ALL CARP HAVE PERSONALITIES
Adam Penning shares his tales of fish with some unique habits... and what that means for you
ITHINK one of the most fascinating things about carp is the fact that, like us, each of them has an individual personality.
The more you watch fish feeding or just going about their business in the margins, the more apparent this becomes. Just like people, some carp are bold, some are greedy, some are shy, some are cautious, some are adventurous, and some are reclusive.
AGGRESSION
When I think back on my encounters down the years, so many examples of idiosyncratic behaviour come to mind.
On one lake, there was a big leather, and it would charge aggressively about the lake, seeming to dominate the pack. It was always the first on to the baited area and during its travels would regularly vault clear of the water with a huge crash. Whenever you heard one clatter out it was always that fish.
Interestingly, it seemed to go even more berserk after being caught – then it would charge about at high speed, jumping out every few minutes for hours on end, as if it was showing its fury at having been banked!
KINGS OF THEIR PATCH
I’ve spent a lot of time watching fish that are what I call residential or territorial – those that spend almost all their time living in a small part of a lake. These fish become intimately aware of their surroundings and even though location is often straightforward, they can be tricky to deceive. I think of them as being like somebody who lives in a tiny flat and rarely leaves. If you went in while they were asleep and moved a picture above the fireplace, they’d notice immediately. If we flipped that, and the person lived in a huge mansion and we went into the west wing and moved a table round, it would be far less noticeable. This is why carp living in small, intimate environments can be so much harder to catch than those living in huge great gravel pits.
SAFE HAVENS
I recall one fish that spent almost all its life living inside a snaggy overhang. I’d been putting a few baits into a part of the snag that was good for viewing and the fish had been happily eating the bait for weeks. Then a chancer came along and tried to catch the fish in the snag. It was outrageous really and resulted in the loss of the fish. From that point onwards the fish refused to pick up bait there again.
A few weeks later, I put some bait into the snags and went to check on it the next morning. To my amazement, it was almost all gone but there were no signs of fish. Quietly, I crept to the bigger part of the snag, to the right, and peered in.
I saw a carp sitting there chewing red boilies that looked identical to the ones I’d fed in the other part of the snag.
At that moment, the big mirror that lived in there swam in from the left and then spat out a line of whole boilies, just like a paintball gun!
This fish had moved all 30 or so boilies from the part of the snag where he no longer felt safe, across to the denser part where he thought it was safe to eat them! The irony in this behaviour, of course, was that it wasn’t the eating of the bait which had led to him being hooked, it was the fact he’d picked them up, so he’d have likely been caught again anyway!