Carp

You take your good news where you get it and here's mine: the Preakness sent Kegasus packing. You remember Kegasus. Sleaze-ball centaur with the biker haircut and beer gut? Budweiser-swilling centerpiece of the Infield Fest ad campaign the past two years? Gone. Got the proverbial pink-slip. You won't see him Saturday for the 138th Preakness Stakes. "He went back to the islands and I haven't seen him since," Maryland Jockey Club president Tom Chuckas joked the other day. Good thing.

Many parents have read, liked and tweeted Glennon Doyle Melton's popular essay " Don't Carpe Diem " about bucking traditional advice to enjoy every second with her kids. ("This CARPE DIEM message makes me paranoid and panicky. Especially during this phase of my life - while I'm raising young kids. Being told, in a million different ways to CARPE DIEM makes me worry that if I'm not in a constant state of intense gratitude and ecstasy, I'm doing something wrong. ") The founder of momastery.com followed up that viral success with a book called "Carry On, Warrior" that describes overcoming her bulemia and drug and alcohol abuse to become the mother she is today -- imperfect, but who isn't?

On October 15, 2004, ESTELLE S. CARP (nee Sollod); beloved wife of the late Henry Carp; beloved mother of Nancy R. Carp, of Reisterstown, MD and Judith Schwartz, of Orlando, FL; devoted mother-in-law of the late Harry Schwartz; devoted sister of Norman Sollod and the late Selma Block; loving grandmother of Alisa and Amy Schwartz. Services at SOL LEVINSON & BROS., INC., 8900 Reisterstown Road, at Mt. Wilson Lane, on Sunday, October 17, at 3 P.M. Interment Har Zion Tifereth Israel Congregation Cemetery, Rosedale.

The announcement that Maryland's first slots parlor, the Hollywood Casino in Cecil County, will open in October, sooner than expected, is good news for the local economy, which will be boosted by new jobs, and for the state's treasury, which will eventually see nearly $80 million a year in taxes from the site. But somehow this development has done nothing to quash the talk that Maryland's slots program is a slow-moving disaster that has been bungled by Gov. Martin O'Malley and the Democrat-run General Assembly.

WASHINGTON - A group of hard-core anglers meets every May in the nation's capital to fish for bottom feeders. There's a joke in there somewhere, right? But the mission of these anglers is hardly a joke. The members of the Carp Anglers Group (CAG) are targeting the big ones - rod-bending fish the size of a toddler that rule the Tidal Basin. Last weekend, about 25 of them gathered at the basin for their eighth annual get-together, which almost always becomes a carp tutorial for inquisitive tourists on their way to the Jefferson Memorial or the FDR Memorial.

Sunday night, with a small crowd watching on the sidewalk in front of her dining room for the poor on North Collington Avenue, Bea Gaddy took the heads off with a hacksaw. Then she scaled the three fish -- two 30-pounders and one weighing 20 -- and cleaned the insides. Monday, she put each beast in a pan, draped them in onions, spiced them and slid them under the broiler in her kitchen."We fed 50 people," she says, pleased that everyone seemed to enjoy a late-spring supper of river tuna.Or reservoir tuna.

WORFELDEN, Germany -- Sven Heininger, the dashing young guru of German carp fishing, has no patience with the lazy anglers who still go after carp the old way."The old way," he says, "is to take a heavy rod, put a potato on the hook, or a mouse, then throw it into deep water and wait."Nor does Mr. Heininger, author of "Carp Talk" and its sequel, "Carp Talk 2," have anything good to say about anglers who cheat by pouring bleach into rivals' fishing waters.Can such passions really be inspired by the humble carp?

A mysterious illness is attacking the carp and catfish in the tributaries of the upper Chesapeake Bay, killing some and leaving others sick with kidney damage and bulging eyes.But so far, biologists with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources haven't figured out whether the cause of the sickness is some natural disease or toxic contamination.Officials have been getting reports of problems for several years, but this winter and spring biologists began a more in-depth look for the cause and have collected samples of fish tissue as well as water and mud from the bottom of rivers.

VICKSBURG, Miss. - Grass carp, bighead carp and the silver carp - giant, prolific species all originally imported by catfish farmers in Mississippi and Arkansas two decades ago - have escaped in floods into the Mississippi, and have begun showing up as far north as Iowa and Illinois. "They are thick as fleas in Mississippi tributaries," said Bill Reeves, chief of fisheries for the state of Tennessee. Now a more recent arrival, the black carp, is stirring alarm from New Orleans to Ontario.

LONDON -- They are women enlisted in opposing causes. They are women enamored of fish.Marianne MacDonald is the more quixotic of the two. She is a fish protectionist in a land of 3 million anglers, the country that gave Izaak Walton to the world, author of The Compleat Angler.Mary Paisley is, quite simply, in love with carp."They are the most desirable fish," said Mrs. Paisley of all the carp that lurk in the dark lakes of England. "They are beautiful. Absolutely glorious. Shimmering. Like people, each one is different, so different we give them names."

