Asian Carp – Interesting Story.

THERE IS A STORY COMING UP REAL SOON WITHIN THE NEXT FEW MIN ON WCCO CH 4 ABOUT THE CARP CHECK IT OUT

So there going to do a study on the fence.And they sent a carp to St Paul. Wow this just makes me all fuzzy inside. the DNR is going to study this thing to death. And as usual they wont get anything done in time. What a bunch of B.S. They knew about this problem for a long time and by the time these morons get there act togeather it will be to late. Probaly all ready is. Im tired of being nice to the DNR. I went to school for this sort of thing and I know what kind of people are making the big decisions.I saw first hand how the screwed up the crab and halibut fishing in Alaska,Salmon in northern Cal and Oregon,Idaho trout,and all the new treaties with the Native Americans(yes I am 1/4 native but all american). Because of there wise policies some of the best fisheries and the families that were supported by fishing are gone or soon will be. After I retire I would like to guide full time. I just hope theres some where I can go and not have to say “should of been here in the good old days”. Give It 4 maybe 5 years if your lucky with these carp. Then you better look to other areas. Once they spawn its all over. Dont look for the DNR to do much. Maybe its time we all started making some calls ,I will, and I will keep every body posted..You know that if some body complains this much, they better try to do something.Seeya..

sadly Orca… there is some truth to what you say… the DNR is a political body and it shouldnt be…. so their actions are those of politics and they dont respond quickly enough.. therefore all to often they have to repair when timely prevention would have been more effective… its NOT the field bioligist.. their hands are tied and their mouths are muzzled… they can say or do nothing.. they just have to endure the frustration along with us…. this is the #1 reason I got out of that line of work a LONG time ago… I just saw too many cases of this sort of thing…. bottom line is that we take a look in the mirror and we will see another reason why nothing was done… didnt WE know a long time ago this was coming… wasnt it US who said nothing, lit no fires in the right places… put no smoke signals into the air… motivated none of our brethern anglers?? maybe it shouldnt be OUR job.. but then if something bad happens should WE just pass the blame to someone else?…. does that actually help anything? isnt it time that WE as anglers and stewards of a resource we love not become MORE active?? if we do not…. things like this are going to continue….. there are other issues going on right now that could be as big as this… like for instance the Army Corps plans for the river… how active have we been in this area? I think we have dropped the ball here too….

We pay Taxes and more each year. And we buy liscences. not just the people around pool 4 but all up and down the watershed. GRASSROOTS MY GRASS. We shouldnt have to yell and scream to get anything,My kids did that and it didnt work. Is that what we have to do, act like little children. ” oh please Mr goverment man, save us,and save our river.Please.” They have the money and the know how to slow the infestation down.And maybe keep it in good check.There great excuse will be.” We just dont have the resources.” Well, What are you going to say to that? They better find the resources, because this fish will spread into every tributary of the Mississippi.Then they will find a way into the lakes. They better put off some of the other B.S. and hit this hard. These are not little mussels.or weeds. they are 100lb fish that live 20 years. And they all ready know how well they multiply. Ok Now what.How do we scream and have a fit that the dnr might possably react to.Any Ideas.

again.. your points are valid…. but… Im of the opinion that were all in this together… if the current system dont work what can we do about it? If its a political body then we have to act politically…. if thats what it takes to get the job done then perhaps we need to try it… there are many avenues available… Im upset about this too… I have SOME idea what this can mean to a fishery… there is NO way to know exactly.. but its NOT going to be good… at the very least its going to tie the plankton eating biomass up in LARGE fish that are unusable to the predator population… instead of in shad that are the life blood of the river… sounds like we will be comercial fishing these monsters because there will be little other choice…. so what do we do? good question.. if we MUST do something the first thing is to decide what… how do we do that? well guess we have to organize, decide on a course of action, pursue it… Im committed to this ecosystem, and sure enough I will be part of the solution if needed…..

