carp?

mah, i think that the only satisfaction in spearing the carps is that you can take photos with a "big one": they're too easy ton shoot (not exactly tha fast and furious fish) and not so good to eat for my taste. I once caught a 18,5 kg carp in Garda lake (Italy's largest lake, on the lower edge of the alps). Up there it's full of eels, pikes and blackbass, but visibility is quite low. I was scanning the sand inch by inch looking for for eels with a five-prong omer tempest 50, when I rose up my head towards a huge dark shadow. My finger pulled the trigger without judgement. I badly hit the enormous carp's tail. Of course I couldn't pierce it, so I wrestled to wrap it up with the line and started stabbing it.
Great photos, but not so the dinner: lots of bones and taste of mud. That was my first and last carp ever speared.

Around here - at certain times - they are extremely wary for some reason- have to use 'aspetto' but then it is very easy to get close since they will come right over.
I've just been taking pictures of them - don't think I would spear them though I did alot when I was a kid.

When carp come from clean water they aren't bad. I remember taking some from a local park on corn. The recipe included vinegar but I'd have to look it up if you really want. Bony, though.

ok . so for the carp...
this fish we use to fish with boilies and with fishing rods
it is giving a nice fight
more then 5 Kilos the taste is not sogood , but a carp of 2-3 Kilos
can be nice .
like others said this is not so big deal to spear them , they are easy to reach
so for me its a waste of time and effort

Ok, years ago they used to harvest them here for cat food.
My goal in my youth was to be the guy that speared the world record carp.
Both with the spear gun and the bow and arrow. At that time we had carp that exceeded 50 to 60 pounds. Both with the bow and the ol' snubnose. When the opportunity arose I freaked. It was like shooting an old truck tire!
The damn arrow and spear both bounced off and came back at me with lightning speed. both just missing my head. Im sure now days with newer technology that there is better gear. But the point is.. dont discount them as being a big sac of mush! thats armour they are supporting and it works.

Btw I never did get the wr
jim

If you;re in Canada please shoot every carp you see. these fish are a non-native invasive species that do massive amounts of damage to our wetlands.

I use anything I have to shoot them, they are big, but don;t fight long if you slip a shaft in behind the gills. I'll be heading down to kelowna very soon to do some carp slaying in about a week

Like land shark said carp have got some pretty tough armor on them. I'm a newby still trying to get some gear rounded up (sugestions would be nice 1-30lb fresh watter fish)
so i've never speared any thing but i've caught carp before and they put up a good fight. there was a compitition going on while I was down at starvation (utah) and they where spearing 20-30lb carp with single band 120 and 150 cm single bands using 7mm shafts and single barb points

I use a JBL NW Special. seems to knockem down quick. 3x Jbl "blue" bands.

So we might spear a carp around here from time to time.

The smaller ones are better to eat than the bigger ones, but some of our local lakes are so filthy that I wouldn't eat anything out of them- I guess that's why "catch and release" is so big on some of our lakes. rofl

If your going to spear it to eat I would suggest finding a smaller one, less toxins, and smoking it- like a piece of jerky and not like a bong. :duh It actually tastes pretty good this way. Shooting one, to eat, in the winter time tastes better than one shot in the height of summer when lakes temps are in the 80's.

My Grandfather used to like to eat them "pickled", but that's not my cup of tea. :yack He also liked a good smoked carp better than a smoked trout since it is an oiler fish and made for a better "smoking fish". I have a friend from the Czech republic who used to eat them every Christmas. She gave me a book of recipes and my grandmother, whose also from that area, seemed to recall her mother making some of them as a child.

Now, there are much better tasting fish to eat around here and I don't waste much time shoting them- to eat at least. They are NOT a native species to these parts and simply trash the native vegetation in our local lakes. This makes things siliter, native fish have a harder time competing, more invasive plants are allowed to move in, and then whole cycle just repeats itself until the lake has nothing else living in it.

As a result, I have no problem wasting a few if they happen to get in my way while I'm out looking for a decent sized perch or crappie. We even have "carp shoots" around here form time to time to help clear the waters a , very, little bit.

As far as guns go I like something shorter since the vis can get so bad at times you can't even see the end of you gun- which makes it really hard to shoot the fish rigth in front of your face.

