Carp fishing bait - Boilies vs corn

As the weather cools and those North winds bring in cooler air, the cooling water starts the pre-winter feeding frenzy that many fish in Canadian waters go through every year. Carp are no exeption, and fall is a great time to catch fish before they hunker down to hybernate through the winter.

I headed out for an afternoon of carp fishing with a couple friends, both are local fishing guides, but don't typically fish for carp. I put one of them onto carping a few years ago, he and I have gone out together quite often, but not too much this season.

I mentioned my recent success with using boilies as carp fishing bait instead of corn, but he wasn't convinced. This led us up to a fishing challenge: Both guys used lines baited with corn, while I stuck with boilies as bait. The water was chummed with both baits, and we all fished the same spot to keep things fair.

The fishing was a bit slower than I hoped for. It took close to 3 hours to get the first run, I hooked up on my boilie line. Brought in the fish, a nice 10 lb carp, actually my smallest from that spot so far this season. As they fished 2 lines versus my 1, I scored double points on my fish, which put me in the lead 2-0.

About an hour later, I got my second carp, just about the same size as the first one, again on the boilie line. 4-0 Phil.

Another hour went by with a missed run on my line until my next hookup. This fish was a bit bigger. My line crossed my buddies, he untangled while I fought the fish. With his line out of the water and the fish running towards my other buddies line, he started bringing in his line. To our surprise, he had a small largemouth bass hooked up on his corn baited line, but it didn't count for the purposes of our competition. My carp was still on and fighting hard, eventually ended up in my landing net. The carp was a lot bigger, it actually weighed in close to 26 lbs, my biggest landed carp this season.



And that was all she wrote, I took the competition 6-0, while landing my smallest and biggest carps of the season from that spot.