I have been told that I am not politically corect by several people. Ok pretty much everybody.Ok everybody. But hey I game. I enjoy the river as much as any other place I have fished, and would be more than happy to fight for it. Whats next?

what do we do next? good question!… any ideas… Ive two… but Im not sure what order they should be pursued in…
1. Check with DNR channels and see just what IS their action plan. Then decide if we are “happy” with it. If not push for other or addtional solutions…..
2. Check with our own group here and see just how MUCH support we can count on here if we need to become “active” and push for “more”…..

Lots of discussion on this topic and some pot shots taken at DNR staff that are really unwarrented. The whole Asian carp fiasco got started down south when catfish farmers were looking for ways to reduce algea buildup or stop parasite infections in their catfish ponds. They imported the fish from Asia and during a time of floods, these fish escaped. Severl people in the US Fish and Wildlife Service have been demoted or re-assigned in their duties when they called attention to what was going on. Because these fish are crossing state borders, the US Fish and Wildlife Service is the Agency with the most jurisdiction (Lacey Act).
Because none of us want Big Government regulating our lives anymore than they allready do, these catfish farmers were free to import any fish they wanted to without any thouhgt as to the consequences. Now I hear people saying there should have been more laws on the books and the DNR’s should have done more. Its a “catch 22” situation, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
At any rate, I’m going to try and attach a couple of pictures of what silver and bighead carp look like so if you guys see one, you can identify it. If they have allready been posted and I missed them, my apologies.

The first photo is of a silver carp.
This one will be of a bighead carp.

Hi John….
thanks for posting.. Im not sure what your lattitude is for discussing this in a public forum…. but anything you can provide us in way of information is appreciated…. it sucks when people doing their jobs get slapped down… I see that as politics and its always bugged me… no matter where it exists… (happens in my line of work too!)… is there an advice you have for people who would like to help?.. I can see your saying identifying and reporting incidents of captures of these fish is important… anything else?
thanks again….

Those fish from the profile almost look like a large shad. Even the scale pattern is far from a river carp. They are darn ugly to boot.

Right now the Fish and Wildlife Service has posted on the Federal Register for Bighead Carp, the injurious speceis act, and the collection of information to list this species as detrimental to native fishes. I will try and attach the document (its in Acrobat Reader) for all to see. I tried to attach, but its was in pdf format and this server would not take it. I will try to find out where you can go to view and will post.

Here are the sites I promised for more info and the listing of Bighead Carp.

http://news.fws.gov/newsreleases/r9/3B89D135-F4C8-49C7-B944A95263A31763.html

http://policy.fws.gov/library/03-23745.pdf

Are these new. When we used to net small shad for catfish bait down by the lynxville bait shop marina and we used to see either those silver ones or gigantic shad, all with that blunted almost dolphinlike(fish).

Here is another story about the Asian Carp problem.

Posted on Sun, Nov. 23, 2003

Asian carp invasion
BY DENNIS LIEN
Pioneer Press

BOONVILLE, Mo.

Fishing for catfish on the Missouri River in July, Gary Hoskins, his daughter and son-in-law found themselves in the middle of a spectacular show.

“Just as we started up the Lamine River, my daughter said, “Look at all the lightning bugs,’ ” said Hoskins, who lives in nearby Nelson, Mo. “She said, “It looks like Christmas in July.’ ”

As Hoskins turned to his left, a 30-pound silver carp shot out of the river and struck him on the right side of his face, then fell to the boat floor. The blow knocked a molar from his mouth and the fish’s fin sliced his arm.

Downriver near Hartsburg, Vivian Nichols had a similar encounter. She and her husband, Edwin, were circling their boat through the quiet waters behind a wing dike, when a silver carp leaped from the river and whacked her on the
nose, breaking it.

While her husband and a friend scrambled to corral the fish, Vivian lay across a center console, blood streaming from her nose. “They didn’t realize I had been hurt,” she said. “They were talking and saying, ‘I can’t believe this fish jumped into the boat.’ I’m going, ‘Hey, guys!’ ””I thought it was the fish’s blood,” Edwin Nichols said.

Life on the Missouri River has changed a lot recently, thanks to the huge Asian carp that have invaded seemingly every bay and inlet of the river’s watershed. The fish — the ugly bighead carp and the frenzied, leaping silver
carp — have made it all the way up the Missouri to South Dakota and are threatening Minnesota via the Mississippi River.

