Carp is a bottom non-predatory fish. He eats aquatic insects, bugs, sometimes tempted by fry. Aquatic plants can also serve as its food. With pleasure he eats calorie roots, rich in fiber and carbohydrates.
As a matter of fact, non-predatory fish is only from the point of view of anglers, who comparatively rarely have carp bites for live bait and fry. From the point of view of biologists, this is an omnivorous fish. Can eat almost all day, but most actively only in the evening and morning hours.
Meals vary with the seasons. In the spring, the carp eats young shoots of aquatic plants and spawn fish and frogs, which spawn before it. Gradually, by the beginning of summer, he begins to eat aquatic insects, leeches, worms and polyps. Closer to the autumn completely departs from plant food. In the cold season, the carp is inactive and for the most part stands at the bottom of deep wintering pits, and its body is covered with a thick mucous layer that reliably protects the body during hibernation from infections.
There are several forms of carp that have been domesticated by humans. This is a mirror carp, which has almost no scales, as well as a koi carp – the eastern variety of carp with a fancy bright color. It is of great economic importance. Carp when breeding in pond farms is able to bring a good income, but only with a fairly large scale production. For smaller farms, you can recommend a fish such as carp.
Spawning carp occurs when the water temperature is about 20 degrees, in its natural environment, this is May. Fish flock to spawning grounds and stop at a depth of about 1.5-2 meters, often covered with jugs and lotus thickets, of which there are many in the lower reaches of the Volga, in the Astrakhan region, where the carp is quite numerous. Such places are found in other rivers. Spawning occurs at shallow depths in groups of one female and several males. Usually, the fish spawn on floodplain sod areas with hard bottom, or lay eggs on aquatic plants in places with a depth of no more than 60-70 cm.
Two types of carp can be distinguished by the type of behavior – residential and semi-passage carp. Residential is found everywhere in places with a weak current or without it in the Volga, the Urals, the Don, the Kuban, the Terek, the Dnieper and other rivers, in many lakes and ponds. Usually he lives in quiet bays, rich in food and aquatic plants. It spawns near its permanent habitat.
Poluprokhodnaya lives in fresh and brackish waters of the seas – the Azov, Black, Caspian, Aral, East China, Japan and several others. He never moves far from the mouths of the rivers that flow into him, and prefers overgrown reed mouths. To spawn a semi-carp goes into the rivers in large groups. In Japan and China, there is a cult of this fish precisely in its semi-aisle form. It is believed that the carp going to spawn is the personification of male power.
It is worth mentioning the structure of the mouth carp. This is a fish with a classic lower mouth. Unlike bream, roach and other carp fish, common in central Russia, his mouth is rather weak and his lips are thick. Therefore, for its catching, rather large hooks are used to cut through a thick lip well, and a special form, such as a claw.
Fishing practice when catching carp
All tackles on the carp have one feature. Nozzle when catching it is not put on the hook, and spreads with him, and the hook is placed on a separate flexible leash. This is done because the carp swallows the bait, it passes further into the stomach, and the hook, like a foreign body, tries to throw it over the gills.
Thereby he reliably sits on a hook. Catching him somehow is not very effective. Firstly, he feels well the hook in the bait and spits it out faster. And secondly, more often when it is used for fishing it is used relatively hard tips, a makuha and boilies. They are not originally intended for mounting.
Classic carp hair assembly
Hair carp montage is an indispensable feature of the English carp fishing. It consists of a hook that is attached to a main fishing line on a leash. Typically, a fishing line passes through a flat-type bottom feeder. A thin hair leash is attached to the hook, and a floating Boyle attachment is attached to it. Boyle is placed with a special needle through which the hair with a special loop is passed through it. Hair mounting is made on the basis of purchased accessories, which can be purchased at a specialized carp shop.
When thrown into the sinker, feed is stuffed. Boyle hooked pressed into the bait hand. After casting, the feed is washed out and a feed spot is formed. Boyle with bait float above the bottom, washed out of the bait. They are clearly visible to fish among the bottom vegetation and silt, and this method prevents the hook from entanglement when casting and that it, along with the attachment, will catch on the grass stem, sinking down to the bottom after the sinker, and will not be visible to the fish hidden by it.
