Carp Harvest at Olsina

Two years ago my husband and I watched the carp harvest at Lake Olsina near our house. This time I came with Salamander and stayed at her house by the lake, this meant we could be up before dawn.

For three weeks the lake has been slowly draining, until yesterday evening I was able to walk almost to its middle. There the carp were bunched in a channel of low water, running the gauntlet of hungry gulls, herons and egrets. I woke at 6 and just had time for a cup of tea, before hunting horns announced that the harvest was about to take place.

We climbed up on to the lake dam wall just in time to see the men start dragging their flat-bottomed metal boats out along the channel. The water had fallen even lower and the carp were now restricted to the area near the sluice. A net was dropped and then the men in the boats began banging on their boats and hitting the water to herd the fish towards the shore.

The sun started to rise and the wet mud glistened. The nets tightened and the water started to boil with fish. On the shore a line of men hoisted the fish out of the water and into plastic barrels. When these were full, their flapping contents were emptied into scales and weighed. Most carp were then sent up a conveyor belt and into vast tanks on the back of a lorry. These will then be transported to holding places, from whence they will make their way to the large barrels one sees in the middle of Czech towns in the run-up to Christmas. Quite a few however did not make it that far, but went straight to the stall on the side of the road. Locals arrived in their droves (not to see the harvest as we did) but to buy carp so fresh and recently caught that it was fighting to get out of their carrier bags.

One could not help but feel sorry for these lovely creatures with their bright scales and their mouths opening and closing in the alien air-filled environment. Only a few months ago I swam with them in the warm waters of the lake. But my sorrow for them was not so great that I did not buy two bits of freshly fried carp, which I ate with my fingers from a paper plate. They were delicious. As I commented to Salamander it reminded me of eating fish and chips on a British summer holiday - it was even raining.

Salamander has been doing some interesting posts on her blog about the history of the Czech fishponds

Carp - Czech Christmas Food

Happy Christmas! I photographed this rather chirpy looking sheep decoration in Ceske Budejovice last Christmas.

I am now in England until just after Christmas and was looking in our local large town Cheltenham for some Czech alcohol yesterday. There are at least four shops in Cheltenham selling Eastern European food and all feature in their windows a prominent notice announcing the arrival of carp for Christmas. The British may not consider the carp a great fish for eating, dismissing it as muddy in flavour, but in Central Europe it is prized. Indeed carp is a central feature of the Christmas celebrations.



Around our Czech home in South Bohemia there are to be found large man-made fishponds, where carp has been farmed for centuries. Back in late autumn we visited the nearest of these - Lake Olsina - to watch the bi-annual carp harvest. The Lake had slowly been drained of water over the preceding days, forcing the fish into a pool at one end. A large net further restrained them and by the time we arrived they were confined to a small area, where they thrashed and gasped for air.


Above on the embankment a crowd of Czechs had gathered, some brought in coaches on trips to see the fish haul, others in the distinctive green outfits of the local fisherman's guild. Sausages were available for purchase, together with beer to wash it down with. The atmosphere was one of great festivity. Down below the fish were caught and thrown large plastic tubs, which were then loaded onto a conveyor and hoisted up to huge fish tanks on one of a fleet of lorries.


The destination of these fish will be the many barrels which appear in the market places of Czech towns at this time of year. When I first saw them I was quite amazed to see live fish for sale in the centre of town. I was amazed to see too the Czechs taking the still live fish home with them. There the poor fish are often kept in the bath until the time comes for the preparation for the Christmas feast and their demise.


Carp has a very important place in Czech affections, so much so that exiles in the UK feel the need to import them specially at this time of year. I have eaten carp once in the Czech Republic and not been able to see the great attraction of the fish. But then Christmas traditions are like that aren't they - turkey isn't the most flavourful meat I've ever eaten, and yet where would a British Christmas be without it?

Carping

In town squares all over the Czech Republic there are large tanks full of carp. Carp or capr as they are called in the Czech Republic are the centre of the Christmas meal - the Czech equivalent of turkey. Shoppers buy the live fish and take them home, even keeping them in the bath until the time comes to kill and eat them.

To feed this love of carp over the years the Czechs have built man-made fishponds across the plains of the Republic. The largest complex of such ponds - or rather lakes (they are that big) - is to be found around the South Bohemian town of Trebon. The area is well worth a visit - it has UNESCO-protected area status and makes a good area to explore by bicycle. The ponds were created by Jakub Krcin, the master pond-maker to the Rosenbergs, who had a home in Cesky Krumlov. He may have been a genius when it came to building ponds, but like so many landscape transformers on behalf of the nobility he was a complete bastard when it came to dealing with the peasants whose homes he destroyed and whose labour he abused. So vilified was he in life and after his death that there are a host of ghost stories about him, including one where he is cursed every night to ride in a carriage drawn by two giant cats.

When our Czech house was a the home of a German-speaking farming family before the 1945, the yard featured a carp pond. The pond was fed by a stream, which flowed from a well behind the house through a channel in the barn. From the pond the stream flowed on under the gate and down the hill. Under the ownership of the Czech family that succeeded them the well fell into disrepair and the pond was replaced by a septic tank. As for the stream its way blocked it made its own way through the granite bedrock and into our cellar.

Eating fish at Lake Lipno

On a couple of occasions recently we have gone to Lake Lipno to eat at the restaurants along the shore and look out across the lake as the sun sets. One of the things that really strikes you is how in contrast to Cesky Krumlov and even Ceske Budejovice this part of Czecho, only a few miles away, is not geared to the English-speaking tourist.

This is Dutch or German territory. The Dutch have arrived here in their droves – camping in tents and campervans at the various local campsites, or even buying up local properties. The reason I am told for the latter is that they are investing in a part of the world that is sufficiently high above sea level not to be threatened by global warming. Last night we were sitting around a fire in the garden of some Czech neighbours drinking pear schnapps and the subject got on to the Dutch. It would appear that they are not all together popular around here – the comment was made that you would never see Dutch people sitting by a fire with the Czechs. This is probably a problem more with the fact that the Dutch “colony” here is sufficiently large that it can keep to itself (as happens with the Brits elsewhere) than with the Dutch themselves.

Anyway back to the Lipno restaurants the menus were in Czech, German and sometimes Dutch and fortunately I speak enough German to get by and if that fails have a Czech phrasebook with a convenient menu section. The second restaurant we went to was a fish restaurant. Unlike fish restaurants at home Czech fish restaurants of course specialise in freshwater fish – especially the ubiquitous carp (which the Czechs eat for Christmas lunch by the way and which you buy from large tanks set up in town squares from November onwards). Our conversation with our waiter was not good, and he arrived with two portions of butter fried pike which we had not ordered and which was of course more expensive than the trout that we had. We could not work out if he was pulling a fast one, or if he was particularly thick – we had accompanied our order (made in both German and Czech) with much pointing at the relevant menu item. Either way he didn't get a tip at the end of the meal and we will not be going back there again.

As we came out of the restaurant the sun was setting. All along the shore line there were solitary fishermen with rod and line catching a free meal. The lake was like glass in the twilight and the Sumava mountains rose out of mist on the other side. Our tempers calmed, we took some photos and came home.