For Some Anglers, The Lowly Carp Is A $1 Million Catch
In weather so foul that most people won't leave their homes, at a power-plant discharge pipe most people avoid, Mark Metzger likes to sit for long hours hoping to catch a fish many people would like to exterminate.
Such is the lonely life of the carp fisherman, long scorned as the bottom-feeder of American angling.
"When you mention carp, it's sort of like a four-letter word," admits Mr. Metzger, wading shin-deep in slush on the snowy bank of the Potomac River on a 30-degree Sunday morning.
That's about to change, if Mr. Metzger gets his way. He and a few fellow carpers -- as they call themselves -- are making a bid for public acceptance, hoping to elevate the whiskered, rough-scaled, pollution-loving, bad-tasting carp to the rank of trout or walleye by bringing the 10-year-old World Carp Angling Championships to the U.S. for the first time this June. To sweeten the pot, the American Carp Society, a for-profit group, is offering a $1 million grand prize, an enormous sum for a tournament-winning bass, much less a carp.
In the U.S., the carp needs a face-lift. After all, carp are ugly, with down-turned lips and full-body slime. Most Americans don't eat carp. Many anglers consider them an invasive species, because they were brought to the U.S. in the late 1800s to restock dwindling fresh-water fisheries and feed a wave of Eastern European immigrants. Now they are thought to threaten the native fish and waterfowl.
The Global Invasive Species Database lists the common carp as one of the 100 worst offenders in the world.
Then there's the uncomfortable fact that carp survive nicely in the most polluted urban waters, an attribute that gives carp fishing all of the cachet of rat hunting. A carp-fishing tournament in Austin, Texas, next month wryly specifies that only carp -- not tires -- count for winning prizes.
Little wonder that BASS LLC., the bass-fishing organization owned by Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN network, boasts 550,000 members, while the not-for-profit Carp Anglers Group claims just 700.
But for carpers, carp have an attraction that many high-end, freshwater sport fish do not: They get very, very big and live almost anywhere. A monster common carp can weigh more than 50 pounds, with fish in the 20 pound to 30 pound range fairly common. The biggest large-mouth bass ever documented weighed 22 pounds, 4 ounces, and even a bass enthusiast might never catch one heavier than 7 pounds.
"The idea of fishing is to catch a big fish," says Mr. Metzger, a portly, 44-year-old custom clothier with a black goatee. "If you just caught small ones, what would be the point?"
Mr. Metzger caught the carp bug growing up in Glencoe, Ill., on the shores of Lake Michigan. As a boy he would sell carp to the local fish mongers, who turned them into gefilte fish, a Jewish specialty commonly found on the Sabbath dinner table. As he grew up he moved onto bass, perch and wahoo, but two years ago heard the call of the carp again when he ran into a Frenchman pulling a 24-pounder from the Tidal Basin, near the Jefferson Memorial in Washington.
Now he fishes in the mornings on the way to work, stopping afterward at a health club to shower away the carp scent. Even on the coldest winter days, Mr. Metzger lugs his gear across the railroad tracks, climbs down the Potomac River bank and fishes between the ice floes at the hot-water discharge pipe of a coal-fired power plant in suburban Alexandria, where the carp gather to enjoy the warmth. He is now the Washington chairman of the Carp Anglers Group, which has three members in the nation's capital.
It was no coincidence that Mr. Metzger caught the carp bug from a Frenchman. In the past two decades the fish has become enormously popular in Europe, where it is said to be a multibillion-dollar industry. European carpers travel to Romania and France to fish pay-as-you-go, catch-and-release ponds.
Britain is the mecca of carpdom. Anglers there carry antiseptic to treat the carps' wounded lips before they release them back into the water. London newsstands are stocked with Advanced Carp Fishing ("Voted Britain's Top Carp Magazine") and Total Carp ("The U.K.'s Biggest-Selling Carp Magazine"), which offer carp portraits for cellphone screens, toffee-scented bait sprays and package carp-fishing tours to Canada and France. The carp craze extends to Asia, where Koi, a goldfish-style carp, have long been revered. Restaurants in Baghdad maintain pools of live carp, and diners can pick the one they want when they order one of Iraq's signature dishes, mazgouff. The carp is then killed with a wooden mallet, splayed open and cooked around a firepit.
Now, American carpers figure this is their moment to break into the big time. These days they sell "Carpe Carpio" (Seize the Carp) T-shirts, put out a carp newsletter and disseminate literature singing the praises of carp. They organize carp socials, submit procarp articles to newspapers and print up carp-oriented business cards to give to curious passersby. One carp-promotion guide advises:
? "Know and pass on the history of the carp in the USA."
? "Fish in public places where lots of anglers can see you."
