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Do any of you fish? I'm not sure if anyone can answer this question since it's probably niche even for fishermen. I live about an hour away from the Illinois River and I am sympathetic to the plight of the Illinois River's Asian carp problem. I am also very curious about what the bastards taste like and I won't accept the colloquial answer of "they taste bad, don't bother". I participated in a Redneck Fishing tournament one year where people sign up to get on motorboats that stir up the water and catch them with nets when they jump, which was quite thrilling. I'd guess thousands of pounds result from that every year, but I didn't ask if I could take any home; I think they were sent to a meat plant to get turned into dog food.
As far as I know, they're filter feeders. I possess no fishing equipment and I have only fished once in my life in some relatives' pond when I was 10 or so, and we tossed the fish back in that case. What's the cheapest way for me to fish Asian carp? A motorboat is out of the question, but a fishing kayak might not be, though I don't know how smart that would be on a big river like the Illinois River. These are big fish we're talking about, and capsizing is within the realm of imagination of a bunch of them smacked you on a small boat. Ideally I would be on the banks, anyway.
Fish love me, women have mixed opinions.
Last time I fished in the family pond was about a decade and change ago. I hate the taste of fish, which takes all the fun out of it.
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I don't think we have this kind of carp where I'm at, but there are lots of smaller ones around -- we fished for them as kids. (and were encouraged to bonk them on the head and throw them in the compost, so I guess they are also considered invasive?)
I don't recall them being bait sensitive in the least -- from what I recall the technique would be "chunk of hotdog on a treble hook, dangled just above bottom near some hiding place (usually a dock that we were standing on, but hey)".
The "hiding place" and "dangled just above bottom" bits might be trickier in a river -- I'd be surprised if casting a bobber set to whatever you figure the depth might be near/behind rocks/overhanging trees/snags didn't catch the odd fish though.
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Oh, that's tolstolobik, isn't it? It's a pretty common fish here. Like all carps, it has lots of bones and smells faintly of muck, but you can make gefilte fish or just keep only the largest specimens, like 7lb+.
You can fish from the bank, you just need a rocky shore, this fish doesn't like grass. Do not fish during algal blooms, the fish will not be hungry enough. Midnight is the best time. We use "technoplankton" to catch it, but all English-language links are machine translations of Russian sources. It's a dense block of finely ground bait that slowly dissolves in the water, forming a cloud of food around the hooks. You need a tackle that looks like this: https://www.amazon.com/Fishing-Feeder-Inline-Coarse-Terminal/dp/B09244F54V
They are filter feeders, so all other bait or tackle will be much less effective.
Yes, I think it is that fish. Asian carp or silver carp is what it's called here. The Illinois River is absolutely full of them and the authorities have been troubled by this fact for years. That's great advice on how to catch them, makes perfect sense. That's probably going to end up a lot cheaper than a kayak.
I've certainly never heard of "technoplankton" and none of the fishing threads I looked at on reddit seemed to have any inkling of anything like "technoplankton". Perhaps Americans don't catch this fish much and don't know how to catch them? Do you make technoplankton yourself or do you buy it? What do Russians think of the fish? The people here (rural Midwest) think it's a trash fish. Man, glad I made the original post, how fascinating.
YouTube autogenerated subtitles are fine if you want to watch some actual fishing guides. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Qe69lsqX3u0 or just paste "ловля толстолобика" into the search box.
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It's native in the Far East, but it's been introduced across the whole former USSR. It's considered better than most other forms of carp because it grows big enough there's enough meat between the bones.
You can buy technoplankton, but some fishermen make it themselves, especially when they are short on money. For some of them fishing is not a hobby, but a source of protein. It's basically a mixture of various flour, some sort of binder (like sugar or powdered milk) and optionally a source of strong delicious smell (I've seen ready-made ones that smell like strawberry, honey, baked milk, aniseed, garlic and... fleas). You mix all this into a barely wet dough and press into a dense block (about 2 ounces) that fits onto the tackle (or inside it, if it has a cage like the one from Amazon). It slowly dissolves in the water and forms a tasty cloud that the silver carp will try to slurp.
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Asian carp were endemic in a lake near where I grew up. People mostly used bows but it was possible to catch them with conventional spinning reels using bread as bait. It's my understanding that they're very bony. I think my folks tried before being one of only two money saving hacks I know of them giving up on in the attempted processing.
I unfortunately do not own a bow. I do own a shotgun, though. Can you use shotguns on the river, I wonder? I wonder what kind of ammo you'd use for it. Birdshot would be my guess, since it probably wouldn't take so much of the fish if it was far enough away, but I don't know if it's illegal. Where did they use the bow? On the banks or were they in a boat of some kind? If boat, what kind of boat?
We should bring back dynamiting as a legitimate means of fishing. I'm far from a fisherman, but I'd get behind throwing explosives into water bodies.
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Much as I'd love to join you, and I theoretically could, shotgun fishing in Pritzker country sounds a little risky...
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Bullets lose way too much energy in a short distance of water. I don't think they'd work. Easiest way I know of is a cheap rod and some bread on a hook.
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People say they taste pretty good.
I see mixed things about them outside of that thread. In real life, the sentiment is quite negative. There's some movement to rebrand them "Copi", but there was a stand at the state fair selling them and they did things like mix them heavily with potato stuff or crab rangoon mixture and then breaded them so you don't even know what they taste like. What a waste of money, and it wasn't even good, just greasy and salty with no winning flavor to save it. Really put a damper on the whole visit. I am just really interested in dirt cheap protein that the State wants gone. I am interested in hogs for the same reason, but I don't live in hog country, unfortunately.
WDYM you don't live in hog country. They live literally everywhere. You just need to be patient.
Sounds like most fish to me tbh. We commonly eat carp in eastern Europe and it too doesn't have that much flavor either.
It's not bad but the breading does a lot of lifting.
Well no, you're wrong! Look!
Still bizarre they are not everywhere.
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I thought you were going to link this.
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