How do you tell - male or female carp?

Shine · Sep 30, 2009

I'm going to ask the question a lot of people would probably like to know but are to embarrassed to ask, or they feel it may make them look silly.
Well I dont mind looking silly, as long as I learn something from it

How do you tell the difference between a male and a female carp?

Stealph Viper · Sep 30, 2009

The female carp is the noisy one

Waveney One · Sep 30, 2009

male v female

As far as I know there is no way unless you cut it open or it is shedding milt or spawn.

Graham Whatmore · Sep 30, 2009

If it moans all the way to the net and whilst you are unhooking it is definitely a female

Wiki says very wisely the females grow bigger than males which helps a lot doesn't it. I suspect there is no way to tell the difference visually.

Sean Meeghan · Sep 30, 2009

Turn the carp on its back. Take a sharp pair of kitchen scissors. Insert in the **** (the carp's) and cut upwards towards the head. Open the body cavity and you should now be able to sex the fish. Females will have obvious egg sacks down either side.

---------- Post added at 13:28 ---------- Previous post was at 13:27 ----------

Hmm... **** didn't work. How about rectum?

---------- Post added at 13:29 ---------- Previous post was at 13:28 ----------

I suppose that vent might be a better technical term.

Shine · Sep 30, 2009

Cheers Sean. And how do you go about stitching it back up and would Klin-Ik make it smart

So there is know way of knowing just by looking?

The bad one · Sep 30, 2009

As has been said you can't unless it's spawning time. And/or you have expensive equipment (Ultrasound) and high degree of interpreting skills of the images you are seeing on the screen.

Sean Meeghan · Sep 30, 2009

Most carpers will have a baiting needle and hooklength material so stitching it up shouldn't be a problem. Klinik probably won't make it smart as fish don't feel pain.

---------- Post added at 13:52 ---------- Previous post was at 13:50 ----------

Mr Cholmondeley-Corker (PaSC) · Sep 30, 2009

Turn it on it's back. If it has a great big c**k then it's a male. If it has a m**ge then it's a female. Simples!

Shine · Sep 30, 2009

I was just about to post no one has said that yet

ED (The ORIGINAL and REAL one) · Sep 30, 2009

You have to shake it --if it rattles it's a male

mikeshaw1979 · Sep 30, 2009

Mr. Cholmondeley-Corker (PaSC) said:
Turn it on it's back. If it has a great big c**k then it's a male. If it has a m**ge then it's a female. Simples!

I always used to go by the name, but they got Benson wrong didn't they? How many more?

In the absence of the above I expect Caster and Semenya will turn out to be popular names next year.

P.S. What is the natural ratio of male to female carp?

tortoise100 · Sep 30, 2009

With allot of tropical fish it is by the size difference or by the shape of fins .
In allot of cichlids it can become easy to tell by the shape of the head.

I find it not so strange that so many pictures of carp show very different shapes to them for the weight ,so I suspect that it would proberbly be easy if someone had a huge fishtank and grew a whole load of fish from the same batch and kept them on the same food then waited till they could spawn and assesed the difference between the pairs .

I have done this with tropical fish .

This might not happen untill there is a tank like the one in the london aquarium devoted to carp which might be just a little bit expensive though I suppose there would be lots of anglers who would want to see them .

For instance in pike it is females who grow largest in most cichlids it is the males.
I think the problem is that when catching big fish they are essentailly obesse not naturel anyway .

slime monster · Sep 30, 2009

I dont know Shine but I can tell you that I have never seen a Carp on the bank with a knob ,however You do get the odd knob on the bank with a Carp.

Waveney One · Sep 30, 2009

dayglowfroggy said:
For instance in pike it is females who grow largest in most cichlids it is the males.
I think the problem is that when catching big fish they are essentailly obesse not naturel anyway .

And in a lot of sea fish they change sex as they grow older. Starting as males and then turning into females. With certain species of wrasse there is one female, when she dies, one of the males changes sex to replace her.

That may explain a lot of the strange people on this Forum

Shine · Sep 30, 2009

slime monster said:
I dont know Shine but I can tell you that I have never seen a Carp on the bank with a knob ,however You do get the odd knob on the bank with a Carp.

...... Very, very true Slime

Waveney One · Sep 30, 2009

slime monster said:
I dont know Shine but I can tell you that I have never seen a Carp on the bank with a knob ,however You do get the odd knob on the bank with a Carp.

Only the odd one? I thought you had to be really weird to fish for them. Oh I get it now, most of the knobs won't have caught one for their 2 years worth of 48 hour sessions.

Jeff Woodhouse · Sep 30, 2009

Easy, when you lift it from the water and it's mouth's still moving it's a female.

In the water if you have a shoal, put a mirror down there and those fish that keep looking in it are females.

tortoise100 · Sep 30, 2009

Waveney One said:
And in a lot of sea fish they change sex as they grow older. Starting as males and then turning into females. With certain species of wrasse there is one female, when she dies, one of the males changes sex to replace her.

That may explain a lot of the strange people on this Forum

I remember some news article a while ago about pollution making lots of fish either change sex or have extra female internals (could have been about samon)don't seem to hear anything about that now ?

If the trend I had read about is to believed there is a generall shift towards more female creatures because of all the female hormones floating about from pollution so since carp are in the water I would guess there are more females than males.

I used to try and breed lizards and is was well know that one degree out when incubating the eggs would result in all female or all male brains regardless of actual sexual organs I think it was leapard gekos that it was most common in .
They would spend there whole lives thinking they were male even trying to mate with real females .
I think this could be the case with some humans .;bp

Waveney One · Sep 30, 2009

dayglowfroggy said:
I remember some news article a while ago about pollution making lots of fish either change sex or have extra female internals (could have been about samon)don't seem to hear anything about that now ?

You are correct, it is the Oestrogen from the 'pill' that isn't extracted at sewerage works. That has been proven by the EA tests. Not only does it get into rivers where the fish nearest the outflows are 'on the change' but it also gets into the water supplies. Although not officially proven it is thought that it accounts for the dramatic reduction in sperm counts in modern males and probably the increase in 'man boobs'. Thank God I am now nearly 60! Man boobs would just be another useless thing to play with as I got older!

My own feeling is that it probably has been proven but hushed up!

How do you tell - male or female carp?

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