Weed eating carp not a good idea except in fewer numbers than recommended

[Spoonminnow]

There is a lake near me I've fished for over 40 years and learned pretty much everything I know about catching different fish species. The habitat was perfect for bass, pickerel, panfish and catfish. It had just the right amount of pads and other weeds that supported the spawns of different species and fingerling survival. But our previous club president listened to non-angler property owners complaining about weeds around their docks and had the NYSDEC give a permit for triploid weed eating grass carp - 5,000 in fact! Fortunately - or unfortunately - the prez and homeowners association without much discussion or research funded only 3700 carp.

One needs to know what types of plants these fish eat, what they don’t, and then stock the right size fish at the proper rates. Rather than shooting from the hip. If stocked at a high enough density early in the year before plants germinate, grass carp will consume all vegetation within their selective diet. This can be a negative because bare ponds leave young of the year (YOY) and juvenile fish with little refuge. As a result, eradicating vegetation can cause a balanced fishery to quickly turn upside down, especially systems that are not very nutritionally productive via plankton.

Besides that, certain plants carp don't eat spread in shallow water changing locations that used to be productive for anglers to inaccessible areas.

The lake I mentioned now has massive fields of lily pads never seen in all the years I've fished the lake. A pad not native to the lake measures 1.5' in diameter, the thick growth allowing no access to shorelines.

The change is permanent and will get worse as time goes on. Sad that such a great fishery has gone down the tubes including the numbers of fish once caught of the different species.

[funfishers]

Mother Nature doesn't like it when we try to control her.

[M R Dux]

The entire Mississippi River Drainage is experiencing an invasion of Asian carp which were allowed to be used for weed and algae control in fish ponds and other facilities under the permission of the US Fish and Wildlife. USF&W were under the belief that river conditions here were different than river conditions in Asia so the carp couldn’t reproduce. Sad part is nobody made sure that wasn’t the case. Typical government idiocy!

They reproduce in gigantic numbers and even where they don’t spawn successfully, they still manage to swim upriver into any lake connected to the river by a lock system.

We are now seeing many of our native species being pushed out of the ecosystem thanks to some biologist in DC who should be publicly named.


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[thaDudeAbides]

That stinks. Seems they said this was less harmful than spraying herbicides that would contaminate the water system. Awful experiment though!

Just switch to a weedless jig and keep fishing it if you can!

[TackleJackal]

White Amur are quite tasty. They will take a Night Crawler if fished out in front of them. They are rough fish, I presume Ya' can invite some friendly Bow Fishermen. Easy to spot them, seen a 3 foot+ yesterday in the lake I was fishing. I have seen them in quite a few lakes without any real negative impact. They tend to be in the shallows where their food is.

Filet, score, dust 'em and Deep Fry, Yummy.

Better option in dealing wit sumpin' you can't change at this point. How did Winkelman put it, "If what Yer' fishing for ain't bitin', fish for what is."

[Spoonminnow]

Ya' can invite some friendly Bow Fishermen.

3700 of them? They live up to 20 years! Fortunately triploid are sterile whereas the carp the dude wrote about are not. So much for fish & wildlife government agency getting involved.

[Kevin22]

Those are supposed to be sterile and not reproduce, and were stocked at 5 per acre here. They just drained a local lake for renovations and found an estimated 1,000 fish in a 55acre lake. They dont know how they got there and said it was contributing to the dirty water by eating all of the plants and stirring up the silt all day. They are not putting any back in now that it is filling again.

[BobC]

Those are supposed to be sterile and not reproduce, and were stocked at 5 per acre here. They just drained a local lake for renovations and found an estimated 1,000 fish in a 55acre lake. They dont know how they got there and said it was contributing to the dirty water by eating all of the plants and stirring up the silt all day. They are not putting any back in now that it is filling again.

That sounds like good news. Hope the lake recovers in a couple of years.
Bob

[Central Minn]

3700 of them? They live up to 20 years! Fortunately triploid are sterile whereas the carp the dude wrote about are not. So much for fish & wildlife government agency getting involved.

Bow fishing day/night tourney's multiple times a year with decent pay outs...If they truly are sterile they would thin them down pretty fast...The I've been to a few...boats coming in many hundreds of carp per boat on night tourneys.

[Spoonminnow]

That sounds like good news. Hope the lake recovers in a couple of years.
Bob

Tragically there's no way it can. The damage is permanent. Once the invasive lily pads and native pads take over along a mile or two of shoreline, only aquatic harvesting machines can reduce the concentration and maybe allow good underwater weeds to grow. But what homeowner would help pay for a harvester even though they helped kill the ecosystem? None fish, so it's not in their best interest. I don't even know of any local companies so that option is out.

Note: Pads don't produce oxygen underwater, only into the air and provide no cover to fingerlings in the spring spawn months as do other plants that grow all year. Fortunately the lake can never experience an algal bloom which kills fish and plants alike in small bodies of water. I've seen it and it's not pretty! The lake is just too large even though less than 12' on average.

before:


now:


Did I forget to mention the three carp I put into my small pond as recommended by the DEC? Zero weeds/ pads growing and expanding in areas never planted/ fluffy algae clouds that when raked onto the bank look like pond scum. Fortunately I can restock any species any time but this is not what I expected after adding those d&*#@ carp. My wife's nephew has agreed to shoot them with a bow and get rid of them.
Pond last year: