There is a golf course in houston that is closed on mondays that i fish on occasion. The pond is small but i usually catch a good number of bass every time i go. I was there on monday and it didn't take me long to realize someone had poisoned the entire pond. I was shocked to find a silver asian carp in excess of thirty pounds floating in this pond that is probably an acre or so (maybe a bit more I'm not a great judge). I have no explanation as to how the fish got in there, but my best guess is that maybe a bird dropped the fish in the pond as there is a pretty significant bayou a few hundred yards away that has a decent population of fish in it. If this is the case and these things are in tx public water, that could be disastrous. Has anyone seen or heard of any asian silver carp infiltrating texas waters? I am having trouble uploading the pictures i took of it, but i am positive it is one of the invasive asian carp species.

it could easily be a bighead carp i don't really know how to tell the difference as this was the first one i have seen in person.

I know the pond. It was an oxygen depletion combined with a cyanobacteria bloom that killed some of the fish, they were not poisoned. The appearance would be the same as if they had been, though. Although I did not go and see myself, one of my associates reported that most of the dead fish were either common carp (
Cyprinus carpio, grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella) (of course most carps are either Asian or Indian, as are the common carp and grass carp)or largemouth bass.

This is not uncommon in hot summers on golf course ponds with heavily fertilized watersheds.

The situation is being addressed. Rumors abound of the restocking of some such ponds around Houston....soon as water quality improves.

I really doubt that any of the dead fish were either silver or bighead carp (yall can look up the names, too long). To the untrained eye, all them carps pretty much look alike.....

I'd bet the carp you saw was a grass carp, which can easily reach very large sizes. They were most likely placed there for vegetation control.

I thought I saw one jump in the red river about 10-12 miles below Texoma dam but am not sure. I go to Missouri my home state and they are thick there I have been worried about them getting into Texoma

Almost certainly a White Amur. ( AKA a Grass Carp. ) If you're not familiar with the species, they look a little bit like a silver, or a bighead. But White Amur are often stocked in ponds like that for vegetation control, and they can get very big, very quickly.

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/species/gcarp/