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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.
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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