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

Originally Posted by mrdux

http://www.crappie.com/crappie/main-...-care-explain/

I fish below Smithland dam quite a bit, there used to be shad for days, the water would be black with them running along side the lock wall or the short wing wall. That is far from the case now, the cat fishermen always ask if I’ve seen any shad. Their is not enough shad for them guys to have bait. The Sauger and the stripes have really slowed down the last five years or so. I’ve noticed the rockfish are thin and poor looking now.


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It was a day in October had to be nearly ten years ago now...I made a trip to fish below Kentucky dam. Every time I threw my cast net all I caught was juvenile asian carp. So I just used them...screen was full of fish...did not get a bite.

I tell you just made me sick...literally.


And that had to be ten years or more ago now.


Problem too big now ...it will just have to play itself out.

Read a little about invasive species in Australia...I think the German carp decimated their waters.

Protect your borders...or pay the consequences

I am assuming all this near bottom is shad. Do you think it is asian carp fingerlings?

Probably small Asians. Those are individual fish and too large for shad. Shad show up as a big glob or "baitballs". Rickie and I side-scanned a lot yesterday and those type signals showed a shadow. I've seen yellows that thick but they would be wearing your arms out pulling them in. More than likely silvers like the one I caught. Sad situation.

All the huff-n-puff about helping out the commercial netters and such just seems to be a way to take the heat off and shut us up. Sorry! Ain't happening. When the motels and campgrounds are empty from folks who used to fish these lakes, something might get done.

"When the motels and campgrounds are empty from folks who used to fish these lakes, something might get done." quote from mrdux

I wish, but they'll just say they don't have any money to throw at it because revenue is down because there's no out of staters buying licenses

You may have heard about the recent Asian carp sampling conducted in cooperation with usfw on the lakes last week. We will be discussing what they found when we come to the shindig, but the basic summary is that there are a lot of silver carp in the 600-700 mm (~24") size range. They did collect a couple below that size, but literally only a couple. A size of 600-700 means they were spawned in 2015 when we saw the huge spawn in the tailwaters and potentially the lake. There are also some silvers larger than that size although their numbers are lower. These ky lake silvers grow faster than any other documented population of silver carp. These fish are competing with our native shad. The degree of competition actually depends on the sizes of shad and silvers as they have very slightly different feeding preferences. They are undoubtedly having some effect on our shad populations. We do no collect any meaningful assessment of the numbers of shad in the lakes. It is all but impossible to collect an accurate assessment of that in lakes this size. We still observe plenty during our other sampling, but we don't quantify the shad numbers in the lake. We instead primarily focus on relative weight information (how much a fish weighs for its length). This gives us an estimate of how much food was available for a given species. Sport fish relative weights have remained within historical norms. We hope they will stay that way, but will obviously keep monitoring the situation.
As we've stated before, we are trying everything possible to bolster commercial fishing for these fish. These fish are a problem and we are committed to fixing this problem. I have got to push back against the idea that we are just waiting around and hoping the problem will go away or that somehow if we lost local license sales we would finally do something. Our job is to provide the best fishing opportunities possible to the people of ky and we take that very seriously. No state is taking this problem more seriously and we are constantly increasing our efforts to fix this problem. All that being said, I'm glad anglers like you are so involved in the health of the fishery and I really do appreciate your concerns.
We now have another invasive filter feeder in the lake (zebra mussels) so this could potentially have some effects on water clarity and hence vegetation growth. These effects remain to be seen.

Originally Posted by Amartinbio

You may have heard about the recent Asian carp sampling conducted in cooperation with usfw on the lakes last week. We will be discussing what they found when we come to the shindig, but the basic summary is that there are a lot of silver carp in the 600-700 mm (~24") size range. They did collect a couple below that size, but literally only a couple. A size of 600-700 means they were spawned in 2015 when we saw the huge spawn in the tailwaters and potentially the lake. There are also some silvers larger than that size although their numbers are lower. These ky lake silvers grow faster than any other documented population of silver carp. These fish are competing with our native shad. The degree of competition actually depends on the sizes of shad and silvers as they have very slightly different feeding preferences. They are undoubtedly having some effect on our shad populations. We do no collect any meaningful assessment of the numbers of shad in the lakes. It is all but impossible to collect an accurate assessment of that in lakes this size. We still observe plenty during our other sampling, but we don't quantify the shad numbers in the lake. We instead primarily focus on relative weight information (how much a fish weighs for its length). This gives us an estimate of how much food was available for a given species. Sport fish relative weights have remained within historical norms. We hope they will stay that way, but will obviously keep monitoring the situation.
As we've stated before, we are trying everything possible to bolster commercial fishing for these fish. These fish are a problem and we are committed to fixing this problem. I have got to push back against the idea that we are just waiting around and hoping the problem will go away or that somehow if we lost local license sales we would finally do something. Our job is to provide the best fishing opportunities possible to the people of ky and we take that very seriously. No state is taking this problem more seriously and we are constantly increasing our efforts to fix this problem. All that being said, I'm glad anglers like you are so involved in the health of the fishery and I really do appreciate your concerns.
We now have another invasive filter feeder in the lake (zebra mussels) so this could potentially have some effects on water clarity and hence vegetation growth. These effects remain to be seen.

Thanks for stopping in and sharing information.



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Originally Posted by Amartinbio

<snip> We now have another invasive filter feeder in the lake (zebra mussels) so this could potentially have some effects on water clarity and hence vegetation growth. These effects remain to be seen.

I got my Kentucky Afield magazine today and in it there is an article by Paul Rister about the re-establishment of the Zebra Mussels in Kentucky Lake. They are also Plankton Filter Feeders so they will be adding to the mess we have now. Perhaps the Zebra Mussels will starve out the Asian Carp.