Zeb Clark, a former Game and Fish invasive carp team member, holds a 69-pound carp taken from the Arkansas River. (Courtesy photo)
Nearly 50 years ago, catfish farmers in the Arkansas delta imported Asian carp to clean vegetation from ponds, making better habitats for the lucrative fish crop.
It sounded like good practice. Carp eat nearly their weight each day and the plankton and plants that were detrimental to catfish disappeared. More farms popped up in eastern Arkansas along the Mississippi River and its oxbows. Business thrived.
But in what sounds like a plot from a cheesy 1950s science fiction movie, carp escaped those ponds due to flooding and improper management and got into the Mississippi River. In the 25 years since those first fish found freedom, millions of carp began moving northward up the river, into the Illinois River and now the Chicago River, eating everything they could find and now threatening the sport fishing industry in Lake Michigan.
“[Officials] drug their feet on this,” said Dave Thomas, a commercial fisherman from Forrest City who has seen the glut of carp hurt his business. “There’s no fixing it. These fish are here to stay.