River-choking invaders make easy bowfishing

From the Milw Journal Sentinel

By 1890, as many as 35,000 carp were stocked into Wisconsin waters.

And by 1895 the carp stocking program was discontinued, wrote Becker, as the fish had been planted throughout the state.

Problems associated with carp were noted soon after the fish's introduction to Wisconsin.

At the 1901 meeting of the American Fisheries Society in Milwaukee, General E.E. Bryant, a member of the Wisconsin Conservation Commission, reported that within 5 miles of Madison there were "billions" of carp and that every fisherman saw them, cursed them and refused to catch them.

A 1944 account from George Peabody in Appleton said the introduction of carp to Lake Koshkonong had destroyed the fishing for bass and pike, roiled the waters and ruined duck hunting through destruction of wild rice and celery.

In his book, Becker details a Madison pond stocked with carp in 1944-’45. The pond had dense growths of waterweed and sago pondweed and lesser amounts of pickerel weed, coontail and wild rice.

Just 51 days after the carp were added, the pond’s aquatic vegetation was "reduced to a very critical stage." The wild rice had been uprooted within a few days of stocking, the sago pondweed torn out quickly and the coontail soon after. Only the waterweed, heavily grazed, and the pickerel weed remained. When the pickerel weed was attacked, however, it was destroyed completely in less than two weeks.