CAGI

[Grandpa Tom]

Nothing to do with carp, but it does have to do with grandkids and fishing. My 3 granddaughters live in upstate NY. Their backyard is a 1-acre lake fed by a larger lake above. What a sweet spot to raise kids! Anyway, last week the youngest was fishing with an ancient Zebco 303 and an even older rod. She had on some kind of multi-treble hook plug. She caught a fish and as she was reeling in the fish seemed to get bigger. She got it in and "it" turned out to be “them”. She had caught two 12” line-sides on the same lure. A few minutes later she caught a 15” largemouth even though the lake has not been stocked in years. My son thought maybe she deserved a new rod and reel as it was obvious he had a fisherwoman on his hands.

[jcoberley]

I agree with the fact that we need more people fishing for Carp and Gar and we need fish and game to make a rule that if you catch one you must not return it to the water. Birds worms and possums need to eat also. If they will even eat them trashy fish! :)

[Davy Wotton]

Kind of interesting me me that Carp are becoming a sport fish here in the USA.

For myself before l moved here to the USA along with many other species, other than trout, Carp were one of my favorite fish to angle for.

Many hours l spent fishing through the night at noted Carp ponds after that elusive 30lb fish.

Carp here are way easier to catch with bait, no doubt of that. Carp back in some of the noted UK lakes have a IQ like you do not believe and we used some very sophisticated methods to attempt to lure those fish.

The choice of bait was one of the deals along with how you rigged up to catch them.

What it amounted to was you produced a secret bait that know one else knew what it consisted of.

You would then over a period of time feed that swim until you got the Carp well interested to feed on your concoction, after that you would fish that bait on a given hook rig in the hope that the Carp would take that. I can tell you from experience it was never a done deal.

In fact while l was with the Partridge hook company we produced a Hugh range of very special Carp hooks, for the given ways rigs were made up and the type of baits that you would use.

I stll have a ton of those here with me.

Interesting to me also that many see Carp as a trash fish, but would not say same about trout.

So are Pheasants, Chuckers and many more species that guys like to hunt and fish.!!!

OK, lets be honest here. Brown trout are also a introduced species, and Bows are the progeny of anadromous strains of Steel head.

If it were not for the hatchery programs around the country, you would not find Bows in the many systems you now do, and that includes the rivers out west.

They are not indigenous species to those systems.

Carp are raised commercially for the table, they are not all bad to eat if you prepare them the right way.

I will admit that they are not my choice as table fare.

May be l will get the urge to bring out again my Carp rods, reels, lines and all the other crap l have here got Carp fishing.

Davy.

[Crippled Caddis]

A lot of interesting viewpoints.

While I readily admit that I was raised in the South in the 40s & 50s of the past century and exposed to the prevailing opinion that Carp were 'trash' fish I learned that popular opinion is often just that---opinion, and often not based on fact.

As a Sophomore in high shool during our Summer break a friend and I had a great Summer vacation by catching Carp on doughbait using flyrods on a new COE lake and selling them (unlicensed of course) on the street in a part of town our parents had warned us to avoid. We had a LOT of fun, caught a LOT of big, strong fish and earned enough for gas money to go again the next day before my friend neglected to hose out the trunk of his Mothers' '54 Chevy we were using to transport ourselves and our catch to market. The oder that quickly developed in the heat of a Texas Summer caused us to lose the use of her car and no doubt diappointed our regular clientele who were often waiting when we arrived with a trunkload of produce.

A bit later in life a flyfishing buddy, as a joke, brought me a booklet published by a couple of 'professional' Carp tournament fishermen in Austin, Tx while I was recovering from a minor operation. Their enthusiasm for the sport, transmitted through their writing, infected me and after I was once more mobile I practically had to hold a gun on my fishing buddy to try out the techniques extolled in the book. The venture was highly successful and I cleaned and cooked the fish following the directions in the book. They were unexcelled as table fare and my wife went so far as to say, "You can quit bringing those Bass and Trout home".

