How big does carp grow? Types of carp: mirror, koi and others. What is the difference between a female and a male

Carp is a type of pond fish. It is grown in nurseries and in natural conditions. The fish is not picky about water quality and nutrition, but it is demanding about temperature conditions; it does not like cold water. Under natural conditions, it lives up to 50 years and can reach a weight of 70 kg. It is delivered for sale when the weight of an individual reaches 1.5-2 kg.

Carp is an artificially bred variety; in fact, it is a domesticated carp. The meat of this fish is distinguished by its fat content and delicate sweetish taste. For these qualities it is so valued by buyers.

In Russia, several fish farms are engaged in breeding carp and supplying it to stores. It is also caught from reservoirs where fish live in natural conditions. The price for carp depends on the fishing conditions, method of preparation, transportation and storage conditions.

Varieties

You can buy carp fresh, chilled or frozen. When purchasing, you need to pay attention to the quality of the fish:

• fins pink or red;
• the smell is fresh;
• eyes transparent, bulging;
• the frozen carcass is covered with a thin layer of ice, like glaze;
• the shape of the fish is not deformed.

Carp, due to its nutritional properties, is very popular among Russians. Fish contains a large amount of vitamins and minerals. This is a record holder for iodine content.

“Carp carcass” in Moscow can be bought for 346.8 rubles, Buy “Carp carcass” in Moscow for 456.72 rubles, Buy “Carp carcass” in Moscow for 266.4 rubles, Price “Carp carcass” is 261.4 rubles. in Moscow.

The Lyuban fish processing plant has been providing consumers with its products for more than fifty years. Today, carp, grass carp, silver carp, pike, and catfish splash in its ponds. "Kur"er visited the enterprise and found out what route the fish takes to get to the table of the residents of the region.

“The entire growing process takes place at the fish processing plant: from eggs to commercial fish,” said Sergey Makarenko, Director of OJSC Fish Processing Plant Lyuban. — How does our fish grow? For example, in the spring we received a carp larva, it grew to 30 grams. On next year We transplant it to another pond, it grows there up to 120 grams. Then in the third year we transfer it to a new pond, feed it, the carp grows to 1000 grams.”

As the interlocutor said, there is a two-year rotation for carp cultivation, and there is a three-year one. In the first case, the fish are grown up to 500 grams and sent for sale; in the second case, the carp gains more than a kilogram.

“For a fish to grow to 1 kg, it must eat 3-4 kg of feed. While the fish is gaining its marketable weight, it needs to be transplanted three times from one pond to another (for winter and summer).”

Is it expensive to buy Belarusian fish? “The cost includes the cost of feed (today it is 4,000 rubles per kg), workers’ salaries, the cost of electricity, automobile fuel,” says Sergei Makarenko and laments that this year it was not possible to send fish for export to Russia.

“Last year we supplied our goods to the Smolensk and Pskov regions. But due to the collapse of the Russian ruble, Belarusian fish has become more expensive. And the Russians stopped buying it,” says the head of the plant.

OBLOV. The area of ​​the pond from which fish are caught today is 162.4 hectares. The water is first drained into the reserve channel, and the fish are sent to two fish collection channels. Then the workers drag the catch with seines to the final point of fishing - the gateway of the sorting workshop. Photo: Anna Leshchenko

SORTING. The catch is sent to the sorting workshop. Here fish are divided by size and type - carp, silver carp, grass carp, crucian carp, pike. Photo: Anna Leshchenko

WHAT IS FOR SALE AND WHAT IS FOR PROCESSING. After sorting, some containers are sent to the processing workshop, others to a special pond, where the fish will wait in line for sale. Photo: Anna Leshchenko

Fish in numbers

Carp fry

• in the first year of its life it grows up to 30 g,
• in the second - up to 120−500 g,
• in the third - up to 1 kg.

Commercial carp grows for 2-3 years.

