A Sucker For Early Season Fishing

A handsome Peter Grelli, with a not-quite-as-handsome carp

The local rivers have been unseasonably high this year and the late spring has ensured that a lot of the smaller stocked lakes were still under ice when the season opened. Undaunted by the prospect of a challenging start to the season, The Alliance is always keen to get our lines in the water. We headed to the nearby confluence of the Sturgeon and North Saskatchewan Rivers to officially start the season. Alliance members Scott W., James C. and new recruit Peter Grelli were all present for the inaugural outing. Though a only modest excursion, The Confluence is always a convenient and accessible setting; perfect to toast the start of a new season with.

It was the first warm weekend we had seen and the fishing was comfortable and relaxing. The atmosphere perfectly matched the lazy and blasé conduct of the spawning carp, who would casually rise and breach the surface of the shallows right in front of us, indifferent to our presence and seemingly in no rush to return to the sanctuary of the deeper waters they are known to dwell in. Though not considered a true sport fish by the Alberta Statutes and Regulations, hooking into one of their delicate mouths on a 3 weight fly rod with a number 17 hook and landing it in a swollen, fast moving river was a welcome test to start off the season.

Scott Wilson with a healthy Sturgeon River Carp

Carp in Alberta don't have the best reputation amongst anglers, which is chiefly due to the ignorance and uneducated opinions which abound amongst would-be sportsmen. I have heard on several occasions that anglers who unwittingly hook into carp, or 'suckers' as they are referenced to, will just abandon them on the river bank because they fear that the carp will out-compete more attractive species and damage the future prospects of the fishery. This is of course absolute boulder-dash. Carp fill a niche in their native ecosystems and actually help to keep the lakes and waterways they inhabit healthy by eating decaying plant matter and zoo-plankton that are overlooked by most other species. Also of note, is that their eggs and juveniles provide an important food source for sport fish and other predators. Granted they are not regarded as the most palatable of fish, their meat is actually lower in environmental contaminants when compared with predatory fish from the same ecosystem. Because toxins such as heavy metals and carcinogenic plastic particles accumulate in species higher up the food web, carp tend to not carry as many pollutants in their tissue.

The bottom line is that these fish have been a part of the ecosystem for longer than we have. To regard them as rubbish and adopt policies that actively try and exterminate them is not only foolhardy and short sighted, it is reminiscent of how species like Burbot and even the Provincial Bull Trout were treated in times past. We have a better understanding of the importance of such species in their local environments now, and have since actively tried to conserve and rehabilitate populations that were damaged by such attitudes. If you insist on harvesting one of these native fish from their habitats, don't let it go to waste. They make great bait or fertilizer and I have heard tell that there are some recipes that make these fish taste absolutely delicious. Though I have yet to try any of them for myself.