"Derek.Moody" wrote in message
...

The carp are similar, even if our fishing methods differ wildly.

Don't tell the fanatics but the same methods work worldwide - even in the
UK. It's just that manufacturers make more money out of high-tech
solutions
to invented problems.

They make huge money from low tech solutions, too. The fishing philosophy
here is apparently counter to your own. It is illegal to release a carp in
some states, and you'll be verbally abused by other fishermen in others.
Here, carp are perceived as a problem rather than a resource.

I have seen them treated as hand fed pets, though. There was a fancy
restaurant on a large lake just south of here. I had heard of the place and
when a bread man dumped his out of date load in a dumpster one holiday
weekend, I took about 50 bags of bread and buns over there. The carp had
learned to come to the sound of others slurping the bread from the surface.
Imagine the sight of 300+ 20 pounders rising to take bread from the surface.
It looked like a log jam. thats about 3 tons of fish surfaced at one time.
Quite a tourist attraction, eh? They had "No Fishing" signs on the dock,
but once the carp are trained to that, I'm sure they would fall for it at
other sites around the lake. A piece of white foam with brown stripes would
make a good "artificial", eh?



You don't say how fast the water is but in general if yu can get a fish to
work hard upstream of you, you have the beating of him. The trick is to
bring him in before he is completely exhausted as a big dead-weight in a
strong current is pretty well unmanageable.


The "unmanageable" ones are the ones that make their first run hard
down-current. That's when you MUST stop them. A dead weight in current is
not much compared to one swimming hard down current. You can feel them
slowing and then turning slowly. That's the first sign that you may be able
to land him. Once you get him turned upstream, you have him under control.
By then he is way down stream and if you ease up he will relax and move up
slowly. Then is the time to start him toward you; if he does make another
hard run, he will likely swim himself onto the bank. If you can get him
shallow enough to beach himself, he's helpless.