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Ghost carp in Birmingham city centre.

Graham Tremble

Graham Tremble

Senior Member
Walking past a canal in Digbeth ( Birmingham city centre ) I could not resist looking over a bridge and gazing into the water. The first thing that surprised me was that the canal was alive with small roach. Then a Ghost carp of about 5 lb swam beneath me! How on earth can a Ghost carp be found in a canal in the centre of Birmingham?
G.T.
 
Graham Tremble said:
Walking past a canal in Digbeth ( Birmingham city centre ) I could not resist looking over a bridge and gazing into the water. The first thing that surprised me was that the canal was alive with small roach. Then a Ghost carp of about 5 lb swam beneath me! How on earth can a Ghost carp be found in a canal in the centre of Birmingham?
G.T.
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There used to be a few kois in the city centre canals years back. I've seen and caught them. I suspect they were dumped there.
 
Plenty of garden centres and aquatics shops sell them as fingerlings for people to stock in their garden ponds and they can quickly outgrow the ponds they are stocked into. Not a huge surprise if people introduce them to canals etc. They have found their way into other waters through misguided stockings including Redmire of all places! :eek:
 
Joe Winstanley said:
Plenty of garden centres and aquatics shops sell them as fingerlings for people to stock in their garden ponds and they can quickly outgrow the ponds they are stocked into. Not a huge surprise if people introduce them to canals etc. They have found their way into other waters through misguided stockings including Redmire of all places! :eek:
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Pretty sure I read that they have all been removed from Redmire as part of its reinstatement. But they had indeed been introduced there.
 
There was a Goldfish on the factory wall section of the Loughborough canal a few years ago. It got caught in matches on there, went about 3lbs.
 
Thats nothing there was a canal in St Helens where you could catch cichlids from, years ago and still produces werid fish today it use to be hot water and a local petime shop closed down and emptied it's remaining stock into said canal
 
All sorts of stuff out there.

The D.Stour has Terrapins, I’ve seen two of those with my own eyes. There’s also Goldfish. Heard rumours years ago of Sturgeon.
The H.Avon has Koi and Grassies, there’s quite a well known Gold Koi.

Somewhere over time I’ve seen a Pleco but I can’t remember for the life of me where and it may never of survived long term.
 
There was a big koi I spotted yrs ago. On my local cut. Wyrley and essington. The when I was fishing last month with my nipper, a chap showed me a koi that was spotted by bentley Bridge on his phone, it was a big bugger. Could have possibly been the one I saw yrs ago. I also saw a red eared slider once basking on a lilypad again on the Wyrley and essington.
 
Nicholas Cole said:
Pretty sure I read that they have all been removed from Redmire as part of its reinstatement. But they had indeed been introduced there.
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That wasn't a deliberate stocking though - members of the family that owned the estate at that time rescued ghost carp from a small pool next to the manager's cottage when it started to lose water, leaving the fish in distress. Rather than see them die, they put them into Redmire, not realising what the consequences would be. As you correctly state, all the ghost carp were removed during the restoration work that took place a couple of years ago.
 
A bit late to the party with this one but as someone that fishes the Birmingham canals quite a lot, I can attest to their being many odd species that turn up! The grand Union canal has turned up wells and bullhead catfish, and I’ve personally seen a number of goldfish & ornamental carp on my travels. There were rumours of an alligator gar being found dead in Kings Norton not so long back.
 
Lee White said:
Thats nothing there was a canal in St Helens where you could catch cichlids from, years ago and still produces werid fish today it use to be hot water and a local petime shop closed down and emptied it's remaining stock into said canal
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Fished there many times as a kid, happy days. :)
 
Fished there loads my self never seen anything like that place

Always remember it had a close season on there when we where kids we would let it rest for 2 weeks in the close season then sneak on for the night it was like fishing and old day Drayton res no sleep carp all night long
 
Lee White said:
Fished there loads my self never seen anything like that place

Always remember it had a close season on there when we where kids we would let it rest for 2 weeks in the close season then sneak on for the night it was like fishing and old day Drayton res no sleep carp all night long
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Remember one time i was desperate for the loo, decided to take a swim, can still picture the face of an angler who foul hooked the oddest looking fish youve ever seen in your life, strange brown creature it was 💩 I hope that angler wasnt you Lee 😁
 
Derek when your kids you do some crazy stuff we used to fish halsneed in Whiston when we was fishing for the weekend on there all the regulars had a peg on the island called the toilet it was in the bushes it had a tree that had a low branch that over hung the water and was enclosed in needless to say the margin was getting shallower every week

When a new member would join the laughs you could here when people would spot someone fishing the peg was terrible it would go round like Chinese whispers ( someones fishing the toilet )
 
I used to fish many urban waters in Yorkshire. It never failed to amaze me what there was in these free and forgotten waters. The old canal at Barnsley is mostly derelict. In some of the parts that still held water you could see ghost carp, koi carp and goldfish. I caught a rainbow trout in the Dearne and still can't fathom out where it came from. In another section that was an old double horse shoe bend that had been by-passed 40 years previously by a flood channel so effectively was an isolated stillwater, there were chub and dace. In the River Don at Hillsborough there is a Trebor Bassets factory alongside the river. You can catch Allsorts there!

I'll get mi coat :p
 
Alex Constantinou said:
A bit late to the party with this one but as someone that fishes the Birmingham canals quite a lot, I can attest to their being many odd species that turn up! The grand Union canal has turned up wells and bullhead catfish, and I’ve personally seen a number of goldfish & ornamental carp on my travels. There were rumours of an alligator gar being found dead in Kings Norton not so long back.
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Same on the Wandle. I've spotted a few Ghosties, 2 white Koi and a large orange Koi that often can be found opposite the Savacentre eating bread thrown in by passersbye feeding the ducks. They must have been placed there by someone.

I'm also aware that two catfish had been released into the Wandle. I've heard one has since been caught and removed , but not sure how reliable the source was (concerning the captured fish, the release most certainly did take place). It's amazing what you kind find, particularly in city canal and rivers/streams.
 
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