Assessment of a Bait to Increase Removal of Invasive Grass Carp from the Mississippi River

Grass Carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella), an invasive carp in the Mississippi River and Lake Erie basins, are opportunistic and feed heavily on aquatic vegetation. This over grazing can disrupt food webs, increase shoreline erosion, and intensify harmful algae blooms. Removal of Grass Carp has become a high priority of management agencies, but Grass Carp are challenging to remove using traditional methods. The use baits to enhance removal has increased in recent years. A bait formulated with corn and rapeseed has been successful at attracting Grass Carp in USGS laboratory trails and are being tested in various river systems. However, the effectiveness of the corn and rapeseed bait has not been examined in a large riverine system like the Mississippi River. The Mississippi River is economically and ecologically imported and has a rapidly increasing population of Grass Carp, particularly in Pool 19. As such, Pool 19 of the Upper Mississippi River is an ideal location to test the effectiveness of the bait to draw and aggregate Grass Carp to target location where they can more easily be removed.