Asian Carp

[offdtop]

Guys I was on the Ohio river in the Smithland pool and the Asian "flying" carp was absolutely horrible. I have never seen the amount of them on those waters before they were flying everywhere. I know that there has been a few here and there in the pool but in every creek they were launching at times 20 to 50 flying everywhere we seen as big as about 7 to 8 pounders even had one about 5 jump in the boat on the Illinois side in Lusk Creek. This crud is scary to say the least.

[raincheck]

Did you drain & wash your boat after you left the river?Helps keep them from spreading when you go too a inland lake.Its only a matter of time & they will be everywhere.Hope they are good too eat.Mite have too start carp tournaments if they take over the lakes.
Terry Adolph
River Basser

[KYCatfish]

Man this worries me. I have seen that show on TV docmenting how disastrous they are and it literally scares the hell out of me. The KDFWR needs to really PLEAD with sportsman to try to stop this. On the show I saw, a fisherman was about to go out of business b/c these fish took over completely. Instead of laying down, he went after the carp and DAILY takes over 20k pounds to a processor, where they make fish oil and fish meal. 20k lbs A DAY!!!! And biologists say that's not even making a dent in them. If the KDFWR asked me, I'd go out there a few times a year and try to net them. I really think if we are going to win this battle, all fishermen are going to have to join together in this.

On a side note, I don't know what the impact would be on the lead shot, but it seems like it would be fun to treat them like upland birds. Just blast them all day long.

[adam7456]

The other weekend I was at the confluence of the Kentucky River and Ohio River. A 30 pound asian carp jumped up behind the boat! Only saw one that day. I was up at Lock 1 on the KY River and saw a few smaller ones jumping there.

My brother lives by the Illinois river, they are absoultely terrible there. I'm not sure why they doing better further north but they have completely taken over the river. I've heard that commercial fisherman are pulling a ton of fish out and selling them to a fertiziler company. The last time I was on that river there weren't as many jumping and they were a lot smaller. So I guess they are making a dent in the population.

[KYCatfish]

I've heard that commercial fisherman are pulling a ton of fish out and selling them to a fertiziler company. The last time I was on that river there weren't as many jumping and they were a lot smaller. So I guess they are making a dent in the population.

Well, that's the first good news I've heard on it. Hopefully their success will bring in more commercial fishermen so we can at least keep them in check if we can't eradicate them completely. Too bad we can't put a chemical in the water that would target only them.

[riverrat12]

On a side note guy's make sure you wear your kill switch! These critters will knock you out of the boat.They are hear to stay unfortunatly. Chuck

[Bandit1]

I watched a KY Afield a few months back & Tim Farmer shot one with his bow & cleaned it & he said it was delicious. He even had his crew taste it & they all said it was good.

Just an FYI.

Jason

[mhall]

I watched a KY Afield a few months back & Tim Farmer shot one with his bow & cleaned it & he said it was delicious. He even had his crew taste it & they all said it was good.

Just an FYI.

Jason

God bless Tim, that boy would eat a dog turd. I ain't eating one of them nasty things.

[kygorski]

There is a market for them in asia,they are supposed to be pretty good table fare if cleaned right. So why are we not marketing them over seas? We import asian shrimp,catfish, and frog legs, also a lot of tilapia is imported. So whats wrong? To begin with, smelly processing plants, what to do with the entrails and other stuff, folks seem to object to things like that, An example. years ago in Northern wisc. there was a nice clean walleye and smallmouth lake. Guys starting bringing in rusty crawfish as bait. It took 10 years for the crawdads to strip the whoile lake of vegatation, no weeds soon very few fish. A guy started to trap them, clean them and ship them down south where folks eat the heck out of em.Just when business was starting to get good, here comes the DOGOODERS. Too smelly, brings down property values, he was put out of business.The place was lake metonga in crandon wisc. So the state needed to spend tax payer money to try and solve the problem, their still at it. Like pogo said "we have met the enemy, its us"

[raincheck]

Do they just jump when a motor boat in moving or is it all the time?

[offdtop]

Do they just jump when a motor boat in moving or is it all the time?

Loud noises and or water vibrations. I was sitting still in a creek and when another boat just idled by 2 dozen started launching some sounded like cinder blocks hitting the water. Their defense mechanism is what causes them to jump from all the reports I've read.

[kygorski]

Before I moved here to KY I was thinking of buying some property near Ottawa Ill. the Illinois river was great fishing then, walleye and sauger, and the white bass were spectacular at times.My cousin moved there instead, he is afraid to fish the river now because of the carp.So how did this happen? one story is a flood came along and washed out several catfish farms, they used the carp to clean out algea, they escaped, we inherited them. Some of those same catfish farms are in the same kind of trouble now, whats next?