Will U.S. Waters Ever Be Managed as Trophy Carp Fisheries?

“Kansas considers management for trophy carp, but do enough anglers actually want it?

How do you feel about common carp? No doubt, they have their zealots in the U.S., some of whom chase them with fly rods, while others use bite alarms, boilies, and specialty rigs adopted from the thriving carp culture in Europe. If you’re a bow fisherman, carp are nothing but targets. I would suspect, though, that the vast majority of anglers in American would say they don’t feel one way or another about carp—they’re just kind of there. They don’t really get in the way of other fish people love to target, and their discerning nature means they won’t often beat catfish or panfish to your bait. But recently, the state of Kansas wanted to know exactly how anglers felt about common carp, with the goal of figuring out how to better manage the species—this isn’t something most states seem to worry about. So, the state conducted a survey, and the results are pretty interesting.

Trash Fish or Trophy?

According to the story on Ksn.com, the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks mailed 2,000 surveys to residents who had purchased a fishing license. They also posted the survey on social media so it could be taken digitally. One of the key things the department was trying to determine was how big a carp had to be for anglers to consider it a trophy. The plan was to use that information to decide if certain waterbodies should be managed to support trophy-class fish, but what they seemed to find was an over-all disinterest in carp, which I’d have called very predictable.”

The full article can be found here.

Photo Credit: Original Author

 

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