I came across grass carp for the first time when working as a fish farmer in Greece in 1983. The fish farm consisted of an extensive pond system covering around 300 hectares. Each pond was about 20 hectares in size and was stocked with common carp, tilapia, grey mullet and freshwater prawns. These were being introduced as small fry either from the spawning ponds or by capturing juveniles from the wild for growing on as table food.

It was decided to introduce grass carp into the ponds and connecting canal system to try to keep a check on the pond weeds that would grow unchecked. The grass carp is purely a herbivore and would feed on the encroaching vegetation keeping the ponds clear of weed.

I remember when we would net ponds that at first it seemed that the grass carp must have escaped. It turned out that we would only get them in the last netful when the pond had almost drained, such was their strength and desire to escape their captors. I remember standing by the edge of a net of fish up to my thighs in mud when I was hit by what seemed like a torpedo! The power of these fish as they attempted to escape the net was incredible. My thoughts were that these would be ideal sports fish for the angler, stronger and wilier than the common carp which itself is a worthy adversary.

Therefore, my challenge during my year or so stay in this particular job in Greece was to catch a grass carp from one of the lagoons that was not used for rearing the fish, but still had carp introduced to keep them clear of weed. There were no carp tackle shops in Greece so I had to make do with some light sea fishing gear I had, as I had no coarse fishing tackle with me. In any case you will not find dedicated grass carp tackle in normal carp tackle shops.  Also the bait to use posed the problem – all acceptable carp baits that I could find locally seemed to fail – sweet corn, worms, bread. I only ever caught one of these powerful grass carp – on a parboiled potato! Whether this was a fluke or not I do not know – I have never had the opportunity to fish for these fish again since my stay in Greece.