i'm half polish, so i know all about eating carp!
why is it that carp anglers all get tarnished with the "hole in the ground" brush? match anglers tend to fish these places, yet "pleasure" anglers dont seem to get lumped in with them. a lot of questions get asked on the carp forum about poles and match carp angling, but i think they are more suited to the coarse thread, i think that most of the "carp anglers" on here tend to fish "harder" waters. but then these overstocked waters are a great way of getting people into the sport, rather than spending a year blanking on a hard water and giving up fishing altogether. each to their own i guess.
dabbing antiseptic may not do any more good, but it does no harm either, so why not? if you ever read albert romps book, it shows a 40+ from savay which was caught just before spawning with scales missing, scars etc. he caught it a week or so later and it was pristine - so pristine that they thought it was a different fish - all without klinik.
on the other side of the coin, a lake i used to fish had a parasite in it that was causing the skin to rot off any open wounds (it was around spawning time). fish were swimming on the surface in obvious distress. many of these were netted, cleaned off and treated with anti-septic and the parasite cleared up. fish did die, but only one of those that were treated did. coincidence? maybe
its been said before but whats wrong with naming a fish? if thats what floats your boat, fine (i couldn't really care what its called), but its hardly worth quitting carping about. fish unfished waters. fish rivers (before dave slater names the chub(couldn't resist dave!))
europeans do come over here - you see a few around the oxfordshire waters - but then why would they? they have far more quality carping on the continent than we have in the uk, and wraysbury/horton/etcetc aren't the sort of water that you can "drop in on" for a couple of days. ask the french about the german/dutch(and english!) invasions of cassien/lac de dur etc and i'm glad they DONT come over.
i also think you'll find the euro carp anglers are every bit as caring of their catch as we are
back to work for a bit!