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Pond Fish - Do You Like Catching Them?


Dales

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The record chub came from a gravel pit connected to the Thames in Oxfordshire. I think several gravel pits around here hold chub as a result of flooding, especially along the Windrush valley. The chub seem to quite like a big, quiet gravel pit. I still wouldn't stock them into one though.

 

TT, I learnt to fly fish at a gravel pit in Norfolk. It was stocked with a mixture of mainly rainbows and a few browns and so is a grey area here. It held very few fish though and a friend and I are the only people we ever saw fish it. The trout in there had been there years. It was the largest lake in a complex of 4, the other 3 being mixed coarse lakes, and was deep, gin clear and weedy. It is now (along with the other 3) a muddy hole full of carp. Another one lost.

 

As a youngster I went a couple of times to Narborough trout fishery in Norfolk, and didn't like it. The trout were piled so high it was embarrassing. Even with my rubbish skills I'd have a carrier bag full of finless trout in a couple of hours. I remember someone advising me to use a yellow bulbous fly because it 'represented sweetcorn' <_<

 

The only stillwater I fish for trout now is Farmoor reservoir. I accept that this is still a grey area as I'm fishing for non-native stocked fish, but the water quality is excellent, there's plenty of natural food (the buzzer hatches are amazing), lots of cold, deep water, 170 acres for them to swim around in, and it is not over stocked. Many of the trout are overwintered.

 

I suppose the stocking of unsuitable fish is what happens in a competitive business environment, where commercial owners want to present the 'best' product on the market. If commercial A has a pond full of goldfish and barbel then they have a competitive advantage over commercial B, who only has boring old tench and carp. I think it's all very cynical and selfish.

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Me too - there is a sort of oxbow lake near ("near" as in about a hundred yards) one of my local rivers. It contains some chub, presumably as a result of flooding. I have had them up to 4 lb there.

 

Ironically, the lake and some nearby dykes are owned by a farmer who runs a carp fishery, but has the good sense to leave the carp in their muddy pit and allow the oxbow to stay in its natural state - it was once used as a duck decoy.

 

 

 

No personal experience, but some gravel pits next to the Medway are said to contain barbel as a result of the river flooding. There have been one or two reports of barbel being caught there.

AFAIK the individual fish survive, but won't be able to breed. The water quality will deteriorate henceforth though, as the owning club have now stocked "match-sized" carp.

 

horton kirby used to have a small shoal of chub in the top pond ,plenty tried to catch them but i never heard of one being caught ,very flighty

Edited by chesters1

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But on a welfare grounds, I doubt it's a bed of roses for other fish in commercials. I still don't buy the argument about Tench and Crucians in poor water. Just because they are last to go belly up, does not prove they are able to thrive in such conditions, they just survive better.

 

It's a matter of degree for me - I don't like any of them being mistreated, but my stronger objection to some fish than others is based simply on how well the commercial fishery environment meets their needs. If a fish is naturally found in shallow, warm, turbid, eutrophic pools with relatively low oxygen levels, if it has evolved to live in those environments without harm, then the water conditions in a commercial are not in themselves likely to stress the fish. If it is not naturally adapted to those conditions, then keeping it in them is in itself cruel.

 

If you are going to keep any animal in captivity, you should find out what kind of habitat it naturally occurs in and use that knowledge to provide the best environment for it you can - and if you can't provide something reasonable, you shouldn't keep them. If you were to build a safari park in the Arctic, keeping zebras in it would be more cruel than keeping polar bears, and keeping ostriches would be worse than keeping penguins, not because African animals are more deserving of sympathy and shouldn't be in safari parks, but because it would be too bloody cold for them!

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The only stillwater I fish for trout now is Farmoor reservoir. I accept that this is still a grey area as I'm fishing for non-native stocked fish, but the water quality is excellent, there's plenty of natural food (the buzzer hatches are amazing), lots of cold, deep water, 170 acres for them to swim around in, and it is not over stocked. Many of the trout are overwintered.

 

I don't actually have an issue with stocking fisheries with non-native fish which wouldn't naturally breed there, so long as there is no risk of them spreading and becoming invasive and so long as the fishery can provide the fish with a decent environment. If the Farmoor rainbows were escaping into the Thames and colonising it, or if the water quality were miserable, I'd have a different view. I guess I'd also have a different view if Farmoor had been a natural coarse fishery, ruined to provide trout fishing. And, to be honest, I would have far less of an issue from a welfare point of view with stocking barbel or other river fish into a water supply reservoir with fish stocks at tens of kg/hectare than into an over-fertilised puddle along with 400kg/ha of carp. I wouldn't really want to fish for them in that situation, but it wouldn't strike me as cruel.

 

I suppose the stocking of unsuitable fish is what happens in a competitive business environment, where commercial owners want to present the 'best' product on the market. If commercial A has a pond full of goldfish and barbel then they have a competitive advantage over commercial B, who only has boring old tench and carp. I think it's all very cynical and selfish.