Their potential impact in Minnesota, where sport fishing is a $2.5 billion industry, could be enormous. With four major river systems and almost 12,000 lakes, the state has 750,000 registered boats, more per capita than anywhere
else in the United States. Only three states have more licensed anglers.

On the Missouri and its tributaries, people now think twice about taking a spin in their personal watercraft. They avoid fishing by themselves at night. They watch their speed as they head along the river. They’ve even constructed barriers, or carp guards, on their boats, all to avoid injury from silver carp, which become so disturbed by engine noise that, without warning, they leap 6 to 10 feet into the air, often landing in boats. “I’ve had at least 50 of ’em land in my boat,” Hoskins said. “We thought it used to be funny,” said Nichols, a part-time commercial fisherman from Hartsburg. “But it ain’t funny anymore.”

IMPORTED IN 1970S

Imported from Asia in the early 1970s by Southern aquaculture farmers to consume unwanted plant growth in ponds, silver and bighead carp later escaped or were released into the wild, where they have flourished, moving
up major rivers and tributaries over the past two decades.
Bighead carp can tip the scales at more than 100 pounds, with silver carp typically a bit smaller. Voracious eaters, they consume zooplankton and phytoplankton, tiny organisms at the base of the aquatic food chain, more efficiently than do native bigmouth buffalo and sturgeon. Other native
larval fish and mussels also need that plankton. In addition, they produce huge quantities of eggs. “A 50-pounder we caught had a 5-gallon bucket of babies in it,” Edwin Nichols said.

Neither fish would win a beauty contest, but the bighead is particularly ugly, with a disproportionately large head and eyes set lower than the mouth, giving it an upside-down appearance. Both bleed easily, leaving the insides of boats a mess.

In the lee side of the Missouri’s many wing dikes, where they find protection from the swift current, they hang out in large numbers. “There’s an awful lot of fish in there,” Duane Chapman, a fisheries biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey in nearby Columbia, observed at one
of those areas on a recent outing to capture carp, gutting some for food samples and tagging others to learn more about their movements. After setting long nets to close escape routes, Chapman whirled the boat around a confined area between the dike, a sandbar and the shore to chase
fish into nets. Most passes produced at least one silver carp, leaping behind or alongside the boat. With loud bangs, they also slammed into the bottom of the hull. One landed in the boat. In short order, the nets held almost three dozen fish, almost all of them 10- to 30-pound bighead and silver carp. Three buffalo and a shovelnose
sturgeon were the only native fish caught.

Chapman said it is difficult to measure the ecological impact on the Missouri, the longest river in North America. But he said the numbers and size of the carp pose problems.
“Their impact on the environment is directly proportional to their biomass,” Chapman said. “And under the right kind of circumstances, they can reach enormous biomasses. Sometimes, when you have invaders, there’s a huge peak, then it drops after a while. We haven’t seen a sign like that with Asian carp, but it’s possible.”

GREAT LAKES THREATENED

In St. Paul, Jay Rendall, head of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ exotics species program, has been warning about approaching Asian carp for years. To get here, the fish have a straight shot north, interrupted only by a penetrable system of locks and dams.

They already are moving up the Illinois River, threatening the Great Lakes, with only an electrical barrier near Chicago standing in their way. Last month, a 23-pound bighead carp was netted in Lake Pepin, 100 miles farther
north than any previous discovery. Silver carp, which apparently got into the wild later than bighead carp, are believed to be still farther down the Mississippi. Rendall and other state and federal fisheries specialists in the Midwest are desperately trying to come up with ways to hold the fish at bay. In the next few months, they’ll explore a variety of options, including electric or acoustic barriers on the Mississippi and chemical ways of tricking the fish.
If they get here, they could have a profound impact on Minnesota’s fishing and recreational industries, he said.
“Because they consume such a large amount of the food chain, they could dramatically reduce what is available for other species,” Rendall said. “The other big impact is on recreation. … The impact of silver carp on water recreation could be dramatic. In the South, people are starting to not be very excited about going on the water when fish jump in their boats.”