Subsequent research and reading brought the realization that our culture was possibly the only one around the globe that failed to recognize that the Carp, termed by 'Father Walton' as the 'Queen of the Waters', is one of the more challenging of aquatic quarrys. From both my own experience and my reading I now wonder why we have allowed ourselves to ignore with disdain such a challenging sport specie. Carp are quite possibly the most intelligent of the freshwater fishes. They aren't easily fooled by artifice, when hooked I am convinced that they are the strongest thing that swims freshwater in their weight class, they will wreck inappropriate or poorly maintained tackle and are a true challenge to bring to hand.

One of the more difficult and challenging ventures in freshwater angling is sight-fishing for large Carp with artificials----flies or jigs being about the extent of what will work when presented with a level of care that makes dryfly fishing for big Brown trout often seem like a sport for the unintiated.

I started calling them "Freshwater Bonefish" well over 30 years ago for the reasons mentioned in the preceding paragraph and I still find myself marvelling that sportsmen will max out both their credit cards and their wifes' tolerance with expensive trips to try for Bonefish in exotic locations yet ignore a fish easily their equal in their own backyard. Truly an amazing dichotomy!

So tell me again why they are 'trash'.

[gonefishin]

I don't know that trash fish is the right word to describe common carp but, they certainly aren't high on most peoples most sought after game fish list.

As to eating quality goes, I understand that some people like carp but most people don't find the taste all that palatable. I am not the only one who holds that view. I was reading MO Conservation Magazine a few months ago and they stated that common carp have to strong of a flavor for most peoples taste.

The thing I have against carp is that they are way under fished. They, and bighead carp, soak up way to much of the available biomass in our rivers, stream, and lakes, again this is per MO Conservation Magazine.

I would love to see them become a viable sport fish. If they were to be pursued more the numbers would decline, there would be more room for the remaining Carp to attain trophy size and it would help take some of the pressure off the natural habitat of other fish.

Another problem, again according to MO Conservation Magazine, common carp have a bad habit of wallowing and therefore destroy vital habitat for bugs and micro-organisms that other fish use as food. Carp are the biggest shufflers of the fish world.

As to comparing them to Trout, Brown or Rainbow, there is no comparison at least in the Ozarks. They can't survive outside the cold water areas they are stocked in.

Right now I see common and bighead carp as the Starlings or English Sparrows of our lakes and streams. They are invasive, over populated and destroy biomass vital to other fishes survival. Something needs to be done to lessen the impact they are making on our lakes and streams.

Seems to me if people in other countries like them so well we could net about a billion pounds and ship them to starving people in Africa or North Korea or wherever.

JMO which I know isn't worth much.

[Davy Wotton]

Tom,

Here is a bit of history for you.

In 1952 Richard Walker a noted angler in the UK, caught at that time the record carp of 44lbs, at Redmire, a very famous UK big carp water. He did not wish to kill the fish for the sake of the record and it was transported to London zoo and remained there for very many years. It was called Clarissa. I did get to see that fish.

Carp had been pursued for many years prior to Richards record, but the records did not show a fish larger than Richards being caught.

There are 3 species of Carp to be found in the UK. The common carp as you see here, the leather, Crucian which is a small species.

Common carp are omnivorous, there is more or less nothing they will not eat. In fact l have caught them on fish bait. They are no different to catfish in that respect.

They also like catfish are able to survive in ponds that have dried up of water, if there is wet mud, l know as l have dug them out of that before when we have drained lakes.

And like catfish they can become very difficult to catch if they are wised up.

Grass carp so far as l am aware were introduced here from Asia, l may be wrong about that one.

Walker wrote many books related to angling that also included fly fishing. He also innovated many new fly patterns that were very popular in UK, primarily for still waters, in fact he also held the record for rainbow trout at one time. Which was a fish raised in a hatchery and released into a lake, he declined that record on the basis that is was not a wild fish, he eat it.

I knew Richard, and have here in my office letters that he wrote to me before his passing, we frequently corresponded on matters pertaining to fly fishing and flies.

He was certainly one of the greats in his day, and contributed a great deal to the angling world.

On a another note, the matter of the English sparrow interests me.

There are only 3 species of sparrow in the UK.

The common house sparrow, the tree sparrow and the hedge sparrow. They do differ plumage wise.

