Grass-eating Carp in Alabama and Mississippi

Question: Do you recommend grass-eating carp for use in ponds and lakes in Alabama and Mississippi?

Answer: We do recommend grass carp in many ponds in our area. They do a good job in most situations. There are certain situations where they are just overwhelmed by the amount of vegetation sometimes, but most they work really well. The biggest issues we have with them are keeping them in the ponds. One of the big things, they do like moving water so anytime you have a flood event or anything, they’re likely going to leave your pond if you have an overflow situation. But that’s usually the biggest drawback to them. And once they get to a certain size, they start losing their efficiency as far as removing the vegetation and you can overdo and then you have to get rid of them. And when you’ve got 40 or 50-pound grass carp in a pond, sometimes they can hurt your pond as far as your carrying capacity so you have to remove them—and they’re not an easy species to remove from the pond once they’re there. So that’s probably the two drawbacks is just losing them and them outgrowing your pond basically and losing their efficiency. But otherwise when they’re first stocked for a four or five year period, they’re really, really good on weed control and do a good job.

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