The Drovers Old Time Medicine Show - Prater's Creek Gazette

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Sports	The Prater's Creek Gazette 12th Issue Winter 2006 Page #7
As Compiled by Sports Editor Bubba McCalister and his brother Dorris Are The Killer Carp Coming Our Way? In the 1970’s, the big nature scare, after the great white shark, was “killer bees” winging their way from South America to the South and the Southwest of the USA. Well now the big scare is, and I crap you not, KILLER CARP. Amassed outside Chicago, like some aquatic gangsters, they are mostly kept out of Lake Michigan by an electric fence that has seen its days. The fence needs replacing and Congress is holding up the $16 million needed to fund the new electric barrier. The Asian carp leap out of the water at such a rate a velocity that on rivers such as the Mississippi and the Illinois Rivers, people are scared to carry small children out on the water for fear of getting severely injured by the carp. One grandfather said he was afraid what a 20-pound carp landing in a boat on top of a child could do. There are two kinds of Asian carp and they can wipe out all food sources for other fish, like walleye and salmon, in no time. The bighead carp is huge but more like our carp in its actions, but the silver carp flings itself out of the water like a dang kangaroo! The carp jump when they are spooked by predators or boat engines. Out on the Illinois River, this bar owner staged a Redneck Carp Tournament to show how bad the Asian carp population had gotten. But get this y’all, they didn’t fish with a line and a pole, but with nets. They had to catch ‘em, or hit ‘em with a club, as they jumped out of the water and sailed through the air! The carp were flying all over the place at such a pace that one fella got hit in the side of the head by one and it busted his lip and knocked a couple of teeth loose. There were 78 boats entered in the Redneck tournament and 1,840 carp were caught in only 3 hours! The winning boat caught 126. These carp are like the kudzu of the fish world. They were introduced into the American ecosystem down here in the South in the 1970’s by commercial fish farms to eat the algae. I know over at Devoid Mengele Mill, they pay big bucks for sterile Asian carp to put in their millpond to eat the algae. The species quickly escaped out into the Mississippi and started spreading rapidly. These killer carp need to be stopped. Congress has passed two separate bills to build the new permanent fence, but the funding is held up in a conference committee. The longer they piddle, the more killer carp are getting past the old one.

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Sports

The Prater's Creek Gazette

12th Issue Winter 2006 Page #7

As Compiled by Sports Editor Bubba McCalister and his brother Dorris

Are The Killer Carp Coming Our Way?

In the 1970’s, the big nature scare, after the great white shark, was “killer bees” winging their way from South America to the South and the Southwest of the USA. Well now the big scare is, and I crap you not, KILLER CARP. Amassed outside Chicago, like some aquatic gangsters, they are mostly kept out of Lake Michigan by an electric fence that has seen its days. The fence needs replacing and Congress is holding up the $16 million needed to fund the new electric barrier.

The Asian carp leap out of the water at such a rate a velocity that on rivers such as the Mississippi and the Illinois Rivers, people are scared to carry small children out on the water for fear of getting severely injured by the carp. One grandfather said he was afraid what a 20-pound carp landing in a boat on top of a child could do.

There are two kinds of Asian carp and they can wipe out all food sources for other fish, like walleye and salmon, in no time. The bighead carp is huge but more like our carp in its actions, but the silver carp flings itself out of the water like a dang kangaroo! The carp jump when they are spooked by predators or boat engines.

Out on the Illinois River, this bar owner staged a Redneck Carp Tournament to show how bad the Asian carp population had gotten. But get this y’all, they didn’t fish with a line and a pole, but with nets. They had to catch ‘em, or hit ‘em with a club, as they jumped out of the water and sailed through the air! The carp were flying all over the place at such a pace that one fella got hit in the side of the head by one and it busted his lip and knocked a couple of teeth loose.

There were 78 boats entered in the Redneck tournament and 1,840 carp were caught in only 3 hours! The winning boat caught 126.

These carp are like the kudzu of the fish world. They were introduced into the American ecosystem down here in the South in the 1970’s by commercial fish farms to eat the algae. I know over at Devoid Mengele Mill, they pay big bucks for sterile Asian carp to put in their millpond to eat the algae. The species quickly escaped out into the Mississippi and started spreading rapidly.

These killer carp need to be stopped. Congress has passed two separate bills to build the new permanent fence, but the funding is held up in a conference committee. The longer they piddle, the more killer carp are getting past the old one.