Asian Carp – Interesting Story.

I don’t know how often I’ll be checking in, but if you have questions Re:Asian carp, you can email me. I left my home email on the registration, so you can contact me there.

Incidentally, I just read a disturbing piece in a letter to Science magazine, that indicated that bighead and silver carp have eliminated some native species from some lakes in China where they had been introduced. (Bigheads and silvers are native to China, but there are parts of that large country to which they are not native.) It took 30 years to wipe out one particular species, which was a direct competitor, a filter feeder that was less efficient at filter feeding than bigheads or silvers. We have established already at my lab that paddlefish are less efficient filter feeders than bighead and silver carp. Bad omen.

I had said earlier that I would post a picture of the carp guard on my boat, and a picture that compares juvenile Asian carp to gizzard shad. Here’s the carp guard, together with a fish that beheaded itself when it hit the guard. The guy who rides in the front port side of the boat has a guard too.

The guy in this picture is a colleague.

The fish in that last picture weighed 10 pounds sans head. These fish are about 4″ long.

Carptracker
Thanks for all the info. What is that netting made of? It looks like a heavy monofilament. I hope I don’t need to install that on my boat anytime soon.

Gator Hunter

We have more trouble with carp than most people because we are always in thick of them – we go where the carp go, as we are following tagged fish. Also, we drive fish with the boat to push them into nets, which results in a lot of jumping. Whether you end up with a net or not will depend on your use of the boat, and how bad the fish get up there. The net is made from braided nylon. I just ordered some braided nylon netting from a net company and went to a welder and had him build the supports, then I tied it all together. There are other boats around here with carp protection that have different designs, but I think the nylon net on supports is a good design. One thing to make sure is that the throttle mechanism is protected. We’ve had a couple of scares when the fish jumped up and hit the throttle, causing the boat to jump forward.

Hey Tracker…

Great job on sharing your knowledge w/us…Welcome to the site!!!

What effect do these fish have on commercial fisherman? Is there a market for these fish or are they just going to waste when they are caught (not that i have a problem w/that–worms gotta eat too!!!). I’m just curious as to what will happen IF it ever gets that bad in pools 7-9, and if the commercial fishery can help in any way.

There is a market for the fish, but the price to the fisherman is not always high enough to make money on it. The fisherman has to have a buyer that will pay sufficient money to make it worthwhile – big fish are hard on nets and the nets are expensive. There are some buyers that pay enough money, but for limited numbers of fish – those are the guys that have a specific small market or two. Then there are the big buyers, but last I heard they were offering ten cents per pound, and that is just not enough money, especially if you are fishing far from the buyer. Then there’s the fact that commercial guys catch the fish even when they don’t want to. Ever spend a winter day pulling a ton of fish out of a net? They don’t just fall out. It’s work, let me tell you. Some of these boats, usually with one to three people on board will boat up to 2 or 3 tons in a day. Even if you get two tons in a day, that’s 400 smackers. Then you have to pay your people, get the fish hundreds of miles to the buyer, pay the boat payment and the nets ($600 a pop, and they are easy to lose or snag on trees and destroy, and big fish tear them up), clean up the boat and repair the prop that you hit a rock with, mend the nets… ten cents won’t do it. And if you catch them, you still have to deal with them. Makes it hard on the commercial guys. But markets are developing, and state agencies are trying hard to improve those markets. Then there are those that who don’t like that idea – and they have a point. If you develop a market for these fish, and we can eventually come up with a way to get rid of them, those who are making a living off them won’t want it to happen. Also, if people are making a profit on the fish, there will be an incentive to move the fish into places they don’t already exist.

thought I would add this to this thread…. Michael Fry sent me a photo of a possible asian carp he caught on the croix at the kings power plant… I forwared the photo to the Mn DNR… and the response was it was a goldeye… which along with adult gizzard shad look VERY similar to silver carp…. but the mouth is turned down in these fish.. and upwards in the silver carp….. heres the shot he forwarded…… just for everyones information…..
thanks Mike for keeping an ‘eye out!…

Wow….another fish for me to try and kill..jk..

I can certainly see the resemblance and see where the confusion might be….