Here in the USA there are very many more species of sparrow. They are of course a species very similar to the finch family

I have as yet not seen here in AR a sparrow that looks the same as any of the species from the UK, and l have killed 1000s of em, l used to feed my ferrets with sparrows back in the UK and also my pythons.

So this does beg the question in my book. Are the species we see here a cross bred race with the indigenous finches.

In fact l will pursue the answer to that Tom with one of my friends who is one of the foremost authorities on Bald Eagles, and was very much at the front with USFW studies and re introduction of the species along with many other species.

May be the English sparrow does not deserve fault here, l know for sure the starling does, but hey you also got clover both red and white from the UK along with many other species of fauna and wild life.

And we got catfish, crayfish, Turkeys, gray squirrels, Rainbow trout, Brook trout to name a few.

In the UK the common house sparrow is not seen on a regular basis unless you live in the areas they choose to frequent. They are typically not a bird found in woodlands or very rural areas, but frequent more so around built up areas and farm yards.

Ain't all bad, we had new species to hunt and fish, and so did you guys !!

So far as l am aware of only the Brown trout is the indigenous fish species of the UK to enter the USA. Carp are not a indigenous species of the UK or EU.

Foot note here. Ornithology has been a interest of mine since l was a kid. The demise of any indigenous species is largely the result of habitat loss, in some cases the introduction of invasive species and in other cases such as DDT or the use of chemicals that reduce the available food source.

Other than that it is due to excess harvest or destruction of the species by humans, usually for profit or gain and in some cases food.

So far as l am aware of rod and line fishing has never been the reason for the total demise of a fish species.

All for now,

Davy

[Crippled Caddis]

Davy wrote:

<In the UK the common house sparrow is not seen on a regular basis unless you live in the areas they choose to frequent. They are typically not a bird found in woodlands or very rural areas, but frequent more so around built up areas and farm yards.>

Yep----that's the same bird. They are an urban bird, habituated to manmade architecture. I've never seen one out in the woods and fields. The male wears a disctint gray and brown 'cap' and a black bib while the female is easily confused with any number of indigenous species, being quite plain.

<The demise of any indigenous species is largely the result of habitat loss, in some cases the introduction of invasive species and in other cases such as DDT or the use of chemicals that reduce the available food source.>

That is a virtual universal truth.

Insofar as 'trash' species I had an exellent example here last week. A Phoebe had built a nest on the bowdeck of one of the canoes I store inverted under the rafters of the barn shed. I left the shop to go to my 'beerbox' which is an old refridg under the shed. One of the babies from the Phoebes' nest was on the ground in front of the beerbox. I backed up and looked up at the nest. Sure enough all that was left was a single huge chick, the result of a Cowbird sneaking one of her eggs into the nest. When the Cowbird hatchling outgrows his nestmates he pushes them out of the nest. I just hate that!

[Wayne SW/MO]

Its hard to make a comparison between Bigheads, and their cousins the Silver, with the common, they don't feed the same nor were they deliberately introduced, not to mentuon that they haven't been here 125+ years.

The suppose trait of muddying up the water is hard to pin down and it seems to be based on carp presence, rather than a fact.

[MoCarp]

The thing I have against carp is that they are way under fished. They, and bighead carp, soak up way to much of the available biomass in our rivers, stream, and lakes, again this is per MO Conservation Magazine.

I would love to see them become a viable sport fish. If they were to be pursued more the numbers would decline, there would be more room for the remaining Carp to attain trophy size and it would help take some of the pressure off the natural habitat of other fish.

Another problem, again according to MO Conservation Magazine, common carp have a bad habit of wallowing and therefore destroy vital habitat for bugs and micro-organisms that other fish use as food. Carp are the biggest shufflers of the fish world.

the fish carp displace in the biomass would be native suckers like buffalo, which also feed like just like common carp / not getting any more bass by getting rid of commons--anyways I see table rock has a healthy carp population and the water is soooooo dirty from all that wallerin--Jkin!

lots of myths still hanging around about common carp in our waters--many lakes that get muddy do so from what soils make up the drainage, if there are enough carp to dirty a lake, then its a symptom of too few preds, a 40 pound flathead can and does eat 8 pound carp! CATCH PHOTO AND RELEASE!