Ohio River bass fishing negatively impacted by Asian Carp?

[mheichelbech]

Has anyone seen the bass fishing negatively impacted by Asian Carp where they fish?  I have fished the Ohio River McAlpine (Louisviile) pool for 25 years and the fishing seems to get worse wvery year.  The only thing I can think of to cause this is the influx of Asian Carp.

It used to be we would have 10-15 lb bags in little 3 hour week night tournaments in the spring.  Now 6 lbs is a constant winner.  Catching anything over 3 pounds is rare now.  It’s always been tough but just seems way worse now.

[Bankc]

It's probably not the carp, though that is a possible contributor.  

 

Other factors are increased fishing pressure (a lot more people fish now than 20 years ago), climate change, pollution, and sometimes a fishery just changes as it ages.  Sometimes it's due to natural fluctuations, and sometimes it's due to manmade interventions into natural fluctuations.  

 

Sometimes the brush and cover in it breaks down and doesn't get replaced with new growth if the lake remains at a steady level for decades.  So that's less protection for baitfish which leads to smaller bass. It's not unusual around here for a disaster to drain a lake that's not known as a good bass lake, but after a few years of slow repairs, enough vegetation regrows in the old lakebed, that when it finally does get refilled, it becomes a good bass lake a few years later.  And then reverts back to the way it was, because natural lakes aren't supposed to remain a constant depth at all times, but rather rise and fall with the seasons.  

 

Sometimes catch and release practices will increase the number of bass but decrease their average size.  And with fishing pressure, they might be harder to catch, even if there are technically more of them.  

 

On my local lake, it's a water supply reservoir, and with the budget cuts to infrastructure, they don't have the money to closely monitor the lake and make informed decisions, so they just spray it for vegetation to keep the filters free of clogs at regular intervals.  So depending on the weather, they'll sometimes spray the bass as they're spawning.  

[Team9nine]

I’m sure they're not helping, but the Ohio River has mostly always sucked, and likely always will. Keep in mind the McAlpine pool is where George Cochran won the 3-day Bassmaster Classic with 14 bass weighing 15 pounds ? 

 

The water quality tends to suck; the river fluctuations tend to suck; and the spawning habitat tends to suck. Oh, and the bass population in general tends to suck ?

 

My experience fishing “the river” over many years is that it runs in cycles, good and bad, for several years at a time. It seems like the best years are during periods of minimal flooding, decent water clarity, and an abundance of shallow water vegetation, especially on the main river. That ‘stability’ seems to help the spawning and recruitment out, which eventually translates to decent fishing…then you get a bad year or two of environmental conditions, and fishing sucks again for a period of time (years). Life as a bass in the river is tough, and most never live more than a few years it seems.
 

From tourney results I’ve seen, it seems the river has been in a down cycle for a while. I’m glad I no longer have to fish down there ?

[TnRiver46]

Yeah I was thinking the Ohio river has never been good bass fishing 

[mheichelbech]

The problem with the BASS Classic was they had it at the worst time of the year.   Summer is really tough.  Back in the 90s and up to about 2005, fishing in the Spring and late Fall was pretty good for this area of the country.  You could catch 2-4 pound Spotted Bass and 4-5 pound Largemouth.  Big bass in a tournament would usually be 5-6 lb range.      This was between March and May.  There is one particular marina that I use as a guidepost that always held big fish as long as you weren’t the 3rd or 4th guy through.  I also remember Spotted Bass commonly spawning on the trim tabs of big boats.  This rarely happens either anymore.  I’m sure one thing that hurts is several good marinas have silted in too.  
They built a new bridge and some have blamed that but I can’t see how that affects things.

[Team9nine]

Hard to say for certain, but i just looked at the results from all the river events in the Hoosier division BFLs over the last 20+ years, and it has been very rare that it ever takes more than 8+ pounds a day to win, whether Rocky Pt, Madison, Lawrenceburg or Tanners Cr., regardless of the month fished. The place just sucks, and has sucked for a long period of time ? 

 

Not certain when the carp got in there, but they certainly aren’t helping, I’m sure. They probably affect the smallies and spots on the main river worse than the largemouth in the embayments, maybe? Flooding and siltation are also a big problem. Bass recruitment has always been low, and even the hundreds of thousands of bass stocked into that pool over the years rarely seemed to help. 

I fished it a lot in the 1980s and 1990s, and it didn’t seem quite as bad - almost always tough, but there were fish to be had. Just seems like these days, getting a keeper or two is a struggle. I saw the results from this weekend (Tanners) and nearly 50 boaters blanked, including many of the well recognized “sticks.” Only 8 pounds to win, a pair of 6 pound sacks for 2nd and 3rd, then everyone else 5 lbs and change or less. I don’t even know why anyone bothers spending their time and money to fish there anymore - lol.

[mheichelbech]

34 minutes ago, Team9nine said:

Hard to say for certain, but i just looked at the results from all the river events in the Hoosier division BFLs over the last 20+ years, and it has been very rare that it ever takes more than 8+ pounds a day to win, whether Rocky Pt, Madison, Lawrenceburg or Tanners Cr., regardless of the month fished. The place just sucks, and has sucked for a long period of time ? 

 

Not certain when the carp got in there, but they certainly aren’t helping, I’m sure. They probably affect the smallies and spots on the main river worse than the largemouth in the embayments, maybe? Flooding and siltation are also a big problem. Bass recruitment has always been low, and even the hundreds of thousands of bass stocked into that pool over the years rarely seemed to help. 

I fished it a lot in the 1980s and 1990s, and it didn’t seem quite as bad - almost always tough, but there were fish to be had. Just seems like these days, getting a keeper or two is a struggle. I saw the results from this weekend (Tanners) and nearly 50 boaters blanked, including many of the well recognized “sticks.” Only 8 pounds to win, a pair of 6 pound sacks for 2nd and 3rd, then everyone else 5 lbs and change or less. I don’t even know why anyone bothers spending their time and money to fish there anymore - lol.

Matches up with my experience.  We only fish it because we are 15 minutes from the ramp.  The next closest bigger lake, Patoka isn’t an easy lake to catch fish in either….for me anyways.

My main point is, although it wasn’t great before, it’s gotten worse it seems.  

[TnRiver46]

That river has been for moving and stealing cargo, not fishing since the late 1700s. 

[Tennessee Boy]

I’m told by the experts that there is no evidence that Asian carp have spawned in the Tennessee river.  Kentucky lake is huge and if you removed all the carp the lake would probably drop 3 feet.  All of those carp came from the Ohio river and had to lock through Kentucky dam or Barkley dam.  That boggles my mind.

 

[mheichelbech]

Interesting.  Wonder why they would spawn in the Ohio and Mississippi but not the Tennessee River.  They are not as bad in our area as those videos you see but I’m sure it will get there eventually.