I go fishing to catch fish, and sometimes it means chasing pest species.
European Carp are such and underrated fish to target on light gear. If you haven't caught 1 on light gear using lures you are missing out. 6 meters of Mud Marling lying beside the Basspro.
On a recent trip to Lake Hume chasing a feed of redfin, I seen something I have never seen before. About the size of 8 football fields of Carp sucking stuff of the top. I slowly moved into the centre of the school of fish as quietly as I could. It reminded me of chasing tuna back in the day. The carp were slurping small bait fish of the top of the water, So I decided to try and match the hatch and grabbed out a few different jerk baits. After trying a few different sizes I ended up with a Duo Spearhead Ryuki 50 MDF it was the closest to the size of the bait fish anything that sank or suspended didn't work the lure needed to be twitched on the top. If the lure went more than 6 inches under the water you would not get the bite.
Sitting in the middle of the school of carp watching them slurping bait all around the boat was getting the juices flowing. Sight fishing the old MUD Marlin was something I had never done before. The technique was fairly easy, wait to see witch direction the fish was swimming and cast the lure in front of the fish. You then needed to leave the lure until the fish was only a meter from your bait, once they were close enough twitch once or twice to get there attention and Hold the Hell on.... The fight of a large carp on light gear is second to none in freshwater. Each fish pulled drag better than any other freshwater fish I have caught. The fish all ranged between 600 to 800 ml long.
After about an hour the wind changed and the carp slowly disappeared. But in that hour window a hooked well over 20 carp landing 7 fish. You may say the ratio of hook to landing was poor but it was a lot of fun. I would class it the most fun fishing I have had in years.
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