Tips on Catching Carp

Wimmera CMA is a proud sponsor of the Horsham Fishing Competition. It’s not only a great community event but it also helps remove a lot of carp from the Wimmera River.

The Horsham Fishing Comp has helped remove over 1750 fish over the last 6 years greatly helping to reduce their impacts and improve the Wimmera River quality and our native species.

Carp catching Tips

Chris Denton is an avid fisherman and loves to come to the Horsham Fishing Comp. Here are Chris' 7 tips on how to catch carp from the Wimmera River. 

Why do we focus on Carp?

Carp are an introduced species originating from East Asia and have spread across most of the Murray Darling Basin since the 1960’s and have become a major pest. Carp are commonly found up to about 4-5kg, but some carp caught have been known to be up to 10kg.

Carp are a very adaptable fish and are capable of tolerating a range of environmental living conditions, including very poor water quality.  Whilst they are capable of tolerating these condition, their natural habits also decrease water quality.

Their diet includes a variety of small food items including bottom and swimming insects, microcrustaceans, snails and terrestrial insects.  But they will eat whatever is available including plant material and organic matter when other food sources are not available.

Carp feed by sucking up debris from the ground and filtering out the food items from the mud and water with their gill rakers. This action muddies the water which can cause bank erosion, it blocks out sunlight from plants and other fish, it lowers water quality, disturbs native fish breeding sites and increases nutrient levels, which can contribute to blue-green algal blooms.