Fishing being destroyed

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striper stalker

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15 years ago I asked a ranger what they were doing to control the carp population. She assured me they were on top of it by electrocuting them and grinding them up for fertilizer. 15 years later the lake is being totally destroyed by the carp. Obviously they weren’t on top of it.
 
Phillbo said:
How can you electrocute just one species without other fish in the area dying?
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Buddy worked for the Park Service in the canyon. You shock everything. They all float to the surface. You throw the non desirables out onto the shore for the coyotes, and everyone else recovers and goes back to swimming.
 
Hey sealegs, I’m trying to do my part in keeping the Striper population down. I’ve been fishing lake powell since 1995. I miss the days of launching at Farley with a full parking lot up there. I haven’t seen carp like I have this year and I’m not seeing the shad like I normally do. I know I’m a little gun shy on this. I grew up in eastern colorado fishing what are little puddles compared to powell. Back in the 70’s every lake thought they needed to introduce carp to control some of the vegetation. Within a few years they were draining them because that’s all there was in them. I don’t want to see that happen here. To control them with shocking them(sorry, not electrocuting) I can imagine would be really labor intensive. I can’t imagine that will happen now.
 
I would agree that on our last couple trips we saw way more carp than in years past. But from the way the fishing has been it doesn’t seem to be detrimental.

I’d be curious what percent of the biomass in Powell is carp.

As far as the comment about tossing them on shore I’d really rather people didn’t do that. In very short order wherever they end up on shore will smell terrible. From experience, that ruins what might be a good camping spot.
 
The way I see it, carp are a benefit, they eat the moss,algea and dont compete for the forage of the game fish. When they spawn the eggs provide food for the game fish and some of the forage. Like crawdads and such. So how are they destroying the lake?
 
Just got back from the lake, actually made my first post from the lake and really frustrated. I average twice a month on the water and usually 3-4 days each time. I can’t imagine anyone hasn’t seen a difference this year. As I said earlier, carp numbers are way up and I’m not seeing any shad ripples. I do think it has been a windier than normal year so ripples are more difficult to see but still plenty of calm water see them. I never use to see the carp in the main channel like you see now. Basically schooling up like Striper boils. Carp are scavengers and I’m sorry they will eat anything they can get in their mouth. I haven’t seen actual numbers on it, but have heard that shad numbers are down. I do think the park needs to look at the carp as a problem.
 
I saw a lot of carp sucking quagga off of the walls. Definitely saw a lot of massive carp, but also saw huge numbers of hatchling shad up 7-mile, where we parked this past week. I did not see any slurps or boils this week at all, which was very surprising to me. I saw no shortage of sunfish, bluegill, or catfish though.
 
I invite any of you to purchase a speargun and participate in the National Freshwater Spearfishing Association tournaments that happen from time to time on the lake. That event typically carts off a couple huge dumpsters of carp.

I've seen people bring their bows to Lake Powell as well.

In my experience I'm not seeing more carp than normal. This lake has always had a gagillion!
 
I've always seen carp "all" over the lake. They have always been plentiful. Thos May I've seen more striper than I've ever seen. In every nook and cranny. In the main channel and side channels. I dont see any difference in my small mouth and large mouth catches that indicate carp problems. We caught more striper than I wanted to clean. I dont fish striper that much but the people that showed up to fish with me wanted to. Again no difference than usual.
 
striper stalker said:
Just got back from the lake, actually made my first post from the lake and really frustrated. I average twice a month on the water and usually 3-4 days each time. I can’t imagine anyone hasn’t seen a difference this year. As I said earlier, carp numbers are way up and I’m not seeing any shad ripples. I do think it has been a windier than normal year so ripples are more difficult to see but still plenty of calm water see them. I never use to see the carp in the main channel like you see now. Basically schooling up like Striper boils. Carp are scavengers and I’m sorry they will eat anything they can get in their mouth. I haven’t seen actual numbers on it, but have heard that shad numbers are down. I do think the park needs to look at the carp as a problem.
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Is it possible their behavior has changed due to the algae?
 
striper stalker said:
Just got back from the lake, actually made my first post from the lake and really frustrated. I average twice a month on the water and usually 3-4 days each time. I can’t imagine anyone hasn’t seen a difference this year. As I said earlier, carp numbers are way up and I’m not seeing any shad ripples. I do think it has been a windier than normal year so ripples are more difficult to see but still plenty of calm water see them. I never use to see the carp in the main channel like you see now. Basically schooling up like Striper boils. Carp are scavengers and I’m sorry they will eat anything they can get in their mouth. I haven’t seen actual numbers on it, but have heard that shad numbers are down. I do think the park needs to look at the carp as a problem.
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The park can’t even remove channel markers that have drifted onto banks…
 
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