# What to do with carp



## ShoreFisher (Mar 23, 2015)

I have been catching carp and don't want to bring them home. Since they are invasive should I just run a knife between their gills and put them back in the water?


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## Honyuk96 (Nov 21, 2014)

Toss em up on the bank. *****, coyotes and wolves will eat em up


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## ShoreFisher (Mar 23, 2015)

I would but I'm catching them from shore where other people would not appreciate it


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## davi5982 (Mar 8, 2010)

Check the state regulations. &#128521;


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## Scott K (Aug 26, 2008)

Just put it back in the water. Killing a few carp is like emptying the ocean with a bucket.


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## ShoreFisher (Mar 23, 2015)

davi5982 said:


> Check the state regulations. &#128521;


I guess I was kinda confused when reading them because I thought all carp are asian carp and thus bad, but after reading a little more I guess common carp are not labeled as asian carp. I am definitely not a pro.


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## PIKE (Sep 10, 2003)

Sounds like fun fishing to me. Multi species at its best. They fight hard and usually you can get them going when nothing else is happening. Have Fun!


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## Burksee (Jan 15, 2003)

ShoreFisher said:


> I guess I was kinda confused when reading them because I thought all carp are asian carp and thus bad, but after reading a little more I guess common carp are not labeled as asian carp. I am definitely not a pro.


But your learning and that's a good thing! 

Carp make excellent fertilizer in the garden, if you have either a flower or vegetable garden reconsider taking a few home and putting in under your plants.


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## GuppyII (Sep 14, 2008)

If you are getting them in the UP, you may think about eating them, out of clean water they are good to eat. They were introduced here as a food source.


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## Teggs (Mar 20, 2013)

Is it not highly illegal to just catch fish and kill them for fun? I know a lot of fly fishermen who travel to the Lake Michigan flats to target jumbo carp for weeks. They are a great fight. Why would you illegally kill fish for fun?


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## triplelunger (Dec 21, 2009)

Teggs said:


> Is it not highly illegal to just catch fish and kill them for fun? I know a lot of fly fishermen who travel to the Lake Michigan flats to target jumbo carp for weeks. They are a great fight. Why would you illegally kill fish for fun?


Somebody's never been sucker spearing!

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## ShoreFisher (Mar 23, 2015)

Teggs said:


> Is it not highly illegal to just catch fish and kill them for fun? I know a lot of fly fishermen who travel to the Lake Michigan flats to target jumbo carp for weeks. They are a great fight. Why would you illegally kill fish for fun?


Because I've heard that putting asain carp back into the water is illegal in some places because they are an invasive species. A quick google search says in IN it is even illegal to throw asain carp back into the water if they jump into your boat. I was just confused on the difference between common carp and "asain" carp. 

If they were invasive and shouldnt be released I would still enjoy catching and killing them though. Itd be like having fun and doing the fishery a favor all in one. 

Im definitely gonna try to eat them been watching some videos on how to fillet them, it looks a little tricky with two sets of y bones on each side.


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## Oldgrandman (Nov 16, 2004)

My old neighbor, RIP, was from the depression era and they kept and ate much of what they caught. He stated carp really wasn't that bad. He said properly cleaned and when caught from cleaner and colder water (like specks) and keeping the smaller ones, that they would fool most people into thinking they were eating some sort of game fish.

I know these old guys can tell some "tails" but he supposedly knew a guy who would smoke em for you keeping half for himself and it was great. I'd try it once if I knew someone such as that.

BTW, it isn't just Asian carp that are the problem, of which there are many species, it it the silver carp that is known as the flying carp.


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## Big Skip (Sep 1, 2010)

Seems like a wasted effort to kill em just to bury em, but that's what the bow fisherman do. I personally would let em go. Those guys are thinning em out for us.


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## fanrwing (Jul 31, 2010)

If its from clean cold water smoke it. If anyone around you raises hogs they might not mind if you tossed them a carp or two, hogs love fresh carp.


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## Big Frank 25 (Feb 21, 2002)

Years ago my Liquor Store owner like them. Salmon too.


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## oldforester (Feb 12, 2004)

Fillet, skin, and cut in to fingers. Put in pint mason jars, add a teaspoon of salt and can according to standard directions. Makes fine tuna salad and other dishes.


