Quote Originally Posted by crappiepappy View Post
IMHO ... the state/fed govt have bigger fish to fry, than worry about the Asian carp infestation. Even if the carp problem gets cleaned up in KY, you'd have to totally eradicate every single one of them in every single waterway & pond ... or they'd be back in a matter of years. We also don't know if the deaths of those carp below the dams even WAS a "disease" ... could have just been a fluke "condition".

I doubt very seriously if the KDFWR has a greater interest in a sustainable industry with these carp. If they invade & ruin some of our best waterways, and sport fishing collapses due to their presence ... do you really think commercial fishing licenses are going to put the same amount of money in the coffers as all the in & out of state fishing licenses sold to people that fish those waters ??

We may have to be content with having their numbers "controlled" ... since there may not be a chemical or biological solution that rids us of JUST THEM. Remember, we imported them to keep aquaculture & wastewater ponds clean ... then floods put them into the main arteries of our waterways. We have to be careful with whatever methods get used to rid us of them, or even deplete their numbers to a point where they're not detrimental to the sport fish population.

... pappy
We (plural meaning all of us) didn't bring them here. Only a few people did that and they were foolish to not think that they could get into our rivers. I guess they didn't think about their ponds being flooded and releasing those carp out of their ponds into the water ways of the USA. But our US fish and wildlife agency should have thought about that and stopped it in it's tracks. But it's too late now.

But I just wanted to clarify what you were saying. We the USA didn't all bring them here to the USA. It was just a few fish farmers/researches that made the mistake. And it was a huge mistake as we know now. Hindsight is always 100%. But I wish that we have some foresight that could have prevented this from happening.

What happens if people stop going to KY lake to fish and paying for guides, fishing gear, bait, housing etc.? The KY and Barkley Lake fishing industry could be hurt if this happens.

Look on the bright side. Maybe this will cause some of the water fleas(jet ski) to stay off the lake or slow down to avoid being clobbered by a flying Asia Carp? And I'm not going to be water skiing any time soon but I wonder if every other person that's water skiing in the bays thinks about getting a carp in the face?

I'm pretty sure that If I were a fishing guide on KY Lake I would not want this to be happening and would feel pretty helpless to stop this from going on. Like Dave said he has to move to another spot if the Asian come into his spot that he's fishing. But what if they get so numerous that there is no more spots?

Why can't we use commercial nets and such and can them for Fertilizer for the farmers and not just for human consumption. There are many things that could be fertilized with these fish even if they die too soon. Grind them up and de-water them and put the dried up fish stuff in bags and sell it to Lowes for gardeners to put in their soil.

Farmers should be interested in increasing the fertility of their soils too. I'm not sure about the economics of this. To me the limited factors would be being able to net enough of these fish to make it commercially and economically viable.

I guess we just need to start thinking out side the box some more to figure out a new solution to this problem.

As to the fish kill. I've studied wildlife biology and one of the things I learned about in those classes was that wildlife population will zoom and boom. That is to say the population of an animal species will continue to increase until predation or disease cause the population to crash. This cycle is repeated over and over again throughout history and could be one of the reasons why so many of the Asian carp died at one time. They got so populated that the spread of any disease went though them faster than normal. This has been documented with other animal species. It's natures way of controlling populations. See the Lynx and Hair or the Lemmings and their predatory prey relationship. Sorry I can't remember exactly which predator that preys on the Lemmings was in that study. Maybe that's on Google some where. I had a paper back book that was required reading in one of my Wildlife Biology Classes and it had all kinds of stories about studies of predator prey relationships and such. I think I still have that book at my parents house somewhere. I enjoyed reading the stories in that book. Sometimes I wish I had majored in Wildlife Biology. They just don't earn enough money.