I thought this was pretty interesting piece and figured you would, too. Crazy. Now, what is 7 million times ten cents. Hmm. Maybe I should be buying a little commercial boat and heading south…GOSHEN BAY — Commercial fishermen in a small fleet of custom-built boats are plugging away at an unfathomable task: removing 40 million pounds of carp from Utah Lake.Daily they take a fishing net the length of three football fields, trap more than 3,500 carp and
scoop them into one of their flat-bottomed boats until it is almost swamped. They pull the boat close to the shore and use a motorized conveyor to load the fish into a massive trailer. From there the fish are mostly used for compost.
Fishing efforts slow down when the weather is best because other motor boats on the lake scatter the fish — and because fishing nets tend to catch motor boats. Otherwise, the carp fishing continues.
Even when the lake is frozen over, fourth-generation fisherman Bill Loy Jr. and his men cut holes in the ice and use a remote-control “submarine” to guide the net’s ropes between holes. Loy said some of his best catches come through the ice.
Loy gets 20 cents for each pound of carp he pulls from the lake. His fishermen have had their hands on seven million pounds of carp since the removal initiative began almost two years ago as part of the June Sucker Recovery Implementation Program.
The amount of work Loy’s fishermen have to do is compounded by the fact the estimated 40 million pounds of carp in the lake is just a count of the adult fish and does not include the young that will grow up before the eradication initiative is finished.
That repopulation is one reason the eradication project does not have a firm completion date, though officials READ MORE