Carp Removal Program Suspended On Beaver Dam Lake, Program’s Future Uncertain

(Beaver Dam) The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources will not be offering contracts this year to commercial fishing companies to remove carp from Beaver Dam Lake. Carp are an invasive species from Europe that reproduce and grow quickly; bottom feeders that stir up the lake bed creating murky water while uprooting plants, reducing food options for other species. Under the current model, private fishing companies pay the state for the opportunity to remove carp and sell it for profit at market. Beaver Dam has had a contract in place for several years and is one of the more productive lakes in the state for harvesting carp.

“We’re evaluating internally where we want to go with the program,” says Fisheries Biologist Travis Motl with the DNR’s Horicon office, “In recent years we’ve had a number of issues with contractors, from a breach of contract standpoint; it was really time for the department to take a step back.” He says there has been no decisions made yet.

Motl, who oversees waterways in Dodge and Jefferson counties, says it is difficult for the state to hold fisheries accountable as their interest is market driven and if there is no demand they may not fulfill the contracts.

“We’ve had so many [contracts] on the landscape it was getting hard for us to enforce or monitor the contracts to make sure these guys are in compliance,” he says,” so [the DNR] is scaling back on the number of contracts. Fishing waters where we are not going to have an effect on the rough fish population is not the business we want to be in.” Motl says the state needs to figure out where they want commercial fishing with specific management goals.

Beyond this year, the future of the carp removal program has yet to be decided.

“We are going to explore moving forward ‘how do we evaluate the effect that we are having with these contracts’ and ‘are we making some kind of dent where we are improving water quality and further improving the whole fishery’.”

Prior to last year, the DNR had contracts in the region for carp removal on Lake Sinissippi, Fox Lake, Beaver Dam Lake and Lake Koshkonong, which has one of the bigger carp populations in the state. Last year, those contracts were all scaled back except for Beaver Dam. This year, he says there are only a couple carp removal contracts in the whole state.

There has been little-to-no research on the impacts of contract fishing and the effects it has on water quality and fishing in general. Motl says Beaver Dam Lake has issues beyond carp, specifically nutrient runoff from surrounding agriculture into the watershed. He gave credit to the growing relationship between lake groups and ag producers in implementing more sustainable practices.

“I don’t have any concerns that it’s going to completely crash the fishery or anything like that but it’s hard to say exactly what effects are going to happen,” Motl says.

The intent is to have a decision made on the future of the program by late summer or early fall.

 

Listen to our interview with Travis Motl here: