Yesterday I was lucky enough to be invited along to Preston Nurseries near Hull to meet Dave Heslop and his 100,000 plus carp!
Dave is a maggot breeder by profession and describes his fish farm as more of a hobby. Some hobby this - he has a 20 to 30 acre site with the main breeding of fish taking place inside specially constructed tanks within what used to be a commercial greenhouse.
On arrival Dave greets me with a cup of tea and we sit down to chat about the future of my fishery which I explain is in the process of going through planning. It is surprising that our ideas of the future of match fishing are remarkably similar and he has come up with an almost identical design to that which my father has envisaged for our project.
Dave knows all there is to know about the fish rearing and growing on business - and he goes on to advise me on a natural reedbed filtration system that I can employ on my fishery and enable the fish to grow more quickly and healthily.
The next visit is to the brood stock, these are Daves prize fish - inside a barn and through several doors and corridors we reach a room with several large tanks, when I say tanks I mean containers that would not be out of place as small swimming pools! They are at least 8ft deep and the water is crystal clear. Therein you can see very large shapes - Dave throws in a handful of pellet and all hell breaks loose, there are at least 10 fish all around 20lb mark fighting for the handfull of food. When I say these fish are immaculate I mean they are fin perfect deep and dark commons and mirrors, in the other tank Dave has some ghosties and koi.
The process is explained - the fish are kept at a constant 16 - 17 degrees centigrade and when they want to encourage spawning the temp is raised to 23 which is the first trigger, the fish are then moved to a new tank with spawning brushes. Each spawning produces 100's of thousands of eggs.
The brushes are then moved to tanks in the greenhouse which have a complicated filtration system and rapid aireation. The flow in these tanks is designed to keep the fry moving - the weakest fish are lost at this stage. Dave has an automatic feeding system, each tank (and there are probably 20) contains 15 - 20,000 small carp - and a large number of them are shoaling under the feeder. The feed is a high protein powder - they will move onto 1.5mm pellet at the next stage. With a quick scoop Dave has about 500 carp in the net - if only you could have all these in the keepnet in a couple of years time! These carp are only 7 weeks old and about an inch and half to 2" long.
The first spawing of the year Dave achieved was in January and these fish are destined to reach 10" in length in their first year, the following summer they should be around the 2lb mark.
Out from the greenhouses and along the lane we come to Daves stock ponds, these are all around an arce in size and there are 7 or 8 of them, each is stocked with the 2" carp that came from the breeding facility - Dave produces a whip and a tub of maggots and proceeds to catch fish straight away, there are apparently 6000 fish in each of the growing on ponds and they are filled 3 weeks previously. The fish have grown very quickly - in the three weeks they have been outside they have already grown to 4" and weigh about 2 - 3 oz!
To get the large numbers of fish out for sale Dave purely drains the whole lake through a series of pipes and nets the fish from one corner which has been dug to about 3ft deeper than the rest of the pond.
Once fish reach about 1lb in weight they sell for £4.50 each - Dave explains that for a 2 acre lake to get winning weights around the 80lb mark you need to stock 2,500 fish per acre - so 5000 fish at £4 = £20,000 worth of fish!
If you get the chance to visit a fish farm it is a very very interesting couple of hours!
Thanks Dave for your time.
East Yorkshire Fish Farms
Carp farming
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