When the water was dirty, the carp were a constant source of hand-wringing and injury. He’s one of a dozen or so commercial fishermen who gill net carp on the Missouri River. “That’s the sound of money,” Nelson yells. I grab the tail, free its head with the fish pick, and toss it in the front of the boat. I see it, a bighead, probably twenty pounds. To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist. He’s the only person who gets that privilege.
Nelson let me borrow his Grundens, which are two sizes too big, but he doesn’t want me to wear his dad’s old gear. The electric engine is whining with the weight of the catch though and Nelson keeps saying, “It’s a good day, Benjamin! It’s a good day!” Losing a net is a big deal too because you can get fined for “ghost fishing,” or catching and killing fish in an accidentally lost net. The silvers and bigheads like to bask in the calmer pockets of water where your nets can get snagged and the common carp prefer to skirt the bank where it’s two or three feet deep, foraging for worms, insects, and whatever else they can find. It can get dicey, gill netting silver, bighead, and common carp. He is winching in his gill nets and I am wondering if it is a bad idea for me to try and help him with the day’s catch.
Wake from a passing barge nearly throws me over the edge of Nelson’s flat bottom boat. I magine 2200, Grist’s climate fiction initiative, publishes stories that envision the next 180 years of equitable climate progress, imagining intersectional worlds of abundance, adaptation, reform, and hope.
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