Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 January 1899 — The Carp and The Carpers. [ARTICLE]

The Carp and The Carpers.

The Morocco Courier is quite funny and the Rensselaer Democrat tries to be and fails, in regard to L. 8. Alter’s article about the present and prospective effect of the Ger fa an carp in the Kankakee river. And yet we have no doubt but that Mr. Alter’s ideas in that respect have a good many facts to justify them. The enormous fecundity of the German carp is a well known fact, and that since having been planted in the Kankakee river by the government fish oommission they have increased and multiplied until the whole river swarms with them is another well known fact, bbbveij Kuukukeefioliexmaukuuwb to his sorrow. The further facts are also known that until within the last year or two the slow and sluggish Kankakee has been choked and clogged from bank to bank with the rank growth of water grasses and weeds of all kinds, until their effect could not have been otherwise than to greatly interrupt and retard the current. This past year every hunter who has been to the river fisher, and who has been familiar with its previous weedy and grassy condition, has noted with astonishment how free it has been of weeds and grass. Furthermore, every observant dweller along the river has noticed how soon the river reached a low stage after high water, and how low a comparative level it has maintained even in very, wet times. This rapid subsidence and low average stage erf the river is no doubt, mainly due to the freedom of the river from aquatic vegetation, and this freedom is known to be due to the work of the German carp. Mr. Alter’s estimate that the work of these fish has added ten per cent, to the carrying capacity of the river is not unreasonable, nor is his other estimate that moving the snags and driftwood from the stream would add another ten per cent. Whether this added 20 per cent, would be sufficient to work the full results that he estimates, is another question. That it would go a long ways towards it, however, there is no doubt at all- f