German/scale/common carp: The German or common carp was the variety most widely spread in Michigan.

Poppe settled them onto a train. The Transcontinental Railroad linking the West Coast to Iowa and the eastern rail network had been completed only three years earlier. Despite Poppe’s best efforts for those in his care, two more died in San Francisco, and another died on the boat from San Francisco to the coast near Sonoma.

Five had survived the nearly 7,000-mile journey – only the youngest, each about the size of a pen. Poppe placed them in his pond that August, hoping for their survival.

By the following May, the five German carp, also known as scale or common carp, had spawned 3,000 young. They also helped spawn a short-lived nationwide carp craze. In Michigan, state fish officials’ initial enthusiasm turned to alarm as the non-native’s depredations became another one of the state’s late 19th-century ecological disasters.

Poppe sold carp for food and for breeding to his neighbors as well as to Honolulu and Central America. News of his successful venture spread.

U.S. Fish Commission

The U.S. Fish Commission had been created the previous year in order to investigate “the causes of decrease in the supply of useful food-fishes of the United States, and of the various factors entering into the problem; and the determination and employment of such active measures as may seem best calculated to stock or restock the waters of the rivers, lakes and the sea.”

In the commission’s 1872-73 report, commissioner Spencer Baird noted:

 Sufficient attention has not been paid in the United States to the introduction of the European carp as a food fish, and yet it is quite safe to say that there is no other species that promises so great a return in limited waters. It has the pre-eminent advantage over such fish as the black bass, trout, grayling, &c., that it is a vegetable feeder, and, although not disdaining animal matters, can thrive very well on aquatic vegetation alone. On this account it can be kept in tanks, small ponds, &c., and a very much larger weight obtained, without expense, than in the case of the other kinds indicated. It is on this account that its culture has been continued for centuries. It is also a mistake to compare the flesh with that of the ordinary cyprinidae of the United States, such as suckers, chubs, and the like, the flesh of the genuine carp (Cyprinus carpio) being firm, flaky, and in some varieties almost equal to the European trout.

The “genuine” carp encompassed three varieties: the mirror carp, the leather carp, and most commonly, the German carp. The federal fish commission imported carp from Germany in 1877. Some were placed in Baltimore ponds, and others in the Babcock Lakes, a series of ponds adjoining the Washington Monument before the creation of the National Mall. In 1879, over 12,000 federal carp were taken from both sites and distributed to various states and territories, likely including Michigan.

In subsequent reports Baird listed the admirable qualities of carp: they were fecund, hardy, adaptable, and had rapid growth. Carp also showed a “harmlessness in its relation to other fishes,” the “ability to populate waters to their greatest extent,” and “good table qualities.”

By 1870, Michigan fish populations had declined as a result of overfishing, dam construction, pollution, and such habitat destruction as that caused by the timber industry. The waterborne transport of thousands of logs often scarred and eroded riverbanks, Sawmill sawdust dumped into waterways could blanket and choke a fish feeding or breeding ground.

Michigan Board of Fish Commissioners

The Michigan Board of Fish Commissioners formed in the spring of 1873. It did not have regulatory power. The Board could not compel commercial fishermen on Lake Michigan to stop decreasing the size of the holes in their nets, a strategy that led to the capture of immature whitefish before they could breed. The Board could not change timber industry practices. Its strategy was to hatch and distribute fish – those used for food – to replenish depleted populations and introduce new varieties thought beneficial.

The Board opened the state’s first hatchery in Pokagon, Cass County, in 1873. The following year, the hatchery produced whitefish, Atlantic salmon, king salmon, and carp. Aside from restocking commercial fishing areas in the Great Lakes – most notably the lucrative whitefish fishing grounds – the Board also offered shipments of young fish to farmers around the state. Originally the shipments were made in ordinary milk cans loaded on trains.

Railroading Carp

In 1888 the Board secured a specialized railroad car, the Attikumaig (an Ojibwe word meaning “whitefish.”) It combined space to transport fish, five sleeping berths for the men looking after them, a kitchen, and an office. The car traveled between 20 and 30,000 miles per year between February and July, distributing trout, whitefish, black bass, pike, and carp. It was eventually rebuilt and renamed the Fontinalis. Another fish car, the Wolverine, was built in 1913; a replica can be seen at the Oden fish hatchery in Alanson, Emmet county.

