Carp in high water

M
Moe
Went carp fishing at a pond today. Caught my biggest one yet: IMG_20110117_134756.jpgIMG_20110117_121937.jpgIMG_20110117_125857.jpgIMG_20110117_151948.jpgIMG_20110117_154718.jpgIMG_20110117_154739.jpgIMG_20110117_151939.jpgIMG_20110117_120708.jpgIMG_20110117_151944.jpgIMG_20110117_153932.jpgHope you liked the open mouth pic:D:lol:
 
brandon4455
brandon4455
fatties! way to go dude.
 
R
rainbowfisherman
Way to get out today! And catch fish! well done.
 
D
Drew9870
Nice job, I think you just inspired me to put the Carp rod out this week, I haven't tried since October.

I bet your PB by the end of the Summer will be atleast 16lbs, if you got down to Salem this Summer, mrlindman and I will be sore lipping lots of them, and a 12lb fish is small/average down here, we could set you up with one of the Euro style rigs.

Good luck on your next PB. I bet OntheFly would love to frame that pic of the open mouth :D.
 
brandon4455
brandon4455
Drew9870 said:
Nice job, I think you just inspired me to put the Carp rod out this week, I haven't tried since October.

I bet your PB by the end of the Summer will be atleast 16lbs, if you got down to Salem this Summer, mrlindman and I will be sore lipping lots of them, and a 12lb fish is small/average down here, we could set you up with one of the Euro style rigs.

Good luck on your next PB. I bet OntheFly would love to frame that pic of the open mouth :D.
are we gunn have a big team of carp fisherman? :lol: it will be fun.
 
M
Moe
Drew9870 said:
Nice job, I think you just inspired me to put the Carp rod out this week, I haven't tried since October.

I bet your PB by the end of the Summer will be atleast 16lbs, if you got down to Salem this Summer, mrlindman and I will be sore lipping lots of them, and a 12lb fish is small/average down here, we could set you up with one of the Euro style rigs.

Good luck on your next PB. I bet OntheFly would love to frame that pic of the open mouth :D.

It would be fun to have an OFF carp gettogether. Today I just used a hook with no weight and it worked well for better sized fish, no super small fish this time :D
 
D
Drew9870
That would be awesome!

It would be a pleasure to see more people using Euro methods around Oregon, so far I have only fished with one guy that used to fish around the UK, Carpbloke in fact, and I learned a lot from him the first day I fished with him at Walling Pond, he had all the fancy stuff, the whole Rod Pod with the bite alarms and drop back indicators, probably ran about $300-500 for that set up alone, then the rods and reels, oh buddy :lol:. Then I fished with 'Gandzadi' from Youtube, that was actually one of the last three times I went Carp fishing last year in October, he used to fish France for 40+lb Carp, and he strictly fishes rivers, we actually fished the dock at Riverfront in Downtown Salem, and I now know that some of those ''bites'' are actually Crawdads, lol, he fishes the Columbia and the Willamette around Portland, sometimes Washington since you need no license to fish for nongame species.

I have only had one guy walk up and ask if I was fishing for Carp, I was like ya how did you know, he said he had traveled to Europe and seen people fishing, other than that, everyone has no idea what in the hell I am doing most of the time, I mean imagine seeing someone cast a 3oz weight into a pond, :lol:.
 
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brandon4455
brandon4455
carp get together when the weather starts to warm up in salem sounds fun. i wonder how many people would show up.. hey moe any guess how much that big one weighed?
 
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M
Moe
I was guessing five or six pounds, I really need to get a scale. Man that thing would not get tired. The big ones pull so much drag when using six pound line! And I love how when you release them most of the time no reviving is needed, they are just OFF like a rocket.
 
brandon4455
brandon4455
Moe said:
I was guessing five or six pounds, I really need to get a scale. Man that thing would not get tired. The big ones pull so much drag when using six pound line! And I love how when you release them most of the time no reviving is needed, they are just OFF like a rocket.

thats not bad bro looks like a fat one too! andi know what you mean. they just jet out of your hands int the murky depths. very powerful fish. sounds like it would be fun on a trout rod.
 
GungasUncle
GungasUncle
Nice work!

My favorite carpin' setup is thus:

7' or 7'6" ultra light spinning rod, 4lb main line. A large corkie - prefer a high visibility color like cerise, or the green/orange half & half. This is slipped on the line and pegged with a half a tooth pick (the round, pointed style vs. the flat style) about 4-6 feet from a #6 egg hook - prefer Gamakatsu or Owner hooks for this, as they're durable and sharp. The egg hook is tied on with a normal improved clinch knot on my setup - since I'm not fishing eggs or yarn with this rig. I fish water from 1-4 feet deep with this rig. Note there is no weight mentioned - I don't use any when carping. Carp are very sensitive fish, and they can tell instantly if there's resistance on the line in the form of weight, or too much tension on the line, and they can spit a bait faster than you can blink. The bait I use is enough weight to sink down to the fish's level.

For bait, most of the time I stick to good ol' sandwhich bread - wheat or multi-grain usually. In my experience, the fish will hit this bait more often than plain white bread. I look for the stuff on the clearance rack at Albertsons or Fred Meyer. When baiting up, simply tear a piece off, preferably with a small section of crust, hook the hook through the crust, and then just keep pressing the bread into kind of a pyramid or ball shape around the hook, and keep pressing until you've got a dense, firm bread ball on the hook. You don't need to cast far in most carp-fishing, so I stick to 30' or shorter casts. Keep some slack in the line - the corkie serves as an excellent strike indicator. When a fish mouths the bait and starts to swim off with it, the corkie will twitch, or start moving. Count to three in your head and set the hook firmly, but don't get toooo crazy - think of it as setting the hook on a flyrod, vs sinking a hook into the mouth of a salmon. Carp don't have hard mouths, so a wild hookset is unnecessary anyway. Keep the drag set to about 2 or 2.5lbs at most - let the fish take line, and pump & crank it back in. These are very hardy fish, and it doesn't hurt them like it would say, a trout, to play them longer.

When bread doesn't work, I'll fish canned sweet corn, firm balls of dough mainly made up of creamy peanutbutter and wheat flour, or lastly, night crawlers.

Bread is my #1 producer. Corn usually gets more squawfish, and occasionally trout if they share the water with carp. I have caught stocker trout in Commonwealth and Bethany on my bread baited carp rigs too - though not too often.

If you want to add a bit more to the fun of playing the fish - use the same basic setup, but on a 5 or 6 weight flyrod. Just peg the corkie on the leader like you would the mainline on the spinning outfit, and use a wide looped overhand or lob cast. You can also forgo the corkie, and watch the tip of the flyline as your strike indicator, if you keep your leader short (7' or less) - but the corkie is better. Nothing like having a carp take out 100' of flyline and then take you well into the backing in about ten or fifteen seconds.

When i fish for carp, I look for signs of actively feeding fish - instead of just blind fishing over dead water. It's kind of like hunting in that aspect. Just look for silt plumes or trails, or bubble trails, if you don't actually see the fish themselves. Sometimes in shallow water, they will tail like a bonefish - that's quite a sight to see too!
 
M
Moe
Thanks for the info!! I have a video of me pulling one in I will put it on youtube later and post a link.
 
GungasUncle
GungasUncle
Nice little chunky carp you got there! Can't wait to watch you land a lunker :)
 
M
Moe
Thanks, I am thinking I will go out for a big one this weekend if the sandy doesn't look fishable.
 
J
john montana
Glad you got into some fish. I am dying to get out after some carp as soon as the weather warms up.
 

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