Asian Carp

What is current status of harvest / eradication effots? Anyone fishing for them commercially? If so, what are end uses? Fish markets? Fish meal? Fertilizer?

And lastly, has anyone used them in place of common carp for fish sticks, pockets, etc?

50 years ago we ate them overseas at weddings and such. A big delicacy there, they just have a bad name here I guess.......jk

The fish is an excellent eating fish the meat is some white and very mild tasting the drawback are heavy Y bones that don’t cook up when scored as a buffalo fish does . A big Asian carp has a nice back strap with no bones and we cube and fry them . The reason they’re a problem here Americans are to picky but a couple billion Chinese fight over the scraps that’s population control lol

Problem for commercial guys is the poor payout, lot of grunt work for pennies per pound, and Americans don't like changing what they eat... Industrial style fishing could remove them but not where they're thickest, and recs would complain the commercials are removing "their" preferred species...

Which I guess was the point of asking about "industrial" uses. Said to make pretty good fish meal, and have seen reports that the fish contain two essential amino acids needed in many livestock diets, including poultry. Could be the protein in a high grade chicken feed.

But that would not be what a few commercial fish guys could catch in their hoop nets like is or was done for buffalo, carp, etc. Not a few hundred pounds per day. Several tons per day using boats the size of a good sized house boat. Industrial scale harvest.

Just wondering if things had progressed that far. Sounds like maybe going the same way as feral hogs. What used to be thought of as a disaster may now have become a resource for recreation and other.

Still wondering if these have the same appeal as common carp for trapping bait. If so, maybe the guys catching them could sell 5 gallon buckets of fish heads and tails?

I can a lot of them and it’s real good. They say you can can the big bones but I cut around them and just can the Y bones. They make real good cut bait for set lines also. I can’t believe it wouldn’t make good trapping bait. My dogs pretty much ignore catfish, drum and other carp when they are on the boat. Dogs go crazy for the silvers. Always licking the blood and biting skin when one jumps in.

There's definitely a commercial use for them, but to make it pay several tons isn't cutting it, more like 50,000 # plus to make it worthwhile and provide enough product to get it adopted. Even then it's a tough sell, just to ramp up processing would cost a lot, and the product needs to move from day one to sustain production. Assuming they could get the permits. Lot of road blocks that may not be able to overcome

If you could make a good tuna fish substitute or fish patties or something people would eat maybe a fish jerky

needs to be some way to use it as a plentiful protein source for lest cost than anything else available

I have wondered about it as a protein source for cat food , but then it is probably not worth enough to be a good source for that.

was watching the crew clear carp from a lake last spring they can fill a semi trailer in a morning , but the money has to be there to pay 4-5 guys and keep them employed doing something the rest of the year.

Trust me, if catching those carp were paying fisherman enough, they would gladly do it, even if it was seasonal . A big payday and they'll figure out how to catch them in numbers , the easiest way possible.

Ain’t nothing better than fresh Asian flying carp to use for bait when fishing for big blue’s and flathead’s on the river. The Asian carp are taking over the river ecosystem’s in this country. They spawn 3-5 times a year. They are destroying by consumption of algae the other game fish that live in the waters. It’s death by starvation for the other fish. No algae or plankton equals no minnows. No minnows equal no food for crappie, bass, blue gill, walleye and so on. They reproduce faster than regular carp and buffalo and are slowly eliminating even them.
They are trying to keep them out of the Great Lakes but are fighting a losing battle. I know Kentucky Lake and Barkley have netting operations for them going on now for several years.
The only fish that I know that feeds on them is catfish. Kill every one of them you can if you get a chance or they will eventually destroy your fishery. They are the coyote of the water when it comes to survival.

There was a 750,000 pound seine haul on the Illinois river last fall and fish were given to a processor because they have no value.We have some silvers up here on the Miss but no juvenile recruitment.Several theories on why they don’t breed up this one being to cold and another that our dams are to close together and the eggs tumble in the current and get chopped up going through the dam.

There is a sustainable market for Asian carp. There's a lot of guys making a decent to good living doing it but it does require catching in significant numbers. Barkley and Kentucky lakes is probably the best current example of commercial fishing pressure keeping carp numbers at an acceptable level.

This is true but there is a market for a limited amount every week but when 3/4 million show up at one time the fertilizer plant uses most of them.

