Fat-sided Phenomenon

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Fishing Academy

Crucian carp is one of the oldest fishing words, first mentioned in the Nikonian Chronicle of 1216. This fish leads a leisurely, measured life: it slowly digs in the bottom silt in search of living creatures, thoroughly relishes fresh grass shoots or slowly swims along the coastal thickets.

At Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, in his own ponds at a dacha near Moscow in Melikhovo, there were crucian carp, "he personally knew. His frequent fishing companion, writer IA Belousov, described Chekhov's relationship with crucians in his book "Writers' Nests":

“Anton Pavlovich knew all the crucians in his ponds and even called them by name:“This is Vaska: he pulls like a float - I know his habit… And this is Grishka…”.

And here is how STAksakov, an expert in catching this fish, describes crucian carp: “His warehouse is wide and roundish: his figure is in the middle between the rudd and the bream, that is, it is wider than the rudd and narrower than the bream, covered with scales of silver or gold color. Both white and yellow crucians sometimes live in the same water."

Carp, along with, perhaps, only with rotan, is the most unpretentious fish that can survive in the most incredible conditions. In support of this idea, I will refer to the classic of fishing L. P. Sabaneev: “Crucian carp lives in more or less significant numbers not only in all lakes, ponds, but often comes across in semi-underground lakes, almost completely covered with bog, and in small pits, where the life of any other fish is absolutely inconceivable. It can even be positively said that the worse the properties of the water in the basin inhabited by them, the more silty the pond or lake, the more numerous and faster the crucians are. Tina is their element. Here they get food, consisting exclusively of organic residues and particles, as well as small worms."

On my own I will add: crucian carp lives not only in lakes and ponds, which L. P. Sabaneev mentions, but also in peat and sand pits, in swamps, in river oxbows and even in ditches dug by man. Moreover, in dried out or drained ponds for cleaning, under a crust of dried mud, they often find crucian carp covered with mucus, falling into suspended animation.

LP Sabaneev writes about this again: “… There were examples that carps were dug alive from a completely dry pond, from the depth of an arshin (arshin is a Russian measure of length equal to 0.71 meters). Crucians, it would seem, do not show any signs of life, but as soon as they are in the water, they immediately come to life."

In raw moss, crucian carp remains alive for three days. This ability to slow down life processes, almost completely stop the metabolism in the body, helps the crucian carp to survive even in frozen waters where any other fish dies.

In the reservoirs of our region, there are two types of crucian carp: gold or common (fishermen call it red) and silver (white). The name of the fish reflects the characteristic differences of species in color. Golden crucian carp is golden yellow or brownish yellow, silver is white. In addition to these two species, there are many more hybrid forms of crucian carp.

There are different opinions about the size of carp. The size of this fish largely depends on the reservoir in which it lives. In poorly fed reservoirs, poor in vegetation, overpopulated, the crucian carp is small, often reborn into a dwarf form. This is the case in most small enclosed bodies of water.

Of course, crucians also come in solid sizes. So, some seasoned crucian carp claim that they caught carp weighing 3-4 kilograms. I don’t presume to judge whether this is so. It is quite possible that in the reservoirs, where, as they say, the fisherman's oar did not step or row, there are such giants. However, the usual weight of crucians caught by me and other fishermen rarely exceeded a kilogram.

Crucian carp is an extremely fertile material for selection. It is this fish that, as a result of centuries of painstaking selection, has turned into a well-known goldfish. Further metamorphoses gave rise to very unusual, bizarre forms of a goldfish with huge spherical eyes, intricate trains of fins - a telescope, a veil-tail, a comet. Hundreds of varieties of these fish are kept by aquarists in their home reservoirs, continuing to breed more and more.

The lifespan of the crucian carp has not been precisely established, but it can be assumed that it lives no more than 10-12 years. Males are always smaller than females. This fish reaches sexual maturity in the second - fourth year of life. Spawning occurs in May-July at a water temperature of 17-18 degrees.

We will talk about where, what and how to catch crucian carp in the next issues of the magazine.