If you look to the right of this picture, there is a horizontal dark fish and just above that with food pellets around it you can just pick out one of the big black carp coming up vertically to get the pellets. He has just broken surface and is just about to eat a mouthful.
We had a really gusty rainstorm last night and there is flotsom and jetsom on the pond. And lots of leaves around the garden!
This is just one end of the pond, there are lots of fish up the other end. I just had to poke my camera in a hole in the netting and take pot luck.
If you look closely you can see the dark shadows of the three black carp.
They are not too keen on this blustery weather, but curiosity got the better of them and they soon gobbled up pellets. I love how they open their mouths and just suck them in as children suck and slurp spaggetti!
do you know that your red and white fish are carp also just breed for color.
ReplyDeleteYes, I spotted the black carp! Thanks for the pictures.
ReplyDeleteCarp are said to be scavenger fish, unedible. My Dad said the catfish are far greater scavengers and have been eaten a lot; even considered very popular at restaurants in the U.S. in recent years.
We use to fish for and catch fish in nearby rivers, including carp, when I was young. None were the color of any of your fish.
My Dad said the females were the best for eating, that they had to be cleaned properly by cutting out a mud streak along the side of their body. He always took care of the cleaning of the fish.
We ate many, which I recall as quite delicious.
The bait he used was a flour "dough ball" flavored with vanilla, cooked somehow, on a small plate which sat on the bottom of a pot of boiling water. I remember the bait smelled so good, I sneaked a taste, but that was all I wanted.
I was always amazed the bait could be shaped into a small ball, pressed into a pear-like shape over a hook, attached to a line on a casting rod that could be launched out into the middle of a flowing river to rest on the bottom until a fish came along, and seldom ever came off the hook, even if reeled in a few times and recast.
Please, I'm not suggesting you eat your fish for they must surely be of quite a different variety, they are so pretty. Besides they are pets!
I do appreciate seeing them all, especially the black ones, since I hadn't realized there were any that color.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting a comment on my new blog. Once I’ve worked out how- I will link you to my front page. Greenmantle has offered to help me. You’ve certainly got a lot of fish! We’ve not got any- just lots of frogspawn and last year dragonflies. The foxes ripped the new liner the night after we’d replaced it and there must still be a small hole as the water level never stays at the top. Never mind at least the frogs should eat the slugs! Sarah
So they are all carp are they? I know they all had different breed names when we bought them.
ReplyDeleteI was out in the garden just now feeding them - we were watching them when we ate lunch and Pat commented that they were racing about. The black carp really are huge - bigger than the rainbow trout we had for lunch the other day. The pool is quite deep so I guess that might be why.
Joared, I just love the comments you leave - they are so interesting. I wasn't lucky enough to be brought up in a mum, dad, family situation so I just adore hearing reminisces (sp) of people who have. I could just picture the scene you described it so well.
Hi Sarah
Am going to pop backwards and forwards to see how you are getting on.
Off for a rest then update my blog - been up the allotment for hour
Everything is not always as it seems, or as we imagine it to be.
ReplyDeleteActually, my upbringing was not totally a traditional family, since "Pop" as I finally deliberately called him, (not "Dad", the term I used in my comment) and his beloved little dog, Snoopy, did not join our family until I was in about the 5th grade.
The most appropriate line I can think of to describe him was that "some people love their pets more than their own families." His youngest son, who lived with us for such a short time, older than I, became much like a brother to me. Only he and I were present to hear that quote above which was made within the context of a sermon one morning. Our eyes spontaneously met in acknowledgement and recognition of our shared perception re "Pop" from where my "brother" sat in the choir and I, only a 7th grader, was sitting in the congregation.
Pop was quite a loner. The basis of our relationship was often sitting on a creek or river bank, generally some distance apart, for hours on end, with little or no conversation (then or any other time,) quietly observing nature, waiting for the least little movement in our respective fish lines which would indicate a fish might be nibbling at the bait somewhere on the bottom of the river.
Nevertheless, I do partially attribute my deeply felt appreciation and love for all that is natural, nature itself, to him. That alone makes me grateful he was in my life. But, I would lying if I did not say, I had expected and wanted so much more from him, as did others.
Joared
ReplyDeleteI an relate to what you are saying. It is diffucult, but so much better to remember the positive bits of life and not the negatives - not always easy I know for a fact. But great when you are older and can have control of what you do and how and where you live, and to enjoy life's simple pleasures is a great gift indeed.
Give me a quiet place, and nature, whether a breeze blowing grass about, an insect, a fish, a bird, or as now, torrential rain on plants - heavenly.