Experts say putting Asian carp on menus could curb river problems

Renaming misspelled fish to sell as supper may help reduce their population.

According to "experts", Illinois' waterways risk being choked by crap carp... Asian Carp, to be precise. As their name implies, they're not indigenous to this region, and they're sort of taking over and eating all the food the native species need in order to survive. They also have a strange tendency to leap out of the water at the sound of a motor, so, I guess they've knocked a few boaters and water-skiers sillier.

And, as everybody who has ever had to eat what he or she has caught knows, carp, regardless of their country of origin, are nasty, bony things with little meat and less palatable flavor. Still, I did have a slab of smoked carp which actually tasted like food, instead of mud and shoes and dog toes (yes, I've had all of the above in my mouth at one time or another in my life, to my everlasting horror) rubbed with fish oil. Nevertheless, carp are, by their very nature, a garbage scow of the waterways, and they generally taste like it.

Who knows? The right chefs could make a profit off of those nasty, aggressive, fast-growing scaly monsters.

But I'm not volunteering to sample those dishes.