Letters to the Editor

Editor, The Review:

My dad was an avid sport fisherman.  Every summer when I was a kid, we'd pack into the Buick to head "up north" to fish for his favorite, Northern Pike.  Before that, he'd look over my collection of realistic, rubbery plastic bugs and frogs, suggesting ones we'd try on a hook.  I inherited his rods, reels and tackle, but don't seem to find time to use them enough.

For some of us these days, beef doesn't agree with the stomach, and fatty pork is delicious but deadly.  Chickens nowadays taste so artificial, they're just not worth it.  So we eat a lot of fish, from salmon to catfish nuggets, mostly conveniently frozen.  But I'd rather roll a wheelbarrow three blocks down to the Saginaw River for a vendor to sell me a locally-caught, fifty pound fish.

I don't want to jeopardize the excellent perch at Bergers or walleye at the River Rock, but the picture the REVIEW recently published of a mammoth Asian carp looks less to me like an invading monster than two weeks of good eating.  The April 22nd New York Times wrote that the Asian (silverfin and bighead) carp are rich in healthy omega-3 fats, don't accumulate mercury, and don't bottom-feed like the US common carp.  Considered a delicacy in China and Vietnam, it's already promoted by the state of Louisiana at  http://www.wlf.louisiana.gov/silverfin/ . 

Some Kentucky businesspeople are trying to market it as "Kentucky Tuna".  I'd rather it end up called Great Lakes Bayfish, and our harbors be the home of its fishing fleet.  Maybe in a few years there will be a big summertime fry of them in each riverfront park.  Sure, I'll mourn the fun sport fishing of the past and present if it declines, but not too much if it means a new, sustainable Michigan-based food industry, with its inexpensive staple right at our door.

Mike Mosher

Bay City

Editor’s Reply: Editor’s Reply:  Having never consumed an Asian Carp, I’m not going to weigh in on the merits of their edibility; other than to lament the potential loss of such indigenous species as Rainbow Trout, which while not as dominant a species, nonetheless contain incomparable subtleties of richness & flavor. And if Asian Carp ever do make into the Great Lakes basin, I sure wouldn’t want to be skiing behind a motorboat, seeing as the sound of boat engines cause this particular species to jettison out of the water and body slam a skipper with the full weight and fury of a cinder block. . Ever hear the adage about a ‘fish out of water’?