Hundreds of rotting carp stink up Minnehaha Creek

Screen shot via Fox9

Something smells fishy

As if the roar of passenger jets on final approach to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport were not insult enough, folks living and playing near Lake Nokomis got another kick in the shins this weekend: The rankness of hundreds of dead carp in Minnehaha Creek.

The Minnehaha Creek Watershed District's Renae Clark told us this morning that the carp may have washed out of Lake Hiawatha, and become trapped behind a weir blocking their way into Lake Nokomis downstream before they died.

Fox9 has some nasty video of teenagers from the Minneapolis Park Board's Teen Teamworks spearing the hefty fish with a pitchfork and dumping them into plastic bags to be carted away.

Marcel Lynn, who was leading the cleanup, said about 500 carp were cleared from the creek Saturday through Monday morning:

"The kids were gagging at first. When you actually drive up you can smell the smell. Some of the kids don't like fish, so they asked 'Do we really have to do this,' and I said, 'Yeah, if you want to get paid.'"