A national task force has been meeting to devise a federal strategy and hopes to have a proposal ready by August. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, meanwhile, is entertaining proposals to place bighead and silver carp on a national list of injurious species, which would make it illegal to import them or move them across state lines without a permit, actions some have described as too little and too late. “If we could wave a wand and get them out of the Mississippi, listing them might make sense,” said Mike Freeze, an Arkansas fish farmer and vice president of the National Aquaculture Association, a trade organization of
4,000 fish farms. “Without that, it just doesn’t.” The agency also is considering similar actions against black carp, another Asian native and a mollusk-eating monster. Authorities do not believe any reproducing black carp exist in the wild.

The aquaculture industry wants to keep the option of moving sterile black carp across state lines and of shipping live bighead carp to fish markets. “The silver will be the least controversial of the three,” predicted Kari Duncan, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service fisheries biologist.

FISH ARE NET-SHY
What scientists like Chapman learn will play a crucial role in the effort to minimize the impact of the fish. Chapman has been trying to determine precisely what they eat and how the diet changes during the year, whether baby fish make up any portion of the diet, what types of habitat the fish prefer, and their spawning patterns and habitat needs.
Eventually, he said, scientists may be able to generate chemical substances that carp use to transmit information, disrupting their normal patterns. Already, he believes bighead carp in Missouri move long distances up tributaries during the winter while silver carp prefer to remain in the
river’s main channel.As a rule, the carp are tough to net, according to Chapman. “They’re so darned net-shy,” he said. “They know what nets are and they avoid them.”

Spending as much time as he does on the Missouri, Chapman also has observed how people have changed their behavior.
“We don’t have the amount of recreation on the river that you guys (in Minnesota) do,” he said. “We don’t have as many impacts from Asian carp as you’d have. But everybody knows they are out there, silver carp in particular.

“Every boat you pass is doing something related to jumping fish. Some have homemade spears, lawn chairs they hide behind, or nets hanging out of the boat just to catch them out of the air. Everybody you see driving up the river is in some way dealing with these fish.” On many of the tributaries, people used to zip around on personal
watercraft. “You do not see that anymore,” Chapman said. ” If you use a tributary, you use them very slowly.”

In Missouri, the state encourages commercial and ecreational anglers to catch and keep all the Asian carp they want. “Asian carp are by far the most abundant fish in our part of the world,” Chapman said.

MARKETS EMERGING
Fishing, commercial and recreational, may not provide the final answer, but it promises to cut down the numbers, reducing the impact of the fish. At the Big River Fish Corp., in Pearl, Ill., Rick Smith said he wants all
the Asian carp he can get. The company processes and sells the fish, which, until recently, have only appealed to ethnic Asian communities. With each bout of publicity, however, Big River Fish and other processors are finding new markets for the fish, which Chapman and others describe as bony, but good and flaky. Recently, for example, the company sold 200,000 pounds to a Spirit Lake, Iowa, company, which has since put in another order. Smith, Big River’s owner, has only been able to offer 10 cents a pound for the carp, well below what commercial fishermen need to make a decent living. But he said that could improve as demand increases.

Meanwhile, he said, the government should consider subsidizing commercial fishing, instead of spending millions of dollars on other efforts. In China, the carp are overfished, according to Chapman and Smith. “If China can do it, we can do it,” Smith said. “We can take those fish out of the rivers, bring the numbers down.”
Without some sort of incentive, that won’t happen, according to Nichols, the Hartsburg fisherman. He agreed that 10 cents a pound for carp is hardly worth the effort. The fish, he said, tear up expensive trammel nets, fish markets are too far away, and only about a quarter of the fish is salvageable as meat. “The meat is not bad, but the waste is so bad,” he said. He and folks like Mike Rea, a man from O’Fallon, Mo., who was struck in the chest and knocked in the river by a silver carp while using a canoe to get to a hunting spot, have some advice for Minnesota and Wisconsin residents.

“You won’t want ’em,” said Nichols, who grew up in the small Missouri River town. “They’re filter eaters. They eat everything. And that affects all the other species. Nothing else has anything to eat. You’ll be sick of ’em.”
“Somebody is going to probably die from being hit by these things,” Rea said. “I’m almost positive.”