? "Teaching the ways of carp angling, as well as safety of the carp, should always be your number one concern."
Serious carpers go to great lengths to protect the fish from injury. They use barbless hooks to avoid tearing the carps' lips, and after they pull them from the water in special scale-safe nets, they place them on padded carp mats so they don't get scraped by the rocks.
The contrast in carp care was especially sharp in Austin, where Dave Moore, the 39-year-old co-owner of the 100-member American Carp Society, engaged in a fruitless months-long bureaucratic brawl with Texas bow fishermen over fishing rights. Bow-and-arrow fishermen inevitably kill the fish they shoot and often leave them to rot on the shore or bury them as fertilizer in gardens. Bow fishermen brag in online chat rooms of killing 1,000 pounds of carp in a single day. Mr. Moore, a financial planner, tried for months to get bow fishing banned in Town Lake, one of the premier trophy-carp lakes in the country. He was horrified at the thought of a European carp fisherman -- accustomed to paying big money for the right to fish -- visiting Austin for an angling vacation and seeing carp being slaughtered. "Talk about a P.R. nightmare," he says.
"If legally you can slaughter them by the hundreds," Mr. Moore says, "the public's perception is those fish must be worthless." The American Carp Society sells carp-fishing gear, and Mr. Moore figures that if the sport catches on in the U.S. as it has in Europe, he'll be well-placed to cash in on a huge industry.
A well-equipped carp fisherman might carry thousands of dollars in gear specialized for the art of catching the voracious bottom feeders, as opposed to the fast-moving cast-and-retrieve technique of bass fishermen. Typically, carpers set up adjustable racks called pods, which can hold up to three rods at a time. Each line passes through an alarm that beeps when a fish hits the bait. Mr. Metzger's usual pod setup costs $1,500.
The carper usually seeds the waters with kernels of corn or flavored dough balls called boilies, hardened to discourage nuisance fish, which carpers consider to be any fish that isn't a carp. Some even have radio-controlled boats that dump bait off shore. Mr. Metzger, who favors boilies scented with strawberry, pineapple and butter, uses a special jai-alai-style throwing stick and special carp slingshot to launch his bait 30 or so yards offshore. The idea is that when the carp shoal moves through the area, the fish will Hoover up everything on the bottom, including the chum and the hooked bait.
In the meantime, the fishermen wait patiently under special umbrella-like carp lean-tos and rest on reclining carp camp chairs. Mr. Moore even has a carp baby monitor so that he'll hear the line alarm if he falls asleep while fishing at night.
Mr. Moore and the American Carp Society were instrumental in luring the World Carp Championship to the U.S. from its usual venues in France and Romania. The open tournament will be held in June on a 40 mile-stretch of the St. Lawrence River near Ogdensburg, N.Y. Two hundred two-man teams from as far away as Russia will fish around the clock for 115 hours. The team that catches the greatest total weight of carp takes home $100,000. Anyone who breaks the New York State record of 50 pounds, 4 ounces for a single carp gets $1 million, paid out over 40 years. The prize is guaranteed, for an $11,500 fee, by a Las Vegas odds-making company.
Mr. Metzger and his fishing partner have put up the $2,500 entry fee, but he admits it has been a struggle trying to find corporate sponsors, like the ones lining up to get their product names emblazoned on professional bass fishermen. "It's kind of frustrating when...the door is slammed in your face," Mr. Metzger says. So far, he has managed to sign up a fishing-line company, a newspaper, an insurance agency, a crawfish farmer and a towing service.
"I'm hoping somebody rises to the occasion, because it's the next big craze in fishing in the United States," he says.
