FLW Tour pro Tom Monsoor of La Crosse, Wis., has a slightly
different outlook on the future of Asian carp in America. Some
may know Monsoor as the swim jig freak who won the FLW
Tour event at the Potomac River last year. Monsoor is also a
commercial fisherman. He’s spent several decades wrangling
millions of pounds of carp from various waterways in the
Midwest by net, which makes him uniquely qualified to offer
some insight into this situation.
The good news, according to Monsoor, is that he sees no
reason why the very Asian carp that are crowding the recre-
ational waters of America cannot be the next “chicken of the
sea.”
As Monsoor points out, these particular carp are a rich
source of protein that can be distributed all over the world.
Currently, Asian carp are table fare in other parts of the world.
“Right now everyone sees these carp as a lose-lose-
lose situation,” Monsoor says. “But there is a day com-
ing when these carp will be a major solution to
some of our world’s biggest problems, including
starvation. These carp can feed people and cre-
ate jobs. They are a win-win-win just waiting to
happen.”
Monsoor is adamant that this is not just
some pie-in-the-sky fantasy. He believes har-
vesting Asian carp for food is absolutely pos-
sible with the processes and technology already
in place today.
“I know every segment of the carp business,
from catching them to processing them to shipping
them to eating them, and there is not a single part
of the entire operation that is not already in use
right now,” Monsoor explains. “Of course, some
segments of the operation would need to be
tweaked to work specifically for catching
Asian carp out of Kentucky
Lake, but my
point is
that every
step of this
equation is
already in place
somewhere. It’s already a reality.
Carp are food.”
With regard to the carp’s negative
connotation of being “scum eaters,”
Monsoor says that given the water
standards of the Tennessee Valley
Authority, carp out of the Tennessee
River would be some of the clean-
est carp in the world. He believes
that, in time, markets would pay a
premium for Tennessee River carp
due to their high quality.
FALL 2018 I FLWFISHING.COM
“When you hold the Tennessee River up against some other
rivers in this world where these very same fish are already har-
vested for food, the Tennessee River is a very clean system by
comparison,” he says.
He thinks most of the active netting would likely have to be
done in the winter months to help keep the fish fresh from
harvest to processing.
“There is a stringent process for every food harvested from
water, whether it’s clams, crabs, lobster, tuna or carp. There
are standards for icing and/or flash-freezing, and netting Asian
carp out of the Tennessee River would have to follow suit.”
One concern brought up often is how netting might impact
recreational game-fish species such as bass and other sunfish
that might be trapped in nets as bycatch. This is the segment
of the netting business that Monsoor says requires the most
fine-tuning specific to individual lakes.
“Finding the right times when the carp
are most vulnerable and segregated
from other species is key,” he
explains. “Sometimes we do get bass
and walleye mixed in with our nets, but
you have to train the netters to separate
them out and turn them loose.”
Monsoor admits that setting up these
operations would be a challenge.
“I’m just saying it can be done,” he says.
“It’s going to take a cooperative effort
between a billionaire benefactor – a Bill
Gates-type person who has vision and
money – and several of the commercial
fishing industry’s best brains and govern-
ment agencies.”
So can enough carp really
be harvested to put a dent
in the populations in
Kentucky Lake?
Monsoor indicates this
is the least of his concerns.
Given his own experiences
with netting carp, once a
market develops for them,
it’s amazing how scarce
they can become.
To Monsoor’s point, I can
remember way back when
the lowly redfish was consid-
ered to be basically a saltwa-
ter carp. Granted, redfish are
a native fish, not a prolific
invader. But they were of little
food value. Then in the 1980s,
Paul Prudomme dropped a
redfish fillet into a skillet, sea-
soned it with a mix of spices and
created the blackened redfish
craze. Once the fish were specifi-
cally targeted by commercial fish-
ermen, stocks began to dwindle.
By the early 1990s, so many red-
fish had been harvested from
our oceans that they had to
become protected.
Blackened carp, anyone?
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