A bit of carping

Out in the garage I have an old freezer which holds all the stuff Brenda wont let me keep in the other deep freeze. Zip lock baggies of shad and cut bait for catfish. And baggies of leftovers, rice, beans, corn, bread, that kind of thing for carp. Well the thing was starting to fill up, time to go carping. Into a five gallon bucket went the leftovers, a bit of vegetable oil and a couple cups of corn meal. I like all the chum bits to be coated in oil and corn meal so there is constantly a smell and tiny bits dispersing thru the water. Bait was some boilies I made about a month ago and also put in the freezer. These I made out of flour, corn meal, eggs, anchovy paste, and vanilla. Form a dough roll it into little balls and boil. It's kinda fun if you are in the mood.
The rig is a flat no roll sinker, usually 1 1/2 or 2 ounces above a swivel and then a rubber band is tied in a knot around the line above the sinker to keep the sinker from sliding on the line. Then to the swivel is tied about an 8 or 10 inch leader to the hook. The boilie is not hooked on the hook but instead is attached with what is called a hair rig. Which basically means the boilie is tied off snug against the bend of the hook but the hook is free. There are a million you tube videos which show you how it is done. Then Mr. Carp sucks in the boilie and the hook sticks in his mouth when he tries to blow it back out or swim off. Then in his panic he runs and sets the hook against the heavy sinker. I'm usually a bit of a cheapskate but since the hook has to be super sharp to hook the fish on it's own I buy the best I can find in a size 6 or 8. There are several live bait hooks and specialty carp hooks that do a wonderful job, just buy a high end one. The pretty much look like a circle hook without the point turned in.
So I hit a section of river that is kind of a shallow flat but that still has a reasonably firm bottom that is out of the main current. I then broadcast the chum from the bucket as far out as I could throw it. Around the sinker and swivel I loosely packed some of this mix so that when I cast out the boilie there would for sure be chum lying all about it. This big mess I then lobbed into the middle of my chum bed set the rod into a forked stick, flipped the lever over on the baitrunner and sit back and watched the river while I waited for a fish.
Like usual it took a while for things to start up. The carp have to find the chum and then feed comfortably till they gain confidence before they will take your boilie. Because they are so plentiful and widely distributed in the US it is easy to overlook the fact that they are in fact among the smartest of all fish and actually not that easy to catch.
But once the action started it was pretty steady. Unfortunately this trip the fish ran a it on the small size averaging four or five pounds with the one decent one you see in the photo. If you have never tried it don't knock it. You can reasonably expect to catch a dozen extremely hard fighting fish from five to ten pounds on the average trip with the prospect of a big fish or two thrown in during the warmer months. In cold weather you will probably catch less but it seems like you have a better chance of a big fish. Try it you will like it.