Here is a pic of my guns. Either one will work, but the wooden one is easier to manuever in low vis so I use it more. Something smaller than a 75cm Euro gun will work fine. I have had spears bounce off of their heads before, since it's all bone, so I just aim for behind that part and then pith them afterwards. They put up a fun fight and can be taken with a smaller gun if you get close enough- just ask Ted about taking them with the "bandito" I was stupid enough to buy. :duh The three bands give the gun enough punch to go right through the bone plate, but a single band gun makes it more intersitng. I have also shot them with a pole spear as you can see in the second picture.

The pics of Ted and I are of some fish in the 30 poundish range. I think Ted's biggest so far was around 43 pounds, but the state record is over 60. I haven't shot any lately, but once things clear up this fall I might tag a couple of big ones if I bump into them.

Jon

thanks for the gun advice amphibious but i'm on areally low budjet something in the $100
range would be good

jon

nice buffalo in the fish big pic those baby's are native
and quite good smoked.


jim

Jon İf there are so many Toxins in the lakes What the Hell are you doing in them?

Ps Nice Carp.
Personaly i like 2to3LB Blue Carp Done in Chineese Veg on New Year.

The carp we have in Alberta are usually called Suckers. In the lake where I was able to find some, they were very difficult to get near, but I managed to get a few. They are solid with not many bones, and my wife made them taste excellent, fried in spices. I even fed it to anglers who were very surprised at how good it was.
Peace,
Erik Y.

I think our Carp are probably cleaner - they tend to cruise at mid-depth in small pods along the Lake Michigan shoreline - and at a good pace. They also seem generally to be quite wary and will not return once spooked.

They look to be a different species than the Pics jon posted. When I was a kid I shot a huge one and it bent an 8mm shaft against the water! I measured it at the tallest part and it was 16 inches high - from just behind the pectoral fins to just ahead of the big dorsal one.

They are not common in inland lakes around here.

Sequence of carp shots here

Freediving shots

They're curious, but usually not amenable to any sudden movements at all. It is odd - I've seen far more Freshwater Drums than carp this year.

More than one snobby angler has been embarrassed to find that the hard-fighting "trout" he hooked was a sucker. He was then even more embarrassed to find that after singing the praises of the cook over the delicious trout dinner to be advised that the area is "catch and release only" for trout and that what he had just eaten was sucker. The poor fish has bad press from its name.

I posted pics of a couple of different kind of carp. The one on the end of the polespear is the invasive carp that were brought over to be raised in pens during the Great Depression. Over time the escaped into the local waterways and have kind of taken over. The really big ones that Ted and I are pictured with are the Buffolo rough fish that are native to these waters.

We had a bunch of our beaches closed earlier this summer due to some "killer" blue-green algae. We normally only dive the local lakes, the ones 2 miles from our houses, in the late fall/ winter/ early spring. This time of year it pays to drive to other lakes- all of which are at least an hour away. I'm planning on doing a bit of wreck diving this Wednesday out in Lake Michigan, but that's more like an hour and a half away.

This is what our local lakes look like right now. As you can tell I've been spending more time kayaking on TOP of the water than swimming in it.


Jon

I'm lucky - five or ten minutes to the clinch marina - which is in Grand Traverse Bay off lake michigan. It's a great sort of artificial reef - with lots of fish - though boats are bothersome for much of the summer - and generally clear water. Visibility is in the 9-15 meter range most of the time. I don't think I've had a day that was less than 5 or 6 - and tht under heavy overcast late in the day. My daughter and I have our gear packed in backpacks so we can throw down on a moments notice. Our parking options are pre-mapped for contigencies based on time and season.

Right now the tourists are leaving and you kind of feel like you're getting away with something just slipping down the ladder they so conveniently left for us 2 minutes from the parking spot.

Some beautiful and secluded lake michigan shoreline is 30 minutes from here in the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore. Not alot to look at - wrecks here and there, fallen, waterlogged cedars, weirdly shaped marl (clay) and lots of rocks and huge boulders and occcasional timbers from shipwrecks. Mostly frequented by gobies, sculpins, crayfish and freshwater drums. We basically just hit the beach and swim out a few hundred meters to get into a little more depth. Visibility there depends on the wind - west wind usually means pretty stellar visibility if it's not too wavy. North or south stirs up the Marl - which gives teh water a 'milky' look though it's still often pretty good. Boats are rare out there - closest I've seen was probably 2 miles. It's rare to even hear them. Nice open feeling out there.

I was in Duluth last summer. They have a beautiful aquarium there that treats the Great Lakes like the freshwater sea they really are. Fantastic! I'd have a hard time as a spearo there, though. Having giant, juicy landlocks and trout off limits would definitely try my moral fiber . . . such of it as there is!