108 FISHES OF ILLINOIS 



running water for a short time before cooking. Such a measure 

 is not generally practicable in this country, where the resources 

 of cultural establishments are lacking, and the sole recourse is 

 to parboiling and spicing and other subterfuges of the cuisine. 

 Experiments recently made in this country in smoking and salt- 

 ing carp have not been very successful. Carp caviar is known 

 to have been used in former centuries by the Jews of Italy, 

 but its red color is objectionable to the American purchaser. 

 Owing to the low price which carp bring in springtime — often 

 not more than a third of a cent per pound — many of these fish 

 in the Great Lake region are used for fertilizing, although the 

 more progressive firms are more and more holding the spring 

 and summer catches for the better winter price — two to two 

 and a half cents per pound. 



Among fishermen and anglers in America the carp has both 

 its partisans and its enemies. However, it is coming more and 

 more to be believed that its good qualities more than overbalance 

 the other side of the account, the most serious of the charges 

 against it appearing to rest on uncertain or gratuitously assumed 

 premises. These charges have been, in brief, that carp roil the 

 water and spoil the breeding and feeding grounds of other fish; 

 that they eat the spawn of other fish and prevent the nesting of 

 such species as bass and sunfishes; that they spoil the feeding 

 grounds of water-birds by eating and rooting up the wild rice 

 and other aquatic plants; and, that they are of no value either 

 as a food or a game fish. With regard to the first charge it 

 appears doubtful if the damage is serious in waters already as 

 muddy as those of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. Carp do 

 not naturally seek out clear and cold waters to defile them, and 

 they would probably in no case be serious competitors of such 

 fish as trout and small-mouthed bass. 



The second charge, if true, is a much more serious one; but 

 few direct observations bearing on this point have been made. 

 The common form of the argument, that "carp eat spawn, as 

 shown by the simultaneous rapid increase of carp and decrease 

 of fine fish," is not supported by the statistics of the fisheries 

 of the Illinois River. These show, on the contrary, that during 

 the five years between 1894 and 1899, when the carp catch 

 increased from Yi to 8^ million pounds, the black bass, instead 

 of decreasing, increased from 70,000 to 102,000 lb. The de- 

 crease in black bass between 1899 and 1903 to 45,000 lb was 

 accompanied by a corresponding decrease in carp to 6,000,000 



