Some Wize Insight ON Carp.Net

from Alan Kowaleski

if you have thousands of people getting a trout stamp to catch put and take trout and a few hundred (maybe) carpers advocating carp as a gamefish I think they will of course follow economics and go with the vote of the trouters......Oat

Right you are Oat, but first the educational system has got to change more positively toward the carp. Not the universities, but the educational materials the serious anglers employ such as the fishing magazines and angling catalogs. It is a fact that many writers have a policy of not writing about the carp as a fish to be angled for. An exception is In-Fisherman who put out a smattering now and then, usually a small column, and rarely a page. I am not faulting them for this, because they know what they need to do to survive as a publication much better than I do, and the answer for them is that it is not the time to embrace carp any more than they have.

They have dropped the catfish annual which I never failed to pick up on the news stand. And catfishing is about the third or fourth most sought after group of fishes in the country.(#1 in some localities) Literally millions of cat men out there, but not enough to support the efforts of the annual cat issue. I am not privy to the affairs of In-fisherman, but I collect any issue or video on carp they produce. I salute them for recognizing the carp as a worthy fish to be angled for.

So where is the publications for carp coming from. They won't! People won't buy it. This isn't Europe, and we just need to be happy that the popular fishing magazines in the country, going out to the many millions of angling subscribers, don't malign the carp any more than they do. When they do speak of carp, it is eradication efforts or news that a body of water has been reclaimed for sport fish.The magazines are pro panfish which is the most sought after group of fishes, and( the most delicious, but less meat than a mourning dove),trout, then bass species and cats and walleyes come in there somewhere. Now all these are edible and sought after for their tasty flesh. Catch them and release them if you want to, but good water management supports consuming a limit of these species and that is written into the laws for each licensee.

Many of the public believe that eating a carp will make you ill, as they have been accused of harboring poisons and toxins, which are true of fish found in some waters, but not all. The fish is seen as unclean, it became associated with human wastes in the era of sewage dumping in our rivers which decimated most fish populations, except for the carp which easily persisted in our waters. In the fifties and sixties, carp were caught with toilet paper in their digestive tracts, and the rumor begins.

It is hard to catch, it is described as ugly in appearance, especially the mirrors. It is difficult to prepare for the table, and floating bones within the meat are stated as reasons for the fish being unpopular as a food fish. It doesn't compete flavorably to other fish flesh. It also doesn't lend any class to the gourmet table to serve the fish eaten by the lower socioeconomic class, or ethnic groups which are outside the mainstream of American society.

Cabela's and Bass Pro shops do not have the word carp appearing in their catalogs anywhere. These two tackle businesses earn more money than most third world countries. T-shirts and hats can be had with any species of fish or animal embroidered or printed on them, but you will never see a carp in those catalogs. Savvy marketers avoid any inference to the carp which would lower the image these firms have attained. Bass, panfish and walleye boats, can be ordered, but a carp boat brings the image to mind of an old beat up jon boat, besmirched with the blood and slime of speared rough fish, hauling it's load back to a shanty town, where the inhabitants are too poor to provide their children with shoes. I have fished along the C&D canal, nearby these shanty towns, and had people beg for the carp and cats we caught along there. This is the image Americans have of carp.

So what is the answer. It is the men and women that fish for carp. Especially the number of them that join CAG not for their own personal idea that CAG should embrace their views, (like opposing bowfishers) but that lending their support to an organization that is positively promoting carp angling will help. And the carp-net-list. The fish-ins, the educators about carp. The websites of CAG and it's members, and the NACA. These are the mainstream carp anglers that will make a difference in the public's opinion of the carp as a worthy gamefish. Everything is not political, but public image.

Al