Using Bread to Surface Fish for Carp

If you've thrown bread into the water to feed ducks, you've probably observed large fish competing for it.  Those fish are carp, and they are LOTS of fun to catch!

I've written about using bread balls to fish  on the bottom for carp.  They can be caught this way, but they have the advantage.  Carp can inhale the bait off of the bottom and eject it multiple times, thus stripping the bread without touching the hook.  This gets frustrating in a hurry.

Fishing on the surface gives YOU the advantage.  The bait is floating above the fish.  In order to secure it, the carp has to pull its head down after inhaling.  This greatly increases the chance of the hook catching on the carp's fleshy mouth.

To fish off the top, the first thing you'll need to do is remove your weight.  All you need in the way of tackle is a hook tied to the end of your line.  That hook needs to be a size 4 and of the plain shank / baitholder variety.  It needs to be a strong hook!

Now let's talk about the bread.  Forget about the sliced stuff.  That won't hold up.  What you need is a whole unsliced loaf.  They go by many names, i.e baggets, Italian bread, French bread, etc.  All of these loaves have something in common - a nice sturdy outer crust that completely incapsulates the soft white center.

Now let's talk about the setup.  You'll want to pinch off a piece of the bread by simply pinching the crust.  When you do, you'll notice the nice brown crust on top with soft white below.  Think of the crust as the roof of the house and the soft white portion as the house itself.

Take the sharp point of your hook and pierce the top of the brown crust.  Pierce it at about the center.  In order to do this, turn the hook upside down.  It will look like a candy cane.

When the crust is pierced and you're into the white below, gently move your hook 180 degrees back upright.  If the soft white losens in this process, you can crimp it against the bottom of the hook with your fingers.  Make sure you just crimp though.  Don't be tempted to make a bread ball.  They sink!  Here's the finished product.

You can see that the crust overlaps the bread slightly.  There is lots of soft white underneath.  There was no crimping needed on this one.  Notice that I did gently move the bread down so that I could push the point of the hook up into the soft white.  This way the fish won't immediately feel the hook point.

The physics of this are perfect because when you lower it into the water, the hooked bread will float.  Because the white pulp under the crust is heavier, the bread will float crust up.  You see the crust, while the fish sees that white bread it loves so much!  Here's what it looks like in the water.

All that's present is the 10 lb line floating beside the crust.  Since the eye of the hook is on top, the line stays out of the way.  I apologize for that brown water.  It's what we have to deal with in this part of the country!

To show you how sturdy the rig is, here's a picture of crust that was completely stripped of the soft white but remained in tact and on the hook.

The beautiful thing about this rig is that you can drop it in the water and fish near the bank, or you can cast out.  If you cast firmly but gently, that crust will hold.  My kids and I used this rig today.  I baited the hook and when the fish took it, I set the hook.  They reeled in and landed with a hand net.

You'll want to losen your drag about half way.  When the hook grabs, the carp will shoot off like a bullet. If there's no give in the line, even a smaller carp can snap 10lb test like a twig!  To set the hook, jerk up on the pole, as vertically as you can.  Do it hard, and you may have to do it more than once.

We must have caught around a dozen carp today, big and small.  Here are a few pics!

How to Rig a Fishing Pole

If you're just getting into fishing, you might be intimidated by the number of choices you have.  There are a plethora of ways to tie a knot and rig a pole.  There are rigs for bass, carp, catfish, crappie, and the list goes on.

Take a deep breath, my friend.  You only need one knot - the fisherman's knot.  It can be used to tie a basic rig that will catch all of the fish I listed above and them some.  The rig consists of a weight (any shape) tied on your line and a hook on that same line, about 6 inches below your weight.

If a picture's worth a thousand words, a video's worth a million.  Roll 'em!

Fisherman's Knot

Simple Fishing Pole Rig

Attracting Carp with an Inverted Bobber

Fishing shares something in common with cooking.  The best things are sometimes discovered by accident.  My son and I may have stumbled upon such a discovery while fishing today.

The carp in our area feed with the ducks.  They're accustomed to bread, and they will swim up within minutes of it hitting the water.  The carp, of course, don't know that this is bread.

What carp see are white objects floating on the water.  It turns out that the white portion of a bobber looks very similar, at least to a fish.  My son and I brought the bobbers to help the bread stay afloat.  The hope was to float the hooked bread amongst the other bread we had tossed on top of the water ... which the carp had been sucking down with great enthusiasm.

We rigged our poles without a weight.  The line had only a bobber and a hook with some bread on it.  Within minutes the water was churning with carp big and small.  The bread drew interest, but the bobber itself looked like a pinball.  It was violently moving everywhere.

That's when we realized that the carp were striking the bobber itself.  The absence of a weight had caused the bobber to float upside down, with the white portion in the water.  Apparently, carp view the white side of a bobber as the biggest and best piece of bread ever!

