"Strangely Compelling: " Tossing Bread to Carp

I read Saturday's WSJ and quickly found a topic to write about: strangely compelling fish feeding in Pennsylvania. It seems that throwing bread to a swirling, aggressive bunch of carp is becoming a big tourist draw in Linesville, PA. It's the Pymatuning State Park, and the state is pouring money into the infrastructure to make more parking lots and a better platform from which to toss the stale bread and dinner rolls to the fish.

The story compared tourist numbers and found the fish on top: Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright's famous house (136,000 visitors last year) and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, where 84,000 people came through paled in comparison to Pymatuning, with 400,000 visitors.

"Despite all of the fattening, the fish rarely make it to the dining room table. At a carp-eating contest in Linesville two years ago, organizers substituted other types of fish rather than serve bony carp."

One woman named Mary McDonald drives her van to bakeries three times a week to buy around 1000 loaves of 'oldish bread,' and she charges tourists $3 a bag for 4-5 loaves to throw into the roiling mass of fish. Tee shirts that say 'Carpe Feed'm' are on sale at the park.