The Rodney Dangerfield of Fish : Carp Are Treasured Possessions in Japan, but Get Little Respect From Anglers in the Southland

For Marlon Meade, it happened one day last March.

The trout were biting at Irvine Lake and Meade and his fishing partner, Wyle Ishii, were catching their share when they noticed a commotion off in a shallow cove.

“There was all this splashing going on,” Meade recalled from his Anaheim home. “So we got back in there and the carp were in there. We thought they were bass.”

Meade, 32, was about to become a carp fisherman, something he had never thought possible, given the carp’s reputation as a trash fish.

But Meade and Ishii couldn’t resist the temptation brought on by the dozens of large fish rolling almost playfully in a swirling mass of orange.

What the heck, they thought.

“So we started fishing back there with light tackle, and we started hooking up the fish on these bullet-jigs,” Meade said. “We were putting three or four meal worms on them. They were spawning back there.”

Meade and Ishii discovered quickly that these fish were not the docile, lumbering creatures people often see near the docks at the local marina.

“It was incredible,” Meade recalled, laughing. “You hook up to these things and they just take off. They pull. They just pull slowly. And you can’t turn them. You can’t do anything.”

Eventually, Meade brought one in and weighed it in on the Irvine Lake scale at 18 pounds. Ishii soon beat that with a 24-pound fish he could hardly get his hands around. The two spent the entire day fishing for carp .

“We probably caught and released over 25 or 30 carp that day,” Meade said. “We caught between 10 and 15 that were over 10 pounds.”

So Meade was hooked on carp?

Only in a manner of speaking.

“This is a kick in the pants,” he said, acknowledging that he still fishes for carp when the water level is high and the fish are preparing to spawn in the same little cove in Irvine Lake. “I mean, it’s all fun and games. If you hook up to a 15-pound trout you go, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m going to lose this thing.’ But if you lose a 25-pound carp, I mean, who cares?”

It seems that the lowly carp will never live down its reputation.

Bass fishermen frown on carp. To catch one by accident is to open oneself to ridicule. To try to catch one is insufferable.

When Highway Patrolman Alvin Yamaguchi wrestled a 35-pound carp that was swimming down the flooded Irvine Boulevard during heavy rains in February, he was greeted with laughter by his fellow officers.

Yamaguchi wanted no part of the fish and turned it over to Ralph Vargas, an Irvine public works employee who buried it in the city yard.

“If he was a bass, we’d probably eat him,” Vargas said.

But it was a carp.

Carp tournaments are held each year at many reservoirs--merely to get rid of the troublesome creatures. Such tournaments typically involve bows and arrows, at a time when the fish are spawning in no more than two feet of water. They don’t have a chance. Thousands are removed in a single day.

Last year, a “bounty” of 50 cents was paid on every fish taken out of a reservoir at the planned community of Lake Forest. Residents complained that the fish posed a threat to the water quality and the bass fishery.

Carp are prolific breeders; large females can lay 2 million eggs in one season. And they are capable of destroying other fishes’ habitat by foraging so heavily along the bottom.

But these fish didn’t ask to be brought to North America. And if you trace their history, you might find that the carp warrants a little respect.

A native of Asia, the carp was transported to Europe 2,000 years ago, where it thrived in the moats around castles. Royalty considered carp a delicacy, and thus deemed it off limits to the peasants.

The Japanese called the brightly colored carp “a living jewel” and watched the fish swim in small pools as a form of relaxation. The fish are said to live more than 100 years--one reportedly lived to 214--in Japan and are still passed down from generation to generation, usually going to the oldest son.

The carp, in Japan, is considered a symbol of good luck.

Historical accounts vary as to when the fish was first brought to North America. Germany reportedly presented the United States with its first supply of carp as a gift in 1877.

According to Samuel M. McGinnis’ “Freshwater Fishes of California,” which includes the natural history and notes on each species, a Julius Poppe imported five carp from Germany and stocked them in a pond in Sonoma County in 1872, marking “the beginnings of freshwater fish introductions into California.”

In any case, the carp was well received, even revered by some. Gourmets considered the carp “better tasting than any North American species,” according to McGinnis.

But the carp did not catch on as some thought it would. There simply were too many bones.

The carp not only was a scavenger, it was not much fun to fish for. Who wants to wad a ball of dough on a hook and wait for the carp to find it? The excitement wasn’t there.

But fishing methods have changed. Light-tackle line has proven effective, particularly when the fish move into the shallows and you can see what you are fishing for.

“Carp is big-time in Ohio, Missouri and some of those states,” said Dick Gaumer, 56, a fisherman known around the Southland for his expertise in light-tackle fishing.

Gaumer, who is also the marketing director for the Lakes, a chain of Orange County reservoirs that includes Irvine, said he took up fishing for carp on a fly rod years ago in the Delta area of northern California.

“Most people don’t know that carp hit lures,” Gaumer said. “They are very aggressive, good fighters.”

Gaumer uses an 8 1/2-foot fly rod with a light leader, down to about six-pound tippet, a four-foot leader and a yellow chenille Marabou fly--commonly used for crappie--tied to a No. 6 hook.

And to hear him explain the lure of the carp, you have to wonder if he isn’t getting a bit carried away.

“It’s like sight fishing for bonefish,” he said. “You just cruise along very quietly, with an electric motor or by paddle, and (when) you see them feeding, you want to get this fly in as quietly as possible. And the fly suspends very slowly and you just twitch it in front of them and they just inhale this fly.

“The fight’s like one of your better game fish. . . . They’re very powerful fish. In fact, once you catch one, you will consider them one of the most spectacular game fishes. Quicker, more powerful than a largemouth.”

Could it be that carp have been bad-rapped for all of these years?