I realize that you can't hook a carp with a bobber.  However, using an inverted bobber greatly increases the number of fish in proximity to your hook and the actual bait on it.  After all, to some degree, fishing is about the odds.  This move may put the house (or at least the pond) in your favor!

(As usual, be careful not to harm the ducks.  Since the bobber will float your bread / bait, you may want to wait until they leave the immediate area.)

Fishing with Kids

Fishing with your children is both rewarding and challenging.  As an adult, you can cast into the depths and enjoy the scenery while you wait on a big fish.

Most kids are not big on waiting.  They tend to reel in a couple of seconds after they cast out.  This can be frustrating, and you may find yourself asking them to count to 30 before they reel in.

Believe it or not, there are smaller fish that can provide you with a solution.  They go by many names, but they're all close cousins.  Two of the more common are perch and orange-spotted sunfish.

               orange-spotted sunfish

                             perch

In large lakes, these fish can grow big enough to keep.  In most cases, they are only inches long.  Check your state's regulations for legal sizes to keep.  The fish pictured above were promptly returned to the lake.

These fish travel in schools.  They hit bait often and aggressively.  Your kids will literally pull one out after the other.

So how's it done?  First, you need the right hook size.  Generally speaking, that's a size four or smaller.  These fish have tiny mouths.

Next, you need the right bait.  In this case, you want worms.  I'm not talking about a whole worm or even half.  You'll want to use a third of a worm.

Third, you have to know where to put that worm.  Sunfish and perch hang out right beside the bank.  They're in a depth of inches, not feet.

Last but not least is technique.  Tell your kiddoes to take all of the slack out of the line.  Lower it into the water but don't let it touch the bottom.  The second the line tugs hard, your child should give it a jerk.  Nine out of ten times, they'll jerk the fish right out of the water!

There you have it.  Your kids are now happy and occupied while you catch the grown up fish!!

Carp Fishing

Carp can be found in most bodies of water, but in this case smaller is better.  The best place to fish for them is in ponds or playa lakes.  You'll want to look at places with established duck populations.

The connection between ducks and carp can be summed up in one word, and that word is bread.  Instead of feeding the ducks on land, throw bread into the water.  Then watch below the ducks.

The water will start churning.  You'll see bread disappear under the water before the ducks can take it.  If you throw enough bread out, you'll see these giants come up to the surface.  They can devour whole slices in the blink of an eye.

At this point, you'll want to place the bait of your choice on your hook and gently toss it right in the middle of all that churning.  Take care to avoid hitting the ducks.

With regard to bait, carp will hit on a wide variety of items.  The tried and true favorites are bread, corn, biscuit dough, and night crawlers.  Make sure your bait complies with the laws and regulations in your area.  If you choose to put bread on your hook, roll it into a ball so that it falls to the lake bed out of the ducks' reach.

My favorite method is to attract the carp with bread.  Then I bait my hook with a worm and let it gently descend below the bread.  Worms are much more difficult for a carp to strip from the hook, and they like worms just as well.  

Make sure you've threaded that worm onto the hook multiple times.  Carp don't have teeth.  They have a powerful suctioning mouth that can rip bait off of a hook before the carp ever touches it.  Just look at that mouth!

Make sure the drag on your reel is set about half way.  These fish are large.  If there's not enough play in the reel to let them run, they will snap your line.

When you hook a large carp, you have what every angler wants - a hard fight!  The fish will run several times.  Be patient.  Let it run.  When the line goes limp, reel some in.  As the fish tires, you may be able to tighten up your drag.  It may take 15 minutes or more to reel in a large carp.

Have a net handy to land the fish.  If you attempt to lift a large carp out of the water with only your line and pole, the fish will snap your line.  After you take some pics, I would recommend releasing the carp.  In my opinion, the meat's not good.

Last but not least, here's the family portfolio!

Why go fishing?

I've been fishing since I was just a boy.  As I've aged, my reasons for doing it have changed.  As a kid, I did a lot of river fishing in the mountains if New Mexico.

Rivers are a lot like little boys.  They're rushing everywhere.  Rivers can be wild and unpredictable.  The current forces you to constantly re-cast.  There's just no chance of getting bored.

Boredom, however, is a relative term.  What would have been labeled as boring in my childhood has a new label in adulthood - peaceful.  Hence I love lake fishing now like I did river fishing then.

Lakes offer peace and quiet.  They provide an opportunity to observe and interact with an endless list of wildlife.  Most importantly, lakes offer a chance to interact with your family.

When I take my kids to the lake, there are no electronic devices.  There are no iPods, iPads, or anything else that starts with an "i" followed by a capital letter.  It's just me and my kids interacting for hours and talking to each other about a wide array of things other than what's biting.

My hope is that this blog will encourage you to do the same with your little ones!