I was invited to the United States in the 1880’s but since 1900, I’m a fish that has been despised, maligned and persecuted. I’ve been poisoned, speared, shot with arrows and guns, snagged, pitchforked, and thrown on shore to die.

I’m buried in gardens, under rosebushes and plowed under in farm fields.

I’m accused of eating desirable fish’s spawn, destroying their spawning areas and causing turbid, muddy water and uprooted vegetation in lakes. Who is this vile creature? The common carp.

New York has three species of this invasive success story. They are the common carp, the mirror carp that has a few large scales and some skin like a catfish and a much rarer leather carp that has no scales.

In Europe, carp were reserved for royalty. When Eastern Europeans arrived here, they were surprised there were no carp in America. Carp were thought to be brought here from Europe as early as 1831. Some were even transported on the West coast after surviving a journey of many months at sea. By the early 1880’s, Dr. Spencer Baird, Head of the US Commission of Fish and Fisheries had received a few thousand requests for carp to stock in private ponds and were then imported to the U.S. Carp were then released into the wild to supplement existing fisheries that had been plundered by uncontrolled overharvesting.

Carp, being very prolific and adaptable to almost any aquatic environment, were soon the dominate fish species in many waters.

As bottom feeders and preferring muddy bottoms they were not anywhere near as palatable as their European ancestors raised in clean water with a controlled diet. So, by 1900, carp are here by the millions and unwanted and created a new hundred years war that fisheries personally can’t win. An invasive success story and now we could be watching an even worse carp attack with the big head and silver carp at the gates of Lake Michigan.

As for prolific, a large female carp can broadcast one to two million eggs from late May through June. In most waters the carp orgy is hard to miss as one large female and 2-5 smaller males are ramming her to disperse her spawn. This is where the waters get muddy, aquatic vegetation is uprooted and, surely, large mouth bass and panfish spawning is disrupted.

My brother and I could write a large book about our carp adventures. We speared, bow fished, netted and beat carp with metal pipes over the years. We even speared so many carp one night the boat sank! About 60 years ago we started to fish for them with hook and line. We found they like corn and corn is always available in Orleans County. Whole dried corn or whole canned corn for humans works well. I now chum with dried whole corn off my dock on Oak Orchard Creek. I feel carp are the wariest, smartest of freshwater fish. The chumming with corn overcomes their wariness. Talk about cheap bait, 50# of dried corn is only about $15. and you get a few hundred thousand baits!

When fishing for them we use 12-14# line, a size 4 or 6 steelhead hook, a single kernel of corn and no weight. I recommend a good quality rod holder because several rods have been lost from my dock.

For his smarts, strong fighting ability and wariness, we have given the carp a newfound respect and refer to them as swamp salmon.

Sometimes we’ll get some large carp while fishing for panfish with tube jigs, especially chartreuse or yellow or in the fall while fishing for perch on Lake Ontario tributaries. Tube jigs on the bottom tipped with spikes account for a couple of carp in the 20+ pound range every fall. My biggest carp was 35# caught 0n a 1/8 oz. tube jig with a minnow December 27th, 2015.

Carp are also getting some respect that in some cases has spilled over from European anglers that come here to fish carp. It’s becoming more common to see anglers with all the carp gear, long rods, bite alarms and special multi-rod holders. Many use boilies for bait. Some soak corn in strawberry jam or different Jello mixes and some have perfected their own bait formulas and likely have an abundance of secret baits. I often see corn spilled at many fishing access areas proving more anglers are getting into carp.

Most New York waters outside the Adirondack region have an abundant underutilized carp population. Give carp fishing a try, show him a little respect. After all, we invited him to the U.S.