Anybody here catch carp?

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Who here fishes for carp? What techniques do you use?

I was never interested in carp until watching the catfish and carp/outdoor boys YouTube channels with my kids. I learned from that guy the DIY pack-bait/hair rig technique using a drywall anchor and items easily available is the US (these are European style rigs). The pack-bait is: 1 16oz panko bread crumbs, 1 can sweet corn, 1 pack strawberry jello mix.

I catch lots of carp this way! They fight like hell too! It’s not unusual to catch 10lb fish. Also catch tons of channel catfish on the pack-bait/hair rig

When I don’t want to get skunked, I bring along the carp rigs… I feel like carp are an underutilized resource around oklahoma. Hardly anyone targets them. Most of our lakes are absolutely packed with common carp and I believe they need to be thinned out.

Personally I still kinda view them as trash fish and I don’t like to release them. I try to rid our lakes of as many of them as I can.

I have eaten plenty of them. Pressure canned is my only way. It literally tastes almost exactly like canned tuna. Anymore I don’t mess with canning very many but I use them for fertilizer and to put in compost.

Share your carp stories y’all!
 

HoLeChit

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I’ve caught some. I like bow fishing for them. I give them to my buddy’s wife, as she’s Chinese and loves them. Buys us some brownie points so he can get out occasionally. Otherwise any carp that make it out of the water die. If I’m somewhere busy I can usually find someone to take ‘em. Last random guy I gave a real big one to said “hey, nice fish” in really bad English. I said, “thanks, you want it?” He asked me twice if I was sure, I thought for a second and had to make sure I wasn’t giving him my truck or something. Once he was convinced I wasn’t messing with him, he took it off my hands, threw the fish over his shoulder, and ran all the way back to his truck like I was gonna change my mind or something. Threw that thing in the bed and hauled ass for the house I’m guessing. I still think about that short Mexican guy from time to time.

I’ll use method feeders, with mixed success. Usually use the corn/Panko/koolaid mix.
It’s a pretty cool gig, the weight on one side ensures your bait always lands bait side up, and the fins allow you to pack that bait in there.
IMG_2864.jpeg


My craziest catch was when fishing for striper, managed to catch a 15-20ish lb carp on a 6” shad swimbait. The way that guy took off I thought I was about to bring in a contender for state record striper. Talk about a rush.


Some of those British guys take it super serious… but what amazes me is their casting abilities. Roughly according to one guy “I don’t see why an average bloke can’t cast at least 150 yards”, that same guy can make 230 yard casts. Laser accurate too. I can get some distance, but I’m never accurate in those instances. I think my furthest regular cast was probably 100-110 yards. 150-200 yards is just crazy.
 
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As a kid growing up I used to fish for carp using my secret recipe doughballs made of two day old bread from the mom & pop bakery and garlic powder rolled into balls and I caught a lot of them......probably still is but back then it was against the law to throw them back in the water.

I'd never heard of a Bighead Carp but the Okla. record of 118 lbs was caught recently.


bhrc.jpg
 
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SoonerP226

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When I was a teen, I read an article about catching carp in Oklahoma, so I decided that I'd like to try that. When I told my grandma that I wanted to catch carp, she asked why anyone would intentionally try to catch carp (and she had survived the Great Depression out in west Texas).

Turns out that my grandpa didn't stock any carp in his pond, the only place I had to fish at the time, so no carp fishing for me. The closest I got was trying to grab the great big ones that got caught up in the overflow from a big pond after a rain, ending up in the bar ditch/creek next to the road where I walked home from school.
 
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I’ve caught some. I like bow fishing for them. I give them to my buddy’s wife, as she’s Chinese and loves them. Buys us some brownie points so he can get out occasionally. Otherwise any carp that make it out of the water die. If I’m somewhere busy I can usually find someone to take ‘em. Last random guy I gave a real big one to said “hey, nice fish” in really bad English. I said, “thanks, you want it?” He asked me twice if I was sure, I thought for a second and had to make sure I wasn’t giving him my truck or something. Once he was convinced I wasn’t messing with him, he took it off my hands, threw the fish over his shoulder, and ran all the way back to his truck like I was gonna change my mind or something. Threw that thing in the bed and hauled ass for the house I’m guessing. I still think about that short Mexican guy from time to time.

I’ll use method feeders, with mixed success. Usually use the corn/Panko/koolaid mix.
It’s a pretty cool gig, the weight on one side ensures your bait always lands bait side up, and the fins allow you to pack that bait in there. View attachment 402448

My craziest catch was when fishing for striper, managed to catch a 15-20ish lb carp on a 6” shad swimbait. The way that guy took off I thought I was about to bring in a contender for state record striper. Talk about a rush.


Some of those British guys take it super serious… but what amazes me is their casting abilities. Roughly according to one guy “I don’t see why an average bloke can’t cast at least 150 yards”, that same guy can make 230 yard casts. Laser accurate too. I can get some distance, but I’m never accurate in those instances. I think my furthest regular cast was probably 100-110 yards. 150-200 yards is just crazy.

Over the years I fished a lot below Eufaula Dam, Texoma and others. I seen when guys started using remote control boats to take their bait out. One time I watched a little old man walk so slowly to fish at Eufaula dam.
He found him a spot on”the wall” and damn he could cast his rig accurate and far! Just as far as he needed to and where guys were running them boats. People were amazed and asking him how! He stated “ we didn’t have such toys when I was growing up, we had to learn how! LOL!

Gar and Carp at Lake Murray and rivers. Big ones below dams!
 

n423

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When I was a kid, my friend lived about 3 blocks from Overholser. In the summers we would catch carp, and some catfish, with dough bait and give them away to others fishing. Don't remeber the recipe for the dough bait but used bread, smelly stink bait, and put on treble hooks. The carp are good fighters and fun to catch. The people that ate them, baked the fish, they have a lot of bones in 'em.
 
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cowadle

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When I was a kid, my friend lived about 3 blocks from Overholser. In the summers we would catch carp, and some catfish, with dough bait and give them away to others fishing. Don't remeber the recipe for the dough bait but used bread, smelly stink bait, and put on treble hooks. The carp are good fighters and fun to catch. The people that ate them, baked the fish, they have a lot of bones in 'em.
I have a really tasty old old old recipe for carp.
 

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