For Orion Briney, fishing for Asian black carp on the Illinois River is like 'herding cows'

Orion Briney studied the surface of Upper Peoria Lake, undistracted by pink-purple dawn spreading over the bluffs or ghostly funnels of fog rising from warm river water colliding with crisp September air.

"They're here. No doubt about that. Blacks and silvers. Somethin's really going to happen here," Briney said, cocking his head toward thousands of small ripples fanning out over the surface of the water.

Briney, one of the few commercial fishermen left on the Illinois River, is actually a fish tracker. He searches for clues and factors them into a cognitive process involving daily knowledge of the river and fish behavior, temperatures, currents and instinct.

Briney knows how to think like a fish.

It's an ability first learned from his father, Stanley Briney, considered the best commercial fisherman on the river north and south of Havana. Stanley Briney named his son after the winter constellation Orion, the Hunter, now rising in the eastern sky before dawn.

On a recent September morning, before Orion the Hunter had faded at first light, Orion Briney had already risen at 3:30 a.m., picked up his stepson and hired hand, driven two hours to the marina in Henry, lowered his boat into the black waters of the river and headed north in darkness.

He intended to fill an order for 13,000 pounds of Asian black carp and be out of the water by noon. Because he fishes withtrammel nets, that means manually lifting 13,000 pounds of fighting carp.

Briney is a full-time, year-round commercial fisherman. His tales of sinking up to his waist in January with thousands of pounds of fish on board or breaking through foot-thick ice in February until his arms felt ripped from their sockets are now legendary and accurate. At each telling, his wife, Ronda, marvels anew.

Fishing is in their genetic bonding. Their fathers fished together long before Asian carp invaded the river. Orion Briney's father died in 2004 but would have been astounded by what Asian carp have done to the river in recent years.

"I'm afraid to go out with Orion for Asian carp," Ronda Briney said. "I wear a towel over my head so I can't see. I don't like it. I'm afraid of them."

Twenty-five pounds of jumping Asian carp hitting a person traveling by boat or water skis can break a tooth, a jaw or knock a person unconscious. Carp can jump five to six feet out of the water and look like they're trying to swim through air.

With one hand on the throttle of his Yamaha outboard, Briney stood stalwart in the stern of his 30-foot plate aluminum boat, face ruddy from years of sun and wind burns, blue eyes barely squinting as he scanned the water.

He's a burly man, making a living with work so grueling few men can compete, even when gross earnings last year hit $300,000. At 1.5 million pounds of carp last year, Briney was the No. 1 supplier to Schafer's Fisheries, a leading processor located in Thomson with customers worldwide. He also sells buffalo fish and catfish to other markets.

"I never say 'no.' I never say it's raining, it's blowing, too cold, too icy," said Briney, 48. "It's never too cold. We just go. We put in some pretty ugly days."

Briney can catch fish on days no one else can even find them. His prowess earned him features with Forbes magazine, CNN, NBC, Tokyo Broadcasting, Chicago Tribune and TV crews from New York, California and France.

This day, as Briney steers the boat north, stepson Jeremy Fisher, 28, and hired hand Matt Reed, 27, sit with backs to the wind, hoods pulled low, cradling cigarettes, knowing full well this will be the last pause in a bloody morning. Once the shucking starts, nothing on board is protected from flying fish, blood and scum.

One day last year, Briney and his crew pulled 50,000 pounds from the river.

"It took us three days to get out," he said.

Occasionally people berate Briney for depleting crappies and bass, but he says, "We catch nothing that bites worm."

Even after fishing commercially on the Illinois River for 15 years, Briney is surprised by the river today.

"If you had told me five years ago, I'd be doing this every day, I'd have said you're crazy. In 1979, there were 1,500 commercial fishermen on the Illinois. Now there are fewer than 20 full time," he said.

When Briney felt confident he knew where most of the carp were massing, Fisher and Reed started pulling out a seamless stream of trammel net ... 300 yards, 600 yards, 900 yards, approaching 1,500 yards. Trammel lines stretched across the river outside the channel in two rows. The net has a 4-inch grid so fish smaller than 8 inches swim through.

By 6:52 a.m., nets positioned, Briney started weaving his boat back and forth from shore to shore.

"It's like herding cows. My goodness," Briney said with a whistle. "They're thick in here. Not seen this many for quite a while. But you can't hurry them. This will take a while."

First he zoomed toward the eastern shore, turned and headed west, looping from shore to shore. Nearly 800 yards downriver, the water around the nets began to churn. Wave after wave of 15- to 25-pound, aggressive black carp hit the trammel line and began fighting, leaping into the air and struggling to swim free.

