Eat the invaders….

Carp are easy picking during the spawn with a bow.  140ish lbs with a bow in 2 hours or so.  We fillet them and use the remains to charge biochar.

How do you plan to cook those?  Baked, fried or tacos?

I had a friend who grew up eating those.  I didn't bother to ask how they tasted.

That's great, Gray! Here in Washington we can fish for Carp without a fishing license. They eat all the vegetation in the bottom of our reservoirs and turn it into poop, which leads to algae blooms. I've been meaning to fish for them, but bow fishing would be a lot of fun, too!

Anne Miller wrote:How do you plan to cook those?  Baked, fried or tacos?

I had a friend who grew up eating those.  I didn't bother to ask how they tasted.

We fry, grill, and smoke them.  The family really likes to make tacos out of fried strips.  If cut vertically into 1/4” strips the bones “fry out”.  Never would have believed it.  A friend recently suggested pickling them.  Might give it a try.

Carp fishing--yay! May there be more of it, and may it catch on more and more with American anglers. I know a YouTube channel for anyone who likes this topic:

Great to see.
I've taken them with line, arrow, net, and stabbing/throwing spear.
In addition to all the other cooking methods, they pressure can very well. The canning process jellifies the bones, so your processing time can be cut way down.
The roe is wonderful mixed in and cooked with scrambled eggs.  
Keep up the great work!

If you can't beat them, eat them!
Carps do make good eating and they grow large. Just try to source them from a place that's not too polluted because they are bottom feeders and will survive in conditions that other fish won't.
If you have a holding pond where you can have clean water, harvest your carp in the spring and keep them in clean water during the season.
Come fall they won't have the muddy taste as their system will have cleansed. They are a bit hard to debone, but they have excellent videos to help you do that.
Also, when pickled in vinegar, these little bones disappear. They also pressure cook very well, and if you do that, the bones pretty much disappear.

Medieval and monastic fish farming in regions like the Vendée relied on interconnected systems of artificial ponds (viviers) designed to raise carp for food. Monks carefully managed water flow, segregated fish by size, and used kitchen scraps to maintain a steady, reliable food supply.
Vendée is a very low, marshy area in the west of France that is not suited for regular agriculture.
They also raised eels and pikes:
https://www.kloster-maulbronn.de/en/interesting-amusing/collections/fish-farming

Resurrection of a thread here (thanks dailyish email!)

We used to get carp sandwiches from Joe Tess's place in Omaha when I was a kid. They were scored and fried with a cornmeal flour mix breading, and super crispy. Those were the days.

Is there a method for cleaning them? I always heard there was a mud vein to look out for

An old timer told me this recipe for the absolute best way to eat a carp:

Take large carp and nail it to a board using three nails directly through the body.
Leave it out in the sun for three days.
Remove carp, and eat the board.


I don't necessarily agree with him, because I've had some carp that was pretty good, but i struggle to get myself excited about eating them as long as I have access to catfish, particularly flatheads.

Neil Kleinschmit wrote:Resurrection of a thread here (thanks dailyish email!)

We used to get carp sandwiches from Joe Tess's place in Omaha when I was a kid. They were scored and fried with a cornmeal flour mix breading, and super crispy. Those were the days.

Is there a method for cleaning them? I always heard there was a mud vein to look out for

Scoring, battering them and deep frying is indeed a good method for preparing carp: The scoring exposes these smaller bones and they disappear in the cooking.
The "mud vein" isn't really a "vein" as in a blood vessel that brings the dirty blood back to the heart. It is actually a specialized layer of darker, fatty lateral-line meat containing blood vessels that can trap strong flavors from the water. When you buy a salmon filet in the store, you will see, running along the flank an area that is  brown, while the rest of the fish is pink to almost orange.

You can use a knife and filet out this area, (after cooking, it's easier) which indeed can trap the muddy taste On a large fish, well fed, it can be over an inch wide and about 1/4" deep at the thickest part.

