Thought they didn't eat any bait fish?? I have heard of them being caught on jigs on the bottom but I had one blister a 6" swimbait today. I didn't foul hook it, it engulfed the swimbait. Hmmm
Asian carp
- Thread starter TRIGGER
- Start date
Bad news guys. They ruined our MS River fisheries in short order.
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Buddy of mine caught one last week.
It ate a swim bait as well.
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It ate a swim bait as well.
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catman529
Well-Known Member
I've heard the bighead carp are more likely to eat a bait than the silver carp
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they cant feed on baitfish. silver and bighead carp have no way of digesting them since they dont have true stomachs. they digest planktin types through their gill rakes. imagine a fish like that swimming around with its big mouth open engulfing as much water as it can in order to filter every tiny particle from it.
choupique
Well-Known Member
WTM":annqc057 said:
That's a bunch of bunk. No minnows (the family, not the general term) have stomachs, they have an alkaline digestive tract, but there's plenty of species that eat other fish -- pikeminnows, creek chubs, fallfish, etc. Bigheads have fine gill rakers that they use to direct food items into the esophagus, but they can and will eat small fish given the chance, and yes they'll eat lures. The gill rakers on silvers are fused together into a spongy mass that has a slimy mucous coating; this allows them to eat smaller zooplankton and even phytoplankton (!) but it also means they can't force a larger food item past the mat. They won't eat most lures, unless it's something really tiny.
choupique":2zkestlj said:
lol thats laughable, like i said, they have NO TRUE STOMACH, just a foregut and hind gut. they cant eat anything that cant pass through their gill rake system, big head or silver. according to the gut content study only 20% of organic matter makes it to the digestive track. and like you said, "unless its something extremely tiny". i would imagine Trigger was probably throwing something like a 10xd. big heads and silver are both closely related. black and grass carp are in another group in the minnow family.
so here is the thing, if these 2 types of carp are eating 3-5" shad, then why are more than one caught at a time? you would think that you could catch one on every cast, but they are not, as these are incidental catches. the only way to purposely catch one on a hook is by suspending a particle based food from a cage ball with small hooks attached to it.
here is one of the gut content studies:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl ... po=56.1538
My buddy fished a tournament on KY lake Saturday, they ran all the way to the dam and fished the tail race. He said they caught 20-25 Asian carp on swim baits.
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choupique
Well-Known Member
WTM":1tagxgow said:
Extremely tiny only counts on silvers, when there's a big bony mass that partially blocks the throat. Have you ever actually looked at how the gill rakers are arranged? You can shove your fist all the way down a big bighead's throat down into its gut. Easily. The gill rakers just strain material that would otherwise go through the opercular opening, they don't block the gut. I've caught dozens of bigheads on jigs and streamers, they will most certainly eat fish when they get the chance, and I suspect many of the the diet studies that have been published don't reflect situations like below a dam or obstruction where they can stack up and blast schools of small shad. At several of the control structures out in west TN you can cast through mixed schools; feel your bait ticking across the silvers (you'll foul-hook a few) then BAM it gets hammered by a bighead. One after another. There's no way that's incidental.
FWIW, a couple weeks ago I got about a #35 grass carp on a 5" streamer while targeting stripers below a mainstem TN River dam. I could barely reach the eye of the hook it was so far down its throat. Now THAT's incidental.
ZachMarkus":1gxm4lbl said:
The tail race??? They locked through and fished Ky dam?
TRIGGER":2jgqoy3i said:
The tail race at pickwick dam
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ZachMarkus":29hz48et said:
That's a haul. Where was the tournament out of?
TRIGGER":17c1wgr0 said:
Mouse tail
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choupique":1yqoir97 said:
yep grass carp and common carp are of different sub-family and genus than silver or bighead. they have dual digestive tracks that can eat either animal or plant matter.
if you think silver or bighead are eating a lot of shad, do a study on it and send it up to USFGS or one of the multitudes of universities who are studying them. im sure they will value your input.
UpperTully
Well-Known Member
Spurhunter":1mek4iku said:
Man, you ain't kidding! I remember bass fishing all river chutes around Memphis before the asian carp hit. What i'd give to get days and some of those chutes back the way it used to be!
Smo
Well-Known Member
UpperTully":197tf7o8 said:
When the carp first started there , did y'all see a decline in bait fish?
Smo":yag7fx8x said:
not really. the shad decline has more to do with shad kills the last 2 winters at least on KY lake. last fall's trapnet study showed above average shad numbers, but when the bays froze over and the water temps dropped into the 30's it kills the shad in large numbers. how else can you go from above average numbers to hardly any shad in a couple of months? contrary to some theories, the carp arent eating the shad lol. the good thing about a shad kill is that the next spring spawn, their populations will explode. some of the elite anglers where fishing the shad spawn.
the same type of thinking goes into the lower numbers of LMB this year. its a spawn problem, nothing else. paul rister even told us what to expect on north KY lake and yet anglers still dont believe. the elite anglers caught the exact numbers and size of bass that he predicted last fall. the exceptional spawn year fish of 2008 are pretty much done. the above average fish that are left are the ones in the 5-7 lb range.
same goes for crappie. why do you think i asked you if that big crappie you snagged was a black or white crappie? the same reason i asked Mr. Simms what percentage of his haul were black crappie. why did his biologist friend ask him the same question? it has to do with the dynamics of the lake, water clarity and the spawn rates linked to both. blacks and whites are 2 different fish in the tactics we use to catch them. like Paul said, if crappie anglers arent willing to change tactics then they will get left behind.
then you have perception. for example, during a good spawn year any angler with a rod can catch descent bass and crappie and they get into the thinking that they are above average anglers. then when a bad spawn year rolls around they think since they are above average anglers then there must be something that is causing it. except they never think of their average or below average angling skills. thats why i said this year will seperate the amateurs from the pros, and it has so far.
i fear for KY lake in the long term, but all of these seasonal changes arent due to the carp problem, yet. it amazes me that hard core anglers dont take the time to learn these seasonal patterns and do a little reading into the trapnet studies. it might make them better fishermen. was it einstein that said that doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, is the definition of insanity?
UpperTully
Well-Known Member
Smo":32ca9tnp said:
Not when they first started. It started becoming noticeable several years down the road. I quit fishing the river chutes about 2004-2005 and haven't been back since. I've read reports and talked to several that have reported the bass were making a come back alone, so I assume the bait fish are as well. I plan on making a few trips here soon to see how it is this year.
I don't know what is going on, but it seems the asian carp aren't as bad in some areas as they once where.
Smo
Well-Known Member
Thanks for the reply Guys.
It's hard for me being a newcomer basically to Ky Lake then run into a year like this makes it even tougher lol
But I'll still be after them every chance I get.
WTM that's a good point about the cold weather killing off the shad, I'd say that is most likely what has happened.
There doesn't seem to be a shad shortage upstream of us.
I saw a pic where Richard Simms was showing a yellowtail minnow and Zach Markus was catching smallmouth bass below one of the dams in an area known to have big shad runs as well as bedding activity.
But the weather was a lot different in those areas than what we expierienced here last Winter.
It's hard for me being a newcomer basically to Ky Lake then run into a year like this makes it even tougher lol
But I'll still be after them every chance I get.
WTM that's a good point about the cold weather killing off the shad, I'd say that is most likely what has happened.
There doesn't seem to be a shad shortage upstream of us.
I saw a pic where Richard Simms was showing a yellowtail minnow and Zach Markus was catching smallmouth bass below one of the dams in an area known to have big shad runs as well as bedding activity.
But the weather was a lot different in those areas than what we expierienced here last Winter.
