F&W care to chime in on this one?

Why not just ask the people at the processing plants ?? Or send an agent over there to look at the stomach contents for themselves ?? :scratchhead

a year long diet study was completed by a graduate student 2 years ago on ky lake Asian carp. Some of those fish were market fish. Observing adult or juvenile prey fish would be easy to see at the market, but larval fish would require a dissecting microscope. (A microscope was used for the diet study).
I've heard multiple people tell me that they talked to a commercial fishermen who cut one open and found all kinds of fish. (We collect market data all of the time and have never observed any fish or been told by a processor that they found some.) not sure where the rumor got started? Maybe someone here knows?

At this point it's not worth the cost of another diet study so soon after the previous one.

Hypothetically, if one of these carp did have a larger throat which allowed it to swallow fish, larval eggs, ect....then it spawned, with very high-quality conditions, and this adult carp produces up to its potential in eggs which is +/- 1,000,000. Now, we have the high potential to have 1,000,001 carp with larger throats. And that is just one potential big throated invasive species that can hypothetically ruin these lakes.
Now, say 1% of the population has this, then spawns with average to peak spawning conditions. How many adapting fish swallowing invasive enemies does this put into our ecosystem??
I'm sorry, but this problem has to be addressed much, much faster than all the agencies just collecting data and waiting for the implementation of the alligator gar to radicate these fish. Which that idea doesn't hold water either because the average carp is growing g approximately 16" per year in its first few years.
I understand the political correctness but it's time to be real here. Our government, state and federal, has no clue what to do about this. The guilty parties from decades ago need to be held accountable for the current problems, and the eradication of them as well. It's time for the virus to be used to rid these invasive species so that we can all move forward.

Asian carp are a serious problem, but the concern is not that they will mutate and begin eating out sport fish. This is incredibly far fetched. They compete for plankton resources and that is bad enough.

There is currently no silver bullet for Asian carp. No viruses, no bacteria, no gene therapy. If we had a silver bullet, we would pull the trigger. We would have no reason not to. It just doesn't exist yet.
You are right that there isn't a great plan to eradicate them. Michigan is currently offering a 1,000,000 dollar reward for anyone who can solve the problem of Asian carp and the Great Lakes (If we had a secret virus, we would claim the money). Commercial harvest is the best control option we have. We have multiple staff working on this project. (Our local Asian carp branch currently outnumbers our old staff 6:3).
Alligator gar were not stocked to control Asian carp. They were stocked because they were formerly native.