I bow fish silver carp out of my local waterways. Grass carp as well.  Their diets make them a little safer to eat due to less bioaccumulation.  They are boney though. I typically grind them and then make fish cakes, bones and all.

I am also starting to make fish hydrolysate out of them now.

Ian, could you write more about your efforts? Color me intrigued,  this sounds like a stellar idea

Rico Loma wrote:Ian, could you write more about your efforts? Color me intrigued,  this sounds like a stellar idea

Indeed it is! and if you have access to a lot of dead fish, (like from a lake where all the fishermen can clean their fish) you have it made. I found the process at this site, which gives you the recipe and proportions fish/ sugar/ lactobacillus:
https://www.ridgedalepermaculture.com/blog/making-fish-hydrolysate
It sounds relatively simple, if somewhat stinky.

Rico Loma wrote:Ian, could you write more about your efforts? Color me intrigued,  this sounds like a stellar idea

Yeah, of course, is there is something specific that you would like to know? I live north central Indiana.  The largest body of water is the Wabash River with some others being the Tippecanoe River, Wildcat Creek and the Big Pine.  You fine the silver carp mostly in the Wabash and Tippecanoe rivers.  They are phyto/zoo-plankton eaters.  Grass carp are vegetation eaters.  They have become very prolific many waterways across the US due to their accidental release and compete with natives for food sources and / or foul the water with poorly digested plant material waste. Neither of these fish are omnivores or bottom feeders.  Like all fish in most waterways PFAS are becoming an issue. They are very bony, but the taste of the fish is very mild. They are just a typical "white fish". Season them up and they are tasty. Very boney though so like I said, I typically grind them twice through a meat grinder and just make fish cakes.  

Silver carp are not easy to catch because they are not going to go for most things you bait a hook with it. Bowfishing or netting is the way to go. Bow fishing is super fun.  A great hobby for spending time outdoors.  These carp species are grouped in to the "trash fish" category (a term that is misleading and misapplied to native nongame species).  You can basically take as many as you want at most waters where they exist.

I have tried at times to do a "fish rotation" through my garden, where I would save up the filleted corpses of the fish and bury them along an entire garden bed all at once. There were plenty of nutrients there but the practice took up a lot of freezer space, required a considerable time of bare soil and did not do the soil texture any favors.  A cover crop rotation is much healthier. I shot two silver carp on Saturday which came to about 3.4 kg.  I chopped up the fish put them in devoted "gross blender" and pulverized them.  Then you add you about 3 parts water per part fish and molasses and mix it all up. Molasses ratios seem to vary from 1/3 to 1 per part fish.   Stir it daily and this time of year, in about two weeks you can strain it for use.  I think it needs to pH stabilized to store with out further decomposition.  I have read dropping the pH to 3.5 with phosphoric acid is a good way to do that. All this will make about 4 gallons of concentrate which is greatly diluted and then soil / foliar applied.  Considering that 2 fish will make 4 gallons of concentrate (they are pretty big fish) and typical dilution rates are like an 1 oz per gal , this is the primary fertilizer I will need.  Considering I can spray it on cover crops, this means the cover crops will further enrich the soil (not to mention all the good they do with endomycorrhiza), fish hydrolysate is a great way to go. I will also soak my biochar (also made largely from invasive species) in dilute FH solution, making....biocharp.  It is a nice little local loop.

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:

Rico Loma wrote:Ian, could you write more about your efforts? Color me intrigued,  this sounds like a stellar idea

Indeed it is! and if you have access to a lot of dead fish, (like from a lake where all the fishermen can clean their fish) you have it made. I found the process at this site, which gives you the recipe and proportions fish/ sugar/ lactobacillus:
https://www.ridgedalepermaculture.com/blog/making-fish-hydrolysate
It sounds relatively simple, if somewhat stinky.

Fish hydrolysate, made correctly, smells more cheesy or ketchupy than fish.  Not a great smell, but mush better than fish emulsion and potentially better than collected manure.