carp deaths

a few club waters have been closed in the cheshire region due to carp deaths that started on the river weaver, has any one got ant updates or actually seen any dead carp.

http://www.thisischeshire.co.uk/cheshire/warrington/angling/WARRINGTON_ANGLING1.html

This says a bit about it

it is far worse than i realised , hundreds of carp have been seen dead on the brigewater canal by barge owners, i myself saw 6 dead this morning, and i have spoken to people walking the banks, and they have reported lots of dead carp, god knows how many are lying on the bottom. this is really serious and nobody is being notified, the whole system seems to be affected, from middlewich through to agden and on to manchester.a freind of mine has notified warrington anglers, who have closed their carp waters, but left the canal open.

this is really serious and nobody is being notified,
apart from baz has been banging on about it for the last 6 weeks and the EA have been testing things in the whole system for about the same ammount of time if not longer.
maybe you just weren't listening in the right places.

Apparently fish were turning up dead in Top Flash as early as March. It looks like there has been a series of foot dragging, indecision and perhaps even incompetence by both the controlling club/clubs and the EA all along the line.
The Top Flash deaths were initially put down to a localised minor pollution, events since have clearly demonstrated that this wasn't the case. So that?s at least one example where the EA have got things badly wrong.
Given its location Top Flash should have been closed to fishing as soon as a problem was apparent instead it was left open. I have it on good authority that one brain dead un-named individual actually dumped a number of corpses into a stream that flows DIRECTLY into the Weaver.
Given the close proximity of Top Flash, Bottom Flash and the Weaver the spread of whatever pathogen is killing all the fish may have been unavoidable but thanks to the actions of certain individuals and bodies we will never have the luxury of knowing.
It is about time the EA took some real decisive action and stopped ALL angling activity within the affected area until the problem is under control and they know exactly what they are dealing with.
Personally I would be happy to see angling suspended in the whole of Cheshire and South Manchester as way of a fire brake. Given how lethal and the rate at which this thing is spreading the alternative is that the whole area and perhaps even further may be lost to Carp fishing for many years anyhow.
In four months we have already seen this insidious killer wipe out one of the North west Premier still waters and travel through mile upon mile of the North West River and canal system leaving thousands of irreplaceable Carp dead in its wake. If we have a mild winter and decisive action isn?t taken NOW I dread to think where this could all end.
Surely this has to be already the biggest killer and threat to English Carp fishing we have ever witnessed?
For those who are not aware of the scale of this fish kill you have to view a map this size to view all the waters that have been currently infected.

Sorry about that can someone take out the URL tags in my post they dont work and have messed the page up.


try this
here

on the other hand they're not indigenous, there's a lot of people think that many of the waters have been ruined by their introduction and you could fill the waters back to the same staate in about 2 weeks with australian ones.

Jason I can't believe anyone who calls themselves an angler could have made such a comment. This is the Carp fishing section and the waters infected are best known as Carp waters hence the emphasis on the Carp deaths. It is not only the Carp that are being killed though, many Bream and silver fish have also been lost. One of the waters affected has been the subject of at least two Bream fishing videos in the past. Yes that?s right Bream and Carp thriving side by side who would have ever thought it?
These waters are not fairly recently dug gravel pits over stocked with young fast growing fish that have benefiting from the comparative warmth of the south. They are long established balanced waters where the fish have taken decades to attain their ultimate weights. Given the comparative lack of decent waters in the North West this is a massive loss to the region no matter which branch of the sport you personally follow.
Even if the money was available to restock it would take another 20-30 years to build up such balanced fisheries to anything like the level that they ultimately attained.
But hey why should you care its all happening 200 miles from you and judging from your comments you hate Carp anyhow.
Let?s just hope than none of the North West lads take a trip to Oxford without drying their nets. I suspect you wouldn?t be half as dismissive and nonchalant if it was YOUR waters YOUR fish under threat.

I would hazzard a guess that Jason's comments were a bit tongue in cheek.

It is indeed terrible news for Carp fishing in the North West Andrew, and indeed for carp fishing as a whole.

I can't understand the apparently very slow reraction to this by the EA???

Sad times!

as i pointed out andrew it's the bream guys who think the places were ruined when the carp were stuffed in there,
as you point out i would be worried if it was my waters,
that would be the waters round manchester then, as i live in rochdale they would be my fekkin waters.

maybe just maybe carp shouldn't be stocked back into all of them to leave them in the state that they were in when the bream were thriving.

unlike you i am not a carp fisherman i am an angler and can see the benefits of not having carp stuffed into every water in the country.
this does not mean that i don't fish for carp but my pb is relatively small being only 33lb, then again i have done the vast majority of my carping on rivers.

I don't see it as a tragedy but an opportunity to improve fishing in britain as a whole.
and malc was right part of it was tongue in cheek.
the things that do worry me about it is that some moron could apparently dump the dead fish in another water course and the ammount of time it has taken for the ea to act. these are the really bad things about it, you can easily replace carp.

