It is good to kill carp. Not only are carp ecologically incorrect, they are also to my eye, at least unlovely. There is something creepy and embryonic about the short, fleshy barbels under the chin. The toothless, protrusible mouth seems somehow degenerate. In the family of the minnows, carp are gigantic versions of those little fish.
Carp have no adipose fin, which leaves their undersides unattractively blank.
Searching the levee for some sort of lance, I finally found a stick, deeply bowed but sharp. I set about trying to spear a carp. My point kept glancing off the streamlined bodies. The struck fish, when they noticed my harpoon at all, would violently tail-slap away. After I had assaulted three or four, my bad intentions were finally communicated to the entire school, and they retreated downstream.