Carp on the Kayak – or “poor man’s free-range fish-farming”
by Richard deCosta
I was introduced to carp angling via the British mini-series, A Passion for Angling, and was enchanted by the charm of the small farm-pond setting, and the quaint and quiet ways of its hosts. What I discovered when I set out to have my own bit of quaint and quiet carp angling was anything but quaint: the mighty Kennebec river. I now fish for carp almost exclusively in Merrymeeting Bay and its tributaries.
Taking a rest on the side of the Kennebec River
Carp are a highly underrated game fish in Maine. They’re a coarse fish, and from away, but then again, so are some of our favorite summer visitors! Carp aren’t just visiting fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on which side of the invasive species fence you’re on). Despite efforts to the contrary, they’re pretty much here to stay.
And my favorite way to catch carp is from a kayak. A small one. When you latch onto a 30 pound fish from a 7 foot kayak, it’s an event! If you’re not well anchored, it’s the perfect poor man’s trolling motor, so long as you don’t mind making a beeline for the weeds every time you turn it on!
Since their introduction in the 1890’s they have spread to quite a few places in Maine, but the spot with the highest carp ratio I’ve found is in and around Merrymeeting Bay, particularly in the tidal flats around the south end of Swan Island. Truth be told though, nearly any stretch of flats in the lower Kennebec watershed will usually yield some carp. Swan Island just happens to have great camping facilities, so I tend to prefer that area. You can put your kayak or small boat in right at the public launch in Richmond. If you’re camping at Swan Island, Maine IF&W offers a shuttle service that comes with the daily fee.
Swan Island campground’s dock in Richmond
Camping at Swan Island
The first step, of course, is finding feeding carp (if they’re not feeding, they won’t go for what you're offering, no matter how ambrosial or well-presented it may be), and being there at the right time. This means positioning yourself near, or possibly in, a patch of grass in the flats during the last two to three hours of flood tide, and staying there for the first two to three hours of ebb tide. For a visual guide, as long as there is at least 8-10” of water on the flats, they’ll be there somewhere. The shallower the water, the easier they are to spot, especially from a low-sitting kayak.
High tide on Swan Island flats
Once you find a likely spot for carp, you need to know what to look for to find feeding carp. Their feeding and other behaviors have been given names by anglers over the years: tailers, rooters, mudders, cloopers, cruisers, and hellraisers, to name a few. For bait fishing under the surface you’ll want to find the tailers, rooters, and mudders. These are the ones foraging in the silty, muddy bottom in and around the grass.
They leave unmistakable signs as to their location: gradually expanding and travelling silt clouds, blades or clumps of grass moving in a way unlike their neighbors (this is the carp moving between stalks, rooting around them), bubbles rising from disturbed silt, and the most obvious, big ole carp tails sticking up out of the water while the business end points down into the trough.
A sure sign of feeding carp: A slowly expanding cloud of silt
Cloopers can be the most fun, since they rise up and ‘cloop’ the food off the surface. This is where a hooked, floating bait is the most lethal. It’s also where using a fly rod for carp is most effective.
Let’s talk a bit about preparation. If you are fly fishing for carp, locating feeding fish and positioning yourself where you can see and reach them is usually enough. If you are fishing with any kind of bait, you’ll want to do some pre-baiting of the area you’re going to be fishing.
A word of caution about this: pre-baiting or advance baiting, that is, depositing meat, bones, dead fish or other food material in the water to lure fish, is not allowed in any freshwater body regulated by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, so do not do it! The reason you can pre-bait in Merrymeeting Bay (and the tidal waters of its tributaries) is that they are not regulated by the IF&W, but rather the Maine Department of Marine Resources, and they allow it. They are the ones that issue saltwater licenses and handle anything that is not freshwater. I have verified on the phone with a DMR official that pre-baiting is allowed in the locations I am advocating.
I could, and probably will at some point, write an entire article on the ways and means of effective pre-baiting for carp, but for the sake of the brevity let me give you the basics. Essentially what you are attempting is short-term, low-budget, highly inefficient, free-range fish farming. The goal is to freely offer (place in the water, no strings attached) that which will be your hook bait in the area you have selected. Do this regularly for hours, days, or even weeks in advance of when you expect to catch them. The idea is to create a “safe” and regular food source for your quarry, so that when you come along ready to lead them to the aquatic abattoir, they will not be nearly as suspicious as evolution would have prefered them to be. You bear hunters will likely be nodding in agreement at this tactic.
There is also the theory that the more free food you offer at one time, the more likely the carp are to compete for the apparent abundance, and in doing so, let their guard down and clamp on to the bait that has a shiny, pointed, hook-shaped tail.
As for what bait is most effective in catching carp, the answer is simple: smelly, tasty food. They do have a sweet tooth (well, sweet lips), but the more nutritious the bait the better, since they won’t keep coming back for empty calories. Carp will eat sweet corn, boilies (generally a cereal/flour/sugar mix, balled up and boiled), premade catfish bait (carp bait isn’t as readily available in the U.S. as it is in the U.K.), worms, sandwich meat, and even dog food. Boilies are most popular with British anglers for advance baiting, and they should know. They’ve been catching carp a lot longer than we’ve even had them. I like to make my own boilies and make them big, at least an inch or more in diameter. I’m not the least bit interested in growing the local yellow perch and smallmouth bass populations.
A small batch of homemade flour and Wheaties boilies
A selection of carp baits: two flavors of boilies and sweet corn
Since the point of all this is to catch carp from a kayak, let me fill you in on some other essentials: two anchors, one fore and one aft, and a periscope. A periscope is most important when you are really low to the water, except in the case of tailing or clooping carp. Anything going on below the surface will need to be spotted from a distance, and from high enough to see through the reflections. Edu Science makes a nice collapsible periscope for about $30.
Two anchors are essential, especially if you are using only the mushroom type. With a 20-30 pound carp on the line and a slick, silty bottom, you will slide; maybe not out to sea, since the carp will not be able to go quite that far, but if you have just one mushroom, you will move! It’s best to anchor yourself (well before you actually make your first cast) with at least one plow or fluke-style anchor on either end of the kayak. With no anchors, you might as well get off the kayak and stand in the silt (snowshoes, anyone?), because a carp of any decent size will take you on a magical sleigh ride. Even a mere five-pound bass can easily move a good sized canoe!
So assuming you’ve got it all set up right up til this point, and you’ve just hooked a decent 20+ pounder, make sure you’ve good a sturdy net to haul it into the kayak with you. It’s not a graceful thing, having a fish-cow in your lap in a kayak, but it can be quite fun to see just how much fish you are capable of landing in such a small craft!
