Paul Pezalla talks with Joel Greenberg and me Monday afternoon about Chicago carp fishing on "Outside."
Pezalla made an odd journey from academia to owning an international carp fishing business, Wacker Bait & Tackle. He talks about reasons for that journey and the Chicago Carp Classic next month.
This year's Chicago Carp Classic is Sept. 9-11 on the Chicago lakefront.
"Outside" airs from 4:30-5 p.m. Mondays on WKCC-FM (91.1) in Kankakee. Rebroadcasts of the show are at 12:30 p.m. on Sundays.
Laurel Soper, the web tech and digital media person for KCC, has put together a better podcast system set up here.
Otherwise, click here for online listening options.
There is a Facebook page for Outside with Dale Bowman and Joel Greenberg.
I hope the Epsilon-minus carp-haters who always seem to chime in on this blog will take the time to listen to this thoughtful interview.
These points are worth repeating:
Common Carp, in and of themselves, cannot overpopulate a healthy body of water.
Carp can dominate certain ecosystems generally only after humans have done one or more of the following:
1) Caused excessive phosphate loading and otherwise degraded the water (Pollution).
2) Unbalanced the predator-prey relationship by excessive removal of carnivorous gamefish (Overfishing).
3) Engineered waters with dams and retention ponds to create eutrophic environments perfect for low oxygen-tolerant species (Overdevelopment).
Thanks to Paul, Dale and Joel for an interesting, if somewhat short, program.