silver carp jumping-in-the-boat season started today

The silver carp don’t jump as much or as high during the cold water period, so we don’t get them in the boat in the winter. Today the jumping-in-the-boat season started off with a bang with a 24-pound fish. That is a record for a “volunteer” in my boat. We had another jump in too today, striking the carp guard that protects the driver. Could have been an injury accident without the guard. Also caught a bighead/silver hybrid in the nets today. We are getting about 1% or better hybrids now. The pic of the big fish is in the camera still – will try to remember to post it tomorrow.

Please send a photo of you putting the knife to these fish please!!!

How about a hatchet? We get a fair number of silvers this long, but look at the thickness of this thing. It is almost as big around as a bighead. It looks like someone hooked it up to a bicycle pump and pumped the fish up, but it is solid meat. We get them like this from time to time, don’t know what’s up with that. This fish is not even close to ripe, but it did have 1.4 kilos of eggs.

So far, this is the biggest silver that has jumped in my boat, and we have had a few about this weight in nets.

hope this works

x

Hey carptracker,
what kind of boat do you run?

That boat in the picture is a Clark. They are made in Iowa. Very nice workboats, and the manufacturer will make you happy if you are not happy. The Clarks are mostly pad hulls – flat bottom in the back with a slight v in the front. They have a nice, easy to clean front sluice deck that you can pile up lots of slimy fish and then rinse the deck out the scuppers. At my Lab, we have 3 Clark boats. The Fish and Wildlife Service also has several in my area. They are great boats. I also have a Kann (made in Gutenburg IA) that is also darn good flotation. None of these boats are designed to be comfy – they are work boats and are designed to be as indestructable as possible and to be able to carry a lot of gear.

What part of the river are these fish in? I am sure they are moving North if they aren’t there already.

Thanks,
JumpNDaBoat

There have been a couple caught as far upriver as Lake Pepin. One sighting by a knowledgble biologist in the Red Cedar River in WI. Mostly they are still below the High Dam down in upper Iowa, but the odd fish showing up above that. It appears that the dams are acting as barriers, but incomplete barriers. That is not surprising, since the only way to go upriver most of the time is through the Lock, and these fish do not like boats. They seem to have jumped some dams on the TN river, though. On the Missouri Drainage, they are all the way up to the Gavins Point Dam, and then on up the James. I get an announcement of a range expansion every so often. They are in the Ohio River and its tributaries too, not quite to Pennsylvania at last check.

These maps are not perfect, but they help some.
silver carp extent:
http://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/SpFactSh … ciesID=549

bighead carp extent:
http://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/SpFactSheet.asp?speciesID=551

I was hit by one on these while prefishing for the RCL on the Illinois river a couple weeks ago. While I was jigging in front of the boat I dropped something on the floor. As soon as I did that a fish jumped out of the water from behind me, brushed across the back of my leg, and then bounced off the bow into the water. It scared the [Ooops, did I just say that out loud?!] out of me. Then as I left I fired up the engine and goosed it in the idle position and about 6 of these came flying out of the flooded shoreline. They cleared the surface by at least 6 feet. One actually hit a tree when it came out of the water.

I have witnesses…really!

They seem to jump the highest when they are in the middle of the river in the current. You don’t get many that jump in that situation, but those that do – whew! I’ve seen one that looked like it could have dunked through a basketball goal if there had been one standing in the middle of the river. The coolest thing I’ve seen one do is jump over a wing dike that was at least 4 feet out of the water. We had the fish trapped behind the dike with a net (except those that jumped over the net, of course, and we were trying to drive the fish into the net. One of them decided to do a “Free Willy”. It did hit on top of the dike and bounce over. We had a TV news crew with us at the time. Too bad we did not get that on camera.