I have caught the cooking bug in the last few years and as my skills have improved I have started to become more adventurous, this led me to visit Bolton market last weekend as it has a good reputation for its fish hall.

I was amazed at the choice available on the 3 very large stalls, there was all your usual stuff plus plenty of semi exotic stuff like cuttle fish, octopus, razor clams etc but the thing that shocked me were

Roach averaging about 4oz

Bream ranging from 2lb to about 6lb

Irish Brown trout 1.5lb to 3lb

And the one that caused me most concern, Mullet, loads of them, ranging from a about a 1lb right up to what I think was thick lipped Mullet that was at least 7lb. The label on both stalls read Fresh Scottish Mullet. They were going for about £2 a lb, so cheap that I would not have thought it was worth netting them but I guess I'm being naive

I can only presume there is a demand for these fish and its lawful to catch and sell them ?

You can get just about any freshwater fish you like in Birmingham fish market. It begs the question where they come from. It must surely be overseas since it's illegal to take fish in quantity over here...................birdsnest

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Fear not if I steal from your side, as of yore, from paradise streams to fish Teifi once more.
BN based in Wolverhampton

I believe that there are a number of commercial operations raising 'coarse' fish for the table. Possibly led by enterprising fish farmers growing for the coarse fishery stocking market. I've seen carp on the slab on in the covered market in Oxford before now.
I'd imagine that traders have to provide some sort of record of provenience for their stock?
You'd hope that these fish have been sourced from commercial operations rather than netted out of the local canal.

Andy

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GAIC Single Handed Casting Instructor

http://www.andygreyfishing.com/

Manx mullet are also netted in quantity. Mullet Murder in the Isle of Man (images from this thread)

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Save the softmouth trout

Saw coarse fish for sale in Hyde market in the 1980's. I don't know about other species, but commercial farming of carp for the table is massive on the continent.

Mullet have always been netted for the table and are not currently listed as a fish to avoid eating on conservation grounds. Mullet anglers are mostly pretty militant catch and release advocates and the National Mullet Club thinks that mullet stocks should be reserved exclusively for anglers enjoyment as a recreational-only fish, but this is a relatively recently acquired mindset.

I wondered about these freshwater fish being commercially raised, too. There are plenty of farms rearing fish like carp, roach and tench for the commercial coarse fishing sector, have a play with Google to find some. And in last years' Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall TV series on fish for the table, he featured a new fish farm in Somerset exclusively rearing small "pasty" carp for the food market.

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"In wine there is wisdom. In beer there is strength. In water there is bacteria." - German proverb
JH based near Southampton

Had been aware of the mullet photos before horrendous are the words??
Shame on them.

TT

Why the horror at loads of mullet in nets? What about loads of bream/bass/flounder/sole/tuna/cod/haddock/mackerel/etc./etc.? The oceans has been "harvested" (I'd like to use a stronger word, but we're in polite society) for thousands of years with nary a thought for the future -- a walk around the fish markets of Italy will reveal rank after rank of swordfish, many undersized. Banned species of shellfish are sold openly and served in restaurants. Baby octopi are a favorite dish. Quotas are laughable and enforcement is even more of a farce.

And it's obviously not only here in Europe. Salmon wars between "friendly" Canada and the U.S. Rows of overturned turtles in Bali. Ranks of giant tuna in Tokyo. Mountains of sharks without fins in Hong Kong. Aquariums of coral reef fish in East Asian restaurants. And so on and so forth.

It will never end. Until that is, there's nothing left to catch except plastic bags.

BTW, to get back to the freshwater theme, a walk around the fish stalls at the market near Rome's Chinatown revealed, the last time I was there, buckets of common carp, crucian carp, grass carp, bighead carp, tench, Nile tilapia, Red tilapia, Nile perch, Wels catfish, some sort of sturgeon, and the usual gang of pale rainbow trout -- practically all cultured fish. Interestingly, it's almost impossible to find brown trout in the markets.

Resignedly,
Kenneth

Grey Mullet have always been netted in quantity and are generally reckoned a fair but distinctly inferior substitute for bass.

New laws prevent the killing of most wild coarse fish so one would expect that the fish in the market were either foreign or farm bred. I'm not quite so sure about the Irish brown trout - that's a bit of a worry.

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“There is no more lovely country than Monmouthshire in early spring. Nowhere do the larks sing quite so passionately, as if somehow inspired by the Welsh themselves. There is a blackbird on every thorn and a cock chaffinch, a twink as they call him there, on every bush...... It moved me profoundly. I had been spared to see another spring, and I thank God for it.”

Oliver Kite
“A Spring Day on the Usk”
A Fisherman’s Diary