It made for a nice quiet summer but its pointless to have a boat.
Posted on 09/22/2011 12:54:09 PM PDT by Red Badger
It is a stark reminder that the Asian carp infestation that has overwhelmed stretches of river in the Mississippi River basin and is now threatening the waters of the Great Lakes isn't going to go away anytime soon: The Illinois Department of Natural Resources has hired a Louisiana chef for a made-for-media event this week to demonstrate just how good these fish can be to eat.
It's part of the Target Hunger Now campaign, a state-sponsored humanitarian effort to turn the jumbo jumping carp into "healthy, ready-to-serve meals" for the needy. The program also provides venison to the poor.
It already has provided thousands of meals to needy children and families, but this is about more than feeding the poor.
Illinois is in a protracted battle with its neighboring Great Lakes states over how to beat back the carp migrating up the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, a man-made link between the carp-infested Mississippi basin and Lake Michigan.
Neighboring states want Illinois to slam shut two navigation locks as a makeshift barrier to block the advance of the fish; Illinois contends that such a closure would do great harm to the barge industry that relies on a free-flowing canal, and that it is unnecessary because an electric barrier on the canal is keeping the carp at bay.
Not everyone is so convinced the barrier is working as advertised. Water samples taken from the 70-plus miles of canals above the barrier repeatedly have tested positive for Asian carp DNA, and in the summer of 2010, a 20-pound Asian carp was pulled from a fisherman's net about seven miles south of Lake Michigan.
Illinois officials see its eat-the-carp program as another tool to keep the fish out of Lake Michigan.
According to the Illinois DNR:
"Illinois' $15 billion-dollar shipping industry has been threatened through ongoing legal actions by neighboring Great Lakes states in an attempt to close Chicago's navigation locks. Using Asian carp as a healthy food source for food banks is a major step towards eradication of the fish in Illinois waters and protects the waterway shipping industry from forced closures of our locks and dam systems."
The Illinois DNR also hopes the program will do some good for Illinois rivers.
"The Asian carp threat also continues to have a negative impact on Illinois' commercial and sport fishing industries and tourism and leads to revenue and job loss. Asian carp are voracious eaters consuming more than 40 percent of their body weight per day in plankton," states the Illinois DNR's official description of the program.
"They compete with our native fish species for food and can quickly overtake native populations of fish in our rivers, lakes and streams. The planned overfishing program of Asian carp will help protect these multibillion dollar industries in Illinois and the Great Lakes while protecting revenues and ensuring jobs. The overfishing program for Asian carp will also provide an abundance of fish available to feed our fellow Illinoisans."
The Illinois DNR will demonstrate recipes at a dinner with chef Philippe Parola on Thursday at Christ the King Jesuit College Preparatory High School in Chicago.
Look at the Michigan fishing regulations and guide and it will tell you the same thing about every game fish here.."restrict your fish eating habits due to the potential of mercury contamination....."
What they don't tell you is that any mercury the fish may contain is in the fatty tissue below the stomach. And in a properly fillet'd fish, that fatty tissue is cut off..............
Dangit. :(
Dangit. :(
Just a passing thought anyway.
Carp are a bottom dwelling trash fish. When I lived and fished in Cleveland many years ago, the suggested recipe for preparing carp was to gut it, skin it, filet it, cook it on a wooden plank and baste it with a quart of bourbon. After 16 hours, throw away the carp, eat the plank and drink the gravy.
As I commented in another post, carp are a scum-sucking, bottom feeding trash fish. Lawyers NEVER eat carp: Why would they eat a close relative?
You put enough hot sauces, chilis and spices in stuff, and let it cook for hours, you’ll kill off any bugs in it, and when you eat it, you’ll kill off any bugs in you too.
They’d eat shoe leather if they could creole it and simmer it for half a day.
I am too........FWIW, carp are basically nothing and seldom seen in the great lakes (The actual lakes themselves). They prefer shallow waters and rivers and marsh areas........If and when they do make it to those areas then they will have to compete with the existing carp and the predator fish...........
As I said before, nature has a way in taking care of any problems.........
I was born and raised up on Lake Erie on the North Coast of America, and we used to catch carp all the time. If you hooked into a good one, it was not unlike hooking a motorboat heading down the channel...a 20+ pound carp has some muscle, but they still aren’t worth eating unless there was literally nothing else to choke down.
Asians do! Fried carp Indonesian style is de-licious!
I’ve never had carp personally, but I do know from where you speak - water temperature and clarity can make a huge difference in how fish tastes. Anyone who’s eaten catfish caught from a warm, muddy reservoir knows it is decidedly different from the white, farm-raised stuff. And not for the better, I might add - oily (almost waxy) yellowish meat that tastes for all the world like the dirty brown water where it lived. I’m not crazy about catfish anyway, but that stuff is dreadful.
$20 BILLION!?!?!?!?!
Yeah it was right up there but the great lakes czar has oversight over all the lakes. Cameron Davis is also a special advisor to the EPA.
Another Obama crony from Chi-town.
Here’s a story about Cameron Davis from 09. It says great lakes “restoration” was expected to cost $20 billion but doesn’t say what his actual budget was. I haven’t heard a peep out of him since his appointment.
http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/06/obama_appoints_cameron_davis_a.html
You should read up on the Alliance for the Great Lakes for an idea what Davis is all about.
Neither is Michigan......The lamprey were out of control back around 1960 and I remember the poisoning of the Boyne River and lake Charlevoix......there hasn't been any further large scale attempt to control them because the predator fish have been taking care of it. I'm sure research is still on going but in terms of controlling a problem, there is none.
As for the zebra mussels in lake St. Clair, nothing was done in terms of federal or state funding that may have had an effect, nature took its course and they have been reduced to sustainable levels and are no longer a problem.
I stand corrected on the lampreys........thank you for the info.
Brine cured and smoked.
I was talking with a guy that helped develop Agent Orange. He said the active ingredient that kills the vegetation would be great in lakes to kill millfoil. And after a short period in the water (3 days?) it is reduced to harmless chemicals. I almost want to say that it would only kill the stuff near the surface where the sunlight is - but not sure.
And he said the nasty chemicals (for humans) was in the “sticky” stuff they added to it so it would stick to the leaves in Vietnam. But the herbicide itself wasn’t too bad.
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