Penza, 7 June 2012. PenzaNews. Penza-RS team comprising Igor Shafran and Aleksey Brik became silver prize winner of the Moscow Carp Fishing Club Cup in Croatia as well as the winner of the Moscow Carp Fishing Cup which completed on June 2.

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“We have been doing sport carp fishing for a long time and when we decided to do this professionally we joined the Moscow Carp Fishing Club because the sport is not developed in Penza,” Aleksey Brik said during a press conference at the press center of news agency PenzaNews on Thursday, June 7.

According to Igor Shafran, the captain of the team, the main principle at the heart of carp fishing is “Catch and let go.”

“In sport fishing everything is done to save the fish. We catch fish using the gear that causes the least harm to carps, then photograph ourselves holding the fish and let it go. If fish dies at the hands of participants during the competition, those responsible are disqualified,” Igor Shafran explained.

Participants of the press conference stressed that they had refrained from eating carp for a long time.

Aleksey Brik noted that Penza carp fishers were soon going to participate in a tournament in Samara as well as in the Moscow ratings competition.

“If we manage to get into top 10 in Moscow, then we can take part in one of the most prestigious tournaments in Europe, the Friendship Cup, which hails the strongest sport fishers from Croatia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and other countries,” Igor Shafran noted, also adding that Penza carp fishers’ dream was to participate in the Russian championship.

“However, only fishers holding the first sport category qualify for the tournament. If carp fishing competitions were organized in Penza, Aleksey and I would have been sport masters for a long time now,” Igor Shafran said.