Sad Day For The Lower Meramec

[Mitch f]

I was fishing at the confluence of the Meramec and Big river at Route 66 park yesterday and saw a horrible sight. Hundreds if not thousands of Asian silver Carp sitting in the current about a foot under the surface. I was shocked by the sheer number of these intruders at that confluence.They may have been there before but I have never seem them in these numbers. To make it worse, a guy with a boat entitled "Aerial Bow Hunting Adventures" was scoping out the river for his business. I went up the Big river about 1 mile and saw a few silver carp up there also.

I've always heard about this problem in the lower stretches of rivers but I think this hits a little too close to home for me. I'm not quite sure if anything can actually be done short of drastic measures. I know this invasive species filter plankton out of the water removing nutrients for all the bait fish. This would be a bad thing making competition for food and living space. Scary stuff guys!

[KCRIVERRAT]

You eastern Missouri guys have it rough. Maybe they'll target spots only on there way upstream! Insert "I hate KC here"!

[eric1978]

Scary stuff indeed. Sure hope they don't keep creeping up.

Maybe it isn't a terrible thing to see the "Bowhunting Adventures" boat out there. As of right now, I don't know of any other way to control these things. Not that a few bowhunters can put a huge dent in them, but I'd say it's better than nothing. I'd like to see a boat with "Shotgun Adventures" on the side of it, and a guy taking people out with 12 gauges and steel buckshot to blast these critters up and leave 'em for dead. Plenty of people like to kill stuff for the sake of killing...sounds like a match made in heaven. Maybe we should all take our fly rods and billy clubs out to the confluence. Sounds like fun to me.

[FlyFishinFool]

You can laugh and make jokes about it, but take a look at the attached link and view the video of what the Illinois River looks like today!

You cannot run a boat faster than a few miles an hour unless you have a solid shield to hide behind, or don't mind taking the chance of getting your jaw broken by a 15-20 pound fish hitting you in the face! There is one newpaper report about a lady who was hit in the head so hard that it broke her jaw, cheekbone and eye socket, knocking her unconsious and out of the boat into the river...fortunately she was wearing a pfd and was rescued before she drowned.

BTW - there is no way that you can bowhunt, shoot with a shotgun, net or anything else to effectively reduce the numbers. One biologist said the only solution would be to poison the entire river and then re-stock with game fish - extremely expensive and very unrealistic.

[RSBreth]

Dynamite. Scoop up. Repeat.

[snagged in outlet 3]

When they're schooled up like that they will take flies. Wht/chart, blu/wht and all white closers work well. Better use at least an 8 weight though. I prefer a 9 weight and a tapered leader down to 10lb test.

Snagged

[Mitch f]

Scary stuff indeed. Sure hope they don't keep creeping up.

Maybe it isn't a terrible thing to see the "Bowhunting Adventures" boat out there. As of right now, I don't know of any other way to control these things. Not that a few bowhunters can put a huge dent in them, but I'd say it's better than nothing. I'd like to see a boat with "Shotgun Adventures" on the side of it, and a guy taking people out with 12 gauges and steel buckshot to blast these critters up and leave 'em for dead. Plenty of people like to kill stuff for the sake of killing...sounds like a match made in heaven. Maybe we should all take our fly rods and billy clubs out to the confluence. Sounds like fun to me.

You're probably right! At least the bowhunting guy is smacking a few. I'm going to go postal on them myself; clubs, spears, big treble hooks!

Not really, I know nothing short of poisoning the river will get rid of them.

[snagged in outlet 3]

Were they accessible from shore?

[Mitch f]

They seemed to be in 2 groups, the smaller ones (Less than 2 pounds) were in current about 10 ft off the bank. The larger ones up to 8-10 lbs were in the middle of the river about a foot below the surface of the water. With the trolling motor I was able to get within 10 feet of them before they moved. I ran a spinner bait across their backs and I hit at least 4 on every cast. The next day Zipstick and I went up look at them and saw a bunch of boat traffic in the area that had them scattered.

[waterback]

I assume that is just above ten killer?? I fish about 40 miles of the Illinois and have never seen anything like that