Wild Carp

[Hovis]

I was thinking about stocking trends and the type of fish that the vast majority of anglers want to catch. They all want to target large easy to catch fish (normally king carp) so after this generation of wild carp is bones on the bottom of the lake I suspect there will be no more. I know they will exist in natural water happily reproducing and continuing the blood-line but if one would like to stock such a fish would it be possible to find any? Do we think the original wild carp will still be around in a 100 years? of will they be consigned to the history books? Discuss....

[Snape]

This is something Fennel is interested in and yes it would be good to set up a stock of wild carp to preserve the blood line.

[Hovis]

Question is where and how?

Maybe Fennel had plans afoot?

[Barbulus]

Any geneticists amongst Forum members will undoubtedly be able to shed some scientific factual data to this post but ultimately - and other than securing a private lake and associated long term management which of course would be absolutely superb - is it not possible to secure a species for a 100 - 1000 year type period -that you can extract the DNA and seal it....not quite like Jurassic Park but i seem to recall some programmes re-introducing long extinct species back into Nature in recent years through reference or access to the DNA obtained from the species when they were alive....?

[Kingfisher]

Question is where and how?

Maybe Fennel had plans afoot?

You have a PM waiting Sir.

[The Sweetcorn Kid]

There is an article in Creel magazine April 1968 about Wild Carp. It revolves mostly around the need for protecting what Wild Carp stocks are left as in years to come there won't be any left, what with the influx of King Carp into waters all around the country.

If only someone had listened!!

[Aitch]

Sadly, I think that the earlier strains of Wild Carp will be ( or probably already have been) watered down over the years with the introduction of F1's, Simmo's F3's and the like (not to mention foreign imports).... there are too many folk with an eye for a profit with a pool somewhere out to make a killing in the commercial fishery world...

[Carp Artist]

As I understand it. Eventually the king carp strain will eventually over a period of generations; will resort back to feral common carp, as this is the dominant gene.
I tend to class all British wild-carp as feral, as I doubt there are any true bloodline wild-carp in existence in this country now. The only place I know of with true wild carp is the Danube.

[Snape]

As I understand it. Eventually the king carp strain will eventually over a period of generations; will resort back to feral common carp, as this is the dominant gene.
I tend to class all British wild-carp as feral, as I doubt there are any true bloodline wild-carp in existence in this country now. The only place I know of with true wild carp is the Danube.

Yes it does appear King Carp revert after several generations although just how many generations is needed I don't know. For example the Redmire carp are all descents of the original stocking from the early 30s but after over 80 years the carp show no sign of reverting to wildie form.

Fennel's article is good
http://fennelspriory.com/downloads/wild ... cation.pdf

[Hovis]

Thanks for that Snape a most interesting read.

I will write to Fennel shortly to see if I can educate myself more.