To see a video showing Asian carp leaping into a boat, go to
http://www.glfc.org/fishmgmt/Asiancarp.rm.

Thanks fishsqrz. Once again you prove yourself to be an outstanding source of info!

Would you be willing to speculate a little on what you “think or feel” will happen when this species takes hold in the northern strecthes of the Mississippi River? Will it be a full-blown disaster for native species or will we see an explosion of population early on followed by a tapering off of population to tolerable levels after a few years?

I’m very interested in your thoughts on this. Anything you’d be willing to share would be most appreciated.

Does anyone have pictures of the “barriers, or carp guards” for the boats?

Before the Asian carp came along, one of our biggest long-term worries regarding the ecology of Pool 4 was the silting in of Lake Pepin and the back waters. Now we have these carp to deal with – I hate to see what Pool 4 will be like a decade from now. I feel helpless in this situation and hope someone finds a way to stop/slow their advance into our fishing area. I am sure most of us would pitch in to get rid of them if we only knew what to do.

Dave Gulczinski

James – very difficult question to answer. I and most biologist believe they will become very abundant in the UMR (all pools up to the Twin Cities)in the future (how distant is somewhat speculative, but give it about 10-15 years). Because they are filter feeders (well described in the above article) they will compete directly with native fishes that are also filter feeders (buffalo, paddlefish, gizzard shad, etc) and also with larval fish of many species that depend on zooplankton for food during early life stages (walleye, sauger, largemouth and smallmouth bass, northern pike, etc). If they are in such great numbers that they deplete the zooplankton food source, then survival of larval fish of other species will be greatly reduced.
If the Asian carp follow the curve of other introduced species, there will be a build-up to great numbers and then something (predation, disease, etc, etc)will reduce them to a much lower level in terms of number, but it is highly unlikey they will ever again be completely gone from the system.
What I did find encouraging from the article was that apparently they are overexploited in China, which means that somebody has learned how to catch them in large numbers and process them for food. We should find out as much as possible about the fishing methods used in China to catch these fish.

Also – we should take a real lesson from this and stop the introduction of ANY NON-NATIVE species by any person or group until we know exactly what they will do or how they will fit into our environment.

There are also biologists that believe these fish are capable of displacing all of our native fish species to the point where only these Asian Carp are in the system. A case in point was a fish kill last summer in a side channel in a Wildlife Refuge in lower Illinois. The kill was comprised of 97% Non-native fish, with common carp, bighead carp and silver carp being the most common non-native fish.

We have all lived through the intoduction, expansion, and then the decline of zebra mussels in the UMR. There were also people predicting zebs would directly compete with filter feeding fish and native larval fish because zebra mussels are also filter feeders. But, as of yet, we have not made any definate connection with declines in fish species with the increase in zebra mussels numbers. But many time these relationships take years to develop and study before patterns begin to emerge.

Hope this helps some, I’m not sure I really anwered your question, I got to rambling a little about a lot of things that came to mind as I was replying. If not – I’ll try to do better next time around!

Actually John you did a great job of peering into your crystal ball and offering up some likely scenarios. I thank you for your willingess to do so.

I am wondering if the minnow stage of the new carp types would replace/supplement shad as a food base for Walleye, Sauger, Stripers and other game fish. If so, and they occur in large numbers, is that good or bad?

maybe we can introduce some Wells and Maekong (sp?) catfish that get up to 500-600 lbs and will eat up the carp! Why would a cat eat a spiny eye when he can have a fat juicy carp. There was an old lady who swallowed a fly…..

I am mostly kidding of course.

I couldn’t see the Trib article Jon. I can imagine an electric barrier will stop all fish? At least it seems like it would…right? What about all of the other fish that migrate upstream to spawn like eye’s and saugy’s as well as bait fish? Wouldn’t a barrier of this sort stop all (good and bad) fish assuming it would work?

I would think this is going to be similar to all the other exotic species ie. Zebs, milfoil, spiny water flea, earthworms yep check the regs. They (DNR) are going to employ many people and spend a ton of our money to try to eradicate them and they won’t be able to.
Let’s face it many of these things have made it around the world and there’s no stopping them until nature takes it’s course and evens it out.

