Does sound attract carp?

Question

I smiled when I saw this mentioned because I know how deadly it can be when understood and used well as in Rob’s Barston example. Match anglers have a method called ‘slapping’ where they spin their rig round the end of their pole and slap it on the surface to mimic the sound of pellets landing. This attracts fish to their swim with nothing there to eat but the hookbait.

On a large park lake I’ve dabbled on in the past, there are literally thousands of ducks, geese, swans and other feathered critters. They are forever being fed by the public so guess where the carp can be found a lot of the time? The noise from a frenzy of feeding birds can be very loud and they create quite a commotion on the surface. The venue in question has a lot of water less than 4ft deep and I’ve watched carp feeding right under the ducks without a care.

I’ve read a few accounts in the past about carp and ducks often being together on big pits. I personally think the carp follow the ducks because unless the water is gin clear I can’t see how the ducks would even know the carp were there half the time. On the other hand, the carp will recognise the sound of diving ducks and know they’ve located a load of food. The next time you have a few tufties diving on your spot, let them. Yes, we catch the odd one and have to re-do our rigs but they draw the carp’s attention to the area. Sound travels a lot better through water than air so you can bet the fish will know there birds are diving.

I experienced this myself on Pit 6 on the A1 Pits a few years back when I was fishing at range over a large bed of bait. I woke up to see an armada of tufties over my zone, diving happily. I put the kettle on and before it had boiled, I was away with a mid-twenty common. I’ll even feed birds on the top in the winter to grab the carp’s attention and hope their inquisitive nature causes them to investigate the disturbance.

Sound can also work against you on the quiet, out-of-the-way lakes where the carp live an undisturbed life. They are very aware and easily spooked by any unfamiliar noise so stealth is required. I look forward to reading other views on sound and carp. Mark Watson

This is an interesting one. Sound can definitely have the effect of attracting carp, so long as it’s a sound that they’ve learnt to associate with something else that they like. Wherever ducks, geese and swans are regularly fed is a perfect example, and I too can think of plenty of waters I’ve fished where ‘duck corner’ has been a good spot. I’ve often found the carp to be in the same place as wherever plenty of diving birds are doing their thing too, especially coots, which like to pluck and lift pieces of weed off the bottom. That’s something I can relate to on a lot of waters that I’ve fished, most recently Wasing, where the coots and the carp are nearly always in the same place through the day. Like Mark says, it’s more a case of carp attracted to the bird activity (or there for the same reasons), than the other way round.

I can also think of a couple of other venues I’ve fished where the local kids liked to swim and paddle in the day. They’d stir the bottom up over the shallow ground and as soon as things started to quieten down of an evening, in came the carp to investigate. In both these examples it’s the food that they’re there for and the sound is simply serving as a signal to tell them that it’s ‘that time’.

On the river the carp are often attracted to areas of boat activity, especially around the locks Camera dials: Canon EOS 5D, 50mm, f7.1, 1/1,000

Another good example is whenever a pipe or river flows into the lake. The carp can hear that gurgling noise from a long, long way. We know that sound travels up to four times faster and further underwater, and in this case it’s the freshly oxygenated water that they’re heading for. This is something I actually played with for a short while only a couple of years ago on a little fished pool with a very low stock of carp. At the time it was very tricky for me to fish the area where I knew the carp to be, and so after many, many wasted nights, I came up with a plan which I hoped would bring them to me. Basically I made up a mini oxygenator from a Rule 1100gph bilge pump and a 12v leisure battery. The pump itself was no bigger than a Coke can, which I housed in a wire mesh tube, but it was still a bit of a mission and meant a separate barrow trip to the lake for the leisure battery alone. Seriously, this thing was mega! I angled the flow of water just right for maximum sound and aerating effect, and once all was quiet, around midnight, I fired her up and then walked to the other end of the pond where I could still hear the gurgling as clear as day. If I could hear it, then the carp could certainly hear it, and with two baits flicked just off the tail end of the flow I climbed into the bag chuckling away to myself, confident it was going to do the trick.

If I could have left it on for longer then I feel sure that it would have worked, but this was guesting, and so playing it safe I had to turn it off again by 4am. Four short hours wasn’t quite enough, although interestingly I did see the water’s only two tench spawning a few yards to my left at first light, a very rare sight in itself on this water, and a little while later on the smaller of the pools, two carp even turned up to feed on the eggs. The plan had been to start up the oxygenator, which was hidden away in the reeds, between 12-4 each night for three nights on the bounce, but after seeing the small common feeding on the tench spawn I got distracted and abandoned my plan in favour of a swim move. I wish I’d stuck at it, as given time I’m sure it would have had the desired effect.

A belter off the boat

One thing’s for sure, there’s far more to attraction than bait, and on the right kind of water I still think my mini oxygenator idea has a lot of mileage. Obviously it’s not the sort of thing you’d expect to be able to do on a fished water with other anglers, but this place was very different, and if it’s okay to take advantage of a flow or pipe whenever you’re lucky enough to be fishing a water which has had one dropped into it, then what’s the harm in creating your own? I even looked into fitting a timer which would have meant that I could have positioned my oxygenator on an island and then set it to come on for a couple of hours every night if I wanted. Some might think it was taking things a bit far, but really it’s just another form of attraction, and after already fishing a hundred plus nights on this stagnant, de-oxygenated headbanger of a pool, I’m sure that most anglers would have eventually come round to my way of thinking outside of the box. Maybe something to revisit in the future.

Another example of noise, oxygenation and coloured water is the boats on the Thames. I’ve often found the areas around the locks to be good in the summer, where the boat activity is greatest. The carp love all that, in fact on the rivers I nearly always find that the carp prefer the areas where it’s all going on, the built up places with man-made structures and plenty of activity. Strangely enough, they seem to prefer those kind of built up places to the more natural, tree-lined sections of bank, but just as in the examples of a matchman ‘slapping’ his pole rigs, birds diving and children paddling, it’s the food, or the coloured and oxygenated water that the carp are there for, and the sound is the trigger.