Carp, somewhat despised by Bingham County fishermen, arrived in area streams when introduced by settlers who, like the carp, weren't native.
Carp were already in Idaho streams in 1888, Judge Stout's ranch at Alkali Creek (north of Glenn's Ferry) already sporting two foot long specimens at his pond. They were prolific enough in 1901that the Idaho Legislature permitted seining of carp, as well as salmon, sturgeon and charr. They had become so common that by WWI a New York firm called for thirty tons of carp a week from Idaho fishermen. Idaho Governor Alexander opened up seining for all fish species in Idaho during the war effort, which was draining meat supplies for troops, with the stipulation that no fish could be transported out of Idaho, instead had to be sold in-state at a price not to exceed fifteen cents a pound.
Citizens at that time regularly ate the now-lowly carp, in 1923 Nampa residents taking eight hundred pounds of fish seined from Lake Lowell--another eight hundred pounds had been stolen at the bank of the reservoir from the seiners. Complaints of carp (mistakenly thought to be buffalo carp by some) in the American Falls reservoir arose just five years after its 1926 construction.
Boise customers weren't complaining about carp in 1943, when meat markets there introduced the fish as a product. The State Fish and Game had distributed their catch, part of the rough fish removal project, to two retailers, who sold out the entire stock at thirty five cents a pound. The State charged only the cost of removal. A five pound carp, it was said, yielded a pound and a half of fillets.
Californian J.A. Poppe successfully introduced carp into the West in 1872 when he brought five fish from Holstein, Germany. Attempts in 1830 to stock the fish in North America had failed, but Poppe's fish reproduced rapidly. 31 Idaho applicants received 686 fish from the US Fish Commission in 1886 and the the carp's success here began. Scan the latter part of the article below for famed fisherman Izaak Walton's recipe for carp.
A million pounds of carp were seined from Idaho reservoirs in 1966, a $38,000 take at the time. Seiners took fish from C.J. Strike, Murtaugh, Blackfoot and American Falls Reservoirs. An Aberdeen enterprise run by the Chapple family reportedly seined the American Falls Reservoir from at least 1938 to 1981, marketing the carp on the West Coast where prejudice against the fish hadn't yet reached. They seined at Hull Springs, two miles south of Springfield, for many years.
Idaho Carp were advertised at a Fresno meat market in 1975. Carp were a big seller in the eastern states, too, comprising a large part of fresh water fish sales.
Though fisheries originally thought carp to be a harmless species, they found out otherwise, discovering that the mud feeding carp destroyed spawning grounds of other species and competed with food supplies. Local sportsman despise the carp, despite it being a fierce-fighting fish, preferring other species like trout, and though they may wish for its eradication from local streams and lakes few believe it possible, its numbers being so omnipresent.
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