amounts that are the problem. The water leaving some of them is cloudy most of the time, and although trout still exist in the tailwaters, they are fewer in number.

 

Carp in SMALL numbers are fine, its when they are overstocked you get a problem. I'm as guilty as anyone - before the days of Section 30 I and my mates stocked countless dams with carp. If I had known then what I know now, I'd have knocked them on the head and put them in my bean trench.

Edited May 20, 2008 by Vagabond

[gozzer]

I agree that things do change Den, rivers, lakes, landscapes, all change over time. Some from mans intervention, some from natural causes. With these changes the fish populations adapt, but keep a balance with each other. A good prey fish year is usually followed by a good pred survival year shortly after. A change in the acidity of, or nutrients within a water usually sees a change in the type of weed growth, which in turn benefits some fish more than others and they thrive. All this is done with a natural balance over time, until another change causes the next cycle in the water.

How anyone can equate this gradual change within a system, with the introduction of alien species in vast numbers over a relatively short time span, is beyond my comprehension. The two just don't compare!

 

During the 60s-70s we had the mass canalisation of some of the Yorkshire rivers. Bank side trees uprooted, banks shaped at 45degree angles, in fact anything that would impede the flow was removed. There was uproar, and I'm glad to say that this is no longer the case, and over the years most of it has gone back to looking 'natural'. The fry survival rates during those years was poor, and it was reflected in the decline in catches for many years, but the waters adapted, and although the average size of the fish is higher there are plenty of the original species around. (although the issue of fry survival is still a worry to me).

 

The balance in most waters is a delicate thing at times and the introduction of great numbers of carp in their various guises, catfish etc is going to tip that balance dramatically, and some species are not going to survive the onslaught.

 

The destruction that happened to the rivers in the 60s was at best ill conceived, at worst downright vandalism, but the present situation is no less an act of vandalism. The difference is that after the first act the waters got back to some semblance of normality, but in the second case the waters will be changed for ever.

 

You say that carp fishing will be "the saviour of coarse angling", I say it will be the the lack of choice brought on by these inane stocking policies that will be the ruination of coarse fishing.

 

John.

Edited May 20, 2008 by gozzer

[Angly]

Godalming Angling Society's Marsh Farm Fisheries have a lovely policy; any carp other than crucian caught on either of the two main lakes are to be removed by the captor and placed in their small round 18 peg pond. I wish the Bury Hill Fisheries management would implement a similar scheme for their Milton Lake.

 

Geoff