Let me ask you guys this….If you were to catch this fish in the picture (or one similar) and weren’t 100% if it were an Asian Carp ….would you kill it and ask questions later>? Since these Carp are so dangerous…I’d think i would kill and ask later…Thoughts?

The Minnesota state record for Goldeye is 2-13 (Pounds/ounces) What do you suppose that one weighed?

Jon J.

kind of hard to say… but Michael said they were everywhere there.. I know lots of fish like that pack into the kings plant at this time of year… plus there are musky, northerns, cats, sturgeon, smallies, whities.. well you name it.. in there feedin on them…

we done quite a bit of fishing on the illinois river in the havanah area and let me tell you these carp are all over we had one hit the motor and the lady on the bank was plae white and could hardly talk it was so big we was idling but no damage

then same day guy had one jump in his boat it was a smaller one but we herd it flopping 40 foot away and its slime is nasty coated his front deck leg etc

id say on an average day if you wernt looking for them youd see 40 or more just jumping to be jumping not to mention the ones we kick up fishing

dusty t

CHeck out this story..

Click here

We can have a new sport for when the eyes won’t bite. Shotguns with steel of course. cruise up and down the river “jump” shooting flying fish….. LOL

Some more bad news. We just received a reliable report from a commercial fisherman that caught 3 silver carp in Pool 18. There was considerable hope that the high dam at Keokuk (38 ft head) would slow (or stop) the movement of these fish upstream. These fish were in the 4-6 lb range and could easily have moved into Pool 18 with a barge when it locked through.

That is bad news. I will be in Minnesota on Wednesday for a meeting with the FWS and the DNR about slowing the expansion, if anything can be done.

I emailed Pam Fuller and Amy Benson, who are supposed to be keeping track of such things (although they do not get every report of course) and they said as far as they knew, this is the most upstream report of silver carp in the Mississippi. All you fishermen out there – please report any Asian carp you catch (or that jump in the boat) if you are in an area that is on the leading edge of the invasion. Pictures are important – if you can supply digital pictures for id confirmation that is a big plus. Also, it is especially important to be on the lookout for small fish such as those you might catch in a castnet.

can i just box there remains and send them in dont want to waste film on rat coon food or buzzard bait i get one it will see the land im not one to be so in humane but we hre in the 18 19 area are allready loosing our backwaters so we loosing our bass dont need a carp adding to it

Dusty – I do not discourage killing every one of these fish you can. I’m just asking for help to try to keep them OUT of new areas. Part of that is understanding their rate of movement. Believe it or not, we have several things developing to try to control these fish. We are busting our butts on this one. But it will take time, and I don’t know if we will ever completely win this battle. But I have hope that we will at least be able to keep their numbers down to low levels, if the sex pheromone or the daughterless carp technologies work out.

What good will a barrier do if it’s going to take several years to implement it? Kinda like closing the barn door after the horse already ran out. I think it’s a big waste of money that could be better spent elsewhere. Like perhaps paying commercial fishermen to net as many as they can just to try to keep the population in check. Also, are they going to put this “barrier” on all the feeder rivers and creeks? I ask this because how will they stop these fish from moving upstream during periods of high water? Fish eating birds can also help them migrate when they feed in body of water and fly to another and puke up what they had in their craw from the previous feeding that may still be alive.
That’s why I’m thinking an electric barrier is a waste of money.
Just a thought.

DNR & Asian Carp, Walleye Searchers 2/2 Meeting

Old history. I was up in Minnesota at meeting with the DNR a couple of weeks ago. There is a 6-week study going on right now to see if there is anything that can be done, but it does not look like an electrical barrier on the Mississippi will be among the options. There are a lot of things on the table, but all of them are partial measures so far. The Minnesota DNR is on this one like white on rice, and I feel assured after that meeting that they will be listening to reason and science and doing the best within their means to combat this very real threat. One thing that I keep coming back to, and I repeated that at the DNR meeting – we do not yet KNOW for sure how bad this will be for Minnesota and Wisconsin. It is hard to predict the future. I could come up with a dozen theories as to why bigheads and/or silvers might not do well within the dammed portion of the Mississippi. The fact that grass carp have not yet become common there gives me hope that some reproductive or recruitment bottleneck will come into play. But there is all the reason in the world to be afraid. If you look at the commercial catch data in Europe where these things are established, the bigheads and silvers account for >90% of the catch. I sure wish there was some other data on populations of native fishes in Europe other than the commercial statistics, but there is just hardly anything along that line that has been done.