Carp were on the Attikumaig for a reason. “Several marked advantages are claimed for the German carp for profitable cultivation,” noted A December, 1880 issue of the Marshall Daily Chronicle. The article continued:

Any kind of a pond, no matter how restricted, can be used. Difficulties of temperature or purity of water are scarcely factors in carp culture. Providing the water is not too cold, carp thrive rapidly. In fact, no natural water has yet been found too warm for them. Being vegetable feeders, carp thrive on plants growing in the water, or may be given offal, like pigs, or boiled grain, like chickens. A large pond may be dug on arable land, allowed to grow carp for two or three years, the fish marketed and the ground brought under cultivation again.

In the same month and year the Kalamazoo Telegraph chimed in. “The farmers of Michigan should prepare ponds for the German carp which the fish commission is introducing into this country. It is one of the most prolific of fishes and among the best that can be supplied to the table.”

The table was a big one at the 1887 annual dinner of the American Carp Culture Association, based in Philadelphia. The group’s secretary noted:

 “The caterer carried out our instructions to the letter, and the result was that a select party of acknowledged epicures not only tasted but ate several pounds of carp without condiments or seasoning of any description whatever. The verdict seemed to be unanimous that carp raised and treated according to the system prevailing in this region is a first-class food fish … their flavor will be second only to the salmon family, certainly fully equal to the far-famed shad …

Perhaps the most enthusiastic carp-booster was Alliance, Ohio editor and publisher Lambelis Logan (he preferred the abbreviation “L. B. Logan.”) Logan was editor of the monthly magazine “American Carp Culture,” published from 1884 to 1888. Chapter 3 of Logan’s 1888 book “Practical Carp Culture” was titled “The Economic, Philosophic, Patriotic, and Sanitary Reasons for Carp Culture.” The chapter trails off before probing the connection between patriotism and carp, but it does extol the benefits of having a farm pond.

Ohio editor Lambelis Logan was a driving force behind the monthly magazine “American Carp Culture.”

Aside from raising carp, “water farming,” wrote Logan, provides beneficial vapors that “will moisten and purify the air, destroy disease germs and contribute to better health.” The pond supplies emergency water during a drought, he added, gives beauty to the farm, and provides a place to bathe, to ice-skate, and to harvest ice for the ice-house.

Logan went on to detail the multiple-pond system used in European carp culture, including the hatching pond, the stock pond for older carp, and the market pond for mature fish. A series of carp ponds was a feature, for example, of a Cisterian Catholic monastery, founded in 1186, in Reinfeld, a German town in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein. The Reinfeld town crest displays a carp to this day. Though the abbey was destroyed in the sixteenth century, the carp-ponds once tended by monks are still visible.

Reinfeld was the town that Julius Poppe had visited in 1872. He procured his fish from a town miller and carp culturist. Poppe had left Sonoma on May 3, 1872, traveled through the Panama Canal to New York, and crossed the Atlantic twice and the entire American continent once on an expensive three-month journey. He had faith in German-raised carp. Europe had had centuries to refine the art of breeding and maintaining carp in a controlled series of ponds.

Reinfeld’s coat of arms displays a silvery German carp

Michigan farmers would have to learn on the fly.

“A method of systematic carp culture in a series of proportioned ponds as detailed in the preceding pages would be entirely too extensive and costly a luxury for beginners, as most farmers must be,” wrote Logan in “Practical Carp Culture.”  “… [In this case,] a single pond must answer all the purposes.”

Leon Cole agreed in his 1905 book “German Carp in the United States.” “With a few possible exceptions carp culture has never been attempted in this country after the lines which it is carried on so extensively in Germany,” he wrote. “[Most carp culturists] merely dumped the fish into any body of water that was convenient, or into any pond that could be hastily scraped out or constructed by damming some small stream, and thereafter left them to shift for themselves . . . “

Cole was a 1901 graduate of the University of Michigan. As a junior, he already worked for the school as a zoological assistant, living nearby at 703 Church Street. After receiving his bachelor’s, he stayed on at the university to conduct zoological research, some involving carp that he maintained in an aquarium. Cole later received his doctorate from Harvard and became a zoologist and professor of genetics at the University of Wisconsin.

