boy-caught-a-record-96-pound-10-ounce-carp
When l was in MA l was into reading English carp fishing books. The English revere carp as a game fish which is in direct contrast to its trash fish status here. I hate the trash fish pejorative but will let it stand for now. There has been some movement to make carp more appealing to Americans but l don’t think it has taken off yet. Old prejudice dies hard.
l made contact with some English guys trying to promote it in the area. I went to the Charles River where they were set up in one of the downtown Boston riverside parks. It was April, l think, and fairly chilly. One of the guys was Nigel something. I had come to the right place. You can’t get more Brit than that. LOL
They caught a couple and l found it interesting but l could see right off it was not comparable to striped bass in the surf. It did strike me how much gear they had though. They had piled up wagons they pulled behind them. The other thing l noticed was there was as much babe watching as fishing. There were people everywhere.
This beer belly carp is a big one but in England carp fishing has aesthetic issues. Often the fish are fed and caught over and over until they get names. When it started in the 40s and 50s they were considered near impossible to catch hence the obsessive mystique seen in books by BB, Richard Walker, Chris Yates, etc. Since then hair rigs and tailored baits plus who knows what else, in the last 25 years, has changed much.
This is one of reasons U.S. carp are a holy grail to some Euro’s. The fish are huge and wild in vast settings. I saw a story on a carp festival in New York this week. I saw some that drew Brits pre- Covid. Carp are neat fish but the subcultures they inspire are even more interesting.
Speaking of which, here is another fish with image issues. This nice flathead is no salmon* or mahseer. I think Steve referred to them as “animated mud” somewhere but it has cred carp do not have in America. It is amazing how fickle people can be about fish and often a laugh. Bonefish are lionized but, as Donnall Thomas once said, in the beginning it was little more than “a seagoing sucker**.” Then there are pike and muskie. They look almost the same with similar characteristics but pike are sniffed at compared to muskie. Datus Proper made the same comparisons between walleye and zander in his Pheasants of the Mind: A Hunter’s Search for a Mythic Bird book. Fun stuff. Then there are the method disputes which John Gierach called the class wars of fishing. See also chapters 13 and 28 in Steve’s book of books.
The other end of the curve from U.S. carp and flatheads. You can pay $500-1000 a day to not catch these. Carp can be expensive in Europe, however.
**page 95 Whitefish Can’t Jump