There are many subtleties in knitting hair montage. These are buffer silicone beads, feedergams, and all sorts of interpretations, what should be the length of the hair, the length of the leash, which knot to tie, whether or not to put the swivel, and how much to put them, etc. devote a separate article. Here it is worth considering an alternative way of carp tooling, which can be a prototype of the English carp donkey.
Homemade carp mounting
This montage was described in the almanac “Fisherman-athlete” in the article “Catching a carp on a canyon. It is indicated that it is used by local residents in the Amur and Ussuri rivers. Most likely, it is also traditional for China and Japan, from where this fish came to Europe along with other achievements of oriental culture. It differs from the English hairline in that the hooks are located on a flexible leash after the attachment, not in front of it, and the attachment itself is attached to the fishing line.
The article mentioned tells about peremte on a carp. It is placed on the river across during the course of the fish to spawn. The ridge is a wire to which the leads are attached from a thin rope. Each of them is tied with a hook on the so-called “knot” – an analogue of hair snap. The hook is made of a special shape and has no sharp parts, the fish have no chance to prick about it. When biting, the fish takes the nozzle, sucks it in the mouth and swallows, and the hook that has drawn in after this throws it out of the gills like a foreign body, firmly sitting on it. There are also recommendations on the choice of units and equipment of the reamer, so that the fish can be removed quickly along with the leads and then re-equip the Peremot immediately prepared with other leads with a nozzle.
In modern fishing such equipment also takes place. Usually taken tackle with a sliding weights, to which the leash is tied with a loop for the nozzle. A nozzle is a sawn and drilled soybean cake or cake, you can use homemade boilies, bread buns, undercooked potatoes and others, depending on local preferences of carp.
Then a loop is made behind the nozzle and a rig is attached to it from one or two hooks tied to a flexible nylon thread. Two hooks are set for reliability. They can not be fixed in the nozzle and hang loose. Such tackle works in the same way as samaenu peremote. The fish grabs the nozzle, swallows it, and after it the hooks retract into its mouth. Carp reliably intercepted and caught.
Compared to the above, the English bottom gear has several advantages.
Firstly, in English gear there are more opportunities for fish to be caught by the lip. Self-made equipment is usually quick-detachable, and fish hooks are removed at home, so catch-and-release fishing is possible only for English tackle. Secondly, it is more reliable notch fish. Dumps when catching carp on the English carp tackle are quite rare. Finally, a hair snap has less chances of hooking when fishing in the grass.
Bottom gear
Most often when catching carp use bottom gear. There can be many kinds of it. This may be a classic carp tackle with basic, spot and marker rods. There are a lot of them, and the arsenal of the karpyatnik fisherman can be compared to the arsenal of golf clubs with a golfer, of which there are more than a dozen in a coffer and each of them is needed for a certain situation.
This may be a feeder, which is also used when catching carp. Usually, carp hair mounts are installed on the feeder. The difference between feeder fishing and carp here will be in the bite alarm system. Carp snap-in in English or homemade form suggests a good chance of self-intersecting fish, when fishing for feeders with it, you can not look especially at the quiver type. And if traditional equipment is used, when the animal attachment is hooked onto the hook, then the fisherman’s qualification is already required in determining the hooking moment. Feeder can successfully catch carp in the autumn, before becoming a hibernation.
The backwater is practiced by most anglers living near carp habitats. It can be both urban and rural fishermen, for whom fishing is not only a pleasure, but also a delicious dinner. Tackle is used only with a sliding weigher, below which the homemade carp gear described above is placed. Seagull put near the habitat of carp. These are thickets of aquatic plants at a sufficient depth. Since it is problematic to catch the donk in the thickets themselves, the fishermen are forced to look for holes among them, or to clean them themselves.
Finally, the aforementioned barge. Used on rivers, you can put it with an anchor on a lake or pond, you can put across the river. In this case, be sure to observe the limit on the number of hooks for one angler and catch only during the permitted period. A boat is required for setting a ride.