Ferny.

Here is another article on not only Asian Carp, but all non-native species.

Posted on Mon, Nov. 24, 2003
SPECIES SURVIVORS
Minnesota works hard to keep invasive plants and animals from becoming established, but the global economy means the battle will never end.

BY DENNIS LIEN
Pioneer Press

For an enduring image of non-native species, it’s tough to beat silver carp, a large, voracious Asian fish that’s moving up the Mississippi River and can explode from the water like an out-of-control torpedo.
But in the past century, and especially the past decade or two, other alien invaders have left a lasting, if more insidious, mark on Minnesota.

From Eurasian water milfoil, which crowds out native lake plants, to zebra mussels, which foul beaches and out compete native clams, the state finds itself under attack from plants and animals that have established footholds here and are resisting eradication. Other potentially devastating threats, such as the New Zealand mud snail and the emerald ash borer, a killer of ash trees, are on the horizon. They’re getting here through the air, flying from other infested places. They’re reaching us by water, from easy pathways such as the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. They’re hitching rides on cargo in cars and trucks. They’re even coming through the mail.

The sheer speed of today’s transportation systems and an increasingly global economy that ships material from all over the world has outpaced traditional geographical barriers, posing problems for state regulators trying to keep the state from being overrun. “A lot of commodity is coming from underdeveloped parts of the world, where there’s not the greatest infrastructure or sanitation,” said Geir Friisoe, section manager for plant protection at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. Despite those onslaughts, Minnesota is better off than many other states, where even more non-native invaders have become established.

One reason is our climate, which is too cold for many species that have found new homes in places such as Florida. “There’s something good to be said for hard, hard winters,” Friisoe said. “It knocks down a lot of those kinds of pests.” Another is our location midway between the two coasts, where invasive species often are introduced and addressed first. Still another is the state’s relatively early response to invasive threats. Before many other states committed resources to them, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Agriculture Department were already at work. In 1991, the Minnesota Legislature established an Exotic Species Program within the DNR that’s responsible for monitoring and managing harmful exotics, including animals and aquatics. The agriculture department handles other exotic insects and plants.

Earlier this year, the Legislature strengthened plant-protection standards and raised the exotic species program’s budget from $1.2 million a year to $1.6 million. “I think it was a recognition that we have more problems, higher costs, and we need to do more to address this issue,” said Jay Rendall, the DNR’s exotic species coordinator. “The states I talk to, they look to Minnesota as a leader in terms of education and changing boaters’ behavior,” said Jeff Gunderson, associate director of Minnesota Sea Grant in Duluth.

100-YEAR-OLD PROBLEM
Invasive species have been with us for more than a century.
Common carp, for example, were brought here in the 19th century as a food source. Eventually, they took over many southern wetlands and lakes, damaging the habitat in such famous waterfowl lakes as Heron Lake in southwestern Minnesota. European earthworms, another one, are eating away the floor in Minnesota forests, where native worms were eradicated by glaciers thousands of years ago. Anglers have spread them to northern lakes, only to discard some on land. Once there, the worms eat the small layer of duff — or leaf beds — on the forest floor, disrupting the forest’s ability to sustain a rich and varied system of plants.
That pace, however, has quickened in recent decades, with more than half the state’s exotic species arriving since 1985. Examples include zebra mussels, round gobies, and Japanese beetles. Gypsy moths, tree defoliators that the state has battled successfully so far, may become a much bigger problem soon, according to Friisoe. Introduced into the United States in the 1800s, they have been moving westward and now infest much of Wisconsin. “What’s called the action line is moving across Wisconsin with frightening speed,” Friisoe said. “It looks like gypsy moths will be arriving in Minnesota faster than our previous expectations. I would say within five years.”

