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!
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