Developing carp management schemes that are sustainable in the long run often requires modeling analyses. We use models developed specifically for carp to simulate their abundance under different management scenarios. By doing so, we can predict with high confidence which strategies are best, how often they need to be applied, and how much they might cost. Models are crafted to fit specific lakes or chains of lakes. Managers can then use these models to weigh pros and cons of different management alternatives.

Illustrated below: Carp biomass in Long Lake simulated under the assumption that 80% of juveniles were stopped from making their way into Long Lake from Lino Lakes, which is a carp nursery. For both figures, the x-axis corresponds to years after current year. The second graphs shows that if 50% of carp > 300 mm would be removed annually AND the migration of young carp from Lino Lakes into Long Lake was reduced by 80%. We calculated 10 model runs in each figure.