Warmer weather
The price of carp is low compared with other commercial fish, but the ease of catching large quantities makes up for this, both men said.
Irwin has turned down a job in Alaska for the summer. Catching carp in Kentucky is a much easier, he said.
"Here, the weather is warmer, the climate is better and I get to sleep in my own bed at the end of the day," he said, adding that the earnings are comparable to what he would get in Alaska.
Irwin and Berry make a good living catching Asian carp, which are so abundant in rivers and lakes that they have become a serious ecological problem for states such as Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Illinois and Kentucky.
Ron Brooks, fisheries director at the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, said Asian carp are disrupting $1 billion worth of recreational and commercial business in western Kentucky alone.
"The Asian carp dominates the biomass, creating problems for commercial and recreational fishing, boating and water skiing. It deters a lot of new business owners when they talk to us about opening in Kentucky," Brooks said.
In some waterways, carp are so abundant that they jump out of the water into boats, sometimes hitting boaters and creating a nuisance. The massive schools of the fish are also hazardous to water skiers on popular lakes. Commercial fishermen in pursuit of other types of fish have to try hard not to catch them.
Asian carp are having a $7 billion negative effect on various businesses in the U.S..
But He Lining, development manager at Two Rivers Fisheries, said the fish are not a problem, but an opportunity.
According to He, who is writing a book about the species, the fish was introduced to the U.S. by scientists in the late 1960s and early '70s as an easy and cheap way to treat domestic waste.
However, once the fish got into the river and lake systems, they flourished. Decades later, the Asian carp population has grown to such an extent that it is creating an ecological disaster, crowding out other species competing for rich food sources in waterways.
"The Asian carp is an important fish. It's an incredible species and has been domesticated in Asia for more than 2,400 years," He said. "We consume more Asian carp than any other fish ... We eat more silver carp than tuna and salmon combined.
"It is a problem here, but it's not garbage, it's a gold mine," He said, adding that in China, Asian carp processing is a $10 billion business.
