Originally Posted by
Dave Stewart
Since I am a guide here on Ky/Barkley here is my take on the Asians:
They are here and they have been for many years......in the past few years they finally reached such big numbers that people finally realized they were here and the populations were growing. This is happening everywhere in the Mississippi River Drainage System where they can get into. They are growing in numbers all the way up the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, Ohio, heck they are even finding them now all the way up in the tailwaters of the Mississippi.
At present there is no way to get rid of all of them without killing everything else in doing so..ie by poison etc....this is basically a national problem which will no doubt have a national impact on the economy and our sport fishing and recreation if they do not get them under control.....it won't happen tomorrow, but overtime it is coming...it already has in some areas like the Illinois River. The only concentrated efforts by the Federal Government is they are spending big dollars trying to keep them out of the Great Lakes up in Illinios but it was discovered last year that some have already gotten in there according to DNA samples.
KDFW has been actively doing what they can. Basically, the only control at this time is commercial fishing to keep the numbers down before it is too late. It is working in some Illinois rivers where the state made a grant to open some big canneries and the state got big contracts with China to send the fish home for them to eat and also selling there for pet food ingrediantes. The problem is the fish spoil very quick and they have to be processed soon after capture so there has to be some big canneries in the area where they are being taken. Here we do not have that. We have on small canneries opened two years ago on the Tennesse River at Smithland below Ky Dam by a Chinese lady and she is expanding but her anglers are working the river. Not sure what the capacity rate is in the cannery now but last year it was only 80,000 lbs per day...a good dent but it is not enough.
Back to KDFW: The Carp Tournament they had here was to try to get the attention of big money investors to show them just how much weight can be taken on these fish by our local commercial fishermen in a day in hopes that some investors would construct canneries here that would be very profitable. They also have held a lot of luncheons and meetings with these type money folks trying to make it happen....it has not happened yet and I am not sure if it will.....we are keeping our fingers crossed.
As far as impact on the fishing...so far I have not noticed any real impact yet...except if you are bass fishing and a large school of the big heads move into the area, your bite will cease and you might as well go somewhere else. I heard one of the biologists say they will bully the other fish out of the area when they move in...I know it has happened to me a number of times already. Since they are attacking the bottom of the food chain, eventually no doubt their presence will reduce the numbers of all fish as plankton is the mother's milk of all baby fish. This will take many years here on the big lakes but unless mother nature or man steps in...it will happen. We did have a very large die off of these fish below Ky Dam earlier this year...estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of them went belly up.....no one has figured out why yet as far as I know but I know KDFW was trying to figure it out.
Another thing that has come up that a lot of folks are not aware of yet...a number of these fish are now being taken below the dam where they are thick...and they are being taken in the mouth with jigs...means they are actually trying to eat the jigs....that is something plankton eaters do not do.....makes you wonder if the fish may be adapting and starting to eat other things.
Bottom line here is our best hope right now is to get some big canneries built...we have the commercial anglers here ready and willing to control these fish but at present they cannot get them processed. Big government has not done anything to assist in getting this done.....except in Illinois the state has taken the proper steps. What is really needed is the feds.....and they are too busy bad mouthing one another to even consider doing anything now before it is too late...but then again that pretty much reflects what our feds normally do...that is wait until the crisis has already developed and devastating then they jump in and throw money down the toilet that could have been saved had they acted in a responsible and proactive manner before it was too late.
Unless mother nature steps in and evens things out like she does in many cases where a species is getting over populated....your kids and grandkids will be fishing for Asians in order to catch any numbers of fish.