Thread: Silver carp and lack of shad???? Questions for fishery biologists.

Good friend talked to some commercial fisherman this week that 2 boats went out in one night had little over 9000 lbs each of Asian carp cut open and full of shad at big sandy are they targeting them to eat or just filtering and eat what they get

Originally Posted by Liljimriley

Good friend talked to some commercial fisherman this week that 2 boats went out in one night had little over 9000 lbs each of Asian carp cut open and full of shad at big sandy are they targeting them to eat or just filtering and eat what they get

Wow, that would be quite a catch for only two boats. I mean no offense, but I've heard the rumor from hundreds of people that they spoke with a commercial fishermen who caught some, cut them open and they were "full of crappie, fish, etc.". However, I have yet to hear it from any of the commercial fishermen we interact with daily, and we of course have never seen it in the thousands we have cut open or seen opened when collecting data from the markets. It has been theorized by some biologists near the Great Lakes that they could eat larval fish (the avg larval shad is only 5mm long when hatched) but it would be near impossible for them to ingest adult or juvenile shad. The ingestion of larval fish has never been observed despite several diet studies including one on ky lake. There is also a theory that they might accidentally get an adult or juvenile fish in their mouths and try to rough it up a little bit and knock some slime or scales off of it (this has not been observed either to my knowledge).

I'm not really sure where this rumor started. Maybe there is a commercial fishermen out there who is telling everyone he sees. If there is an element of truth to it, please ask anyone who makes this claim to take pictures. It would be national and international news in the biology world.