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1-I feel it's unethical to take the lives of so many fish for the sake of fertilizer.
2-I'm fairly light hearted so my first preference would be for the carp to be put in various ponds such as Historic Gardeners Canal and the pond in back of the Discover Card Builing(My brother works there and he said that's carp in the that they put there on purpose). There's a lot more ponds and things with only carp in them but these are 2 examples
3- Although the above one was my preference, I'd be happier if maybe they grilled up the carp and served them at some restaurant or something instead as well.
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The carp mostly go to mink food and maybe some to fertilizer. Even fertilizer is a responsible and ethical use in my opinion..
Grilling them up isn't an option as they have too high of pcb levels.
Loy used to fish for them to sell to the Asian markets for food until they were listed with the high pcb levels. Now they have to be used for animal feed or fertilizer. Live transplant isn't very realistic.
What pond is large enough to put the numbers of carp that they catch in one netting? 23,000lbs are caught a day. There aren't even enough fish trucks available to move them live anywhere.
5 million pounds a year is too many carp to put in any other place.
If you come up with a reasonable solution, I hope you let them know, as I am sure they would like to put them to more use also. Until then......
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Well a couple random thoughts..How about put them in canals? Unless I'm incorrect I don't think canals are stocked..I think all the fish that end up in canals just swam there from somewhere. It's also not like they're very popular to fish. Plus it's water for irrigation and mud bottom anyways so it's not supposed to look clean or whatever.
Much to my disappointment a few years ago I started jogging along a canal by my house and discovered tons of dying fish. At the time it was really weird cause I didn't remember seeing any carp..All I remembered were lots of mud cats, some channels,lots of white bass and millions of various types of baby cat fish. Like usual this last year I jogged along it buut to my surprise it was ONLY carp and what appeared to be an occasional gold fish. So yeah, there's some canals that run all year long which I'd prefer them to be put in but even if they were put in ones like by my house, at least they'd have the summer to live. I'm not sure if the farmers even know/do anything with the fish. The only people who do know are joggers and walkers.
On another thought how about selling at stores? At Sportsmans they sell Chubs and minnowss in the freezer..maybe they could start selling the carp. I'm sure people would buy cause I've heard several people say they're good for cat fish.
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Hey - congrats on your paper. Are you graded on a curve?
You should look again at the stats on how many pounds of carp are being removed. Not sure what canals you're referring to, but most in my area are there to deliver irrigation waters. Many are already infested with carp. Plus to dump that mass of carp into those canals would clog them and really trudge up their usefulness.
There have been sterile grass carp introduced to some community ponds to help keep weeds at bay. But these are not sterile carp.
To process and market that mass of flesh would be quite an undertaking. They're on an 8 year mission to make up for mistakes made many decades ago. You should consider getting Tubedudes book on Utah lake. UL used to be quite the toxic dump. Big fish from there are not still not suitable for consumption. Now it's more the agricultural runoff, than the heavy metals.
Plus - easy enough to catch and carve your own for cafish bait. If anyone wants some carp minnows, just let me know. I got a freezer full!
Now if there was a simple way to sterilize these beasts and then release them into other wild waters, it would be a monumental and costly task to transport fish.
[inline "CARP CAESAREAN.jpg"]
I don't post this just as a "shock" pic, but it also demonstrates the massive number of eggs a single female carp can distribute.
I'll suggest you get out there, and save as many carp as you can, meanwhile - maybe best to just let this thread go the way of the Dodo.
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I understand that you want them to be used more, but frankly the market just isn't there to utilize them cost effectively. Just transporting, processing, and packaging would cost more than the market would pay for the product.
I think fish meal or feed would be a possibility, but the initial set up and continuing costs would still be staggering. It might take years to begin seeing a profit.
It would be good if someone set up some kind of continuing business that would have an on going need for harvested carp. Might never happen though.
I don't know about all the canals in Utah, but here there are many farmers that pump into pivots etc. Additional sediment in the system is a huge problem. Then too many canals connect to other water systems which would spread carp to areas where they might become an even bigger problem. Random stocking without impact studies just aren't going to happen.
I don't hate carp, I just think they are destructive and not an asset to any water they are in.
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So with your love of carp, and your good grade on your paper, google up asian carp and give us your educated take on that species. Maybe you can enlighten the world on that fish and we can live in harmony wth it.
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I wish the paper was graded on a Curve cause then maybe I coulda pulled out a A or A- but no. I don't totally understand what you mean when you're talking about the canals. But I think you're saying it'd be to crowded but look how easily carp survive. If anything since people hate so bad they'd probably love to see them be crowded. But yeah, I'm tired of the tread...not gonna change any1s minds and probably not going to convince the cities otherwise. Guess I'll just have to accept it even though it's not right. I also don't know what you mean by save as many carps as you can. Do you mean just release the ones I catch? Other than that i'd get in big trouble if I did anything with them lol.
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Maybe 20 years from now lol. Believe me, if I could get a B+ for spending time fishing rather than writing about it I would lol. That paper took so bloody long to sort through all sorts of files and databases. Had to read zillions of scholarly sources crap but only a fraction of them got used. Most sources gave me summary type information rather than argument stuff so a lot of them ended up being useless for this paper.
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Scratching my head. Looks like this summer with be a carp slaughter festival ha ha ha.
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Obviously more to this thread then I've read. When I was a kid my Grandfather smoked Buffalo Carp all the time and it was good to eat. Carp are only not fun to catch when you think you've got a big non carp fish on and a carp surfaces. Their fun to catch otherwise. I have fallen into the norm (thinking they are trash fish) and probably should change my ways, maybe I will fillet one up and throw it in the smoker?
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IS that like Buffalo hot wings? Got any of Grandpa's recipes?
Here's a site with a 'few' Carp recipes. And no - none of them involve nails and boards.
[center][url "http://www.bassonhook.com/fishforfood/carprecipes.html"]CARP RECIPES[/url]
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I don't and have asked my Uncle if he has it. All he knew is he used cherry wood to smoke it with. In other Countries carp is not looked so down upon. I wouldn't per say eat one out of a nasty water lake as I'm guessing their like cat fish. If you pull one out of a mud lake they would taste like mud. What kind of carp are in UT? It was back in WI when my grandpa used to smoke them.
When an Uncle of mine moved to UT years ago he worked with a bunch of guys who thought catfish were trash fish. He went out and caught a few and cooked them up for them, after they were raving about them he told them they were catfish. Pretty sure those were out of the Jordan river back then. Maybe we should try that with carp.
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+1
That just cracked me up [laugh].
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