美国人欲为鲤鱼正名
在天气糟糕得让人不愿迈出家门的日子里，在大多数人敬而远之的发电厂排放管道旁，马克．麦格(Mark Metzger)喜欢长时间坐在那里捕捉一种许多人希望灭绝的鱼种－－鲤鱼。
这就是鲤鱼钓鱼者的孤独生活。长期以来，美国钓鱼界一直以鲤鱼是水底污泥觅食鱼种而对其嗤之以鼻。
“一提到鲤鱼，就好像说了脏话似的。”麦格先生承认。在一个气温为华氏30度的周日早晨，他把一大截腿伸入了波托马可河白雪茫茫的岸边的烂泥中。
然而，如果麦格先生的计划获得成功，这种情况将得到改观。他和几名自称为“鲤鱼渔友”的夥伴正在争取让鲤鱼获得公众的认可，试图通过让有著十年历史的世界鲤鱼钓鱼锦标赛今年6月首次在美国举行，让这种长著胡须、鱼鳞粗糙、喜欢污染、味道不佳的鱼种与鳟鱼平起平坐。为了造出声势，赢利性组织美国鲤鱼协会(American Carp Society)提供了100万美元的最高奖金，这要作为鲈鱼锦标赛的奖金都是一个天文数字，更不用说鲤鱼了。
在美国，鲤鱼似乎需要整整容。毕竟，这种鱼外形丑陋，嘴唇下翻，全身粘滑，大多数美国人是不吃的。许多钓鱼爱好者将其视为入侵的物种，因为鲤鱼是19世纪末引进到美国，用来保存不断缩小的淡水渔场，并且供东欧移民食用。现在，人们认为这种鱼将会威胁到美国原产的鱼种和水禽的生存。
全球入侵物种数据库(Global Invasive Species Database)将普通鲤鱼列入了全球100种最危险的入侵物种之列。
之后，人们又发现鲤鱼在最肮脏的城市污水中也能生存得很好，这一令人不安的发现使得捕捞鲤鱼就像是捉老鼠一样。将于下月在德克萨斯州奥斯汀举行的一场鲤鱼钓鱼锦标赛主办方无可奈何地强调，只有钓到鲤鱼而不是轮胎，才有望得奖金。
难怪迪斯尼(Walt Disney Co.) ESPN电视网旗下的鲈鱼钓鱼组织BASS LLC.号称有55万名成员，而非赢利性组织鲤鱼渔友协会(Carp Anglers Group)只有区区700人。
但对鲤鱼捕捉者来说，鲤鱼有一个引人之处是许多较为名贵的淡水鱼所不具备的：它的个头很大，并且几乎无处不在。一条普通种类的巨型鲤鱼重量可达50磅以上，而20－30磅的就相当常见了。根据文献记载，鲈鱼最大的也不过重22磅4盎司，即便是铁杆鲈鱼爱好者，也从未钓到过超过7磅重的。
麦格先生说：“钓鱼就是要钓大的。”他是一名服装商人，今年44岁，身材魁梧，留著黑色的山羊胡子。“如果你只是钓小鱼，还有什么意思呢？”
麦格先生发现在伊利诺伊州Glencoe的密歇根湖畔有鲤鱼生长。当他还是个孩子的时候，就向当地的小贩出售鲤鱼，这些小贩将其制成鱼品冷盘，这是犹太人安息日晚餐桌上常见的食品。当他长大以后，开始转而捕捉鲈鱼，河鲈和石乔鱼等鱼种，但两年前他偶然见到一名法国人从华盛顿杰斐逊纪念馆附近的潮汐潭(Tidal Basin)钓到一条重24磅的鲤鱼，从此捕捉鲤鱼的热情被重新燃起。
现在，麦格先生每天早晨在上班路上钓鱼，然后到一家健身俱乐部做个淋浴，洗掉身上的鲤鱼腥气。即便是在最寒冷的冬日，他也将钓鱼用具架在铁轨上，爬到波托马可河岸下，在亚历山大郊区煤电厂热水排放管道周围的浮冰块中间垂钓，因为鲤鱼喜欢聚集在这个温暖的地方。麦格先生现在是鲤鱼钓鱼爱好者协会(Carp Anglers Group)驻华盛顿的主席，在华盛顿有三名会员。
麦格先生从一名法国人那里重新燃起对鲤鱼的兴趣并非偶然。在过去二十年里，鲤鱼在欧洲逐渐大受青睐，被誉为“金矿”产业。欧洲鲤鱼钓鱼者跑到罗马尼亚和法国的鱼塘钓鱼，钓上来再放回去，或者钓上多少买走多少。
英国是鲤鱼的乐园。钓鱼爱好者带去消毒剂，在将鲤鱼放生之前先为它们治疗嘴唇上的伤口。伦敦杂志摊上堆满了《最新鲤鱼钓法》(Advanced Carp Fishing)（英国排名第一的鲤鱼杂志），以及《所有的鲤鱼》(Total Carp)（英国最畅销的鲤鱼杂志），这些杂志都提供手机屏幕上的鲤鱼图案，太妃糖口味的鱼饵喷雾剂，并且组织爱好者到加拿大和法国参加鲤鱼垂钓之旅。对鲤鱼的狂热还蔓延到了亚洲，一种叫作Koi的形似金鱼的鲤鱼品种长期来一直是人们崇敬的对象。曼谷的餐厅鱼池里养著大量的鲤鱼，食客在点伊拉克的一道名菜时可以任意挑选一条鲤鱼。鲤鱼是用木棒敲死后剖开，在火坑边进行烹饪。
