Carp roundup is a net gain for Minnesota's lakes.

[Lee Borgersen]

Carp roundup is a net gain for Minnesota's lakes. View full story and photos



http://www.startribune.com/local/west/37480574.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUnciaec8O7EyUsl

Carp roundup is a net gain for Minnesota's lakes. Check out the photos gallery

The weather helped scientists, out to rid lakes of the damaging fish, round up 90 percent of the carp in Chanhassen's Lake Susan.

By LAURIE BLAKE, Star Tribune




 


 
Talk about a great day of ice fishing.

Capitalizing on a quirk of nature -- carp congregate when it's cold -- University of Minnesota biologists pulled more than 3,000 of the unwelcome bottom feeders, some of them as old as 50 years, out of Chanhassen's Lake Susan on Monday.

Working under steadily pelting snowflakes, six commercial fishermen and 10 researchers located the cache of carp under the frozen surface by tracking radio tags placed on some of the fish during the summer.

A 2,000-foot skein net surrounded the fish under the ice as two tractors pulled the catch toward a 15-foot hole where the fish were scooped out onto a conveyer belt to be weighed, measured and counted.

"We probably caught 90 percent of the fish in that lake,'' said biologist Peter Sorensen of the university's Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology. "This is an effort to remove the vast majority of the carp to see if we can improve the water quality of the lake."

And, he added, "A lot of these females being removed are just fat with eggs.''

The netting marked a milestone in an ongoing U study searching for ways to eliminate destructive carp populations, which dirty up the waters where they are found around Minnesota. The study has focused on three west-suburban lakes: Lake Susan in Chanhassen and Lake Riley and Rice Marsh Lake, both of which straddle the Eden Prairie-Chanhassen city line.

"We have been studying the carp in Lake Susan now for about three years,'' Sorensen said. "We know how many there are and have an idea about where they are coming from.''

The striking thing about Monday's catch, said Sorensen, was that "in that net there was almost nothing but carp -- 95 percent of the fish were carp. They were all large fish."

Game fish were thrown back, but the carp will be sold for food or used as compost at the university's Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.

[stevejedlenski]

sweet deal, i bet that would have been pretty interesting to watch.

[HD]

I read that in the paper.

That's pretty cool how they radio tagged a few to find out what they were doing.
(it's like having a snitch in the school) They could pinpoint where they were.
And not many game fish were netted in the process, the ones that were, were released.


Hunter

[joker31888]

Great deal.  My goal is to shoot 30 with the bow this year.  Hopefully more.  I can't wait.

[JoeFisherman]

Sure wish they'd do that to more lakes.  I know where my lake place is the carp and sheepshead populations seem to be growing exponentially.

 

[kenhuntin]

 That would be a fun thing to do for a good group of civillians. I wonder if the D.N.R. would issue a permit for a large net like that. I heard Mcdonalds buys them for their Filet of fish.

[Cody Gruchow]

i live right next to this lake and it use to be a good walleye lake but this year it took a turn for the worst. the water was nasty looking and had all kinds of junk floating around in it. and i have seen some of these fish they have tagged. they spend alot of the early season under the dock. glad they are getting rid of these things. maybe the walleye will start to thrive now

[GRIZ]

I know some guys that do this. A number of yrs back they did a lake around here and were surprised as alot of the older locals were upset as they didn't let the buffalo back. They thought they should have been as they are a native species.

I know I can hear it already, who cares they are still a rough fish just clean them out. Well these people grew up eatin lots of buffalo and have many ways of making them excellent table fare. They taste nothing like the carp that they resemble.

[sandmannd]

I agree with Griz. I don't think that thinning them out is a bad thing, but you don't want to get rid of them all together. Believe it or not, these fish do serve a purpose to the echo system.

[finch]

I think they are very similar to illegal immigrants from Mexico.
(they take the unwanted jobs and stuff.  I don't plan on making this political, just a reference.)
they eat the items in the lake that no other fish will eat- the garbage.

but you get a big group of them together and they sure can cause a ruckus.

[GRIZ]

I think they are very similar to illegal immigrants from Mexico.
(they take the unwanted jobs and stuff.  I don't plan on making this political, just a reference.)
they eat the items in the lake that no other fish will eat- the garbage.

but you get a big group of them together and they sure can cause a ruckus.

Not really. The buffalo will eat the same things as the carp. The buffalo being a native fish while the carp is not. I guess that was kinda my point was take the carp but the buffalo being native could be left to fill it's niche.