Prospect Park fall carp campaign

Last spring, I caught my first carp in Prospect Park Lake. The "pop ups" in the above picture are not entirely my idea but the result of a series of trials based on my belief that the person who comes up with a way to fish the entire water column will catch more carp.  Using any means necessary to catch carp.

On my way to the lake I saw this hawk.  It was eating a rat.  Mmmm,good!

I first realized this many years ago while fishing for carp in the Passaic River.  I saw that carp
would feed on the surface, the bottom and that special place between the surface and the bottom.
My first attempt at this was swinging a #8 white woolie bugger through the water column to passing carp about a foot beneath the surface.  Carp would take the fly as if it were a struggling minnow.
 Egg patterns also work.

The important thing to remember is that carp eat anything and everything.  They are omnivores.
The presentation of the fly is what is important.  I have caught carp everywhere in the water column on trout flies, soft baits, and now I'm trying "pop ups".

I have been chumming with bird seeds, oat meal, corn and bread crumbs.  Each day, I arrive at the lake and chum near Duck Island.  Duck Island is the largest bird habitat in the lake.  In the summer carp swim around this island. but I'm not certain if they follow this behavior in the fall.  The air temperatures were near fifty degrees Fahrenheit.  I have not seen the large white koi that patrols here, normally during the warmer months.

After more than a week of chumming, I stopped.  Maybe the water temperature was too cold or that I chummed on the wrong-side of Duck Island but aside from a Golden Shiner, I saw nothing.  There was a carp lake in New Jersey, where carp would not begin to feed until after dusk between five o'clock and seven in late fall.  It was cold, very cold but carp were active and feeding.  Even experiencing frost bite is bearable when you catch a few, just before you go home.