I bank fished a reservoir today and noticed a lot of carp in the shallows. I’m wondering if they pushed the bass out because the bite was extremely slow. I usually do well here, but today finding a pattern was a grind, even though I managed to catch a few bass.

Has anyone else noticed carp affecting bass behavior or pushing them out of shallow areas? Curious to hear your experiences and what adjustments worked for you.

I've noticed it every year in the waters I fish with carp. Although it seems to me it's limited to the general vicinity of where the carp are making the rukus.

In my expierence carp dont affect bass. I actually spooked a carp a couple weeks ago. It took off in a big cloud of mud , huge wake . I cast a bladed jig in the mud cloud and caught a bass. One of the biggest bass I ever caught was under several carp sucking on the surface.

A few years ago a young man made a post on here. He was fishing my home lake from the bank and was concerned because of all the obvious carp activity. He decided to go with the flow and started throwing at the surface activity, knowing it was carp spawning. He posted a pic with his new LM PB of over 6lbs. Our brains tell us that the bass are going to hate all that drama the carp are creating, but it turns out they are used to it. It's a bit like marriage.

I have caught 8 lbers around carp beds at the backs of creeks. I have caught tons of big ones in areas that carp are rooting around for crustaceans and mollusks. The stain on the water and the frenzied foraging are a perfect opportunity to trick a big one on an artificial. I have caught tons of big ones around huge carp at the backs of lily pad fields.

Cows don’t scare wolves.

Carp don’t scare bass.

Carp do deplete fisheries of vegetation and phytonutrients necessary for ample baitfish recruitment and can lead to algae blooms or stunted fish by starving your bigger fish from the bottom of the food chain up.

I remove every single one I ever catch from anywhere at this point.

I’ve actually found bass fishing pretty slow when the carp are active like that. I have had luck catching white bass around carp, but not much for largemouth.

Personal preference:

Prefer not to fish water disturbed by carp.

I don't believe that they chase all the bass from a particular cove that they are spawning in but for some reason I feel less confident as the water is stained and they are darting everywhere.

I'll find another place to fish in peace.

The lake I'm going to Tuesday will have a ton of carp messing up the shallow shorelines right now.
Time to see what happens when I cast right into them.

2 hours ago, Dens228 said:

The lake I'm going to Tuesday will have a ton of carp messing up the shallow shorelines right now.
Time to see what happens when I cast right into them.

Hopefully the bite isn't slow for you. Let me know how it goes. Good luck!

Wait until you hook into a monster carp by accident. It took me 30 mins to reel one in on 12lb test and a medium rod. I didn't weigh it but it had to be around a 25-30lb fish. I don't know how the line or rod didn't break. The first 5 mins I was just along for the ride peeling drag, I had to chase it down with the trolling motor.

They are fun to catch. I caught a 12 pound carp once on a small swimbait. I had to double check to see if it was in the mouth just to be sure and it was. So I have to conclude that carp hit on a swimbait! Never heard of such a thing. I have heard of a guy catching a 38 pound carp on a rat'l trap.

It actually made the news here in Florida and was kind of funny. The man who hooked into it on Lake Howell in central Florida thought he had hooked into a world record bass. So he calls the FWC and has them come out to certify it once landed. News media caught wind of it.

Next the news helicopters are circling the lake as the sun goes down and that carp is pulling him all over the lake trying to get away. He did not land it until after dark, and it was a huge let down when everyone found it was a carp and not a world record bass.

And I am with ScaleFace and others who say carp don't bother bass at all. One of my favorite lakes is a really shallow dishpan lake with wide expanses of eel grass just below the surface.

Casting out across it and invariably spook a lot of big carp in the 20, 30 and even 40 pound range. But the bass are in there too. Carp and bass seem to get along well in the same area and I have never thought for one second that carp run off bass here in Florida. They coexist just fine from what I can observe.

And those carp love those shallow eel grass flats. Bass do as well. It makes for some fun explosive bass fishing using a weedless fluke worked through the top of the eel grass as bass hiding down in it see a feeding opportunity swimming by above and come up and slam the flukes.

My son wants to target some of those large carp. Maybe we will soon.

On 5/24/2026 at 8:11 AM, Pat Brown said:

Carp do deplete fisheries of vegetation and phytonutrients necessary for ample baitfish recruitment and can lead to algae blooms or stunted fish by starving your bigger fish from the bottom of the food chain up.

I remove every single one I ever catch from anywhere at this point.

ABSOLUTELY!!

Carp are trash fish on the same level of a Mud down here maybe even a notch below!

They can kill entire areas of bass habitat.

They may be buddy buddy in the water and swim holding fins, but

I and every experienced and dedicated bass fishermen I know will do anything we can to get rid of them.

Yeah, catching a big one will get you excited and you can have bragging rites that you caught a “big fish” but that same fish contributes to hurting and in some cases can totally up end a Bass’s ability to thrive.

