Whopper of a fish tail

In a murky side channel of the Mississippi River there lies the ticking time bomb of flying carp.

Annette Kelley and Joe Ridings navigate a 24-foot-long johnboat down a lonely stretch of water called Schenniman Chute, a channel that branches off the Missouri side of the Mississippi River about 6 miles north of Cape Girardeau. The current is slow, the stream is wide and not a single other boat is in sight. Some old logs stick up in a few places, but without much of a breeze, it should be smooth sailing.

But of course, there is the fish factor.

Kelley and Ridings, biologists with the Missouri Department of Conservation Big River and Wetlands Field Station in Jackson, know that in this murky side channel there lies the ticking time bomb of flying silver carp. During their daily work of monitoring the river's fish community, the two have witnessed countless giant fish leaping high into the air, some even landing in their boat. The carp, which have reached a record 76 pounds in Missouri, are usually set off by the hum of a slow-moving motor boat.

"There are about 200 fish right there, and I bet they're all carp," Kelley said Wednesday, only half jokingly, as she looked at the boat's GPS underwater fish finder while carp jumped all around. "It's a war zone right there."

Boaters go to battle with silver carp in rivers across the country, but the fish have not always reigned locally -- or in any other North American waterways. The silver carp, along with its relatives the bighead carp and the grass carp, are exotic species imported from China and other parts of eastern Asia by private fish farmers. Known collectively as Asian carp, they most likely entered the Mississippi River accidentally during times of heavy flooding. Since then, populations have exploded in the river and nearly all of its tributaries.

Ridings said silver carp started showing up in area waters about six or seven years ago. Now his crew can see anywhere from 50 to 100 of them on any given day of cruising a Mississippi River side channel. Almost always, a few of these end up in the boat. Not long ago they were hit with seven in one day.

Of course, this makes for some really big fish stories.

Once, Ridings said, a carp gave his boss a sloppy wet "kiss" when it jumped into the boat, hitting him square in the face. Another time an especially slimy fish landed in a colleague's open laptop computer. Worst of all, a 15-pound carp once deflected off a water jug someone was drinking out of and knocked Ridings hard in the back of the head. The experience left him with back pain for about two weeks. Both Ridings and Kelley said they've learned to keep their eyes and ears open at all times.

"The threat of getting smacked by a 25-pound fish kind of keeps you on your toes," Ridings said.

In less than two hours, a total of five fish landed in our boat that morning -- six if you count the one that hit the top of the motor and bounced off.

But these carp cause more than just a headache for boaters. Because they are exotic, the silver carp and its other imported relatives could be depleting plankton, a main food source both for them and many other marine species. Ridings said Asian carp have a very rapid rate of reproduction and are beginning to out-eat other filter feeders, like paddlefish, which live in the area naturally.

"They're like cows. They just go through the water and eat everything," Ridings said.

Dave Herzog, a resource staff scientist with the field station, said no one knows yet about the direct effects of Asian carp on Mississippi River marine life because scientists have not yet found a way to accurately gauge how many of them are already in the water. Also, human factors such as commercial harvesting have depleted paddlefish and other populations, making it difficult to know just how much any one cause has changed the ecosystem.

"It's really a big conundrum, trying to figure out the singular effects of bighead and silver carp on any X species," he said.

Herzog said Asian carp have traveled all the way south to the Gulf of Mexico and all the way north through the Illinois River, only miles away from the Great Lakes. He said scientists there are working to build electronic barriers to keep the exotic species out of the lakes.

But in this area, Herzog said, the only real solution to the carp problem is increasing human consumption. Although the market for Asian carp is not very big, Herzog said the fish are edible, and many people find them quite delicious. However, Asian carp do not take bait, so a fisherman's best bet is to simply drive a boat down a side channel and just let the fish jump in.

wmcferron@semissourian.com

335-6611 extension 127