美国的鲤鱼爱好者目前认识到，现在是为鲤鱼正名的大好时刻。这些天，他们出售印有“Carpe Carpio”（捕捉鲤鱼）字样的T恤衫，推出一种鲤鱼简报，分发歌颂鲤鱼的文学作品。他们组织鲤鱼联谊会，向报纸投寄赞誉鲤鱼的文章，还印制以鲤鱼为主题的名片，发给好奇的路人。一份提倡重视鲤鱼的建议中写道：
－“了解并传播鲤鱼在美国的历史。”
－“在公众场地钓鲤鱼，让许多钓鱼爱好者能见到你。”
－“教授钓鲤鱼的方法并保护它们的安全，应该永远是你遵循的第一准则。”
认真的鲤鱼爱好者为了保护鲤鱼不受侵害，可谓煞费苦心。他们使用不带倒钩的钓钩，以避免豁伤鲤鱼的嘴唇。他们用特制的渔网捕捞鲤鱼，以免损伤其鳞片，并将钓上来的鱼放在加厚的鲤鱼席子上，以免它们的身体被岩石划伤。
人们在保护鲤鱼方面意见冲突最为显著的是在奥斯汀，拥有百名会员的美国鲤鱼协会39岁的联席主席戴夫．摩尔(Dave Moore)，与德克萨斯州的渔民就捕鱼权问题进行了一次长达几个月的争论，但仍毫无结果。这些渔民使用弓箭射杀鲤鱼，并且通常将死鱼丢在岸上任其自行腐烂，或是将其埋在花园里做肥料。这些渔民在网上聊天室里自夸说，一天就能杀死1,000磅的鲤鱼。几个月来，身为理财顾问的摩尔先生一直在努力活动，争取让Town Lake地区禁止射鱼，因为这里是全美最好的鲤鱼湖之一。一想到那些习惯于付钱换取钓鱼权的欧洲钓鲤鱼者来到奥斯汀度假，看到鲤鱼惨遭屠杀的情景，他就感到不寒而栗。他说：“这仿佛是一场噩梦。”
摩尔先生说：“如果法律允许你屠杀数百条鲤鱼，给公众的感觉就是这些鱼肯定一钱不值。”美国鲤鱼协会出售鲤鱼渔具，而摩尔先生指出，如果钓鲤鱼运动能像在欧洲那样风靡起来，他将能够从这个巨大的行业中美美赚上一笔。
一个装备精良的鲤鱼垂钓者，他为钓到这种贪婪的底泥觅食鱼类而购置的专用渔具可能会价值数千美元，而这与鲈鱼钓鱼者使用的快速抖动的投放捕捉技术大相径庭。一般来说，鲤鱼钓鱼者建起可调节的架子，能同时支起三根鱼杆。每条鱼线穿过一个报警器，当鱼上钩时能够发出响声。麦格先生的一套普通支架就价值1,500美元。
鲤鱼垂钓者通常在水中放入去壳的谷粒或带香味的生面团作为诱饵。为了让其他前来捣乱的鱼不感兴趣，还要将诱饵制作得硬一些。有些钓鱼者甚至拥有无线电遥控船，用于在沿岸投放鱼饵。麦格先生喜欢用草莓、菠萝和黄油口味的生面团做诱饵，使用一种特制的回力球似的投掷杆以及特制的鲤鱼弹弓，将诱饵投放到离岸边30码左右的水里。这种方法的道理是，当鲤鱼群游向这里时，就会将水底可吃的东西吞吃一空，连带钩的诱饵也不放过。
在这个时候，垂钓者就在特制的伞式单斜面钓鱼棚里耐心地等待，坐在轻便折椅上休息。摩尔先生甚至还有一个小型钓鲤监控器，在夜间钓鱼时如果睡著了，鱼上钩时可以发出警报。
摩尔先生和美国鲤鱼协会的努力，对于让世界鲤鱼锦标赛比赛地点从法国和罗马尼亚转移到美国起到了很大作用。公开联赛将于6月在纽约州Ogdensburg绵延40英里的圣劳伦斯河畔举行。有二百只双人队伍参加比赛，其中还包括来自遥远的俄罗斯的队伍，他们将持续进行115小时的钓鱼比赛。钓到鲤鱼总重量最大的队伍，能获得10万美元奖金。如果有人能打破纽约州单条鲤鱼最重50磅4盎司这个纪录，可获得100万美元，这笔钱将分40年付清。这笔奖金是由拉斯维加斯一家博彩公司担保的。
麦格先生和他的渔友已经交纳了2,500美元的参赛费用，但他承认，要找到赞助企业并非易事。“当吃了闭门羹时让人有些沮丧，”麦格先生说。迄今为止，他已经成功地拉来了一些赞助商，包括一家鱼线公司、一家报社、一家保险代理公司和一个小龙虾养殖场和一家吊车服务公司。
麦格先生说：“我希望人们能抓住这个机遇，因为这是美国捕鱼业将要掀起的下一个高潮。”
