The lure of Asian carp: turning a pest into gold

Justin Irwin and James Berry drove their boat on Barkley Lake in western Kentucky, looking for Asian carp.

It didn't take them long to spot a school of fish. Stopping the boat, Berry started feeding a 600-foot-long vertical net into the water as Irwin maneuvered the boat to eventually form the net into a big circle.

With net in place, they then ran the boat in a circle, banging the hull with a wooden stick.

Immediately, carp started jumping out of the water and splashing back in.

A few lucky ones managed to jump outside of the net to live another day; some dived deep enough to get away.

When the flurry subsided, Berry began to pull the net up and pick carp out one by one.

Repeating this process one or two more times, they would have enough of a load to deliver to the nearby Kentucky Fish Center owned by Angie Yu, who also operates Two Rivers Fisheries, the largest Asian carp processor and exporter in the US.

Berry and Irwin, half-brothers originally from Washington, came to Kentucky to fish Asian carp in November last year.

Irwin is a commercial fisherman who has fished all over the world, from America to Africa, most recently in Alaska during the summer. For three months a year, he would work 20 to 22 hours a day off Alaska. The pay was good enough to cover a year's worth of living expenses, but the work was extremely hard.

He read an article on the internet one day about commercial fishing in Kentucky and Asian carp and immediately got interested.

"As a commercial fisherman, my interest is to fish up as much as I can," Irwin said.

Irwin and his family live in Costa Rica, his brother Berry was in Tennessee running heavy equipment for a living. The opportunity presented by Asian carp drew them both to Kentucky.

The brothers ran into some difficulties at first. They started with the wrong size net and couldn't catch a single fish. "We traded a car for a new net, and the rest is history," said Berry.

Their average haul of a day is between 3,000 and 7,000 pounds. Last month, they delivered almost 100,000 pounds. That's $16,000 earning between them, not counting the 5-cent subsidy from the state of Kentucky.

"We usually work 10 to 12 hours a day, seven days a week. If we can fish, we fish," said Berry.