The largest specimens for sale:

• carp - 1.2 kg
• grass carp - 0.8 kg
• silver carp - 3.5 kg
• pike – 1.7 kg
• som - 15 kg

To grow a fish to 1 kg, it needs to be fed 3-4 kg of feed.

A sexually mature female carp in the fifth year of life is transferred to breeding stock and is used for 5-6 years. Such individuals weigh up to 10 kg.

NO WASTE: EVERYTHING GOES TO BUSINESS. In the processing shop, fish are cleaned and cut up. There is no waste production here, nothing is thrown away. The heads go into sets for fish soup, the insides are taken by the poultry farm for meat and bone meal. And the carcasses are sent for further processing. Carp and silver carp are used to make frozen semi-finished products, shashlik in buckets and smoked delicacies. But grass carp is only smoked. Photo: Anna Leshchenko

COOK AND SELL. The company store of the fish processing plant “Live Fish” carries out three daily plans on Fridays and Saturdays in the summer and autumn. “Mushroom pickers or tourists from Slutsk and Soligorsk go to the forest and back. They come to us to buy fish. There are often Minsk residents who come to the villages to visit relatives,” Sergei Makarenko says about the buyers. Photo: Anna Leshchenko

How much is fish from Luban residents?

As of mid-November, the Lyuban fish processing plant sells fish at the price (per 1 kg):

• carp - from 29,400 to 43,600 rubles
• crucian carp - from 17,300 to 21,800 rubles
• white cupid - from 37,000 to 41,800 rubles
• som - 62,500 rubles
• pike - from 39,600 to 50,300 rubles

Why didn’t sturgeon and trout go?

As I told you Lyudmila Yesimchik, chief fish farmer of the enterprise, several years ago they tried to grow sturgeon and trout here, but the process did not take off.

“The cultivation of these valuable fish species has its own technological features,” she noted. — Trout and sturgeon need to be constantly supplied with cold artesian water, but our well did not allow this. In addition, this fish needs special feed, which is produced only abroad, which means they had to be purchased in foreign currency. Due to the high protein content, imported feed also spoiled quickly. Therefore, we decided not to deal with sturgeon and trout and sent the fish for processing in June-July.”

Recipe for readers of "Kur"era

How can you cook carp deliciously? Quite simple, especially if you take the recipe for carp with onions and apples. Such carp will certainly be remembered by you for its original taste, incredible softness and tenderness, say the workers of the Lyuban fish processing plant.

Carp with onions and apples

For this dish you need to take one carp, 200 ml of milk, about 0.6 liters of fish broth, half a kilogram of apples, 100 g of flour. You will also need 3 tbsp. l. 9% vinegar, 5 sprigs of thyme, 2 tbsp. l. sugar, 1 bay leaf, 1 onion, 3 cloves, 2 tbsp. l. butter and salt and pepper to taste.

Clean and gut the fish. Cut into pieces about 2 cm thick. Place in a container, pour in milk, to which salt and ground black pepper have been added. Keep for 15 minutes.

Cut the onion into half rings, fry, peel the apples, cut into large pieces, add to the onion. Fry for a couple of minutes.

Remove the carp from the milk, put onions and apples on top. Add spices. Pour in the broth and simmer for about 10 minutes, covered.

Yesterday I saw in the news that the largest woman in Britain died at the age of 26 freshwater fish in the country nicknamed Parrot. The huge mirror carp weighed more than 30 kilograms. The head of the fishing farm, on whose territory Parrot lived, suggested that everyone’s favorite died of old age.

However, the exact cause of death of the lake inhabitant will be announced after an autopsy. Parrot's former owners say they plan to have his body stuffed to forever memorialize the "greatest fish in the United Kingdom."

The parrot was so popular with anglers that tourists from all over the country flocked to the lake near Reading, Berkshire, to see the giant.

Professional fishermen competed with each other to catch the Parrot. Soon after being removed from the water, the carp was released back into the lake each time. The last time a “champion among fish” was caught was in 2016.

However, after Googling, I found out that this age, much less weight, is not somehow extreme for carp. Look...