I don't know what 3/4 of a million pounds set you're talking about but I know of plenty of 200,000+ pound sets that all fish were sold without issue. 3/4 of a million pounds is a bit of a far fetched number to expect to be sold in any scenario. Silver carp don't last long in a seine. Even if you don't bag them tight you're looking at about 4 days to move them before they are rotten even in cold water. 200,000 pounds a day would take a fleet to move and that's with semis waiting at the boat ramp. It becomes a diminishing returns scenerio.The only reason to make a set that large is to say you did it. The guys that are doing this year round as a living catching 50,000-200,000 pounds a week all through the year are the ones putting a dent in them. The most reliable market by far is the oil and fish meal. It isn't top dollar but a reliable market ensures the ability to make a full time living at it.

Google starved rock carp haul.I guess I didn’t realize how many silvers are being utilized.I thought it was just Schafer’s and the beardstown plant that used them are there more buyers down river?

We have a few other markets down this way but most of our fish goes to beardstown. I am familiar with the starved rock haul you mentioned but I was referring to earlier of the people making a living at it. That set at least if done down here would be for bragging rights only and being coordinated by the state is a once a year operation. I don't know much about up there as to how sets may be beneficial to reduce carp at the forefront of the population and may have a place so I don't want it to sound negative about a set like that it is a lot of fish out of the water no matter how you slice it. Do you know how many people were involved with that operation by chance? The crews down here are generally 1-5 people taking the numbers mentioned earlier and my guess is it averages out about the same as that haul when taking people and boats into account.


I don't know about Illinois but in ky and Tennessee state run operations can't legally sell any fish and have to donate them which would be my guess why the fish were donated. The other reason would be after 3 days penned up those fish would be in super rough shape even in 33 degrees water. At that point fertilizer is all they would be good for which is why down here you try to only catch what can be hauled in 2 days.

So now named Copi?

https://www.nprillinois.org/illinoi...hs-popularity-as-a-food-source-increases

How many million pounds?

I'm no researcher, but if I was, I'd be looking to see if there is a lure or attractant that could be used to pull them into an area. On a place like the Peoria pool, they could raise the pool to flood a couple hundred acres with narrowed down outlet. Then when the pool is full of fish, drop the water level at the dam to drain the pool, trapping fish inside. Then scoop them up. Rinse and repeat. Same in KY on KL and Barkley.

Is all I know about the haul is what was in the article.Up in my area the biggest silver catch by far was 300 plus.The DNR and FWS hire out the fishermen and help out by making drives and setting block off nets-it’s quite the clown show.

The main problem is they have a habit of jumping out of the water when as boat approaches, sometimes jumping in the boat injuring people. I heard a guy got killed in Pool 26, Alton, Ill, and I have seen boats with chain link fence across the bow.

I will give Illinois credit at least they have had some large catches when they put together an organized haul like that. Honestly I would say at this point that has been the biggest issue with commercial viability with Asian carp overall. A lot of money has been allocated mostly at a national level for carp removal. A lot of this was meant to be subsidy money for the carp to try to boost both the fisherman and processors. At the end of the day what has resulted has been many state and federal agencies with A LOT of new equipment and overnight processors that saw free money and didn't last because instead of starting with a viable product like pressed oil and fish meal at a lower price but reliable market and growing that operation into other markets with better pricing like bait or food grade, they tried to act like it was swordfish worth $20/lb and wonder why they failed. USGS has been the worst offender on these funds. A few years ago they shut off bays on ky lake and told everybody how they were going to use the unified-modified method to remove millions of pounds of fish. What ended up happing is a bunch of educated 6 figure big shots got their tails handed to them but instead of admitting such they tried to spin it like it was just a study and they got a bunch of data from the project and never really intended to catch much. I'm sure you can still Google unified-modified on ky lake and find interviews of the before and after and notice the tone change. Lots of other examples also but bottom line they can do all the studies they want to make themselves feel important but money that ends up in fisherman's hands is what gets results. Barkley and ky lakes are the example of that. There was something like 8 million pounds removed from those lakes last year which has had a subsidy in place since I believe 2015 and almost every person that spends time on those lakes will tell you it has made a significant difference.

The St. Louis Zoo started a program to buy Asian Carp from the area commercial fisherman, but it died out, don't know why or how well it worked.
A St. Louis Co, local park lake was overrun with the AC's and they set up a massive dredge net operation and killed several 100 K of them, just took them to the dump.

Correction: It was 119 tons and 47,000 fish.