John Bailey – The Kingfisher Diaries
May 28th 2010
Historic Waters
Serious, big carp waters are very special places and are important in the history of angling. Think Redmire. Think The Colne valley pits. There are those outside the syndicate who think that Kingfisher isn't the water it was. Look at the record book. What an array of fish has been taken this year since April.
But it was when some of the carp were spawning in the recent very hot weather that you realise just how awesome a big carp water is. For a couple of days, these massive Kingfisher carp were visible in the shallows around the lake. There was one particular dawn on 22nd May. It was bleak and cold and the mist defied all the efforts of the sun to linger into the morning. But despite the fall in temperatures, the carp were showing, massive black shapes against the grey. It was almost apocalyptic! With a hint of sunlight, sometimes the carp were highlighted. One common looked enormous, the size of a whale.
Fish like these aren't just serious fish. They're serious forms of life. They are well up there with anything else that naturalists get so excited about. They are beautiful, long-lived, intelligent and massive. Hence my amazement when I went round the gardens of a local stately home recently. In the reception area was a board highlighting the birds and mammals that you might see - kingfishers and the like. It was, however, the sentence ‘OTTERS IF YOU'RE LUCKY!'
Let me tell you this. Many years ago I stocked the lake and moat there with genuine wild carp from a shrinking, clogging up pit nearby. These fish were historic and they were wiped out by these otters and can never be replaced.
This little story sums up just how seriously fish are disregarded in society at present. Imagine if those otters had wiped out a colony of great-crested grebes perhaps. Or endangered newts. Or a community of redstarts or the like, there would be uproar.
But who, apart from us, cares about a fish? This is a scandal of modern-day wildlife.