Thanks for the report Carptracker. Keep us posted.

Gator Hunter

I was thinking that if it was possible to employ a electronic barrier, where would be the best place (ie – where is the river at its narrowest where the fish are coming upstream)on the Upper Mississippi River. My thoughts are Lock and Dam 19. This is a hydroelectric dam with a 38 foot head, so the gates are never out (ie – never an “open river” for the fish to move through. Therefore – the only way for fish to move upstream is through the lock gates when barges are locking through. The lock chambers are fairly narrow, would be possible to install an electric barrier at the downstream approach to the lock chamber? How is the electric barrier on the Illinois River working? I know it would not do much good to prevent what has allready moved upstream, however, if not enough fish have moved through to establish a reproducing population in upstream pools, it could prevent more from moving upstream. This situation is really a delema, for years fishery biologists have been after the Corps of Engineers to employ some type of fish passage at locks and dams because we saw those as an impediment to free fish movement up and down stream so fish could reach spawning grounds, nursery areas, wintering areas, etc etc. Now suddenly we are thankfull for Lock and Dam 19 with the high head that actually stops fish movement (in this case the Asian CArp invasion). And so the never-ending battle goes. Just some thoughts.

There is some thought being given to putting an electric barrier there, but the chances of someone falling into the water at a lock are so high that electricity does not seem like a good option. Other options – acoustic barrier, low DO barrier in lock, possibly even cyprinid alarm pheromone at some date in far future. That does seem like a good place to go for the barrier, but as you said we may be too late for that.

Fishsqzr (and Carptracker): Hi John, this is Elliott in Saint Paul. Saint Paul District has been participating with this, and I’ve been trying to stay in touch with where it’s been going. Their is still consideration being given to the idea of a barrier at the lock gates. Employing a barrier across the entire river is difficult if not impossible. Targeting the lock chamber is the only solution that we may be able to get our arms around. It could be some combination of accoustic, bubble screen, electrical, etc. Of course, this has many issues. Even if implemented, it’s uncertain if it will work (I had thought Mark Pegg’s work had shown that electric is not 100% effective against asians). Also, it sounds like the Silvers may already be above L&D 19, and the bigheads have been above 19 for several years. Of course, the next problem is that the Dams above 19 (up to L/D 1) are passable at least a portion of the time… and the silver’s might be the strongest swimmers we now have on the river. Makes it awfull difficult to argue for an expensive barrier project, but we’ll keep trying.

This also becomes complicated in that MnDNR is a primary driver for this effort, and that Lock and Dam 19 is obviously a long ways from MN.

Carptracker,

I read a commercial fisherman’s comments that a disease had entered the Mississippi from a koi raising operation in the twin cities that was causing carp to lose their scales and die. If this is true, and IF this would be proven not to crossover to game species, this disease may have potential as a biological control for asian and other carp as well.

Good luck.

Dan

I would be very interested in reading that information as I have not heard of this before.

From the 12/28/03 La Crosse Tribune.

“This time of year, Valley organizes the annual “Dropping of the Carp” New Year’s Eve festival in Prairie du Chien.

I love the Mississippi, in part because it gives me a feeling of being connected by water to both the North Woods and the Louisiana bayous. But that isn’t always a good thing for the fish; this year a disease made decent-sized carp hard to find.

“Some idiot up by St. Paul was raising Koi,” Valley said, “and this (fish) scale disorder got loose through the river.”

It seems a bacterial illness affecting the brightly colored fish passed to their cousins, the carp, and caused them to lose their scales and die.

“It’s really taken a toll on the carp,” he said.”

I haven’t read or heard about this anywhere else, but from the perspective of “The only good carp, is a dead carp” I LIKE IT!

Dan

Here is the link to that article in the LaCrosse Tibune. http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/2003/12/28/news/z7smith.txt

It just sounds like a bunch of rambling to me. I don’t think any of it is verifiable.

Gator Hunter