The Traditional Fisherman's Forum

I have just been re-reading Peter Rolfe's book "Crock of Gold", in which he comes to the conclusion that the crucian was probably an ornamental introduced sometime in the 18th century. I also recently recall Chris Yates describing it as Britain's only native carp.
The evidence Peter Rolfe presents is fairly compelling for it being introduced but then I remembered stories my father told me of catching crucians in Staffordshire in the 1930s as a lad. The crucians were only found in farmland ponds with no other species and miles from the nearest road. This to my mind would suggest they were unlikely to be ornamental introductions in such locations and their inability to compete well with other species would suggest they were less likely to be found by anglers and could well have gone unnoticed for centuries. Just a theory but I noticed in Peter's book that they thrive well in Scandinavia in remote, stagnant forest ponds, with few or no other species, that are frozen for much of the year.

The Complete Freshwater Fishes of the British Isles (1979), states that the Crucian Carp "was considered to be a fairly recently introduced species until 1975, when the discovery of a Crucian Carp bone among Roman remains in London pointed to the fact that it is an indigenous species or at least a very early introduction." And A. Wheeler, in his paper on The Status of the Crucian Carp, Carassius carassius (L), in the UK (2000), argues that the Crucian Carp in this country is similar in its distribution to certain other species and therefore is probably a native.

That 'crucian bone' is far from conclusive!

DaceAce wrote:That 'crucian bone' is far from conclusive!

Yes, possibly mythical from what I gather.

DaceAce wrote:That 'crucian bone' is far from conclusive!

My opinion too - just the one? My guess would be that they were introduced from Germany in the late 17th or early 18th century, also I haven't seen anything constructive to prove otherwise - I don't believe that Izaac mentioned them in his book.

JohnL wrote:

DaceAce wrote:That 'crucian bone' is far from conclusive!

Yes, possibly mythical from what I gather.

Or the remains of someone's imported dinner..
The remains of a common carp have been found in a Roman villa, so perhaps the crucian was just "food?"
But wouldn't it be nice to have a "British Carp"?

Interesting information here ...

http://www.fishingmagic.com/news_events ... he-uk.html

Interesting reading A.C. It does beg the question though, what were they doing in remote Staffordshire farm ponds, after all there weren't any similarly introduced goldfish there. Were they relic populations, going largely unrecognised - except by adventurous schoolboys.

I have a theory about fish introduction and names. If you look back to our ancestors first or Christian names were given to offspring who would then be referred to as 'Fred' the son of the John the miller for example. Ergo, they would eventually become John and Fred Miller. This is basically how the Sir name came into place.

Taking that as a given (or at least as a probably), certain names flourished like Thatcher (topical), Mason, Herd, Carpenter etc. But if you look deeper then people were called 'Fish' or 'Fisher' or names like Pike, Perch, Gudgeon, Bleak, Loach, Roach, Rudd, Tench, Trout, Salmon, Grayling even coastal fish like Bass and Whiting. Yet nobody I know is called Mr Barbel or Mr Carp (I've Googled the names too, there is a Mr Carp but he's from S Africa), so I can only conclude that nobody either fished commercially or was seen to share attributes with these fish back in the days when Sir names were being handed out.

Therefore, I can only assume that carp including the crucian, have been introduced.

Very interesting theory Dave, although barbel were fished for commercially in the Thames at least so I would have thought there would be Barbels in the east end. What I am really wondering here is if the crucian was an overlooked fish, because of its habits, distribution and that it could be thought of as just another common carp but it had always been here in isolated populations. I guess we may never know for certain unless someone turns up a few more bones.