The very start of 'USC.'

A lot of people over the last few years have asked where our stock comes from and can we pass them the details, which of course I do. But with quality fish farmers not as common place as you think in France the good ones often struggle to satisfy everyone's needs, especially if you are after unique (what I'd call good looking carp) so fisheries are often disappointed, or end up 'settling' for carp they don't think are that special. So this spring I started to put things in place to start the ball rolling on our own 'small batch' carp farm called USC.

I will never have the time, or the passion if I'm honest to churn out hundreds of carp each year, but the target is in 3 years to be in a position to start selling 50 carp a year to fisheries looking for our type of carp, carp I believe will be pretty unique for France. This spring saw us start the long process of producing our 1st batch of USC carp. We watched closely as desirable carp spawned, and when the coast was clear the egg laden weed was collected and moved to our natural clay fry pool. That was at the end of May. Over the last few weeks I have been having the odd dip with the net to have a look at the progress and the difference in growth and looks, simply some have got the genes and some haven't as is shown in these two images. The bigger common is not one of the real shooters but is still showing great growth for its age, there are several that are at least an inch bigger than this one. The bottom one is growing OK, but nothing spectacular, so in the winter will be moved to the float pool at Lac Du Coron to have a chance to prove me wrong, and the shooters and pretty ones will go in the new stock lake. People often comment on how they enjoy following this type of story, so this is the story of USC from the very beginning, hopefully you will enjoy seeing the fish develop, and hopefully in a few years time you will be holding one of these up for the camera. Kind Regards, Nic #usc