Lake Fishing Tips - Catch More Carp

Carp are one of the most popular species of fish to catch in lakes. One of the reasons for this is that they grow to such a large size and you are always guaranteed a good battle when you hook one.
There are three main categories of carp, crucial, mirror and common. All of these grow to a good size and will give you hours of pleasure in catching them.

Once you have found a lake where you know there are carp, one of the first things you should do is to try and find out what the best bait is to catch them with. You could try by trial and error, but if there are other people fishing at the lake, if you ask them, they will often give you a good idea. On some lakes sweet corn is the best bait, but on others it could be luncheon meat, bread or doilies.
Once you have decided on the bait, you need to find a likely place to catch your carp. If there is a bailiff at the lake, he will be able to give you some information on this that will save you a lot of time. If there is no one to ask, places that carp are likely to be caught, on a sunny day are where there is some shade, near trees or overhanging branches. Other places are those where there are water lilies or other lake plants such as reeds. If you cast out to these places you will often do well.

Another very good place that is often overlooked, but is one of my favourites, is in the margins. The margins, are anywhere from the bank out to about two metres from the bank, around the perimeter of the lake. Carp tend to swim around lakes around the margins, so you do not need to cast out far to catch them.
Once you have decided where to fish, the next thing to do is decide on the method you are going to use.
Probably the most popular method of carp fishing is ledgering with a hair rig. This has proved very successful and the largest carp have probably been caught using this method.
A hair rig consists of a hook with a piece of line attached to it and the bait is threaded on to this. Once a carp takes the bait, the hook is also sucked into the fish's mouth and when it tries to expel the bait, it hooks itself and you will hear your bite alarm sound and know it is time to strike.
I often float fish for carp as I find this very enjoyable.

I often find the margins are one of the best places to catch carp, so I cast no more than two metres out.
I fish so that my bait is just on the bottom of the lake and throw some very small pieces of ground bait out to attract the fish. I think it is important to make this point, because you only need to attract the fish, you do not want to feed them.
Sometimes you will find that after five minutes you get your first bite. Although sometimes it can take up to an hour before your first bite, but I often find that once I have my first bite, I will probably go on getting bites for a couple of hours.
When you are float fishing it is important to make sure that only the colour at the tip of the float is showing, so that with only the smallest of bites there is not much resistance for the carp and it can easily take the float under.
For this reason I usually choose a float with a bright orange tip rather than a dark coloured one, so that I can easily see the tip of the float.
Once the float goes under it is time to strike, with a bit of luck you will hook your fish and catch your first carp of the day.

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