Carp

[Little_Flatty]

Hi all,

Has it ever occurred to any of you that when you sight carp in the water, that you never seem to see the small ones? I also find this with the ones you catch…average size at 2kg or more!

Anyone know where the small ones are? Or do they just hatch at 2kgs🤣

Just sharing my useless thought of the day  

Mike

[wazatherfisherman]

Have to agree with you Mike- have done a bit of Carp fishing, mainly along the freshwater end of the Shoalhaven and never caught one under 2-3kg. There are some genuine monsters down there- which can often be seen, but you don't see the small ones.

The only small ones I've ever seen we used to catch in Lake Northam when I was a kid- they were 2-4 inches long and we traded them with the pet shop

[bessell1955]

Perhaps the small ones just do not take bait?  I don't know.

[wazatherfisherman]

2 minutes ago, bessell1955 said:

Perhaps the small ones just do not take bait?  I don't know.

We used to catch them in Lake Northam on tiny balls of bread about half the size of a pea- the biggest one we ever caught in there was about 6 inches long and that was a 'monster' compared to the others we caught!

[Little_Flatty]

6 minutes ago, bessell1955 said:

Perhaps the small ones just do not take bait?  I don't know.

It's not just that, you don't see little ones swimming around! I was just wondering about this because I walk past a lot of giant carp some days and realise I've never seen a small one!

[wazatherfisherman]

2 minutes ago, Little_Flatty said:

It's not just that, you don't see little ones swimming around! I was just wondering about this because I walk past a lot of giant carp some days and realise I've never seen a small one!

The ones we used to catch in Lake Northam we didn't see- even though it was only about 2ft deep along the edge where we fished for them- maybe even shallower. They were in the weed and we looked for a tiny clear spot to drop our handline's in, with the Carp coming out of the weed, grabbing the bait and we'd basically lift them straight out and into the bucket of water. Used to get 2c each for them after lugging them to the pet shop in Glebe point Rd. I think it was in 1968 or 69

[wazatherfisherman]

Pretty sure they put them in the 'lake' as part of the Waratah Festival and they put them in Manly dam also. This was long before they were identified as such a pest

[big Neil]

5 hours ago, Little_Flatty said:

It's not just that, you don't see little ones swimming around! I was just wondering about this because I walk past a lot of giant carp some days and realise I've never seen a small one!

They are there Mike. Like all small fish they need to hide to avoid being eaten, and they naturally "school up". Until they are about 4-6 inches long their diet consists of tiny plankton like critters. They can be caught with bait from about 4 inches long. 

I get thousands of them, about 2 inches long, in my shrimp nets during the Summer. 

Hope this helps, bn

[Little_Flatty]

3 hours ago, big Neil said:

They are there Mike. Like all small fish they need to hide to avoid being eaten, and they naturally "school up". Until they are about 4-6 inches long their diet consists of tiny plankton like critters. They can be caught with bait from about 4 inches long. 

I get thousands of them, about 2 inches long, in my shrimp nets during the Summer. 

Hope this helps, bn

Thanks Neil,

Makes sense. I guess it's very easy for the little ones to be taken by birds if they lurk on the surface. Much harder to for a bird to could take a 3kg model!

Mike

[frankS]

I fish lake Burrenjuck every year ( except last 2 years ) and small Carp are a bit of a pest down there, ranging from around 6" up to 18" and there are plenty of them.

Frank