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## dasuper (Sep 23, 2007)

Don't feed carp to pigs you plan to eat unlike fish flavored pork. Did it once when I was a kid and it doesn't taste real good.


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## Fowlersduckhunter (Oct 28, 2011)

ShoreFisher said:


> Because I've heard that putting asain carp back into the water is illegal in some places because they are an invasive species. A quick google search says in IN it is even illegal to throw asain carp back into the water if they jump into your boat. I was just confused on the difference between common carp and "asain" carp.
> 
> If they were invasive and shouldnt be released I would still enjoy catching and killing them though. Itd be like having fun and doing the fishery a favor all in one.
> 
> Im definitely gonna try to eat them been watching some videos on how to fillet them, it looks a little tricky with two sets of y bones on each side.


You keep saying Asian carp, these are most definitely not Asian carp. These are common carp, a relative of the goldfish. Natural to the lakes and not invasive. Revered by flyfisherman. Asian carp have downward facing eyes and jump when a motor spooks them, are invasive and destroy an ecosystem. Asian carp are illegal to release, common carp are not.


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## Oldgrandman (Nov 16, 2004)

Fowlersduckhunter said:


> You keep saying Asian carp, these are most definitely not Asian carp. These are common carp, a relative of the goldfish. Natural to the lakes and not invasive. Revered by flyfisherman. Asian carp have downward facing eyes and jump when a motor spooks them, are invasive and destroy an ecosystem. Asian carp are illegal to release, common carp are not.


Actually it is the silver carp that is the flying carp we all do not want to see here. There are many other Asian carp species out there, it is the silver carp you describe. Just for the record.....


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## TheBearFan89 (Oct 2, 2012)

If there's any low income or immigrant families near you, they might take them. Or get a hold of folks with gardens and ask if they want em for fertilizer...that's a lot of nitrogen! 

Personally I shoot em with a bow and toss them in the neighbors compost pile for next years' fertilizer.

Also, bow fisherman are hardly thinning out the vast "herd" of carp (common or invasive) in our waters. Those species were designed to reproduce far more than our native species of bass, trout, walleye, etc. I need to find that peer-reviewed research paper, but in laymans terms they reproduce like rabbits lol


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## Robert Holmes (Oct 13, 2008)

I don't know how carp rate but suckers are excellent smoked. Every year I smoke about 40 suckers and can them up for future use.


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## Oldgrandman (Nov 16, 2004)

Robert Holmes said:


> I don't know how carp rate but suckers are excellent smoked. Every year I smoke about 40 suckers and can them up for future use.


I bet it does taste better up there from down here. The dirtier rivers and warmer waters they are subject to cannot be good. I'd like to try some sometime but I never see it for sale up there. Maybe I don't know where to go? I go to the Soo every year and will be up there in a week if there is a place you know of.


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## oldforester (Feb 12, 2004)

CARP - GOOD EATS
*History of Common Carp in North America*
blockquote {border-left: 5px solid #fff;}
Common Carp in the Upper Mississippi The Problem with "Roughfish"
History of Common Carp in North America Fishing for Carp
Exotic Fish Species in the Mississippi Diverse Uses for Carp

blockquote {border-left: 5px solid #fff;}
The Common Carp's Introduction into North America
Arriving in the United States during the mid-1800s, increasing waves of immigrants could scarcely believe that this vast new land had no carp - it had been a cultivated food source, garden element, and symbol of strength and courage in Asia for over 4,000 years, and similarly esteemed in Europe for nearly 2,000!

Inspired by the European model (whereby the Austrian princes of Schwarzenberg maintained 20,000 acres of carp ponds), scattered entrepreneurs began to import the prized fish, hoping to provide a familiar, profitable food staple to the rapidly growing nation. Julius A. Poppe was one of the most successful, expanding a stock of five common carp imported from Germany in 1872 into a thriving California farm by 1876. Fielding orders from throughout the country, he actively began to lobby for national cultivation of the hearty fish:

There ought to be one person in every county who would raise choice carp as stock fish to sell to others to fatten for their own tables. It would be a cheap but sumptuous food and at the same timevery convenient, as they are ready to be eaten at all times of the year. (Gapen, p. 8).Faced with such public pressure to make carp more widely available and the worrisome decline of native fish stocks after a century of intense exploitation, the U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries began an intensive effort of carp cultivation in 1877. Subsequent efforts by state Fish Commissions had introduced the carp to many area waters by 1883, and the fish's remarkable ability to live and reproduce in most every water condition allowed it to quickly infiltrate others.

