Largest Carp for 2012

[catncarp]

here is a picture of my largest Carp for 2012, a 35.5 pounder

[tomme boy]

Nice! We are getting all kinds of the Asian jumping ones here. In about a month I'm headded out to do some snagging for them. A friend last year snagged about 400lbs of them in an after noon. This is on the Mississippi River.

[Rangefinder]

Good lord--if you had a Chinese Market close at hand, you'd make bank on that bugger.

[Doc Highwall]

That looks like a bottom feeding Democrat.
Nice catch by the way.

[dale2242]

Dang, that thing is bigger than the biggest Chinook salmon we caught from the Rogue River last year.
Congrats....dale

[wallenba]

I hate those slimy, boat bumping, tackle busting, mud mixing monsters. But if you like them...great.

[swheeler]

That's a big one! Wonder how many McDonalds fillet of fish that one would make?

[captaint]

catncarp - Did that carp come from the Blue Marsh ?? Mike

[gwpercle]

Three Questions :

What did you use for bait , are they good to eat ( I mean do they taste good ) and what did you do with that big rascal ?
Gary

[starmac]

When I was commercial fishing and the carp started running they would fill up the nets, and that saw blade fin on their back caused me to do a lot of sewing. lol
The only market at all for them was down on the coast as crab trap bait, and a truckload wouldn't bring the gas money to get them there. Throwing them on the bank didn't work well either as after a couple of days we had every buzzard in texas roosting on that stretch of river. lol

I have never eat one, but did have one guy that wanted a hundred every 30 days. He smoked them in a large smoke house for 30 days, and they were his preferred meat.
They are fun to catch on rod and reel though, always just used corn for bait.

[alrighty]

Nice Carp! The common Carp has got to be one of the toughest fish to catch.I have never caught any over 24 pounds.My Grandfather would make dough balls from Jello mix and yellow corn meal.We would bait up a spot in the river with a couple cans of corn and have a blast catching these fighters.We always gave a couple to a friend and released the rest.
The common Carp can be good to eat , either as smoked as mentioned or pressure cooked and made into patties then breaded and fried.
The Asian Carp are a whole different breed , they are the ones now wreaking havoc in all the rivers.The Ky Dept of Wildlife require you to kill all that are caught.They do have a good taste but are a major pain to clean.They do however work great as cut bait for catching large Blue cats.

[Charlie Two Tracks]

I was watching a Virgil Ward (remember him?) show on a Sat. morning, many many years ago. He was doing a special on How to cook a Carp.
He put the carp on a cutting board, spiced it up with different stuff, put some Lemon on it and cook it till done. He then took it out of the oven, scraped the carp into the garbage can and said. You eat the board, it tastes better...... It was really funny to see. Smoked carp is ok and some people know how to prepare them. I don't know myself.

[77ruger]

Wow didn't know they got this big.

[dbosman]

Grind them up really fine and make Gefilte fish or fish balls for stir fry.

[MT Gianni]

Really oily but smoking cooks most of that out.

[opos]

Serve them up with Spam....makes "Surf and turf" on a budget

[454PB]

Back when I was working at the lake, a commercial fisherman came in every year and netted 200,000 pounds of carp. I asked him what they use them for (nobody eats them around here), and he told me they are shipped to Minnesota for processing and used as "institutional" food for human consumption. They transferred them into special tanker trucks and shipped them live. Carp are really tough to kill!

[MT Gianni]

Close friend is a former Idaho Fish and Game biologist. He says the fish fry @ the Western Idaho State Fair when he was there was carp. Free booth and no complaints with a lot of returnees.

[Nick Quick]

The carp in the picture is not the invasive carp that jumps out of the water and infested the waters everywhere. That is called the common carp(Ciprinus Carpio). Very very very nice experience to catch them. They put on a good fight.
They are also edible but I'm not a fan. In Europe they eat the thing big time.
They can be caught with specialized bait called boilies (spherical balls made out of all kind of flours and eggs). To give you the easiest bait that never failed me I would totally recommend corn. The canned one that is bigger in size. The jig is a bit tricky but there is no big deal to learn it.
I totally recommend to anyone to try this kind of fishing.

[bdicki]

I love shooting carp with a bow.