There are many legends about carp among experienced fishermen. What, they say, can this fish live until such centuries that it is all overgrown with moss and has difficulty turning in the water. But as they say, fishing stories are one of two things that every person should rightfully question. Scientists say that carp can live a maximum of 100 years, which is still very good result for fish. True, even 40-year-old carp are considered long-lived, for example, the carp caught in England in 2012 - a lot was written about it in the media.

There is a legend that Chinese Koi carps live for a very long time. An example is a long-lived carp named Hanako, which scientists from Japan have long followed. As a result of many years of research, it was possible to calculate the approximate age of the creature - 217 years. And only after 10 years of life, the fish died, its age was almost 228 years.

And now about the weight.

According to Alexandre Dumas, the largest carp in history was caught in 1711, it weighed 69 kg 765 g. According to L.P. Sabaneev, about a hundred years ago in the river. A carp was caught in Voronezh weighing 4 pounds 10 pounds, that is, 69 kg 615 g, and had a length of one and a half arshins, or about 1 m. There is no doubt that all this data is nothing more than a figment of fantasy, or maybe not.

The growth rate depends on the feeding conditions, primarily on the richness of the food supply and the duration of the period with water temperatures above 20°C. Carp (and carp is a domesticated carp) feeds most intensively at a temperature of 25-29°C and stops feeding at temperatures below 8-10°C. Under favorable conditions, by the end of the second year of life it can reach a length of about 30 cm and a weight of 500-600 g. Its maximum length is more than 100 cm and its weight is more than 20 kg. There is reliable information about the capture at the beginning of the 20th century. carp weighing 45 kg near Taganrog. Due to the increasing intensity of fishing, large specimens of carp are becoming less common.

On October 3, 2006, Liverpool carp angler Pete Fitzsimmons defeated the irrepressible Scar with her “current” record weight of 38,330 kg on Gravier Lake. On the last day of November 2006, professional golfer and now Mainline field tester Gary Hages broke his own last year's record on Rainbow Lake by fishing the same mirror carp, but weighing 39.520 kg.

But modern records On December 17, 2006, a new world record for the weight of carp caught was recorded in Germany. On December 17, at the German reservoir Gravel Pit, a female named Mary weighing 38,150 kg was hooked by her compatriot Dieter Marcus Stein. According to Dieter himself, it was just a Sunday 4-hour reconnaissance outing with the main purpose of taking a breather from domestic troubles. Imagine the angler’s amazement when, just a few minutes later, on one of the two fishing rods cast to a depth of 6 m, an electronic alarm beeped shrilly and a swinger started jumping! Dieter is an athletic guy, the water was very cold, and the carp ended up in the landing net pretty quickly. Having estimated the weight of the trophy, the fisherman immediately called his carp fishing friends, and soon seven witnesses recorded a record reading on the scales. "Baby" pulled 38.15 kg and was caught by Dieter Markus Stein

The first to conquer a carp weighing over 40 kg was Graham Slaughter. After 20 minutes of grueling boat fishing to the shore, towed directly into the landing net (the poor fellow could not manage to lift the trophy on board), a giant mirror carp weighing 40,090 kg (88 lbs) was delivered 6 oz) ! The length of the fish was 1.22 m with a height “at the shoulders” of almost 46 cm.

But last year a huge fish fell for the bait of an ordinary fish. 54-year-old Warren Harrison noted that this was the largest catch of his entire life.

A fisherman traveled 2,580 miles across Europe to catch this particular fish. The length of the caught carp is one and a half meters. According to the Express publication, this carp ranks third in size among all fish of this species caught in the history of fishing.

I’m wondering if such a huge fish is tasty or is it just a matter of sport who will catch the most and don’t even eat them?

Here's what the fisherman said...

Harrison said he had long heard stories that there were huge carp in Lake Hungry that no one could catch. However, the man refused to believe this story until he became the owner of a lucky catch.

