"Natural fish/cultivated fish" and national records.

[Snape]

Looks like it would be fun... :sun:

[Gary Bills]

Proper carp! :D

[J.T]

Lovely, I'd certainly like to fish there...

Ditto, looks great and those carp look like good fighters as well.

[St.John]

a 60lb fish from redmire would have eaten A LOT of boilies!!!!! they see enough.

[Snape]

This pond was stocked in the fifties and never since. I often wonder is fish allowed to reproduce naturally don't look like this? These are by no means true wildies, but maybe through being left alone over the years to do their thing they've evolved into lookalikes? There are some fully scaled mirrors in the pond as well as some commons. No monsters though! Do carp overpopulate a water like some fish do, becoming stunted? anyone know?

I would say they are wildies which are king carp which have reverted to a more wild state (feral carp). They are not Wild carp (as in the true strain brought over in Roman to mediaeval times for food)
See http://www.fennelspriory.com/downloads/ ... cation.pdf

[Gary Bills]

Just a crazy thought -, might it be possible to assess whether a carp is feral or not by its length? Of course, one would have to be careful not to call an out of condition common "feral" - on the grounds that it might be thin due to weight loss and old age! But if most of the commons in a pond are long for their weight, - muscular and mean - then it might be safe to call them "feral", if the history of the pond agrees with that assessment. Then it might be possible to draw up a feral common weight for length scale, to look for other markers and, in short, to establish at least an unofficial feral common record list.. This could set a new hare running, opening up a fresh and interesting chapter for carp fishing....

[JerryC]

I’m not sure the I can relate to the Romans introducing carp to England, after all what did the Romans ever do for us.......................

The Romans were responsible for the introduction of carp into Italy and many other colonies from the Danube area. The United Kingdom was not included this initial expansion of the carps territory. Following the decline of the Roman Empire and the rise of the Monastic life of the early Christians the carp became a domesticated food fish of the monks. Indeed during this period the first selective breeding took place to try and improve the carp’s growth rate.

Records suggest that carp were present in England from the late fourteenth century, and that by the I53O's they seem well established and much sought after. Despite extensive searches historians have been unable to find reference to carp being kept in ponds in England before c1350. Research has shown that the most popular freshwater fish before this date were bream and pike, particularly on the royal table, where it is thought contemporary trends would be mirrored.

[Snape]

I’m not sure the I can relate to the Romans introducing carp to England, after all what did the Romans ever do for us.......................

The Romans were responsible for the introduction of carp into Italy and many other colonies from the Danube area. The United Kingdom was not included this initial expansion of the carps territory. Following the decline of the Roman Empire and the rise of the Monastic life of the early Christians the carp became a domesticated food fish of the monks. Indeed during this period the first selective breeding took place to try and improve the carp’s growth rate.

Records suggest that carp were present in England from the late fourteenth century, and that by the I53O's they seem well established and much sought after. Despite extensive searches historians have been unable to find reference to carp being kept in ponds in England before c1350. Research has shown that the most popular freshwater fish before this date were bream and pike, particularly on the royal table, where it is thought contemporary trends would be mirrored.

I stand corrected :hat:

[Santiago]

I was talking to my son about the cultivation of fish just the other day. He is very keen on fish ecology and knows a tad more than he should for someone so young. We all probably think that the cultivation of coarse fish has led to a general increase in size and their fitness. But this is probably not the case with the humble roach. The breeding stock used by the authorities to re-stock rivers, might have led to the propagation of a strain of roach that no longer has the capacity to grow to the bigger 2-3lb specimens that once could be found in many of our rivers. Now only 2lb roach can be found mainly in rivers and lakes that are well managed with low stock numbers, where predation is to some extent controlled, with an abundance of natural food, i.e., stretches of the Hampshire Avon that are controlled and managed by syndicates. It may even be debatable whether or not rivers like the Thames will ever see 2lb plus roach in them again.

He also told me how the cultivation of salmon parr by artificial fertilisation was failing miserably, because the released parr are so naive about predators that most are eaten, and then those that are not eaten struggle because they lack virile genes , because the natural mating steps based on male virility and fitness as viewed by perspective females, is absent in the articial process. The resultant young parr are naive about predators because in the rearing tanks they miss out on natural programming of their innate flight response which takes place soon after hatching, and unfortunatley this flight response cannot be learnt when they are older and in the wild. (You cannot teach older salmon parr new tricks!!). Thus, the only hope for the re-stocking of our rivers with salmon appears to rely on native wild fish that are hatched in the wild, and programmed in the wild. Perhaps there might be a lesson to learn here with respect to the re-stocking of our waterways with cultivated coarse fish, i.e., are they really fit for purpose and make a difference to fish numbers in the long term, or is this re-stocking just a short term fix that benefits the predators more so than the angling fraternity???

[Gary Bills]

Snape may not be incorrect when he suggests that the Romans may have introduced carp to the UK. They had carp farms elsewhere in the empire and the "mummified" remains of a Roman carp were actually found during a dig at a Roman villa, "dahn South". This was mentioned in an interesting article in Classic Angling, about two years ago. The question is, though, was the "mummified" carp a British carp, or had it been shipped in? Also, was it a sacred or an ornamental fish to the villa's owners, or thought of as food?
Certainly, Walker suspected that the Romans brought in the first carp...but how can we really know?