Eating Coarse fish: Food Programme R4 Today

[Jim Roper]

I read in a book in the library that an acre of water can produce 200lb of carp a year. Not sure what size. I suppose the small stuff would have to be removed to achieve fish of eatable size.

Who is going to pay the sort of prices that leisure fisheries are willing to pay for restocking fish, and then eat them?

 

http://www.coarsefish.demon.co.uk/

[Leon Roskilly]

poledark:

Frodo and Leon, the point I was making is that unless these fish were packaged in such a way as to compare with what we now purchase then no one would bother, espacially as they are mostly tasteless and full of bones and scales,

  So you decide to have Chub for dinner....you get to the river and only one swim is free and you blank..... off to the supermarket......next week you try again and fail again as all the chub have been eaten... so off to the supermarket again...next time you don't bother, you go to the chippy and buy the usual cod and chips.

 

  That is the reality of eating coarse fish and I cannot see it changing unless it is done on a huge fish farm type of factory farming, none of which would affect our river and lake fishing.

 

  After all many people eat trout, how many of them (non anglers) decide to pop down to the river to catch the dinner?

 

 Den

Ah but Den, you are assuming that cod (and other sea species) will still be available as it is today, and at a reasonable price.

 

Sadly, the way we are heading that won't be so

 

But of coarse we won't be eating coarse fish as an alternative, we will be eating 'sweet water' fish.

 

And asking for:

 

Sweet water cod (barbel)

 

Sweet water bass (perch)

 

Lake mullet (roach)

 

Sweet Carp (carp)

 

Oh! go and invite your own marketing names!!!

 

(And while you are about it find a replacement for rock eel, rock salmon, gurnet etc that we order dogfish by).

 

Food processors will have no difficulty in removing bone, guts and scales (even processing them so that they can be included in the 'product'. Anyone eating 'processed' food now would be surprised at what they are buying (Do you really think that a nice looking peice of chicken breast contains only chicken, or that bread coated delicacy doesn't contain bone and guts?)

 

Yes, most of the new culinary species will come from 'fish-farms', but this means losing lakes and rivers to fish-farming.

 

And fish-farms, with their genetically engineered species, need for pesticides to wipe out parasites, antibiotics etc are an environmental disaster (the salt water farms are responsible for a huge loss of wild species in the area's they pollute).

 

It's all such a shame, when if the sea-stocks were to be sustainable managed, there would be no need for such solutions to the coming crises.

 

Tight Lines - leon

[corydoras]

quote:

---

I knew that was coming. I think it comes down to me having some sort of respect (not sure if thats the right word) torwards freshwater fish. They are after all part of the sport I enjoy so much.

 

I see cod as more of a food fish and as I don't fish for them, then thats fine for me. And the same goes for haddock, mackerel etc. But in my canteen at work once they were serving shark steaks but I just couldn't bring myself to eat some. Sharks fascinate me and don't think they should be eaten.

IMHO all fish are deserving great respect irrespective of the environment they live in. I find the concept of freshwater fish being somehow sacred and not to be eaten whilst seafish can be netted, dredged, trawled or hoovered up and then used for everything from human food to pig food to fertiliser weird.

 

I like ALL kinds of fishing. I don't restrict myself to coarse or game or the sea, I do them all. When I am sea fishing I will occasionally keep a couple of mackerel or whatever for the pot but I mostly release everything these days.

 

For what it is worth my dear old Grandfather who was a dedicated game fisherman and shooter of Red Deer thought that 'English' coarse fishing (we are Scots) was absolutely beyond the Pale. His argument was that putting a fish through the 'ordeal' of being caught just so that someone could have some fun and have a look at the fish was cruel.

 

I do not agree, but I can see his point.

 

Sharks meat smells like urine in my experience. Could not eat it if you paid me.

[Leon Roskilly]

corydoras:

Sharks meat smells like urine in my experience. Could not eat it if you paid me.

Personally I like a nice piece of rock eel, or a wing of skate (which I no longer order, the rays are desperately overfished).

 

In Australia, well in Melbourne, ask for fish and chips and you'll be given 'flake', which is shark.

 

Strangely the Victorians (from the state not the era!) are repelled at the thought of eating crab, whereas Queenslanders love crab, but think that the shark-eaters of Victoria are a bit wierd.

 

Anyone fancy a witchety grub ?

 

Tight Lines - leon

[Paul_D]

quote:

---

In Australia, well in Melbourne, ask for fish and chips and you'll be given 'flake', which is shark.

---

Well if you think that's strange up here in Yorkshire if you ask for a Scallop in the chippie they give you a potato fritter.....weird!

[nursejudy]

just back from a fishing trip to Denmark,after trying a selection of fish dishes was amazed to be told I had eaten the following.Perch,pike,eel and river bream,the same fish we had been catching earlier in the day.aLTHOUGH I HAD TO AGREE THAT IT HAD TASTED VERY GOOD,IT DID NOT SEEM RIGHT THAT THE FISH HAD BEEN KILLED

NURSEJUDY

PS sorry havingT ROUBLE WITH THE KEY BOARD!!!!!!!

[JackPike]

Talking about food I am going to start a tread on non fishing chat about the modern day foodstuffs we buy and eat

[markk]

i live on the wirral and about 4yrs ago saw 2 common + 1 mirror carp on ice in birkenhead market in a fish stall! i couldnt believe it + went back twice to have alook, even persuaded the missus to have a look, not that she was botherd,just to have a witness,both fish were about 2lb + i new they would end up in the bin! every time weve been there since ive not seen any,but there probably has!

[phil hackett]

Some interesting comments coming up here. I’m surprised that no one has picked up on the fact that GTC’s rep was clearly showing a bias towards game fish by calling for the removal coarse fish from rivers.

 

Some people have made reference to perch and how nice they taste. It might interest you to know that Lake Windermere from the late 1920s until the late 1940s, 1947 to be precise, supported an industrial perch fishery. The perch were tinned in tomato source (like sardines) and marketed under the name perchins. During the Second World War hundreds of tons annually were distributed nationally. One assumes as a supplement for sardines, which would have been in short supply due to U-boat attacks on sea fishing vessels.

 

A few years ago when I was doing a lot of fishing for zander, one of the locals told me that the local chippies in the fens were selling zander and chips. He also said they tasted very similar to cod and the flesh was white and firm like it.

 

My view on this subject is I eat very little fish and have no wish to eat coarse fish at all in this country. I have eaten it in other countries, some I’ve liked and some I haven’t.

I would like Leon, wish to see a sustainable sea fisheries policy EU wide, extending globally over time, because I much prefer sea fish to coarse fish. With one exception, that being Omal a whitefish that is only found in lake Baikal Siberia Russia. This fish is without doubt one of the nicest fish I’ve ever eaten and the fishery is managed on a sustainable basis.

 

Jack Pike, if you can get hold of the Guardian supplements from last month on the food we eat I think you’ll find them most interesting regarding this issue. You may be able to access them by searching the achieves on the Guardian Unlimited site.

[corydoras]

nursejudy:

just back from a fishing trip to Denmark,after trying a selection of fish dishes was amazed to be told I had eaten the following.Perch,pike,eel and river bream,the same fish we had been catching earlier in the day.aLTHOUGH I HAD TO AGREE THAT IT HAD TASTED VERY GOOD,IT DID NOT SEEM RIGHT  THAT THE FISH HAD BEEN KILLED

NURSEJUDY

PS sorry havingT ROUBLE WITH THE KEY BOARD!!!!!!!

Well it would not have tasted as good if it was still wriggling.