Increasing Your Carp Fishing Success Rate

Today I had an experience I would like to share. My goal is to help someone else who might experience the same issue in the past, present or in the future.

I prebaited a spot to fish on Saturday morning. Immediately upon casting I started getting runs.

The first run was a nice fish that ended up getting off after a fight and jumping out of the water. I landed the second fish, but then 4 more runs and all those fish got off after a short (or no) fight.

At that point, I decided to change strategy. These river fish today love to run downstream when hooked. They take a lot of line out fast.

Sometimes you can't get too rough with them or you start getting hook pulls. That was happening today, but I decided to just use my palm placed on the reel spool to slow down the fish instead of throwing the brakes on using the reel drag. This worked beautifully and I landed the next 10 fish.

I've been carp fishing seriously for 6 years and 85% of the time a stiffer drag will work to slow down fish. However, when what you're doing isn't working, you have to change. The alternative is a 6 carp day compared to a 14 carp day. I like 14 much better than 6.