Redneck Fishing Tournament

After a two-year absence, the Redneck Fishing Tournament is back in Bath, Illinois. It’s a fun name, but organizer Betty DeFord says it plays a serious role in removing the invasive Asian carp from the Illinois River.

“The reason we started this tournament years and years ago, is because they’re still out there, they’re still jumping and they’re not going away. The idea behind the event was to rid the Bath chute of these Carp. These carp were just jumping out of the water and wreaking havoc with everything. They were giving people black eyes jumping in the boats, so we said okay, we’ll find a way to get rid of them.  We started a tournament and the first year we had five boats just for fun and we caught 200 of them in an hour’s time. Then it just started escalating with the tournament and that is how it has grown to what it is today.”

She says getting rid of a carp infestation in local waters is extremely difficult.

“And we have spread the word about that fish that you don’t want them in your waters. Don’t let them get there because once you get them you’re not going to get rid of them. The way it works in this world is if you get too many of one species there is usually that something that comes along and develops a disease or something to wipe that one species out. It has happened with these. They just mass produce, and they still are.”

The event was canceled in 2019 because of flooding and in 2020 because of the pandemic. There are no fishing poles in the tourney; teams instead use nets to catch the jumping fish.