If potential problems such as Asian carp from the south and gypsy moths from the east aren’t enough, another potentially disruptive creature sits on our northern border. Earlier this year, researchers found the New Zealand mud snail in Thunder Bay, Ontario, prompting fears it could infest Lake Superior and other inland waters.
The tiny, prolific creatures were brought to the United States in 1987, apparently with New Zealand trout, and have since colonized hundreds of miles of the Snake River in Idaho and other Western rivers and streams. They have no natural enemies and can reach densities of 300,000 a square meter. “Because they reach such high numbers, it’s difficult to imagine they would have not have some sort of impact,” said Billie Kerans, an associate professor of ecology at Montana State University. “And the thing is, they are very easily transportable,” she added, explaining how they leapfrogged their way east.

Still another emerging problem, Rendall said, is the commercial sale of aquatic plants and animals, particularly in the water-garden industry. “Most of what they sell is not native,” Rendall said. “It could be contaminated. You could buy a water lily and find hydrilla in with the roots.” A University of Minnesota report to Minnesota Sea Grant and the DNR last year examined the problem. The researchers ordered 681 plants from 34 aquatic plant vendors across the United States. They said 10 percent of purchases contained federal or state noxious weeds and 93 percent contained plant or animal species that weren’t requested. Misidentified plants were found in 15 percent of the orders.

MINNESOTA AT FOREFRONT
With so many potential problems, people might find it easy to get discouraged. But Gunderson said that would be a mistake. “There are a number of myths, and one of them is it only takes one bad boater, one zebra mussel, one introduction, and the game’s over,” Gunderson said.
“That’s not the case at all. Every introduction isn’t going to take hold. … This is something that builds up over time. If we can change the majority of people’s behavior, we feel we can make a difference in reducing the spread of a number of exotic species.” Friisoe agreed, saying “99.9 percent” of the insects that arrive in Minnesota can’t survive here. Gunderson said a Sea Grant survey show the DNR’s education efforts have been very successful in changing behavior and limiting new introductions of zebra mussels and Eurasian water milfoil. “I think Minnesota has been on the forefront of putting money into efforts, and it shows,” Gunderson said. Besides a bigger budget, the state has tighter regulations than many other places. It’s against the law, for example, to possess, sell, or import an exotic species. There’s also a regulation against transporting any aquatic plant, native or not. Rendall said there are reasons for that. “One, you don’t have to be a biologist to follow the rule,” he said. “Just take it off. Two, there are plants that are not in the state yet. It makes it illegal to bring them here. Visitors must follow the same rule. Three, zebra mussels can attach themselves to aquatic plants.”

Dennis Lien can be reached at [email protected] or 651-228-5588.

A lot of good discussion below so I thought I would weigh in. I’m one of those biologists that keep getting quoted in those news articles. I’m with the USGS in Missouri. I don’t have the pictures on my home computer, but I’ll send pictures later of juvenile Asian carp (the silver carp juvies really look a lot like shad) and of the carp guards on my boat. The guards help, but in their current form they don’t protect very well against fish that come completely across the boat. At least those you usually have time to get an arm up and fend the things off a bit, if you aren’t moving too fast. If you are moving very fast, the fish usually end up jumping behind the boat. Just don’t follow behind someone else and get hit by the fish they stir up and you will be OK most of the time. But it only takes one fish that jumps early to really do some damage. And they hurt bad even when you aren’t moving. One of my techs was leaning over the gunnel last month and one jumped right up and hit him in the throat (and fell back over the side). He was coughing and spluttering for a while. I got one the same day that jumped from behind the boat and cleared the carp guard (I was standing up and my head was above the guard). It hit me just above the teeth and it hit really hard. I’m 6’6″ so that fish was at least 6 feet above the water when it hit me. So yeah, these things, the silvers at least, can be a real problem for boaters. As for the environmental impacts, we are not sure what they will be yet, but we are worried. I’m one of the experts on Asian carp so would entertain questions if I have time to answer them. I don’t know the terrain up in Minnesota very well, so I have a question for you guys too. Someone (Chappy) said that they saw Asians caught in the RCL – what is the RCL?? If you catch an Asian carp in Minnesota, any species, PLEASE let the authorities know. If there is no way to get the fish to them for some reason, a digital picture would be almost as good, especially if it had some background that would id where the thing was caught.
BTW – I have been working with Phil Moy and others associated with the barrier in the CSSC between the Illinois river and Lake Michigan, thus I have a little familiarity with how these things work. I think it is extremely unlikely that a barrier will be built on the Mississippi River. It is hard enough to make the thing work in the canal, which a ten-year-old could toss a rock across, and it is much less susceptible to flooding than the Mississippi River. They may do a study, but I feel confident that the study will show that there will be better things to do to control the fish.

