We need to fix a problem and we need to fix it fast. The problems are with the invasive species in our waterways. They are taking over the water, whether jumping out of the water to just bully the native fish to give up their spawning beds. The three main fish that do it are common carp, asian carp, and freshwater drum or some might know them as sheep head. All of them together is a nightmare because of the numbers of them, how big they are and they can jump out of the water.

The common carp  are all over. They repopulate at massive numbers and their population is just going to keep going up in less we stop them. They eat all the food that pan fish eat. They take over the water to where almost every other cast into the river that I live by you can snag one. Some of them can grow up to be over 60 lbs, but I’ve only caught one that was 45 lbs. In the lake I live by the carp were so bad that almost every year they would need to release walleye and other native fish to try and bring the population of them back up. In the winter they net carp and a couple of  years ago they netted thousands of pounds of carp and other rough fish out of the lake, you can find more information at “Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.” They also netted out lots of fresh water drums.

The fresh water drums they aren’t as bad as the carp but they’re just more of them. They don’t have as many eggs as the carp but they have more adult repopulating fish than carp. One of the good things that happened on the river this year is that we had a massive kill of the sheep head for no reason they just started popping up all over the river.  They don’t eat as much but you can still pull them out left and right. They could be anywhere in our waterways. They can be more scarce than carp. Some of the predator fish won’t even eat them because they taste so bad. Sometimes when you catch and you have to take them off the hook and you grab them they just make your hands smell so bad that you almost can’t stand it. They are eventually are going to find away to get into more bodies of water just like asian carp.

Asian carp are the worst of them. They are steadily moving up the Mississippi and into other rivers. If you look at the “National Park Services” and read about the asian carp problem and see how it affects our bodies of water then maybe you will try and help. If you look up the movement of the asian carp than you can see how the efforts to try and stop them haven’t worked they are still slowly but surely moving up the Mississippi and are moving closer to the Twin Cities. The reason why the are the worst is because they can harm people by jumping out of the water. They could also hit them while they are driving a boat. They can also on the way up out of the water hit native fish which can harm them.

So in conclusion they need to stop the common carp, freshwater drum or sheephead, and the asian carp in the Mississippi and all over in the waterways is problem that needs to be solved whether one fish at a time or multiply like netting them. They need to be stopped and I hope the DNR “ Department of Natural Resources” can find away to stop them. Then if or they do stop them we can work on getting the native fish population back up to normal. In the end we just need to help by cleaning up the waterways of rough fish.