I've been carpin 3 times this week and the bite is great till about 8:30 then it shuts off. No more fish (bites) at all. Do carp feed at night? Can they see at night? Fishing a small creek with sweet corn.
Hey Lewzer- Yes, they do. In fact at lakes, some people prefer the " night bite" I always thought they did not feed at night. But they do, and in the summertime, maybe even better. CATKING
I catch'em all hours of the day and night. The only thing that i've ever noticed that influences their feeding behavior is cold snaps.
They definitely will bite at night, as others have noted. However, different lakes/rivers seem to have different feeding patterns, and these patterns can change depending on time of year. For example, i've fished lakes when the only time i could get any action was early in the morning, right around sunrise. I'd say most waters have a certain timeframe when the night bite will be particularly active, but a lot of times this might not be until 2:00 or 3:00 am. There have been numerous times when i've quit fishing around 12 or 1 am due to a slow bite, only to wake up in the morning to have others tell me the fish really turned on a couple hours later. Anyway, my point is that it all depends on water, weather, and time of year, but generally carp can be caught just as easily at night.
CW.....I've noticed the same thing. And the only comparison I can come up with on lakes being close is similiar altitudes. Sounds odd, but I even went that far to find a similarity, and that's the only thing I've noticed. I wonder if that really has anything to do with it or if it's just coincidince.
I agree with Mitch....the night bite paid off for me at E. Harbor for sure..lol Carp feed in different areas/locations through out the day and night..they will feed on shallow bars under the cover of darkness...and keep to deeper water or stay far away from the bank during the day(atleast the bigger fish). In summer i always here the carp working to surface around large log jams, but i was always busy trying to catch the lager catfish that were trying to feed on the smaller sized carp...lol Scott
I think that there is an interesting thing going on in rivers that contain good populations of flatheads and carp, such as the LMR and GMR. A lot of my flathead trips used to start with me fishing for carp a couple of hours before dark. I'd bait the area with sweet corn and the carp would cooperate. Then as the sun would set, the carp would leave and the flatties would come in. I don't think the carp want to be anywhere near a flathead. About 2 or three hours into the night, the flatties quit biting and I've had carp come back in the middle of the night to feed on sweet corn that was right next up to shore. Then about two hours before sunrise, the flatties start hitting again. A study of river flatheads published in In Fisherman pretty mnuch confirmed my observations about the periods of peak activity. So what I'm getting at is that I'm going to start fishing for carp until 8 pm then fish for flatties until around 11. The fish for carp until about 4 am and then switch black to flatties. This will give me twice the bang for the buck. I think that the chumming for carp draws in other baitfish as well, thus attracting flatties to the area. On the few rare occasions that I've had a bad night of flattie fishing, I'm starting to realize that I did not preceded it with a chumming session for carp. If the rivers stay down this year, look for reports from me of catching flats and carp in the same area at night - but not at the same times of night.
commons can be caught at night anywhere.but i have noticed for years now that grass carp will seldom be caught at night.i mean you have your night grasser catches,but it can be rare.only lakes i have seen them turn on at night is lakes where they are the only ''carp''in the lake or out number the commons.strange that they out number commons but some places they do.one lake i fish,you can only catch grass in the day and only commons at night,with the odd mix up in each case.