Carp Falls out of Favor

By the time Cole graduated, carp had already fallen out of favor in Michigan. Their habit of eating by slurping up tidbits on the bottom of a river or pond and spitting out detritus made the water turbid. Such native predator fish as the pike had difficulty seeing prey through haze. In feeding, carp dislodged or damaged aquatic vegetation, a food source for some waterfowl and shelter for other fishes. They could cause riverbank erosion in scouring for food. Sportsmen suspected that they were crowding out more desirable fish. By the turn of the century, the carp’s reputation was in tatters.

The Jan. 1, 1897 Marshall Daily Chronicle said, “German carp are becoming more numerous in the Kalamazoo river each season, and it is feared that they will sooner or later drive out all other species of fish. There should be no restriction placed on their destruction. They bring but two cents a pound in the market.”

“Some years ago the cries went up all over Michigan that the German carp be planted in our rivers,” wrote the August 24, 1899 Benton Harbor Daily Palladium. “Now that we have them the lovers of game fish are wishing they could be exterminated, for it is said that they are destroying the spawn of our best river fish, and that they themselves are scarcely fit to eat. Carp are depopulating the Kalamazoo River of its best fish.”

In “German Carp in the United States,” Cole summarized possible reasons why carp culture had failed. People had rushed into the venture without knowledge of the procedures involved. They ate carp during the spring spawning season, when the flesh was of poor quality. It was cooked incorrectly, without the European techniques that rendered it palatable. Finally, escaped carp became so numerous in waterways that it wasn’t necessary to maintain a private pond.

Carp Compared to Sturgeon

The story of carp in Michigan is roughly a mirror image of the history of Michigan sturgeon. The sturgeon is indigenous; the carp is invasive. The sturgeon needs many years to mature before breeding; the carp is fertile at a young age. The sturgeon was originally regarded as a trash fish and later as extremely valuable due to its eggs, made into caviar. The carp arrived in this country lauded by government fish experts and is now considered a trash fish.

The sturgeon’s decline and the carp’s ascent crossed paths in the 1880s. The 1887-88 Michigan Fish Commission report notes that there is “an increasing demand for carp” – there were 3,485 applicants for state hatchery carp in 1886 alone. In addition, between 1880 and 1890, over 50,000 federal carp had been planted in Michigan waters. The state report also noted “one of the most valuable fish is the worthless sturgeon of a few years ago, and so assiduously is it sought for that the supply will become exhausted in a very short time …”

Not so the carp. As a speaker at the 1901 meeting of the American Fisheries Society said, “We hear a great deal from sportsmen’s clubs and from other sources as to how the carp can be exterminated. It cannot be exterminated. It is like the English sparrow; it is here to stay.”

Mystery Artifact

In the last column, I stupidly neglected to obscure the patent number on the patent drawing of the mystery artifact.

Mystery Artifact

Commenters (adept Internet-scourers all!) wrestled with the moral dilemma this posed, but proved honorable of course – no one spilled the beans!

That means I have the pleasure – it is was shepherd’s crook invented in 1884 by one Sumner D. Felt of Jackson, Michigan.

Because this column’s Mystery Artifact is about as obscure as a Mystery Artifact could be, I feel bound to drop a hint. This is something you could use in conjunction with the carp pond on your farm, in order to protect your investment. I look forward to your guesses!

Laura Bien is the author of “Hidden Ypsilanti” and “Tales from the Ypsilanti Archives.” Contact Laura at ypsidixit@gmail.com.

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This week, The Chronicle’s local history columnist Laura Bien takes a 40-year look back into the past at the use of rotenone on a local lake – Ford Lake. That body of water received a passing mention in Matt Naud’s environmental indicator column on phosphorus – it involved a 1991 algal bloom.  But back in the early 1970s Ford Lake wasn’t blooming algae, it was blooming fish.

Shoreline of Ford Lake after the fish kill.

In 1973, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources wanted to turn Ypsilanti’s Ford Lake into a fisherman’s paradise. They planned to stock it with muskellunge, rainbow trout, and large- and smallmouth bass.

The only problem was the lake’s population of “rough fish” – mostly the common carp, plus bullheads and suckers. Carp are not native to Michigan. They were introduced in the late 19th century by the era-equivalent of the DNR as a valuable food fish that was cheap to keep on artificial ponds dug on farmers’ land. The farmers’ aquaculture projects inevitably spilled into Michigan waterways.

