If you think saving a fish requires a Ph.D. and a government grant, you haven’t met the crews in “The Great Carp Hunt 2025.” Fifty-seven teams strong, they’ve turned Utah Lake into an arena for one of the strangest and most satisfying environmental battles around.

With names like Carp Slayers, Carp Kings, Carpe Diem and the gloriously unintimidating Knockles, the competition rewards anyone willing to rid the lake of its most reviled resident. Don’t knock it – pun unavoidable – Knockles sits in second place with 911 carp landed. And out front is Team BPS, bowfishing hotshots from the Utah Bowfishing Association, whose tally of 1,406 fish has left the rest floundering.

It’s a showdown of opposites: the lumbering, muddy-faced troublemaker versus the lightweight hometown hero that once fed Utah’s pioneers.

The tournament is the latest twist in a decades-long effort to save Utah Lake’s most famous native, the June sucker, a silvery five-pound fish once so abundant that early settlers joked you could catch dinner with a rake.

Those days are long gone. By the mid-1980s, the June sucker’s numbers had fallen to just a few hundred. Carp, hulking bottom-feeders that churn up the lakebed and uproot plants, didn’t help.

To save the native fish, a coalition of state and federal agencies formed the June Sucker Recovery Implementation Program 25 years ago. The plan has helped create new spawning grounds, restore 250 acres of critical habitat along the Provo River and lift the species from endangered to threatened. But as Kelly Cannon-O’Day of the Utah Lake Authority admits, “We’ll never be done with the carp. They’re like dandelions in your lawn. We’ll never get them all.”

Still, that hasn’t stopped the anglers. Their efforts join a larger, long-running push on the lake, where seasonal netting crews with the Division of Wildlife Resources remove tens of thousands of carp each summer. The contest gives the public a way to help.

Monthly heats since February have pulled thousands of carp from the 24-mile-long lake, and the hunt continues through November with stops in Saratoga Springs, Lindon and Utah Lake State Park. Each month’s victors share $1,000 in prizes, and the grand champion in December will pocket up to $10,000 and eternal bragging rights.

All methods are welcome. Some competitors bowfish, firing arrows trailed by fishing line and sometimes spearing two or three carp at once. Others stick with straightforward tackle – anything that pulls a carp from the lake counts. Longtime sailor Louise Frye of the Bonneville School of Sailing says she doesn’t hate carp. “They just want to get rid of them.” She laughs at the spectacle: boats circling, arrows flying, fish flashing in the sun as crowds cheer from the docks.

For the June sucker, it’s poetic justice. Nearly two centuries ago, Utah pioneers depended on the native fish to survive crop failures and harsh winters. According to early accounts, settlers could scoop suckers straight from the shallows with their hands or drag unbaited hooks through the water and haul in dinner by the dozen.

Now a new generation returns the favor – one cast, one arrow, one netful and one carp at a time.