As Wade Robbins and his crew of three tighten a large fishing net below Barkley Dam in far western Kentucky, they are capturing thousands of Asian carp above and below the water’s surface.
The invasive species is notorious for its jumping. Soon, a barrage of Asian carp from the top of the net start to launch themselves out of the net – slamming into the boat’s deck and hitting nearby crew members.
But the chaotic nature of the fish and the hail-like sounds they make as they smack onto the floor of the boat don’t phase the fishermen. Robbins’ crew regularly harvests thousands of carp using a large net known as a seine to circle and trap large schools of the infamous fish gathered around Barkley Dam’s areas of flowing water. On average, they catch anywhere between 40,000 and 60,000 pounds of carp in one swoop.
Normally, state regulations prohibit the use of this size seine in Kentucky waterways. But this team is part of a Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources program that allows commercial fishermen to use experimental gears and ways of fishing the species – giving them the ability to harvest tens of thousands of pounds of carp a day.
Robbins said over time, his team has modified the seine net to make it better suited for catching Asian carp.
“Kentucky allowed us to tweak on that, allowed us to try different things that may work for carp that, you know, we've never done before, and we've come up with this, and we think… this one's pretty effective,” Robbins said.
Invasive Asian carp have dominated some Kentucky waterways for the past couple of decades, especially around the Mississippi, Ohio, Cumberland and Tennessee rivers.
Murray State University professor Timothy Spiers, who researches fish ecology, said carp can take over environments because they grow and reproduce quickly. They also don’t face much competition for food.
“They don't really have any predators here in the United States, and the reason for that is they grow so quickly… they grow so fast by the end of their first growing season, they're pretty much too big for our native predators... also our native predators didn't evolve with them, and so don't necessarily recognize them as potential prey,” Spiers said.
Since 2010, Kentucky’s fish and wildlife agency has launched several efforts to try and combat four varieties of Asian carp – including enticing commercial fishers to help weed out the invasive species. One of those initiatives housed under the Experimental Commercial Fishing Methods Program allows approved participants to adapt certain techniques and tools to conduct mass harvests of Asian carp.
KDFWR’s Joshua Tompkins helped start the Experimental Gears and Methods for Commercial Fishing program in 2020. He said it was created after some fishermen reached out wanting to try different ways of bringing in more fish – including the use of some tools that would otherwise fall outside of the state’s regulations.
“A way that we went about vetting those requests is by establishing the Experimental Gears and Methods for Commercial Fishing [program], explicit to the removal of invasive carp," Tompkins said.
Although the program deems the gear “experimental,” Tompkins said fishermen involved are primarily using tools and techniques already in use out-of-state.
“It's very traditional commercial fishing gear. It's very traditional tackle [that’s] used in ocean fisheries for other species. [There just] wasn't a legal means to use it here in Kentucky,” Tompkins said. “Some of these commercial fishers that are primarily using it… potentially had experience with the gear in another state was legal… and so they wanted to bring some of those experiences and expertise into Kentucky and utilize them to increase the harvest here.”
Robbins’ western Kentucky fishing crew is among those seeing results underneath this program. Their hauls accounted for roughly one-fourth of the 16 million pounds of Asian carp harvested in Kentucky in 2024, Tompkins said.
Through the program, state biologists monitor the fish caught by fishermen to keep track of any non-carp species that are brought in. However, Robbins said it’s rare for fish other than Asian carp to get caught in his harvest.
“We have to do daily paperwork, and several days out of a month we'll have a biologist on board also to verify a lot of that stuff, but… I can't even give you a percentage [of how many are caught, it’s] just so far below 1%. If we are catching… things that are not Asian carp, then we are in the wrong place and we're doing it wrong,” Robbins said.
A typical day for Robbins’ team sees them first catching a school of carp – which typically only takes around 15 minutes of high intensity work. That’s followed by long periods of moving the fish off the water using a small crane system – something that takes over 12 hours on some days with hefty catches. Once on land, the fish are then sold to a local company which converts them into fishmeal and oil.
On one of his most recent trips, Robbins said his crew caught a personal best of more than 90,000 pounds.
For a traditional commercial fisherman using a method such as gillnetting, Robbins says this whole process would be much longer and labor intensive, with the result of catches only being around 1,000 pounds on average.
“Our average catch down here over the last two weeks is running about… maybe 50,000 this year, per day. So four to five times as many fish… if you were to catch that many [using] gillnets on the lake, you'd be there for two or three days working very horrible manual labor,” Robbins said.
It’s not financially viable for every commercial fisherman to follow in his footsteps, Robbins said.
“That's a limitation [of] the program for [new] guys, that money comes out of [the] fishermen's pockets… it doesn't come from some other program or anything like that,” Robbins said.
Robbins said the net his crew is currently using goes for around $30,000. On an average day they could spend up to $500 on fuel for the three boats they use.
Additionally, Robbins said the team faces a few problems while on the waterways. He said there is little communication there is between him and the operators of Barkley Dam about when spillway gates open and when the dam’s lock system is in use.
He also said the crew often gets pushback from some – primarily out-of-state – bow fishermen who see commercial fishing as competition.
“We're not purposely trying to wreck anything for anybody, we're trying to improve things, that's the bottom line,” Robbins said. “But that's why we [get along with] the local guys so well, because they know we're going to do our job. Then they come in and they shoot their fish all afternoon or evening.”
In the time Robbins has been fishing Kentucky waterways for carp, he said he has noticed a direct reduction in their population sizes. But interestingly, he said the more the population decreases, the larger the remaining fish become since there is less competition over food sources. That size increase benefits commercial and sporting fishermen alike, Robbins said.
Since 2013, Tompkins said around 85 million pounds of Asian carp have been harvested in the state. More than two-thirds of that has come from western Kentucky.
Spiers attributes these high yields primarily to the work of commercial fishermen who he said have stepped in to fill a vital role.
“We are the top predator [for Asian carp], and so that's why commercial fishing is so important,” Spiers said. “Commercial fishermen, they're the key to controlling this species.”
