Are carp really clever?

Cute is probably the better word when talking carp which seem shy and more apt at getting away with it.

Somebody once wrote that the only reason we catch any carp at all is through competition, i.e. because there’s more than one feeding. There’s a great deal of truth in this, something I’ve learnt through fishing and watching carp in many different types of waters over the years. The less carp there are in a water, especially small waters where they can’t escape angling pressure, the cuter and harder to catch they become. Go right to the extremes, as I have this past couple of years whilst fishing a pool containing only two carp, and then you really come to realise just how cute they can be.

It’s a confidence thing, carp are led by the actions of other carp. For instance, if one of the bolder ones leaves the snags early on in the evening then one of his mates might have the confidence to tag along, and if one of a group of half-a-dozen drops down onto a spot to feed then there’s a fair chance that at least one or two of the others will gain the confidence to do the same. Take that confidence in numbers thing away and they become a whole lot harder to get feeding, and as a result much harder to catch.

Returning a good common at a water where they’ve been lucky to escape heavy angling

With the mirror I’ve been chasing, I know it’s not super intelligent or anything like that, it’s a fish, and I very much doubt it even knows I’ve been on its case. Then again, I’ve caught its mate three times now so maybe it does know it’s being fished for, after all, it’s been close by on each occasion. Maybe it does deserve a bit more credit, and in a playing the game kind of a way I guess I oblige. I’ve had some funny things happen which, at times, have made me wonder, things like seeing it regularly passing through a channel on the same route every time, but then once I’ve ever so stealthily set-up in the area, it starts passing through on a different, more unlikely route as far from my position as is possible to get, hugging a metre-wide strip of shady water barely deep enough to cover its back. And yeah, I can’t help but play the game, muttering “I can see you… you think you can sneak past me do you…” whilst imagining that the bugger’s looking at me perched up the tree. Whether we really believe it or not doesn’t matter, it’s just part of the chase, and how much of it is down to that fish being extra cute or the simple fact that carp are masters of their own environment with a natural ability to sense a trap, doesn’t really matter, as when you’ve been watching them long enough you just know when you’ve been sussed.

Carp aren’t super intelligent at all, but I definitely think that some are more wily than others. If I was to think they were all completely thick and ready to throw themselves on the first six-inch Choddy every time they saw it, then I probably wouldn’t still be fishing for them. The funny thing is, the carp in heavily stocked runs waters are often very cute, line shy and riggy, but there’s a big difference between those and the carp swimming around in low stock waters, and that’s availability of food. The carp in heavily stocked waters might spook from your lines or suss your rigs, but they’ll be back time and time again, because they have to, because they’re dependent on bait. You see this all the time on the many underwater clips of carp feeding on YouTube, which are nearly always filmed on what I’d call ‘hungry waters’. The same fish keep coming back, even though they’re clearly aware of the trap. In complete contrast, the carp in rich, low stock waters aren’t dependent on bait, and that makes a huge, huge difference.

A pretty mirror from the same water

What makes certain residents harder to catch than the rest could be down to a number of things. If it’s a bit of a loner in a lake with plenty of other carp then it could well be a tricky one for the same reasons as carp in very low stock waters, confidence and availability of food. Other times a certain carp might have gone a long period without capture simply because it’s spent a great deal of its time living in an area which was being neglected for whatever reason, and over time that particular fish might have got into a routine which wasn’t disrupted by anglers. This is often the case when you hear of a certain carp which hasn’t been caught for months on end, suddenly getting caught two or three times in quick succession. Take a look at the first area it was caught from, as quite often it’s somewhere obscure, somewhere that hadn’t been fished in a while, and now it’s been caught from there and it’s been forced back out and about in the main lake, it’s suddenly more vulnerable, hence another capture or two soon follows.

I know of a certain big Thames common caught twice one year, but never before and never since. Not because it was super clever or it rarely eats bait, but because it lived in a ‘No Fishing’ marina for years, and for one reason or another it ventured out that particular year. I don’t think it’ll be leaving its house again in a hurry!

Other times it might well be diet, maybe that particular ‘extra cute’ one feeds more on naturals than the rest. Maybe it’s a big female and it’s tight with eggs. This is commonplace on many waters in the spring, where the males are getting caught out but the big fat females aren’t really eating a lot in the way of solid foods, instead they’re just grazing on stuff like silkweed. Once they’ve spawned it’s a different matter altogether, they’re more easily caught on their way back up to ‘plump weight’, but all the while they’re at their very biggest they’re barely caught. Hold the spawn over for a year and that means less captures.

There really are loads of reasons why certain carp go long periods without slipping up, and more often than not it’s for reasons other than being ‘cleverer’ than the rest.