The Crucian Website

Hi, I'm Peter Rolfe (A.K.A. "The Crucian Crusader") and I thought it was high time that the crucian had a website of its own. The idea is to provide a database of information and to gather together ideas and experiences to try to build up a really reliable resource for anglers, naturalists, conservationists, scientists, land-owners, fish farmers and dealers - in fact anyone who's interested in the species.

I've used the name "crucian" and not "crucian carp", because it is, after all, a separate species (Carassius carassius), and not just a smaller version of the common carp (Cyprinus carpio), whatever the great Richard Walker thought ("a jolly, chubby little carp"). Perhaps if everyone knew it as a separate species, it would be better respected and more likely to survive. We don't call a goldfish a "goldfish carp" so why call a crucian a "crucian carp"? If that is turning an adjective into a noun - so be it!

This website aims to do the following:

• To celebrate the pleasures of crucian fishing
• to provide a reliable guide to identification and so clear away some of the confusion
• to provide an exchange of correspondence for anyone interested in the crucian, so that we can share views and learn from each other
• to keep everyone up to date with news and views about the crucian from all over the country and from abroad
• to describe the biology of the crucian from the angler's point of view and to keep abreast of relevant scientific research
• to show how to develop new crucian waters and how to manage crucian stocks
• to encourage crucian conservation by all of the above

It would be so useful to tap into the experiences of crucian anglers here and abroad, so please send me your experiences and comments and I'll add them to the website. In that way we can build up a comprehensive picture of the fish, its behaviour, the places where it lives (no need to be specific) and the fishing for it.

Browse the site by following the site menu at the top of the page. The header picture is the Upper Saxon Pond dam, taken from the south bank c.2010.

Crucians and Me

Crucians were the first fish I caught, in a small Essex sand pit at the end of World War 2. Many years later, in the early 1970s, I started to restore field ponds, mainly to provide myself with some private fishing. I stocked these ponds with carp (of course!), tench and crucians. I quickly found that crucians in particular flourished in these small ponds, reproducing in huge numbers. The local angling club used many of these fish in its lakes and ponds. From 1987 until 1996 I was partner in a small water plant and fish farming business and we used the restored field ponds to breed tench and crucians. Since then I have restored and created a number of lakes and ponds, managing four of them in favour of crucians. I've told that part of the story in my 1997 fishing book, published by Medlar Press, called "The Net on the Garage Wall".

In 1998, Angling Times published a photo of the new crucian record, caught by Adrian Eves. The trouble was, it didn't really look like "my" crucians, being much higher backed. This prompted me to do two things: first, to begin to research crucians and secondly, as the technology became available, to have my fish DNA confirmed by Dr. Bernd Hänfling at Hull University, which was duly done.

Research became a bit of an obsession, resulting eventually in my second book, 'Crock of Gold, Seeking the Crucian Carp', and this website.

For details of all my books on crucians and ponds and things, please go to My Books in Pete’s Patch.

Watch this space!

TL
Pete

Announcement!

At last 'The Net on the Garage Wall' is available at an affordable price – the First Edition fetches nearly £200 from collectors!

Thanks to KDP, I’ve been able to produce a nice soft cover Second Edition, obtainable from Amazon for just £7.99.

If you’d like a signed copy, I can send you one for £12, post free. Just let me know via this website.

Part of the work of the National Crucian Conservation Project has been to list crucian waters countrywide. You can find this list, updated regularly by Cole Falconer & Mark Wintle, on our 'Crucian Fisheries' page, which currently has over 350 entries.