The fisherman reported that when he started biting and couldn’t pull the fish out, his first thought was that the hook had gotten caught on something. “I tried to pull it out, but soon realized that “it” was moving. For more than half an hour I tried to get this monster, but it resisted with such force that I was completely wet with my own sweat,” Harrison added.

It should be noted that at this moment the temperature outside remained below freezing. The man finally managed to get the fish. To carry it to the scales, the fisherman needed the help of a friend. The weight of the fish was 46 kilograms. “I failed to break the world record. However, for me this is still the greatest achievement,” said the fisherman.

The world record belongs to Czech fisherman Thomas Krist, who caught a 48-kilogram carp in Hungary.

And for some reason this report reminded me of this popular photo on the Internet:

Carp, or golden carp, ( Cyprinus carpio carpio) is a subspecies of ray-finned fish from the carp family. The ancient Chinese began breeding this fish, using carp as their “genetic material.” Over a long period of time, as a result of persistent and painstaking selection, the body of the carp became shorter, the scales became larger, and the shape of the head changed somewhat.

Description of carp

Carp is big fish brown or yellow-green. Although the color of carp may vary depending on its habitat. The body of the carp is elongated and covered with large golden-brown scales. There are carps with virtually no scales. The head of the carp is large, the mouth is retractable. There are two pairs of mustaches on the upper lip. The dorsal fin of the carp is long and has a small notch, the anal fin is short. The dorsal and anal fins have a serrated spiny ray. The sides of the carp are golden in color, the back is dark.

Types of carp

In addition to scaly carp, there are mirror carp and naked carp. In mirror carp, the circumfin, caudal and midline parts of the body are covered with scales, and the scales are much larger than those of ordinary carp. Naked carp are indeed practically naked, “dressed” only at the base of the dorsal fin and sometimes the pectoral fins. By the way, an aquarium goldfish is nothing more than a dwarf form of carp.

Gradually, carp penetrated into Europe: both independently (through Asian rivers), and as a result of targeted delivery by travelers, since everything that was connected with China was fashionable in Europe, and carp fish was among Chinese nobility was considered a delicacy.

From the Greek language the word “carp” is translated as “fruit”, “harvest”. Carps are indeed unusually “productive” - a male carp fertilizes about a million eggs laid by the female. Combined with its unpretentiousness to food and habitat, this was the reason for the incredibly rapid spread of carp in all European reservoirs, from where it was brought to the British Isles, and in the 19th century to North America.

What does carp eat?

The lifespan of carp is about 30 years. By this time, the fish can reach 50 kilograms of weight. Its rapid growth is facilitated by its omnivorous nature (fry carp gain up to 0.5 kg in six months) and a special “stomachless” device digestive system, that is, in favorable climatic conditions, the fish feeds almost continuously. Probably, this feature makes it necessary to jokingly compare carp with a pig - fishermen know that this fish constantly digs in the mud in search of food, like a pig in the mud, and reveals its presence with large, about 10 cm in diameter, air bubbles.

The carp fish stays mainly along the edges of underwater thickets, where they feed on crustaceans, microorganisms, and young shoots of reeds. Large carp prey on crayfish, tadpoles and frogs, even fry of their own species. Young carp, in order to more successfully hunt and resist predators, gather in schools, adult carp are solitary. However, with the onset of freeze-up, fish gather in groups for wintering in pits.

Where do carp live?

The carp fish inhabits almost any body of water, even a polluted one, but it is thermophilic, so it is not found in northern Europe. Prefers lakes, oxbow lakes and creeks on rivers with a small current and a moderately silted bottom.

Carp breeding

Wintering usually ends during the spring flood, when the water warms up to 10 C 0 . Sexually mature, 3-5 year old carp are sent to spawn, for which they choose relatively shallow (up to 2 m) overgrown areas. Such areas are in short supply, so they are used more than once, and each female is fertilized not by one, but by 3-5 males. Interestingly, the age of carp is not a sufficient condition for reaching sexual maturity. Here we can rightfully say: “Size matters.” The body length of males should be at least 29 cm, females are larger and reach 35 cm. The rapid spawning of carp begins at sunset and continues until half a day.

