Fly fishing carp

Taiwan is a weird country, which has been influenced by buddhism for thousand years. Many people who believe buddhism consider releasing alive animals to nature environment is a kind of redemption, and this behaviour will enable people going to heaven, not going to hell after they pass away. Therefore, people buy the animals raised by human and release these creatures in the place where should not release fishes without concern.

Pinlin, a small district of Taipei county, is a really natural place for fishing and enjoying green tea. Hundary thousands of freshwater fishers like to go to here for fishing. Usually, fishers tend to catch Zaccos or small carps in Pinlin. In the past Pinlin indeed was a very popular place for fishing. However, from the last decade over fishing has been causing the fish resources reducing. Additionally, intrusive fishes, like carp or hering, impact the native fishes' habitats. These two matters make the circumstance more seriously.

We have been investigating the water of Pinlin for many years. We wintness the nature environment change and fish resources decrease. To be a Taiwanese, we believe no fish resource will cause the fishing industry decline even crash. We more believe an unhealthy environment definately triggers the environment fighting back to human being. Thus, we recommended Pinlin government to do the field investigation, which is for seting up the fishing regulation and removing the intrusive fishes in the future.

Carp is one of the intrusive fishes in Pinlin. Many buddhists release carp in Jin Gua creek of Pinlin and also cause the native fishes reduce. Ironically, they believe releasing fishes can bring them to heaven after passing away. Now the releasing behaviour, however, kills more native fishes. I do want to see the people who release intrusive fishes will go to heaven or go to hell. Coming back to the issue, in order to remove the intrusive fishes we have to realise where these fishes stay. We checkd the creek along the creek bank, then we found out that carp usually lives in deep water without too riffling and where local people can easily feed them. Due to the long-time contrived feeding, carp tends to be concentrated to staying in fix spots. Hence, we more intend to observe the environment loading ability which has been intruded by carps.

In half year observation, we found out that the number of shrimp and native fishes keep declining in the place where the carps thrive. It is very difficult to find freshwater shrimp in Jin Gua creek. We hypothesize that the carps eat almost all shrimps and the biological chain has been devastated. After the shrimp group finished, we suppose that the carps will target the eggs of native fishes. The circumstance is getting worse and worse.

Therefore, we suggested Pinlin government to remove carps in Jin Gua creek in this year. This plan will start in next half year. We know removing intrusive fishes is almost impossible but we do what we can do. We hope we can change the things which were not easily changed in the past.
We hope more foreign fly fishers can come to Taiwan to enjoy the different experiences of fly fishing in Pinlin and Jin Gua creek.