Carp...the food fish?

A lot of anglers are angry because the carp has been known to eat fish eggs when given the opportunity. And why not? Carp however are not the greatest threat to bass on their spawning beds. The true champions among the egg eaters are gangs of bluegills and related panfish which work in teams and are fast enough to raid all the eggs from a nest. While the bass chase the closest of intruding sunfish, others zip in removing egg by egg until they are gone. The bass are able to keep the non-aggressive carp off their nests, but not the bluegills which wear the bass to fatigue with gang tactics. The majority of anglers in the US are panfish anglers, so we will not hear much malignment of the sunfish. So the less guilty carp is defamed.

Now it may come as a surprise to many, but the bass, sunfish, and most of the highly regarded sport fish are introduced to your local waters, and would not do well growing in them anyway. That's right, even without the carp to blame, the fish you are prizing may be struggling to survive outside it's geographical area. All you northern states anglers that prize the bass so highly need to go fish for them down south where they are in their ideal temperature ranges and grow large. Yes, the bass is a warm water, semi tropical fish which has a stunted growth and poor forage prospects up north. You guys are buying a full tilt $20,000 bass boat to pluck a stunted green fish that is barely making it winter to winter to survive. In the north, numbers are never large enough to keep the angling interesting, so state fisheries stock them by the thousands in each northern state. Do a search on the species found in your waters and see if these are indigenous (native) to your states waters. As an example, the State of California has had the most introductions of species not native to the state. Some are introduced for food, to improve the ecology like controlling mosquitoes, or provide sport fishing. I have copied a list of them at the end of this email as a perspective. This list is typical of what most states do with their tax dollars. Now pay attention to what we can learn about carp history.

Around 1850, it was apparent that native fish stocks were in trouble in this country. Population pressure on native fish stocks were already threatening their extinction. There was no such thing as a rough fish, or sport fish. Eating any and all of a fish meant survival. Hunger ruled. There were no paradise lakes and rivers teeming with an overabundance of fish. Nature as it does when left alone follows an economy which limits natural populations and even angling pressure can upset it. And it did. We learn from documents of the U.S. Fish Commission that carp were imported to increase a supply of food fish for a growing population at a time of declining stocks of native fish. And it worked. At a time when you couldn't rangle up a buffalo, Americans in every state were the first nation to grow their children strong on carp, and started the first of any nation on widespread sport fishing. Remember that native fish stocks were UNABLE to withstand any pressure on their finally balanced populations. They weren't hardy stocks then, and they aren't today! Bass and bluegills decimate each others populations. In how many waters do these species appear together? That's okay, they will be restocked. Bass will be stocked in waters where nature would never allow them a foothold before. And walleye are appearing in waters which never held them before, as well as trout, bass, crappies, etc. Thanks to the corps of engineers newer and bigger waterways are appearing all over the nation where they only existed as geographical formations before. Hybrid seabass and species which never existed in nature before are being stocked in them and record sized fish are coming out of their depths. The quality of a fishery today are largely a credit to the fishery managements in each state and include the creation of waters, stocking, possession limits, etc. There are more of these short green bass in my state of Pennsylvania then could ever exist before and more and newer waters for angling and boating.

So back to the carp, let's quit blaming them for all the problems so called sport fish stocks have in surviving. The carp introduced was a well researched and well executed plan of the early fathers of the country. Carp did contribute greatly to the health and welfare of the nation in it's early inception and the resource remains today and in most waters are in balance with other introduced species which we prize. If the carp was utilized as it was intended to be; as it was utilized in Americana, less problems would be attributed to it.

Al Kowaleski