"They're smokin' down there," Briney said, gauging activity at the net in the distance.

By 7:45 a.m., Fisher and Reed started hauling in nets, shucking carp from the net and hurtling the fish into the center of the boat. Unlike catfish, carp are bleeders. Blood streamed through the air and formed rivulets in the boat bottom, surging fore to aft and side to side. Fish this day averaged 20 to 25 pounds, but Briney once caught a 90-pound carp.

Asian carp are voracious plankton eaters, consuming the same diet as native crappie and bass.

"What's going to happen in five years, I don't know," Briney said. "We see thousands and thousands of tiny carp that are just inches today. When they are full grown, impossible to tell what this river will be like, what that imbalance will mean."

Once the first fish hit the deck, Briney's internal clock started. He wants fish out of water for the shortest number of hours. There's no stopping now. Shucking became a rhythmic, muscular cycle: Haul in trammel, grab fish, free from netting, toss into center compartment of the boat - a task performed over and over to the sound of fish slapping against fish as the boat filled.

"Mercy, mercy, mercy," Briney said at one point. "Let's just get 'em out."

By 9:25 a.m., Briney estimated 7,500 pounds of slithering, glistening fish were in the boat. With one arm, he pulled in a section of trammel net with five dangling 25-pound carp.

"A lot of guys get torn up by this work. They can't go past 60," Briney said, accounting for the relatively short career of commercial fishermen. "One guy took apart four Nordic tracks to make a conveyor belt to get fish from the boat to his truck. He's a good hoop netter."

By 10:14 a.m., Briney estimated 10,000 pounds of fish were in the boat.

As the hours passed, the boat sank lower and lower into the river. Toward the end of morning, silver carp that bring 8 cents a pound were tossed back overboard and dwindling space on board was reserved for black carp, which bring 18-cents a pound.

Once last winter, Briney and his men jettisoned 300 pounds of silver carp on an ice floe. Nearly 100 bald eagles feasted on the easy meal.

"There wasn't anything left on the ice when they were done," Briney said.

Before Asian carp started spawning in the Illinois river, nets used to last 10 years. Now Briney gets two to three weeks of hard fishing out of his nets before repairs are needed. A retired railroad worker works full time making and repairing fishing nets for Briney and a few others.

By 11:30 a.m., all the trammel was in, and Briney throttled the Yamaha and headed back toward Henry with a full load of about 13,000 pounds of fish.

Fisher and Reed, who had shucked in the fore deck, climbed over the slithering mass of fish to stand in the aft deck to distribute weight more evenly. Even so, water lapped over the front and sides of the boat. More than one fish was able to twist its way back into the river.

At 11:55 a.m., Briney's boat smoothly onto his trailer at Henry, and the men headed to Schafer's Fisheries in Thomson. With Briney's internal clock ticking, no one even thought to stop for lunch.

This will be a typical 350-mile day for Briney's Chevy pickup. Briney wears out a truck a year, and his 2006 Silverado already has 65,000 hard carp-hauling miles on it.

Commercial carp fishing is an expensive gamble.

"Last year we had $300,000 come in. After expenses, we cleared $80,000 and then paid $22,000 in taxes," Briney said.

Outside of Thomson, he called the fish packing plant: "This is Briney coming in with 10,000 to 15,000 pounds of fish. Be there in 15 minutes."

With forewarning, Briney hoped the processing plant would get his load on ice fast. It worked. When the final fish was weighed, the day's haul came to 13,063 pounds and was on ice by 2:15 p.m.

Mike Schafer, president of Schafer's Fisheries, said carp is a diet staple among Asian people, and this catch will help fill an order from New York.

"We sell all over the world. We were first in the nation to market Asian carp," Schafer said.

He's hoping to develop a market for frozen, breaded carp patties for prisons, nursing homes and schools.

"I talked with Israel a half hour ago. I've talked with Africa. The future is full of options for this fish," he said. "Carp is very palatable, and we've got the deboning equipment that processes the fish so it comes out looking like hamburger. There's global demand for cheap protein."

Briney said the taste of smoked carp rivals smoked salmon, and cold-packed carp is indistinguishable from tuna at half the price.

By 2:30 p.m., he and his crew had already put in an 11-hour day. They hosed out the boat and left Schafer's for the 125-mile trip back home to Browning. They'll start again the next day at 3:30 a.m.

"I'm up at 3:30 and out of the house in 10 minutes," Briney said. "The best fishermen are out there every day. You have to know where fish like to hang out. My dad was the best in his time. I may be good, but I'm getting better."

State Journal-Register

Clare Howard can be reached at choward@pjstar.com.