RCL = Ranger/Crestliner/Lund

And it is a Walleye Tournament circuit

Is there any chance these fish will not tolerate the cold?

Short answer: I don’t think the cold will faze them.
Long answer: Bigheads have been in South Dakota for years, and doing great. The first silvers arrived the James River in South Dakota this spring. I think that’s about on a latitude with you guys. And since then, they’ve had a bunch more silvers show up. Most of the silvers captured up there have actually jumped into boats. The bigheads up there are HUGE, much larger on average than they are down here in Missouri. I’ve seen bigheads so large that I could identify them from on the bluff top over the river at Ponca State Park, probably more than 200 feet over the water. And you guys probably have better habitat than they do, as a best guess. In the winter here, they feed all winter long, even under the ice. I’m not certain how much they are feeding, because I do not know the gut evacuation rate at those cold temperatures. But they have full guts. And they are active. They swim around, change habitat depending on hourly variables like sunlight and temperature in shallow water. Sometimes we break ice for miles tracking the fish that I have tags in, when they go up tributaries that freeze or get under the ice behind large wing dikes(the mainstem Missouri rarely freezes, but it does occasionally have ice flows that make it to dangerous for me to go out for a couple days.) Anyway, the fish are scared by the noise of the boat and of the breaking ice, so the silver carp will try to jump, even though there is ice cover. You can see them whanging off the bottom of the ice. Sometimes you can see blood in the water, through the ice, they hit so hard. Sometimes, when you make a crack in the ice, the fish will jump out of it (I think they hit the crack randomly) and land on the ice and freeze to death, if they don’t flop back in. Actually, seeing silvers “jumping” under the ice is more common when we are breaking ice behind wing dikes than in the tributaries, because most of the silver carp move into the big river during the cold weather period, while many of the bighead carp move pretty far up the tribs during the winter, at least a few miles up the larger tribs like the Lamine and Osage.

Hey, arrowing these guys is fun, but they are very motor-shy, even of trolling motors. You are better off drifting than using the trolling motor, if you can figure a way to make that work for you. Bigheads do a thing where they feed near the surface that makes them susceptible to bowhunters, if you can get close enough. Sometimes you can shoot them right in the open mouth. Silvers have been tougher for me, at least so far. But they are an absolute blast to try to shoot out of the air. I had a bowhunter friend take me out behind the wingdikes in his bowhunting rig, and we chased the silvers around and made them jump. Eventually, we each shot a fish out of the air. The percentage was really low, but it was a blast. We actually had six fish jump into the boat in the time it took us to arrow two of them. And incidentally, silver and bighead carp are bony, and the bighead in particular does not dress out well, but the flavor of the flesh is excellent.

BTW – Some people around here have taken to using shotguns on the fish, but that is illegal in Missouri. You can’t shoot fish with guns here. Or at least if you do you run the risk of a nasty fine. I think it sounds really dangerous too, standing on the bow of a spinning boat in shallow water with logs and rock in, and slinging a shotgun around. And I wouldn’t want to be the driver of that rig, unless I had a good bullet-proof shield between me and Bubba with the scattergun.

I should also add, spinning the boat and making the silvers jump can be fun, but there is a serious element of danger. Not only to you, but to your depth-finder, radio, windscreens, wife or girlfriend, or anything else they can hit and break. So if you do chase the fish around and try to arrow them, just know I said it wasn’t without risk. We have an ongoing joke about a bag of chips on the deck. Every time I lay a bag of chips on the deck, one of these fish will land on it and smash and slime it. Had a great big bag on the deck one time, and the fish actually got part way in the bag. Maybe they just like chips, and that’s the whole reason they jump in your boat – they are looking for snacks.

Carptracker
Welcome to the site. Great to have somebody onboard that knows a little something about these fish.

Gator Hunter

fishsqzr and Carptracker, great reading thank you!