In this photo collection you will see the largest carp caught in the world in last years. Their weight is reliable, and the fact of capture is recorded. 39, 41, 46, even 48 kg - these carp became a dream come true for those who caught them.

Many of these fish occupied the first place in the ranking of world records.

Each photograph is accompanied by an informative commentary about the circumstances of the capture of a particular fish.

1. Current world record

The largest carp in the world was caught in May 2015 - a carp weighing about 48 kg. It was caught in Hungary on the Euro Aqua pond. This is a small commercial reservoir operating on a club principle. Fishing is restricted to club members only. The reservoir is actively stocked with large carp. The cost of fishing is 1600 euros per week... The area of ​​the reservoir is 10-12 hectares.

2. Giant from Lake Der Chantecoq

Much more significant seems to be the capture of a 44-kilogram scaly carp in France on Lake Lac du Der-Chantecoq (Der Chantecoq) in October 2015. He was only 4 kg short of the current world weight record, but... look at this lake.

Firstly, this is not a commercial reservoir, but “public water” - a public reservoir. Interesting fact: The lake is an important transit point for cranes - about 75 thousand of these birds rest here on their way to the south. It is not surprising that the reservoir opens up space for so many living creatures: its area is 4800 (!) hectares. In fact, catching this carp is more admirable than the current world record... But weight is weight. However, this carp is still the largest among those caught in public reservoirs.

3. The legendary German “Mary”

A huge carp named Mary lived in
Germany and held the title of “world record” several times, in last time weighing 41 kg 450 g. This carp died in 2012.

4. French dream of carp anglers: Eric’s Common

The famous "Eric's Common" - one of the largest carp of Lake Rainbow in France - is the cherished dream of many carp anglers. He was caught many times. He also took 1st place in the ranking of world records with a weight of 41 kg, but held 1st place for only 2 weeks and was displaced from this position by the already mentioned “Mary”.

5. Mirror Giant from Lake Rainbow

Another giant of Lake Rainbow - a world record in 2010. A carp weighing 42 kg bit at an air temperature of -3 and was the only fish caught during this session.

6. Euro Aqua: beyond the 100 lb mark

And again Euro Aqua: in 2012, for the first time, a fish was caught there that exceeded the 100 lb mark in weight (over 46 kg). At that time it was the largest carp in the world. He was caught in 2012.

7. The Scarred Legend from Les Graviers: "Scar"

The Scar, a carp living in Lake Les Graviers in France, became a world record in 2010. He got his name from a scar on his body. The photo shows him at various times weighing from 39 to 44 kg.

8. Ken Dodd - famous resident of Rainbow

Another famous carp from Rainbow Lake, this time a mirror one, goes by the name “Ken Dodd”. It was caught in 2011 weighing 39 kg.

9. Terrible Neptune from wild water

Neptune is a huge carp from another public reservoir in France. His weight was 38.2 kg.

10. Shoulders – broad-shouldered Frenchman

Another carp that visits the carp mat as often as its own home is Shoulders from the French reservoir Abbey Lake. In 2012, this carp was caught by Dutch carp angler Lisette Benders, thereby setting a world record for weight among women. Shoulders' weight at that time was 38 kg. Today he has grown to almost 44 kg.

11. Briggs Fish - another famous resident of Rainbow Lake

There are also several very large carp living in Lake Rainbow, weighing over 36 kg. Briggs Fish is one such coveted trophy.

12. Wild German

A carp weighing 38.6 kg caught in a “secret” reservoir in Germany in 2006 also bore the honorary title of “the largest carp in the world” and took first place in the ranking of world records.

Finally, the largest carp in Ukraine weighs 29 kg 610 g and was caught in 2011 in one of the wild reservoirs of the Volyn region, and then transported to “Prilbychi”.

We wish you to catch your record carp and, of course, release it into its native element!

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