Thread: Asian Carp.. Kentucky Lake how bad?

any place you find them YES IT'S THAT BAD !

I and a buddy sat below Barkley dam for about 2 hours on Monday and without any exaggeration I saw THOUSANDS of carp either roll on the surface or jump totally out of the water, some as close as two feet from the boat. Once in a while the warning horn would blow indicating the lock was going to empty and in the corner of the dam and wing-wall TENS OF THOUSANDS of them would leap out of the water as high as 6 to 10 feet.

Efforts to start commercializing them are going very slowly so there is not much hope in that direction.

The problem is that they eat the same thing the shad eat - plankton. And they are filter feeders so they eat a lot more than the shad eat. When the shad are gone due to a lack of nutrition all the game fish will be gone also. And that is just part of the problem as the mussels also eat the plankton and they keep the water clean enough for the game fish. When the mussels are gone everything will be gone.

I am sure the biologists are working on some sort of defense but I haven't heard any encouraging news.

I've seen more carp jumping in blood river this year than I have seen year to date. Usually seen this much activity near the dam but not further up the lake. I fear it will soon be this way from dam to dam on the tva system.

For the first time I had a silver carp jump in my boat taking off from Pisgah Bay last week! A shocker! Yes, it's bad!

The fry are thicker than the shad in the spring. They have to be by far the dominant fish in the lake by pounds now. You see them constantly on SS and DS.

Originally Posted by CatFan

The fry are thicker than the shad in the spring. They have to be by far the dominant fish in the lake by pounds now. You see them constantly on SS and DS.

SS and DS?

Side Scan & Down Scan - two different modes of sonar some of the higher end Fish Finders.

If you want to see how bad it is go below barely dam , walk down to the waters edge and look ! Hundreds of millions of the carp minnows swimming up stream !!! So thick if you put your hand in the water to block them they will pile up 6 inches just running up on top of each other .
It is gonna get bad alot quicker than the DNR is letting on .
Billions of them in the lake , it's gonna be devistating to the ecosystem !!