Stop Poaching Our Carp

Following on from a previous article where I took a humorous look at how some East Europeans had illegally netted a carp lake and removed specimen fish for the dinner table.  Well recently things have turned nasty and certainly not so funny.

A carp fisherman from the Manchester area has been attacked by poachers who were blatantly netting and poaching fish from one of his local lakes.  The story is as follows; our angler was in the middle of a three day stint at this lake hoping for one of the reputed thirty plus pounds fish that inhabit this lake. It was early afternoon on his second day when a tatty white transit van drove up to the lakes edge.  Two men got out of the van opened the rear doors and unloaded a small rubber dinghy and what looked like nets.

One of the men got in to the dinghy and paddled out into the lake to set his nets with this done he came back to shore.  Then both men started to pull in the nets they certainly knew what they were doing as they had caught several large fish.

It was at this point our angler who was curious about what they were doing approached them.  He was met with aggression and threats to mind his own business not to be cowed he took out his mobile and called the police.  This was when he was attacked knocked to the ground and his mobile stolen.

The poachers quickly gathered together there dinghy and nets plus the carp leaving dead other smaller fish that had been caught.  They then drove off leaving our friend bloodied and dazed.  The sad thing is the angler who is of polish descent recognised the language of fellow countrymen and feels bad that people like this gives his people a bad name.  A final footnote to this story a few weeks later the same poachers were caught at another lake with fifteen dead carp in there van.  Costing the owners of the lake many hundreds of pounds and depriving anglers everywhere the opportunity of catching admiring and ultimately returning the fish unharmed to the lake.  I understand in your country of origin that the carp is nothing more than food stock but here it is a fish we value and cherish for its strength and power plus its ability to be elusive and difficult to catch.  Making it all the more special when one is caught weighed and photographed and most importantly returned unharmed to the water.

So please stop eating our carp