By Glenn Sanders, Retired Conservation Police Officer (Game Warden)
Old Game Warden thingy: ASIAN CARP (SILVER) DIE-OFF ON MIDWEST RIVERS is the headline right now.
Social media is running wild with speculation. Crop dusters polluted the river, city sewage discharge, fertilizer run-off, Alligator Gars are killing them and some secret government virus has been released.
Missouri Dept. of Conservation and Illinois Department of Natural Resources send out the standard press release “Our staff is aware and are monitoring” Neither of them really said this happens all the time.
Chill pill folks, these die offs of Silver Carp have been going on in the river since those jumping bastards first got here. Time of year is very predictable- late summer post spawn. Areas impacted vary from year to year depending on water and air temps and river flow rates. When it happens, it gets stinky and nasty in a stretch of the river for a few weeks. That is a lot of bio-mass that has to decompose. The catfish in the river have all the food they could possibly absorb, the eagles and raccoons also have a bounty of easy meals.
And while it may look like every one of the Silvers is dead- sorry, that is only a small part of them. Additionally, they have already spawned so plenty more of them in the pipeline to slime your boat in coming years. Remember just one Silver can spawn out 3.7 million eggs.
Don’t worry about the native species of fish- they are not affected by the same triggers that take out the Silver Carp. Our catfish are fine and fat with all the extra food of dead Silvers. File this eco-event away in the same thing, different day category. There is a lesson in these events though, they prove that you cannot fish your way out of the Asian Carp invasion. This is a massive removal in the affected areas that fishermen cannot match, and yet next year, you will not see any population decline in that area that is measurable.
