Ice out carp

[Tippman]

Fishing the shallow bays of lakes in the first few days of ice out is one of the best times of the year to catch big carp. Got out for a few hours this evening on new water and managed a handful.

A nice double..

[DEADhead]

those are some great fish tippman. nice going!

[Tyler Holm]

Good Gravey. Very nice

[huntnfishsd]

great fish! looks like those pigs put on some weight over the winter!!

[HuskerBen]

Very nice! How'd ya do it? Bait, rig, etc?

[DeanoB]

Those are some big boys congrats!

[Ralph Wiggum]

Spectacular! Please share tactics! Sounds like a fun day after putting the docks in this weekend.

[JimBuck]

Nice fish Tippman. Those bad boys have been eating good.

[Tippman]

Nothing too technical as far as tactics but what we did was check out all the bays in the lake and find which held the greatest concentrations of fish. An easy way to tell was by looking at how cloudy the water was. If the bay had many carp in it the water was brown from them tearing up the muddy bottoms which was key. They were not in sandy, or gravel areas. Temps were 53-55 in these bays while main lake was 46-50.

We also found out that trying to fish them while scouting did not work well and only managed a few this way. They are just too smart and skittish. Once we set up in a corner of a good area and waited they came back and that's when we had our best fishing. Only had crawlers with us so that's all we used, really wish I'd had some corn to compare. I simply used a small split shot tied about 12" away from a #2 hook with that crawler and waited with it cast out on the bottom. Friend used a egg style sinker with swivel so they couldn't feel any resistance and even a bobber at the end. I caught more fish though. Wish I would have taken a few more pictures other than that first one in the boat of 2008 and a double. Most of them were thicker than the fish in the pics, they all were just deep with shoulders and guts on them.

Hope that helps.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Thanks, Tippman! I hope to give it a shot this weekend.

[Andrew Erickson]

nice fish!

[erickol]

Nice handfulls of fish. those are real healthy well proportioned looking carp.