A century later, the DNR planned to douse Ford Lake with the piscicide rotenone to kill the carp and other rough fish, then whisk the remains into the Ypsilanti Township landfill and restock the pond.

Instead, the project led to a statewide ban on rotenone.

The first step was to lower the lake level. Rotenone was expensive, and a smaller quantity of lake water would mean less poison. Upstream organizations in charge of various sections of the river and its dams agreed to help. The dams closed, and the level of water in Ford Lake dropped by a yard.

One setback at the beginning of the project presaged the disaster to come. After the rotenone had been delivered and stored on the banks of Ford Lake, someone decided it would be a hoot to roll the 50-gallon metal barrels into the water. Scuba divers had to be hired to fish out the barrels.

After the barrels of rotenone were rolled into Ford Lake, scuba divers were hired to retrieve them.

The local organization overseeing the project was JYRO, the Joint Ypsilanti Recreation Organization. JYRO expected that a thousand or so volunteers on shore and in boats would assist in the cleanup, based on an informal survey of local residents. The organization scheduled the task on Mother’s Day weekend. JYRO expected so many private boats to turn out on the lake that the DNR sent down a special marine safety boat to supervise the fleet.

On May 10, the barrels of rotenone were loaded onto a few small motorboats and laid on their sides, two to a boat. Hoses led from the openings in the can lids, running along either side of the boat pilot, and extending over the stern into the water churned by the power motor. Sitting a foot or two from one hundred gallons of poison, the pilots were not furnished with protective gear.

A double-barreled approach was taken to dispersal of the rotenone.

Rotenone was harmless to humans, said DNR fish biologist Walt Root, as quoted in the May 9, 1973 Ypsilanti Press. “‘It’s a dehydrating agent,’ he explained. ‘I had a mouthful of it once as an experiment, and it dries your mouth. Fish are highly allergic to it . . . [i]t causes the blood vessels to shrink in the gills.’” The paper added, “Labels on the drums, however, indicate the chemical is toxic.”

“The boats skimmed gingerly across the lake,” stated the May 11, 1973 Ypsi Press, “depositing the liquid in their spray.” The poison sank into Ford Lake’s murky depths. Dead fish began to wash up on shore.

The newspaper presented this as a culinary opportunity.

“Anyone who can make it to the banks of Ford Lake,” suggested a May 11 Press article, “can take home all the fish he can eat for the next few days in the wake of [the fishkill]. The thousands of dead fish, mostly carp, are free for the taking. JYRO officials say they must be carted away and are giving area residents first crack at the kill.”

When life gives you dead fish, make dead-fish-ade.

Food writer for the Press, Dorothy Zack, seized the occasion to publish fish recipes. Her May 15 column headlined “Lots of fish around gives new menu ideas” said, “The fish kill in the waters of the Huron River and Ford Lake bolstered household stocks of fish for the dinner table  . . .  those that went into the freezer are still waiting for new recipes.” She advised dipping filets in whipped eggs and coating them in cracker crumbs or cream of wheat. The photo accompanying the article depicted a massive slab of salmon that dwarfs the smaller filets available in supermarkets today.

Residents didn’t bite.

But “fishing” with rotenone wasn’t such a far-fetched idea. Derived from the roots of plants in the pea family, rotenone had been used for years by indigenous people in South America and Australia for fishing. When the plant roots were crushed and thrown into the water, dazed fish would surface for capture and consumption. The use of plants containing rotenone or other poisons for fishing was widespread. Various Native American peoples used black walnut, horse chestnut, poke, and other plants. Fishing with poison was practiced in the Pacific Islands, India, and Africa – in fact, on every continent.

Rotenone works by absorption into fish gills. Though the World Health Organization classifies rotenone as a “moderately hazardous” poison, and a link to Parkinson’s disease has been suggested by clinical trials, it is generally poorly absorbed in the human digestive tract, though deadly to fish. Rotenone breaks down quickly in the environment. It’s also used as an insecticide and pesticide. The DNR had used rotenone in Michigan since the 1930s.

Nevertheless, the crowds of eager fish-harvesters, shore-cleaners, and the fleet of boats never appeared on Ford Lake. Dead fish continued to accumulate.

Then someone in charge of the dam at the south end of Ford Lake opened it by mistake. Poisoned water poured into Belleville Lake. In its morning May 14 edition of the newspaper, the Press called it a “mishap.” By the evening edition, the story had expanded and the headline had changed to “Thousands of fish killed in Belleville.”

