Don’t Expect Anglers To Add Carp To Menus

The carp is a revered fish in many parts of the world, including China and Europe, and is considered a wary, hardfighting game fish. To most American anglers, the biggest member of the minnow family is a slimy-scaled nuisance that muddies lakes and crowds out more desirable game fishes.

Now some fishing writers and fishermen are predicting that carp eventually will become a popular game fish in the United States.

Two outdoor magazines, the “In Fisherman” and “Outdoor Life,” this year published articles extolling the virtues of carp as game fish and at least one TV program featured the catching of carp.

The writers and producers tucked their tongues in their cheeks when they wrote about carp, knowing most Americans are prejudiced against the fish.

Nevertheless, they conveyed some salient points and left their audiences actually wondering whether tens of thousands of Americans some day will marvel at the carp they hook instead of uttering loud “Ughs” when they mistakenly hook a fish they don’t even want to touch.

The author of the “In Fisherman” how-to article said the “average British angler would gladly trade the Queen to a pack of nomadic fur buyers for the chance to catch two 20s (20-pound-plus carp) in a season.”

Fly fishing writer John Gierach, in his “Outdoor Life” article on fly fishing for carp, opens his article with: “I fly fish for carp and I’m not here to apologize for it.”

If the carp eventually becomes popular with Americans, the Inland Northwest could attract carp fishermen from throughout Europe. Numerous lakes and reservoirs are over-run with carp, many in the 20-pound-plus class.

When Sprague Lake was dosed with rotenone several years ago, tens of thousands of carp, as well as thousands of spinyrayed fish, died. British anglers would be stunned that anyone would deliberately kill thousands of big, beautiful carp.

Sprague was replanted with bass, bluegills, trout and channel catfish. Now the carp are returning.

Scores of lakes in the Columbia Basin are full of mud-rooting carp. There may be more carp than bass, walleyes, bluegills and trout combined in the Potholes Reservoir and Moses Lake.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, hoping to encourage hunters to shoot coots, published a booklet a few years ago urging hunters to shoot more coots. Wonderful table birds, the agency said. The push to get hunters to kill more coots died before the agency wrote off the costs of publishing the booklet.

Will efforts to popularize carp fishing die?

Actually, carp have some redeeming features. They may not be beautiful in the eyes of American fishermen, but they are exceptionally strong fish, brainier than trout and spinyrayed fish and tasty when taken from unpolluted water. And they’re plentiful.

Izaak Walton, author of the classic, “Compleat Angler,” called carp his favorite. “A stately, good and very subtle fish,” he wrote.

Many Europeans rank the carp, a cunning and wary fish, as among the most difficult of all fishes to catch.

Carp have an illustrious history. Chinese emperors once raised them in garden pools, and the fish were harvested only on special occasions. The carp was one of the first fish to be “farmed.”

Europeans imported carp as a gourmet food. In the 1880s, the first carp were imported into the U.S., the first of many fish management mistakes, fishermen say.Carp root in mud to find their favorite foods, mostly plants and tiny animals. With their sucker-like mouths, they suck in the muck and create great clouds of muddy water.

Doughballs and worms are traditional baits, but innovative carp fishermen from China to Britain have created smelly concoctions over the years.

Carp are a bait fisherman’s fish. They rarely take artificial lures and flies, but fly fishers still try to lure them with imitations of chironomid pupae and mayfly nymphs.

To most Americans, carp are a good target for arrows attached to bows, a practice that horrifies British fishermen.

Some day, American fishermen may develop a measure of affection for carp, but don’t count on it until trout, bass, bluegills, walleyes and perch are nearly extinct.

Contact Fenton Roskelley by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 3814.