A rift among Maryland's Democrats - with Comptroller Peter Franchot increasingly on the outs - became decidedly more public and bitter yesterday with a tartly worded missive from one of the party's standard-bearers. Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, a Prince George's County Democrat who has held his leadership post in the General Assembly for more than two decades, sent a letter to Franchot, the state's elected chief fiscal officer, excoriating him for his "obsession with the press" and "disregard for the relationships you need to be an effective leader."

On a hazy spring morning, George Malone steers his johnboat toward the head of the Back River in Essex, passing the twin golden domes of the sewage treatment plant and gliding under the Eastern Avenue bridge. In the shallow area he calls the flats, where the water is the color of beef broth, a ripple catches his eye. He draws an arrow. Fires. And reels in what looks to be a grotesquely overgrown goldfish. Each year this time, the waters of the Back River "boil" with spawning carp, says Malone, a retired Eastern Technical High School teacher.

What a dilemma. Write a column or go fishing in the hopes "a cataclysmic explosion" of the not-so-distant star Eta Carinae, coupled with the ensuing "runaway thermonuclear reaction," would distract my editors and get me off the hook. Don't get me wrong; gazing at the Milky Way is a great way to pass an evening. But when scientists warned last week that an unstable supernova only 7,500 light-years away could go ka-boom like the death star in Star Wars, suddenly being an outdoors writer didn't seem like such a good idea.

Saturday-next Sunday -- Take in Washington's sights and learn about the fascinating world of carp fishing at the 12th annual "Carp-In" at Washington's Tidal Basin, dawn to dusk. Members of the Carp Anglers Group will display the gear they use to reel in massive fish the size of toddlers. The biggest carp ever pulled out of the Tidal Basin was a 57.8-pounder, back in 1983. Details: 301-922-1672. Online More outdoors -- For more outdoors coverage, calendar and photos, go to baltimoresun.

On April 29, 2006, JOHN C. "Jack" of Forest Hill, beloved husband of Rachel L. Fisher (nee Carp) devoted father of Harry E. Fisher, III, and his wife Gretchen and Susan E. Fisher, dear brother of Sarah F. Rex, and loving grandfather of Austin T. Siera E. and Shane T. Snee, Carleigh, Elleigh and Raegan Fisher. The family will receive friends at the Evans Funeral Chapel-Bel Air, 3 Newport Drive, (Rts 23 & 24-Forest Hill) on Tuesday 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 P.M. Funeral Services on Wednesday at 11 A.M. Memorial donations in Jack's name may be made to the Citizens Care and Rehabilitation Center Foundation, 415 Market St, Havre de Grace, MD, 21078, Attn: Phil Barker.

TWENTY-THREE hundred miles after putting the key in the ignition in Baltimore, we're finally back in the Free State. The idea was to find out what makes men around the world save their pennies to visit a bug-infested river in upstate New York to catch a fish that doesn't even taste good. The answer? "We're crazy," said Tommy Robinson of Baltimore, one of the 200 fishermen competing in the World Carp Championship. They didn't smell too good, either, but you don't tell that to a crazy man. The championship was not for the faint of heart or olfactory nerves.

On a hazy spring morning, George Malone steers his johnboat toward the head of the Back River in Essex, passing the twin golden domes of the sewage treatment plant and gliding under the Eastern Avenue bridge. In the shallow area he calls the flats, where the water is the color of beef broth, a ripple catches his eye. He draws an arrow. Fires. And reels in what looks to be a grotesquely overgrown goldfish. Each year this time, the waters of the Back River "boil" with spawning carp, says Malone, a retired Eastern Technical High School teacher.

It's Mr. Doughball and the Gefilte Fisherman against the world this week along the banks of the St. Lawrence River in a contest to see who can reel in the biggest bottom feeders. The World Carp Championship has come to U.S. shores for the first time, attracting a field of 103 two-man teams that will fish nonstop from today until Friday morning in search of rod-bending fish the size of toddlers. Tommy Robinson of Baltimore, aka Mr. Doughball, and Mark Metzger of Silver Spring, aka the Gefilte Fisherman, haven't been competitive carpers for very long, not when compared with their rivals.

WADDINGTON, N.Y. - In a sport where the luck of the draw is key, two of the planet's most accomplished carp anglers drew the best fishing hole to dominate the World Carp Championship. Tim Paisley and Steve Briggs of the United Kingdom, the 2000 champions, caught 1,591 pounds, 5 ounces of carp over five days, nearly double the second-place finishers. The largest of their 80 fish weighed 34 pounds, 8 ounces. "We've got a lot of experience, and we know what it takes to catch carp," said Paisley, 67. "You have to put the jigsaw puzzle together and it all fell into place."