 

Yes. I think the problem is that if you manage a fishery which is maintained by artificial stocking - either because you wish to keep fish which won't breed in your water or because you wish to maintain a higher stocking density than is naturally sustainable - you are freed from the checks and balances of running a natural fishery where you optimise the environment and let nature take its course. You take on the power to drive the recruitment of fish to the fishery artificially, and in my opinion in doing so you should also take on the obligation to behave responsibly. Just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should. As I said above, some trout fisheries seem to me to be run irresponsibly, but I think we see more abuse in the coarse fishing world, perhaps because you can get away with treating coarse fish worse before they actually die on you.

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I know of at least two still waters one of about an acre and another of about two acres where the chub definatly breed succesfully. They fight harder than the river chub and look in imaculate condition. I also know of another stillwater of about just over half an acre that has a large head of chub but is also stuffed with carp roach, tench, rudd,crucians etc etc and the chub are in superb condition. I don't know how true it is but there's claims of chub being caught up to 9lb's !! I've caught them to just under 5lb and appart from being slimmer than the river fish they are in just as good if not better looking nick.

 

It seems to me that there's to many people trying to inflict their opinion onto others. It would be different if it was their styles of fishing being frowned upon (bolt rig fishing for example).

Lets face it if some anglers (trying to look like do gooders) are trying to stop certain fish being kept in certain waters claiming cruelty to fish whats next on the agenda..,stopping fishing altogether ?

Edited by Tigger
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If I don't agree with it, I don't go there and give them my money. People have to make their own minds up - I'm not telling anyone else what to do, but nor am I pretending to approve of things I disagree with. I think what goes on in these places reflects badly on the rest of us, but there's nothing I can or should do about that.

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Why is anyone even discussing this? Why not do away with any controls, and have an 'anything goes policy'. Just bung any fish, into any water, because somebody wants to catch more/something different. After all waterways and fish are only there to provide sport and amusement for anglers, aren't they?

Why should we bother if a new species has a detrimental effect on native species? They're all fish, so what's the difference? They might carry a disease, out compete for food, or breed faster, but they're still fish, and we can still catch them, and that's what it's all about isn't it?.

So long as we carry our little fishy medical kits, don't use those nasty barbed hooks, and lay them on nice soft mats to unhook them, then they'll be all right. What goes on under the water won't affect them, because they are in water, and they live in water, so that's ok.

We are after all, the "guardians of the waters"......aren't we?

 

John.

Angling is more than just catching fish, if it wasn't it would just be called 'catching'......... John

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Well, not for the first time I imagine I'm in the minority. It seems pretty clear to me that stocking barbel into small stillwaters for the sole purpose of creating easy fishing is wrong. I think overstocking of any species is also wrong, but I see that as a separate issue.

 

Step right up, a prize every time <_<

Well you are in a minority of at least two. I think anyone who introduces ANY non native species should have his gonad sac slit open with a rusty old opinel. There are a lot of old phonies in angling circles methinks. On one hand they claim to be 'conservationists' and on the other they want to introduce all sorts of fish that we know not what the long term consequences of their introduction may be.

 

I never have and never will fish in a shitty brown pond with fish in it who have names.

The problem isn't what people don't know, it's what they know that just ain't so.
Vaut mieux ne rien dire et passer pour un con que de parler et prouver que t'en est un!
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Why is anyone even discussing this? Why not do away with any controls, and have an 'anything goes policy'. Just bung any fish, into any water, because somebody wants to catch more/something different. After all waterways and fish are only there to provide sport and amusement for anglers, aren't they?

Why should we bother if a new species has a detrimental effect on native species? They're all fish, so what's the difference? They might carry a disease, out compete for food, or breed faster, but they're still fish, and we can still catch them, and that's what it's all about isn't it?.

So long as we carry our little fishy medical kits, don't use those nasty barbed hooks, and lay them on nice soft mats to unhook them, then they'll be all right. What goes on under the water won't affect them, because they are in water, and they live in water, so that's ok.

We are after all, the "guardians of the waters"......aren't we?

 

John.

Mebbe that's a minority of three.

The problem isn't what people don't know, it's what they know that just ain't so.
Vaut mieux ne rien dire et passer pour un con que de parler et prouver que t'en est un!
Mi, ch’fais toudis à m’mote

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Trout aren't anything like a strictly river species and they breed perfectly well if conditions allow. There are 1000s of tiny little tarns, puddles and pools all over Scotland, with no inlets or outlets, containing huge, plague-like populations of brown trout, which breed like rabbits in little more than brown acid. They don't normally grow very big at all but on occasion, one or two turn predatory (I hazard calling them ferox) and grow to a decent size but there's nothing to indicate they, as a species, are suffering in any way.

 

Don't ask me how they got in these little puddles and believe me, some are puddles. I cannot believe anyone would go the bother of moving fish into them when there's no guarantee these puddle would stay wet from one year to the next. It would also be a long walk over very dangerous terrain, with a fish that doesn't appreciate being carried in a bucket, even with an aerator.

 

I suppose there are birds but I always had a problem fully swallowing that idea. Just seems a little haphazard but fish do seem to appear spontaneously on some waters so there must be something in it.

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