Something fishy here

Now here's something you don't see every day.

Sept. 7, 2008 05:33 PM
Associated Press

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.- It's a fishing tale that packs a wallop so strong it broke the jaw of a southeastern Arkansas teen and covered him in fish blood and guts. Seth Russell, 15, of Crossett, was cruising Lake Chicot on a large inner tube towed by a boat when a Silver Asian carp leaped from the water and smacked him in the face. Seth was knocked unconscious.
"He doesn't remember anything at all," the boy's mother, Linda Russell, said last week. "He was laughing, and the next thing he remembers, he is waking in a hospital."
The teen has had oral surgery to wire several teeth together and still experiences back pain that doctors attribute to whiplash from the high-speed collision, his mother said.
He's not the only one who's had a run-in with the "flying" Silver Asian carp."They do not fly, but they are quite good jumpers," said Carole Engle, director of aquaculture and the fisheries center at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. "Over the past year, we have had some calls about fish jumping and causing injuries on Lake Chicot."Their jumping behavior is a problem, and their population appears to be growing there," Engle said. Silver Asian carp were first imported to the United States in the 1970s. Catfish farmers brought them here to remove algae and other suspended matter from their ponds. The Environmental Protection Agency started a program allowing cities to use them to help clean the water in sewer treatment plant ponds.

We use to grow catfish in the Arkansas Delta. A few years ago we transferred a few of the carp from there to the pond we have at home in an attempt to control the weeds and grass. (see photo)

While on the topic of fish, I have another sad loss to report. I looked in my 55 gallon fishtank this morning and my plecostomus was dead!! I don't remember exactly what year I bought him, but I know when I moved my tank eight years ago he was already a few years old. I'm guessing he was around ten. A mere inch or two in length when I brought him home, he'd grown to a good 8" or better. Too big to flush! Sadly, I dipped him out (with a large net) and bagged him up for the garbage. I have no pictures of him, but this Wikipedia entry will give you a good idea of what he looked like.