The May 14 Press quoted DNR fish biologist Ed Bacon, who “said the poisoning was embarrassing . . . ‘Dead fish do smell, and sometimes they smell all the way to Lansing.’” His words would prove prophetic.

As the fish continued to pile up on Ford Lake’s shoreline, large black flies appeared. Rats were seen, some shot with an air rifle. The handful of cleanup staff worked desperately to shovel up and bag the fish and heave the bags into a front-loader, but they couldn’t keep up.

Irate calls were coming in to Gary Owen, a Democratic state representative involved with the cleanup. He authorized a group of 105 state prisoners to transfer from Pontiac to Ford Lake to help pick up fish.

The paper issued an invitation to residents to come down to the now-fetid shoreline, mingle with the felons, and pick up fish corpses.

Invitation declined.

“[JYRO] is mad because too few citizens have come out to help,” said the May 18 Press. “JYRO was counting on the help of close to 1,000 volunteers, that estimate drawn from responses received before the planned fish kill. But E. L. Abbott, JYRO chairman, says only about 25 people have come out.”

The original estimate of 150 tons of fish carcasses had been surpassed days ago. Dead fish kept coming. In desperation, a makeshift “road” was plowed down one steep lake bank for the front-loader. This road consisted of a section of lakeside scraped bare and at an angle so precipitous that in another era it might qualify for its own reality show. The front loader crept carefully up and down the slope, and the tonnage of fish continued to climb.

A short road was constructed down to the lakeside to aid in disposal of the dead fish.

The community hoped for relief. On May 22, the paper published an article optimistically headlined “Fish clean-up almost finished,” though in fact the effort was only a little over halfway done. Four-hundred tons of fish had been removed. The prisoners and cleanup workers had left the project. “But [state fish biologist Walt] Root didn’t see that as posing any problem,” the article indicated, “as all the remaining fish are on the south side of the lake and away from residential areas.”

The following day’s Press story, headlined “Fish outlook good in two area lakes,” was even more upbeat. “At Ford Lake, DNR has begun restocking the lake while cleanup of dead fish continues,” it said. “About 92,000 rainbow trout were put into the lake Tuesday and before the week is out DNR plans to stock 100,000 smallmouth bass and 1.75 million walleye fry . . . in the future, there are plans to stock pure-bred muskies, large mouth bass, hybrid sunfish, and channel catfish. Ed Bacon, DNR fish biologist, said the potential for fishing in Ford Lake was ‘terrific.’”

One day later, the DNR issued a statewide ban on rotenone.

“The accidental killing of thousands of fish in Belleville Lake has prompted a temporary ban by the Department of Natural Resources on chemical fish kill projects in Michigan’s lakes,” said the May 24 Press.

The ban didn’t last long, however; that fall the DNR proceeded with a rotenone fishkill in Belleville Lake, as planned months prior. Cooler temperatures alleviated smell problems. The smaller project was completed. The Ford Lake fishkill saga had ended.

A July 2010 walk on the boardwalk in Ford Lake’s North Bay Park offers a chance to pause on the birdwatching platform near a reedfield and examine the foot-deep lake bottom, rippling in wavy light.

Carp-sign consisting of squiggly S’s in the sand reveals where carp in the shallows wiggled around in the warm water, looking for delectables.

Carp love canned corn and bread bits. Leftover spaghetti and pieces of old hot dog buns are their foie gras. They even like canned peas, possibly the only organism who does. You may as well bring some nummies to the park next time, in homage to this ineradicable fish. Despite poisons, front-loaders, trucks, state representatives, improvised roads, drained lakes, fish-plucking felons, and the efforts of an entire state’s Department of Natural Resources over decades . . . they’re not going anywhere.

Mystery item

This biweekly column features a Mystery Artifact contest. You are invited to take a look at the artifact and try to deduce its function.

Last column’s Mystery Artifact elicited some creative guesses. Lisa Bashert guessed a griddle (close enough), abc guessed a crepe pan (close enough), cosmonican guessed a pancake griddle (nailed it).

The tag on this recent Ypsilanti Museum acquisition says it is a “pan-cake” griddle meant for use on a hearth.

This week’s artifact is another recent museum acquisition currently in storage. Can you guess its function? Hint: It came from the same recently-acquired collection as the pancake griddle. Good luck!