CARP

Carp are one of my favorite fish to prosue. Although I have only fished them in rivers. I have shot countless carp on the chain with a bow. I was thinking about giving angling a try out there and was wandering if anyone eles angles for them?

I have visited a good many web sites to reserch the subject and see that carp angling is catching on in Minnesota very well.

I do most of my river angling pre and post spawn. And assume that would be the same on the chain. On rivers I have done well at dams, riffles, front and back of holes. But lakes are a differnt story. I have a few high traffic carp areas that I am going to try that are inlets to bays and a few points.

I have my favorite dough ball recipie and have used commercial bait too on rivers. Lakes might be a differnt story with live bait getting the edge.

Carp are tough to get to bite in the spawn time, any other time they will take a bait offering.

In lakes, I do the best on good quality whole kernel corn(yes, spend the extra 21 cents). In the river I do ok on corn, but much better with crawlers if there arent concentrations of *those other fish* to take the crawlers as soon as it hits the water. A piece of bread squeezed into a dough ball has its good days too.

I have tried lots of different dough baits, some are very effective, sometimes they are not. Its easy enough to make a strawberry flavored wheaties ball.. they will come running for it when they smell it, but they will spit it out just as fast if they dont like the flavor. Getting the right balance to what they will eat is tough.

I have been lucky enough to site fish for them many times.. enough to teach me its easier to use corn

Someof the recipes out there are designed for hair rigs if you are going to start maiing your own baits. These dough baits are too hard to put on a hook, yu will miss most bites if you try. A hair rig is similar to a lindy rig with a small tag of line extending past the hook where your supposed to connect your bait to, and the hook is left 100% exposed.

Fishing in lakes or very slow current areas, its a good idea to toss a couple hand fulls of corn in the water to bring the fish in, or concentrate them to an area(chum).

Doug Stange from In-Fisherman uses boiled field corn. I have used hair rig that I made myself and have had great success with them. To bait them I just straitened the hook on a jig head threded the corn on the sraight hook and connected the barb to the loop on the hair rig and slit the corn on. Then I coverd the hook with a little strawberry dough.

Man o man have I seen some submarines cruising the shallows when i’m flipping for bass…I once snagged about a 30lbs Carp in the back tail with a micro rod & reel while fishing the shallow channels early in the spring. Talk about a long fight, try dragging one of those in with absolutely no control of it.

Well I have been stocking up on Carp gear. Boilies, Hair rigs, and corn soaked in strawberry flavorings. The next warm spell I will start fishing and will report on how I do.