Invaders !

[RiotInferno]

I've also heard that it's supposed to be really good smoked. The other problem, at least with the type of carp we have up here, is that they are thickly-scaled and full of bones, so it's a pain to clean them.

I see a pattern here.
We are still so spoiled we are not considering eating a fish that we consider an invasive species, because although it tastes allright, it costs a bit more time to clean. For the same money we can easily empty some piece of water in the deep pacific or south china sea and ship it over.
So instead of just dealing with the situation, we 1; don't make use of a sustainable source of high protein/healthy fish that if we catch lots if it actually helps solving a problem and 2; we just continue destroying the seas in other parts of the world, because we still can.?

Plus, at the end of they day, time is always a factor.
It takes so much less time to clean and prepare the "good" fish ( bluegill, walleye, trout, etc ) then carp. I don't just mean an extra hour or so. Cleaning them can be work (or so I've been told), and the process of smoking can take over a day.

That being said, as a fisherman, I take mild offense to you implying that because I don't want to clean carp, that I'll gladly destroy the oceans for my fish. There's plenty of other non-carp in our lakes that I gladly clean and eat. The only time I eat fish is during the fishing season, when I'm catching it.

This is one of these situations where I rapidly lose faith in human kind.

I agree. I think you'll be hard-pressed to find a true fisherman who doesn't care about conservation. There's a fight to be had with big corporations and over-fishing the oceans / major lakes. You won't find any allies if you start yelling at the little guys.