*A Fish once Prized, Now DespisedBy the turn of the century, the introduction of the carp was such a "success" that both public agencies and sportsmen had come to regard the fish as a nuisance. While tons of free-swimming carp were being harvested from area waters, they were comparable in taste to neither the selectively bred pool-cultivated carp of Europe nor, it was believed, to many of the native "game" species, and were thus useless as a food source. Moreover, their rapid spread appeared to threaten both water quality and native species, as commissioners nationwide noted a deterioration of formerly clear and fertile lakes and waterways upon the arrival of carp.

Standing on clear-cut hillsides with a bucket of garbage in each hand, they looked down on the rivers, saw carp swirling happily in the mess humans had created, and made a correlation - albeit the wrong one - between the rise of carp and the fall of game fish. Either ignorant of or blind to the damages they themselves had wrought on the landscape, people looked past the dredged and straightened channels, drained wetlands, eroded riverbanks, and waters laden with human and industrial waste, saw carp roiling in the shallows, and accused them of wrecking the water. (Buffler and Dickson, p. 74).

As the carp is both a prodigious reproducer and highly tolerant of pollution, it spreads quickly through waters in which most native species cannot live. In the early 1990s, for example, biologists exposed control groups of carp to 1600 chemicals commonly present in United States waters; only 135 of the pollutants killed all the fish.

This is not to deny that the carp can have a negative impact on its own, however. A bottom-feeder, it roots along the floor of a body of water, frequently uprooting vegetation, and sucks in mud and other matter -- after filtering out nutrients, it spits the restout. This increases the turbidity (muddiness) of water, which in turn reduces the ability of predator fish (such as pike or walleye) to see their prey. The amount of sunlight received by plants also decreases, reducing their growth -- as plants disappear, so do the waterfowl which depend upon them for food. Carp can quickly crowd out other fish with sheer numbers, as well, as females lay up to 2 million eggs when spawning, and fry can grow as large as 8" in the first year. Thus, the health of numerous small lakes and fisheries has suffered from the presence of the carp. However, the fish's impact upon larger bodies of waters remains minimal when compared to that of human activity.

Controlling the Carp
Due to the perceived impacts of the carp upon our waters, concentrated state efforts to permanently eliminate the fish by trapping, seining and poisoning were frequently undertaken early in the century. Few were entirely successful, however, as the carp was simply too adept at reproducing and thriving in our polluted waters. (Having learned from the introduction of carp and other organisms, exotic species control programs presently take an aggressive preventative approach to their spread from the beginning). Conceding to the fish's permanence, carp removal programs began in the 1950s to concentrate instead upon the control of carp populations and their migration into gamefish waters.

Despite the best intentions and desires of decades of anglers, the once common practice of leaving accidentally landed carp along the shore, instead of returning them to the water, has likewise failed to make a permanent impact upon most fishing hole's carp populations. In some cases, in fact, the removal of similar native species with which the carp is often confused has actually aided carp proliferation. In an effort to prevent such instances, as well as to reduce the occurrence of piles of rotting fish along the State's waters (of which only dogs were typically fond), Minnesota declared the practice illegal in 1981.

Ironically, the greatest present promise for carp control hearkens back more than a century, when carp was intended to become a great renewable food source. A steady, or hopefully increasing, market for carp and carp products could today provide the prolonged check upon their population that State removal programs have been unable to due to limited resources. Most State agencies, in fact, have favored State-regulated commercial fishing to removal programs since the early 1980s.

Of course, the waters in which carp are the most prevalent are generally the most polluted, as well -- while we can do our best to eat our way through the carp problem, then, we can have an even greater effect upon their numbers when we clean up the dirty waters in which they thrive. Visit the WaterShed Partners for ideas on how cleaning up your home, yard and neighborhood can benefit your local rivers and the lives they support.
*


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## Old Whaler (Sep 11, 2010)

oldforester said:


> CARP - GOOD EATS
> *History of Common Carp in North America*
> 
> 
> ...


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## whitetailfreak8 (Nov 3, 2009)

Common carp are not native to our waters 1….2 silver and bigheads have down ward facing eyes only silvers jump and grassies are already in our lakes and rivers


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