I swear, it was this big !| Off-Topic Discussion forum |

BBsGarage Reader
9/8/08 6:15 a.m.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- 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 has 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 the fish to help clean the water in sewer treatment plant ponds.

dyintorace GRM+ Memberand HalfDork
9/8/08 8:02 a.m.

Unfortunately, that is a common occurrence on a river near here.

Jumping sturgeon injures woman in Florida

Posted 6/12/2007 7:43 AM

ROCK BLUFF, Florida (AP) — A woman was injured over the weekend by a leaping sturgeon, the latest incident involving the flying fish on Florida's Suwannee River, officials said. Tara Spears, 32, was knocked unconscious by the animal on Sunday while boating on the river north of Rock Bluff, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reported.

She was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries and was expected to recover, the agency reported.

The large, prehistoric-looking sturgeon have hard plates along their backs. They can grow up to 8 feet long and up to 200 pounds.

In April, a leaping sturgeon severely injured a 50-year-old woman from St. Petersburg who was riding a personal watercraft on the Suwannee River. She suffered a ruptured spleen and had three fingers reattached by surgeons, but she lost her left pinkie finger and a tooth.

WilD Reader
9/8/08 9:52 a.m.

I saw a program about asian carp on PBS that had some great footage of them jumping in response to boat motors and to electric currents. The river was boiling with fish. Its quite an infestation.