Southern Illinois University And Others Host Asian Carp Tourny

[Tim Smith]

The problem is that the solution needs to be sustainable. Government subsidies work best when they create the infrastructure for markets to fill. Unless you want the government to feed these to the troops...which might not be a bad idea...it's the markets around the fish that will keep pulling fish out of the river.

Don't we agree you shouldn't do with taxes what the free market can do on it's own?

About three years ago I spoke to the Ziegler feed company about this. Fish meal plants already exist. You can add more fishers but if there's no market to buy their fish they're going nowhere.

There has been a consistent effort from many quarters to get these fish entrained into the free market. A few years ago on the fishing forums, if you talked about eating them then and how they were actually good food, the skepticism was a mile deep.

Now, various chefs have been promoting them. Stephen Colbert even had a piece on marketing these fish. Illinois prisoners have been processing Asian carp for a while now.

The tournament exists over and beyond those efforts.

Probably the best thing you can do for the river is to enter the tourny and buy the fish when you see them on the market.