Pity the poor carp. Once considered a delicacy by European royals, the fish are now considered common pests in local lakes—the roaches of the waters, so to speak. And now, county parks officials want to shoot them full of arrows.
Bowfishing, in which participants hunt carp and similar “trash fish” with hunting bows and barbed arrows attached on a line, hasn’t been permitted at Cachuma Lake in the past due to a ban on weapons. That’s about to change, however, thanks to a unanimous Sept. 21 vote by the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors to allow the sport there.
Park Naturalist Liz Gaspar said Cachuma
desperately needed the ordinance in order to get its burgeoning carp population under control.
“It’s really going to benefit the lake,” she said. “Carp are really destructive fish.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture lists carp as an “invasive species.” Though classified as minnows, the fish can reach 60 pounds and up to two feet in length, with a lifespan of 15 years or longer.
The “nuisance” fish were originally introduced to North America in the early 1870s as a major food source. That introduction was a flop. The problem? Carp are full of bones and just don’t taste very good. Besides that, Gaspar said, carp are also destructive to the lake’s environment and to other fish.
As bottom feeders, she explained, the carp sift through the dirt for invertebrates, muddying the water and making it more difficult for other fish to see their food. They also stir up aquatic plants that cycle important nutrients in the water.
“They’re really aggressive,” she said. “Just because of their feeding behavior, they can disturb other fish that are feeding and are not as aggressive.”
Carp thrive in the lake’s shallow areas, but Gaspar said it’s impossible to estimate how many of them might be lurking in the lake. In addition to helping curb their numbers, she hopes an ability to hold large bowfishing tournaments will help draw more visitors to the park.
Big-time tournaments held at Clearlake in Northern California and at Big Bear Lake in the south draw bowfishers in from all over the country.
Clifford White, owner of an archery shop in Paradise—a town near Clearlake—organizes two bowfishing tournaments at Clearlake each year. Despite poor weather, White said this year’s tournament brought in 130 teams from all over the Western United States. On any given tournament weekend, he said, 10,000 to 40,000 pounds of carp are caught, and big prizes are won for shooting the largest fish.
“Any time there’s some kind of competition and some prizes to be won, they’ll bring some guys out,” White said of the possibility of such events at Cachuma Lake.
As far as how effective bowfishing actually is on controlling carp population, White said in the past 21 years of tournaments at Clearlake, bowfishers have hauled in more than 600,000 pounds of the fish.
“That’s always a key feature—though we never seem to make a dent in them,” he said.
An avid bowfisher since 1976, White has taken part in tournaments across the country. He, like most bowfishers, shoots his prey from boats with an older hunting bow, with a fishing line tied to the arrows as required by law.
“It’s just fun to get out in the water,” White said. “I’ve been shooting with
my son.”
Sometimes, he said, bowfishers will go out at night with a generator to catch fish when they’re feeding in the shallows. But the best time to hunt carp, he said, is in the springtime when they’re spawning.
“The fish are up thrashing on the surface, males chasing females,” he said. “It’s not uncommon to get several in one shot when you get in those situations.”
And what happens to the carp casualties?
“Most places, if you’ve got some remote area, you can just dig a hole and bury them,” he said. “They make great fertilizer.”
At Cachuma Lake, County Parks’ Gaspar said, carp carcasses would be tossed into a “fish eater,” which basically amounts to a giant garbage disposal. However, lake officials are considering working with local homeless shelters to prepare the dead fish as food and distribute them to the hungry.
Once instituted, bowfishing will add to the other forms of carp control already in use at the lake, including electric shocks. County Parks hasn’t received any complaints about the sport being inhumane, Gaspar said, adding that allowing the sport brings the county in line with state Fish and Game Department regulations. Though few lakes in Southern California currently permit it, bowfishing for carp and other “nuisance species” is permitted by the agency and legal anywhere no ordinance exists against it.
“It’s just another way of catching fish,” Gaspar said. “It’s not an end-all remedy. Until there’s an affordable option, this is the next best thing.”
County supervisors were expected to give final approval to the ordinance on Sept. 28. From there, Gaspar said, it will take about a month for Parks officials to hammer out the necessary regulations, and the sport could start there for real as soon as early November.
Staff Writer Jeremy Thomas hunts mosquitoes with a bow. Send him tiny arrows at jthomas@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 30 – Oct 7, 2010.