Mike

Disagree.

***And Mike, not trying to nitpick on you at all. This comment is directed towards the subject of your comment, and not at you singling you out in any way or other members with similar comments. I think this is a great subject for all of us to re-consider.

All of Creation seeks balance. Equilibrium. Nature balances itself out.

Both species were created to live and exist in the same bodies of water. And they do just fine and have for millions of years.

And then here comes us humans to conclude after millions of years of cohabitation and WE decide those fish are not good for each other?

Not buying it. Nature knows how to take care of itself and balance it all out naturally. And those fish evolved into living together holding fins and singing kum bah yah! Ha!

The biggest habitat destroyers are not the carp. Its us humans.

In my waters the primary habitat destroyers are the state of Florida and all their dam chemicals they keep spraying everywhere killing off our fish, and propellers mowing everything up. And septic systems leaking into the water.

Compared to that what carp do is nothing. Their natural feeding does not come close to our destruction of bass waters. Lake O where Mike fishes is a perfect example of that. That lake is 6 times too toxic for humans.

https://www.gulfcoastnewsnow.com/article/florida-lake-okeechobee-toxic-human-water/65833092

Its not the carp that is the problem.

In my unprofessional uneducated opinion, whatever carp does that is considered as habitat destruction may actually be one stage of habitat restoration that they are involved with and we just are not seeing the long term benefits of what carp do, and in the short term thinking we see their immediate uprooting of bottom plants as habitat destruction, but I have to trust Nature on this one.

The grand architect of the Universe's natural designs have to balance out. So there has to be more to this than just a one-sided human perspective based on limited qualifications for such conclusions.

For all I know in the long term what carp do might actually improve bass habitat. I can't prove it does and I can't prove it doesn't.

But I am not going to sit here and try and second guess the natural order and conclude carp bad. Bass good. To me there is no such thing as a junk fish. All are necessary. All work together. All balances out. Remove one species and the chain can begin to unravel. its not for us to decide really. We need to leave and let be.

But I can't tell you how many fishermen I have come across over the years who have decided what is best for our waters. And as they catch a gar they decide its a junk fish and let's kill it. There. Nature is now some how improved. Bass now have less predators and so bass can grow bigger and more of them or some other ideas of what we are doing is some how an improvement to nature.

Nope. I am of the mind that Nature is best how it is. It is we humans who are messing it all up with ideas that really just are not so. And I believe this is another one of them.

I'd like to point out that a case in point would be Native Indians.

Europeans came into contact with deadly diseases. And it killed millions of humans until our bodies developed immunities for those diseases. And then Europeans brought those diseases to America and killed off most of the Indians with them who had not previously been exposed to those diseases and had NO natural protections for any of them.

So in one sense those germs are bad, horrible, evil monsters out to get us destroying all humanity is how one perspective on it can develop with short term thinking. And in one sense it might seem right.

But in the long term thinking, becoming exposed to harmful germs has really only made us stronger and more able to survive.

We NEED the destruction to survive! Carp are no different. They are every bit as necessary to Nature as bass are. Getting rid of fish we think are junk fish is just wrong and wrong thinking in my opinion.

Nature balances itself out. Let it be. The mystic in me hath spoken! Ha! Back to regular programming..... carp are bad so let's kill them all. (shaking my head in sadness for what I am reading in this thread.)

"I remove every single one I ever catch from anywhere at this point."

"ABSOLUTELY!!

Carp are trash fish on the same level of a Mud down here maybe even a notch below!"

Unreal! I cannot believe this is where we fishermen have arrived at. My mind tells me this is so wrong on many levels.

Like Ray Scott tried to institute catch and release throughout fishing, this idea of 'kill bad fish' would be an issue I would like to see change.

They're fun. Ate a Senko. Brian

Around here the when the carp start their aquatic version of Burning Man, the bass will either move deep or cling really tight to the brush. They’re pressured and paranoid anyway, the carp just make it where you have to be a little more patient and methodical.

When the carp at doing the boogie woogie in the shallows, I think the bass might be close by looking for the food that is getting stirred up from the large fish mating in the grass.

There are bad carp and good carp IMHO. The invasive Asian carp and grass carp that will completely eat up all plant growth out of a lake and kill the plant habit will absolutely kill the bass fishing. A case in point Lake Austin in Texas had grass carp introduced to kill off the abundant hydrilla. The carp did their job and the lake went from being one of the lakes that was on the Bassmaster's annual top ten best lakes to fish list in the USA to crap in less then ten years. After the carp had finished eating the Hydrilla they started on the over hanging branches of trees that were close to or touching the water eating the leaves off of the branches. The good carp being the Buffalo and native carp.

FM

I've watched smallmouth follow around carp that were feeding on the bottom in the Mississippi.

Got this guy (while purposely fishing for carp) and then got a smallie not much later