Jason if you live in Rochdale they would indeed be your fekkin waters however, seeing as it says Oxfordshire in your profile can you understand where my fekkin confusion lies?

Jason the place was stuffed with Bream decades after the Carp were stocked. I used to fish Bottom Flash for Carp and the shoals of Bream were simply mind blowing. I am also assured that Carp anglers were relentlessly plagued by Bream on Top Flash right up until its demise.
If that wasn't an example of Bream thriving then I would hate to see waters where they do. I used to fish for the Bream during the day and the sport was nothing short of hectic. The theory that the Bream fishing was ruined when the Carp were ?stuffed in there? is laughable fiction inaccurate in its time scale by 20 years give or take.
Yes that?s right I fished for the Bream, I also have a couple of trophies that I have won match fishing. Looks like someone forgot to tell me that I am not an angler.
Most good Carp waters contain great specimens of all species. The list of carp waters that are stunning all rounders is almost endless. Carp anglers are relentlessly plagued by specimen Bream, Tench, Roach etc. Simple fact is that a well managed and balanced water is good for all species not just Carp.
Carp and Carp anglers are nearly always blamed for every other angler?s ills and always appear to end up as the universal scapegoat. Perhaps other anglers would do better to have a long hard look at our water management methods, baits and techniques instead of blaming, winging and putting forward unsound laughable theories that have no basis outside of biased and bitter minds.
My experience and the thousands of Bream caught by Carp anglers up and down the country every weekend tells me that this theory about Bream not thriving alongside Carp has no factual basis, with perhaps the exception of the most grossly over stocked puddles.

I find your attitude nothing short of ignorant and if you see this disaster as an opportunity rather than a tragedy then I stand by my original comment that you have no right to consider yourself a true angler.

i can understand it andrew completely when i wrote that i did indeed live in oxfordshire, i've not been here a year yet.
but it is still an opportunity, carp don't take long to get to 30 and if you stock them at the correct densities will thrive.
i agree with the vast majority of what you say in the previous post.

i have also seen carp die in large numbers and the waters bounce back very quickly to the levels they were at before.

If stocked at a sensible weight Carp take about 30 years in this neck of the woods to get to 30lb even when fairly sparsely stocked. Given that one of the fish lost was 40lb give or take a few ounces many of us wont even live long enough to see the Weaver system back to its former glory.

i reckon if stocked with mid doubles at a sensible level you'd get the first 30 in about 10 years max. which is still about twice as long as it took in linear.

It's the carp that were stocked into some of the Cheshire and Shropshire meres that have upset some bream anglers, and some ex-bream anglers.

The current carp deaths are not on Cheshire meres but seem to be centred in the salt flashes of Cheshire and connected waters where the carp, bream and other species have always thrived very happily together.

My local club controls one of the affected waters but at this stage we're not sure if the death of our carp (and it's only carp, no other species being lost at all) bears any relation to what's going on around the Middlewich area. It's a very worrying situation and very sad to see 20lb and 30lb carp dying.

Our water is clear and open to fishing again now, but it will be a few years before it will get back to its former glory.

Andrew, can you give me ring regarding the situation up there. Number in the office is 01733 465673. I need to speak to carpers on the ground who know exactly what losses are like for use in a story I'm writing.
I've been speaking the EA and they're sure it's an infectious agent, but they have no idea what as yet. In the mean time if anyone sees any dead or dying fish please report them to Nicki Rushton of EA North Region fisheries team (01925 543536).
Anyone else has any info then please don't hesitate to give me a call and we'll exert more pressure on the EA to take the drastic steps that seem to be required.

It's the carp that were stocked into some of the Cheshire and Shropshire meres that have upset some bream anglers, and some ex-bream anglers.

i'll shut up then!

It seems strange to me that the EA ,given the time since the initial carp deaths and the present date ,still don't really know what is affecting these fish.
Plenty of corpses for them to perform post mortems on.

Problem with corpses Ian is that the fish sink when they die and then blow and pop back to the surface after days or even weeks. After that length of time they are so full of parasites and fungus that they're virtually useless for post mortems.
The EA ideally needs live fish for the most conclusive tests.
They don't know what it is because they've never seen it before. That means it's a novel disease/virus or whatever, and that in turn means that it has only recently evolved in this country or, more likely, some unscrupulous muppet brought it in with a shipment of illegally imported fish.
The fact is that a small number of fish smugglers pose a bigger threat to fishing in this country than virtually all our other problems combined. Antis aren't a patch on the danger posed by the importation of a novel disease that potentially, given the right conditions, could run like wildfire through the canal network killing untold numbers of fish. From there it could get into most rivers. When they flood it would find its way into loads of stillwaters. Let's hope this isn't the case in this instance. Indeed, it seems to have played its course this year, thank God!

If they're quick there may be a few live ones left....
Its months since the problem first reared its head.
It seems to me that the EA was slow to react and is now desperately out of its depth.