Suggestions?

fatboy8

Piranha
MFK Member
Mar 9, 2012
794
245
76
Philadelphia
This past weekend I went to my local reservoir to fish for carp and it reminded me to post this. Now this place is where I caught my first carp and began specifically fishing for carp. After having fished it for close to six-seven years I've noticed my biggest fish out of this reservoir is only around 26" and I've caught close to 500 carp here. Most days it is not uncommon to catch anywhere from 10-30 fish. A little background on the reservoir is it is about 3.5 acres and twice in those six-seven years it has been drawn down twice before a major hurricane and once to repair the dam. Also during a fall storm around four years ago water was released to a spillway(Spillway drains into a private lake accross the street) along with a decent amount of fish. I've noticed since then I catch a lot of carp in the 10-14" range and a lot less of the fish in the 22-24' range which I used to catch all the time but now dont. The question that I've been trying to figure out is why are these carp maxing out at 24-27"? They all look healthy and do not show signs of being stunt. Now across the street at a private lake I used to fish with a private trout fishing club before the school property it is located on closed it to fishing. Here is where it gets interesting the smallest carp I have caught here is around 27" with the largest around the 30lb mark. To me if there is not enough food in the reservoir to support this carp population I just can't see that the fish would all top out at 22-24". I just feel like there would be a small population of larger carp.
Below is the reservoir. Pretty typical dam end to the left is deeper and the opposite end is more of a shallow flat and loads of carp activitiy.
loch alsh.png


Below is the lake. Deeper in the middle and the right side of it where it pinches down is more shallow and where I used to focus my carp efforts on. Also you can see the reservoir to the right.
St Marys.png

So any thoughts on why these carp are so small

loch alsh.png

St Marys.png
 
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