Holiday carp drop comes to an end in Prairie

A recent western Wisconsin holiday tradition is ending. 

Prairie du Chien will not have a “carp-dropping” this year at midnight on New Year’s Eve. 

The ritual of lowering a dead carp to the ground, as a spoof of the ball-dropping in New York’s Times Square, started in Prairie in 2001. 

The city park department says nobody has volunteered to drop Lucky the carp this December, so for now, that activity near the river will not happen for the start of 2019.  

But there will still be a Carp Fest in Prairie du Chien during the last week of December…with a family-oriented party at Hoffman Hall in the early evening of the 31st.