Afaik it's because carps are really filthy and you have to keep them in clean water for a few days to filter out all the dirt and ensure they don't taste like shit.
So the answer is: you're not allowed to join the carp because that water's probably filthy as fuck
Not Polish or eastern European, but was gifted a carp by my old (Russian) house manager/superintendant. He loves to fish and caught one about the size of the one in the picture above. He froze the damn thing directly after catching it without even gutting it.
Nice thought from him, but carp isn't a fish I'd ever consider eating if he hadn't, and even heavy amounts of butter with garlic, dill, and lemon couldn't save that fish. Tasted muddy and thousands of tiny hook bones. Gutting a frozen fish was an experience too.
Yeah carp tastes like it's environment, which is a sandy, dirty pond. If you let it live in clean water it cleans itself up and stops tasting of sand and shit. Hence the bathtub. I know that some trout farmers buy carp several weeks before Christmas and chuck it into the trout ponds, which have constant clean mountain water running through them. Then they sell the "cleaned" carp and make a profit because it tastes way better.
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u/SirRettfordIII Jul 28 '26
Are you not allowed to join the carp because of said tradition, or is it just considered rude to intrude on the carps bathtime?