One of the most important accessories for bottom fishing is a bite alarm. Traditionally, carp fishing uses a swinger, bell, or electronic alarm. A karpyatnik fisherman places several fishing rods along the shore, which can be located far enough. Instant hooking on carp mounting is not always needed. But to determine what kind of fishing rod fish pecked, you need to quickly. Therefore, they put sound signals and coils with a baytranner so that the carp does not drag off the tackle. Of course, for the feeder a traditional quiver-type signaling device is used.
Other gear
Used compared to the bottom much less. First is the float rod. It is used for catching in standing waters in thickets of aquatic plants, where it is problematic to use donkeys. When fishing for carp fishing, they put a strong enough fishing line, use a strong enough fishing rod. The fact is that this fish reaches a large size and weight, resists very stubbornly. Catching a carp on the bait is an unforgettable feeling when the angler makes a lot of effort to pull out the caught fish.
It is more convenient to catch from the boat. The boat allows you to sail off the coast, use water thickets as an anchor, entrenched to them, and allows you to catch a lot more places. It usually makes sense to catch at depths of one and a half meters, and from the coast most of these places may not be available. When fishing, you can use both a worm in the form of an animal attachment, and a crown, using hair or homemade carp montage. However, the need to separate the nozzle and the hook here is not so urgent, because the float allows you to see all the movements of the fish and perform hooking very timely.
Sometimes carp is caught on a summer mormyshku. This is a tackle with a side nod that allows you to play the game with a mouthpiece. Here you need a rod with a reel so that you can immediately set off the right amount of fishing line when catching fish, otherwise you can break the rod. They use mormyshka with a nozzle, much less often – they catch a devil without a nozzle. Nozzle – a worm. A carp detects a mormysk faster than a stand-up tool, even among the abundant bait, and rather bites at it, especially when it is not too hungry.
Such fishing brings good results on paid karpyatniki. The fish there are heavily fed with mixed fodder and fishing bait, so it is quite indifferent to all sorts of fisherman’s tricks in terms of the selection of baits and baits. The author fished on such a reservoir. Carp, standing near the shore, refused to respond to any bait thrown under his nose. He was caught from the water just net, when the guard did not see. But the summer mormyshka the next day gave a good result.
In Japan, there are cohorts of amateur anglers who fish for carp fishing. It is likely that such tackle can be used with us. Fishing is done at shallow depths, up to two meters. When fishing, both nymphs and dry flies are used, sometimes they put up streamers. They use classic fly fishing from the fifth to the sixth class, which allows both to throw far enough and to cope with large carp.
Fly fishing gives a better result compared to float and bottom, probably for the same reasons as catching an active mormysk is better than catching standing gear. It is also more sporty fishing, which allows you to fight with fish on an equal footing, gives you the opportunity to fool her with artificial bait. Probably other “Japanese” fishing methods, such as Herabuna, fly fishing without a tenkar reel may also be used for carp fishing.
For fishing from the boat use side rods. Usually, carp is caught in this way closer to the fall, when it rolls to a depth, from where it soon turns to winter stands. Often biting sazan are when fishing for bream on a ring from a boat. You can catch onboard fishing poles with a hanging or bottom sinker. However, you should avoid places with a strong current – carp there, as a rule, does not feed and pecks much less.
Carp Fishing Accessories
In addition to gear, the angler is desirable to have additional accessories for fishing. The main accessory is a landing net. A good landing net should have a long and solid handle, as it will be difficult to get a large, beating fish out of the water without it. The length of the landing net should be approximately equal to the length of the rod, which the angler catches, but not less than two meters, and the size of the ring should be at least 50-60 cm. It is best to use a rectangular or oval landing net, this is the easiest way to take fish.
The second necessary accessory is a doll. Carp – fish rather brisk. Catching it is made in places where there are plants and snags. If you lower it into the tank, it will quickly bring it into disrepair, since it will beat, rub and even break. Yes, and the tank itself when fishing among the grass quickly becomes useless. At the same time, considering the size of the fish, the kukan would be preferable, as it allows to keep the fish and takes up less space in the fishing bags.
Finally, given the sedentary nature of fishing with a rare change of places, it is imperative to use a chair when fishing. A good carp chair is not only comfort in fishing, but also health. Having sat crooked all day, there are more chances to catch a cold back.
