how he could not have noticed that 8500 carp were missing from one of the ponds, surly you check your fish daily when you run a business like this .At the least would it not have been obvious at feeding time for the fish
You would notice it in a very major way, ie, nobody was catching anything, you cant check your fish daily (im a Fishery Manager) as you cant see under the water, but you can check the area for signs of predation, fish in these lakes are not fed at all, they have to take their chances with natural food and what the anglers throw in as free offerings to encourage the fish to feed by their hook baits. You would probably be surprised at the stocking density of many carp puddles, it''s runs at tons per acre.
I like otters, but the feral mink cause more grief, but otters often get the blame.
Some fishermen leave such a filthy mess behind them
Lots of areas along lochsides up here that are blitzed by them. Not blaming them all by any means, but there are too many lazy, filthy orifices who 'claim' to be fishermen who really give the rest a bad name.
Mink & Cormorants are by far the biggest predators i encounter, we have a DEFRA licence to shot Cormorants and we trap the Mink.
Unfortunately, you are right about some anglers, at our facility, you only leave litter once, because you will never get the opportunity to do it again, our rules also state that if there is l;itter in your peg, you must clear it away, even if it is not yours, before you start to fish.
8,500 carp.........that's a *lot* of fish.......and a heck of a lot of eating, even for a hungry otter and family.
M
Certainly is
I really am no expert on this but I didn't think otters picked a carcass that clean especially when there is plenty to feed on.
Not that i have ever seen, more likely to be a Mink problem, many years ago we had a huge problem with Mink so we organised a shoot, we got 34 in one evening, 34 Mink will eat a lot of fish.
Those ponds dont look big enough to support more than half a dozen decent sized fish.8,500 carp would need artificial feeding more or less daily.Pulling a fast one methinks.
You would be surpirsed at the fish densisty a lake will take, i look after six lakes and in one lake alone, ive personally stocked 14,500 fish, don't forget a lake is a 3d object, it also has depth and therefore volume
Sounds like he dumped a load of fish in the ponds, didn't look after them and is now looking to blame the otters.
If I were the EA I'd be asking for proof of the numbers of fish.
I'm pretty sure that otters would have taken some fish. I'm also absolutely certain that they wouldn't have taken 8 500 without leaving a massive mess beside the lakes (otters aren't tidy), over a period of many months.
He should be able to prove that by way of his Section 30 & stocking consent which is issued by the EA, so if the fish were stocked "legally" the EA will already know what was stocked and if the guy had any sense he would have had a proper site survey undertaken before he bought the place so he knew what was in there to begin with.
Otters would have taken some, but not 8,500, lets not also forget this is an article in the Daily Mail
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