Fat fish cause problem

Press, 14 September 1988, Page 50

Fat fish cause problem

NZPA-Reuter Seoul Hundreds of fat, tame fish are causing headaches for Olympic rowing organisers. More than 400 huge carp, dumped in the Games regatta site to keep vegetation down, have turned the manmade waterway into a poacher’s paradise.

Officials said the fish are easily caught and people living nearby have been sneaking on to the site to net them in the last few months. “The clean water and accessible , banks have made it easier and healthier to catch fish here than in the meandering Han river nearby ” said a rowing official, Kyung Tae-um. "Some of the people who live in the local ricegrowing villages and even some people working here have been a bit over-keen with their fishing rods.” The carp, which can grow to 1.5 metres, were transported “some 400 km from Chung Cheong in central South Korea

The problem, we think, is some of them accidentally bumped their heads in transit,” Kyung said. “They are so passive when it comes to catching them, that you can just row up to them and stroke their backs,” he said. Not only poachers have been attracted to the site, nestled among the lush, green hills at Misa-ri. Mr Kyung said a Games organising. committee member had recently booked a secret day’s sport there. “The problem is he used a worm as bait, which they don’t like. He sat there all day without a single catch.”