Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Common Carp & Largemouth Bass

Thanks Ed, great info!

Yes, great info!

Up here, carp is an ethnic thing. I have had smoked carp, and it is somewhat like smoked suckers.

Not to get anyone's split shots in a tangled mess, but carp, up here, usually hit the shore, or become plant food.

Just the way it is!

The only good carp is one with an arrow stuck in it... JMHO

Ed, thanks for the great post. I come from a very mixed up heritage.

My father's family was from Bialystock, Poland. My grandmother's sister (my great aunt) would somewhere find a big fat live carp before Christmas each year. She'd keep it in her bathtub for several days, and then serve it a number of ways on Christmas Eve. The old Polish generation seemed to enjoy it. On a 1 to 10 comparison with salmon, I'd generally rate it at -10, except for smoked carp, which might rate a +2.

My mother's family was from Oulu, Finland. For Christmas Eve we had "sylte" (pork headcheese) and smoked salmon or trout. They'd wait until Christmas day to torture the family with lutefisk.

Both sides of the family also prepared many wonderful home-baked crackers, breads, sausage treats, hams, pastries, milk cheeses, etc.

I loved the headcheese and the smoked fish. The carp had few redeeming values. The lutefisk -- or "lye-dyed fish jello," was even worse than the carp in its many forms.

If it was my pond, I'd hope that the bass won the population contest. Then I'd stock with good tasting fish.

Yes. Thank you.
Regards,
FRIZ

CJ:

It's hard to get the carp to live long enough to clean them out in clear water once you've skewered them!

I stuck somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 carp one day in a couple of hours last Spring. The smaller Males would be chasing a larger female in the shallows. I always tried for the biggest target.....

Mid May is usually when the carp come into the shallows to spawn on the Potomac. One guy runs the trolling motor while the other is in the front of the boat with the bow ready to shoot. You can hammer them pretty good when they are in the shallows spawning. From clean waters I enjoy carp. Problem is, not many places I catch carp are clean.

That reminds me, I have to buy a couple of points for the bowfishing arrow. I lost one, and had to rob another arrow that I had.

I'll just sneak along the shore of the local BOW, sans boat.

Hey Ed, it's been awhile.

I have never eaten carp, but I have rarely heard good things about the taste. Can anyone pinpoint what it is about carp that is not tasty?

Go to Europe and Asian and people love it... But since it has the word carp in its name, us Americans hate it. Their certainly are bones in the fillets which can be a pain, and the flakes of flesh are big and sometimes it's a bit oily depending on where they were caught. It can have an off taste if caught from nasty waters. This is why most carp farmers purge their fish is clean water for a week or two before preparing them for market.

If my memory is right, the flesh is a bit softer than most of the normal freshwater fish that are caught for the table.

They are good pickled too. When they are spawning in the spring and shallow we use a treble hook spoon with ultru sharp hooks and cast to the shoreline and snag them. Great fun on a flippin' stick. You know there is some serious stuff going on when you get a big one. It is also kind of fun to just beach the boat and watch them wallow around. A big female travels slowly along with a male or two swimming with them and rubbing together in some sort of spawning ritual. Ugly, but a great fight on a rod and reel

It seems like depending on your country, palatable fish change. When I fish off the piers here in So Cal there is a lot of mackerel caught. I always throw them back, but there are always Asian families that ask for them.

Yes, I think a lot of it has to do with what you grew up eating... My early childhood was on Long Island, NY eating oysters, herring, and other things a country boy probably wouldn't much like...

I hear Mackerel is good on the grill, but we used them for Tuna bait.

I wouldn't mind having a nice fresh dozen of oysters on the half shell. That's the problem with living in the MidWest - no good fresh saltwater seafood.

What about stocking tiger musky? Would that help keep the carp population under control?

Generally carp will reproduce faster than musky, pike or sometimes even LMB can eat them -as Greg suggests. The more carp a water body has the more turbid the water generally becomes and the harder it is for the predators to see the carp to eat them. Also with more turbid water spawning success of LMB is less and plankton is fewer reducing recruitment of LMB. IMO the best long term control for common carp is rotenone.

But when carp are wanted then that becomes a different story.
CJ probably has the most experience here with this topic since his acquaintence raises pond carp. Meybe he can check on more carp raising details for us.

Generally what happens normally in waters is the predators are harvested and carp are ignored. In theory and IMO opinion if Fritz regularly harvests carp (30-60?/yr) the LMB should be able to pretty well control the carp recruitment - maybe control too well. If there are not enough carp, then harvest a few bass. Fritz may have to implement a slot limit for carp. (I never thought I would ever utter those words - "slot limit for carp"! LOL). It gets better - read on.

Another option would be to limit the amount of spawning sites (shoreline vegetation / structure) which should also help reduce the amount of recruitment. Since he lives offsite, Fritz should watch that poachers do not harvest his LMB. Doubtful poachers will take his carp. Too many carp will result in slow growth and overcrowding.

Question - At what point (numbers/ac) are carp too abundant in a 1 ac pond without supplimental feed that growth rates suffer? Implement Wr and body condition factors for carp - that is new for me! Is Dr Dave following this thread?

I will check with my dad's friend and get a better idea how many pounds of carp and/or number of carp he harvests per year. What I do know is, he has no other fish in the pond, that he does harvest a large number of carp per year. He harvests most by seining them, but I know he catches some on hook and line as I have caught carp is his pond with him using this method. If I had to guess, he probably harvests 50-100 and they are in the 3-6 pound range generally. As I said, he occasionally fishes for them, but the ones caught are almost always kept. He smokes them in a smoker and does eat some fresh. He also pickles them as well. This is a guy who lives completely off the grid and raises 90% of his own food. He chose carp because of the large amount of fish protein they can produce... He lives on 300+ acres down a 4 mile dirt road, pretty much in the middle of nowhere... The last I remember there was 16 family members living on the property, so there are a lot of mouths to feed. So their need for fish is substantially higher than the average pond owner.

Thank you,
Regards,
FRIZ

CJ also check on the feeding of carp. What type, how much, and how often?. I am pretty sure carp will eat softened field corn which is fairly cheap now at abt $3.50-4.50/bushel shelled (56 lbs) from farmers or grain elevators.
So far from CJ's information, if one wants mainly carp, maybe no or very few predators are needed if harvest of carp is adequate and a regular. Adequate annual harvest is key to the success. Why put a fox in the pen with chickens, if one wants lots of chickens? This is a fairly new concept for us on Pond Boss.

How many carp, can a carp pond produce, if one wants carp,carp,carp?

If anyone put a common carp in one of my ponds he would be sleeping with them if I had my way. Two things you never see in the same sentence, common carp, clear high quality water. Those things are turbidity machines. Bass nest raiders, and I don't have to think about raising them because I can catch them whenever I want, as many as I want. Or shoot them, or spear them, or bow and arrow them, or blow them up with dynomite. They sure make great fertilizer. Decent crawdad trap bait. Clean landfill? Now for the virtues of common carp...

What good is clear water if one wants to raise a lot of fish pounds per acre? The two ecosystems are contradictory and on opposite ends of the ecological / limnological spectrum.

OK. I'll have to put some thought into this. Turbid, muddy carp farm or clear water LMB, bg fishing pond. I'll get back to you on that.

Carp don't wear sweaters, and if you take them to the movies you don't have to pay to get them in.

Nothing better than pickled carp on a Ritz. Eat them up yum.

I am sure I have seen them drinking cappucino in Italian restaurants with Oriental women, however.