THE GERMAN CARP IN THE UNITED STATES. 621 
bream, will probably not abandon those fish for the pursuit of the 
earp, while, on the other hand, those who have done most of their 
fishing for buffalo, red-horse, mullet, or bull heads should welcome 
the carp with joy. How far in this country its capture is supplanting, 
or at least supplementing, the other of the coarser fishes in this respect 
has been best told by Dr. 5. P. Bartlett (1903), of Illinois. For this 
reason I quote the greater portion of his paper: 
The question has been asked me a great many times why it was that carp can not 
be taken with the hook and line. <A great many persons have told me that they 
have used all kinds of bait and failed to get them to take it. These inquiries came to 
me as a surprise from the fact that hundreds daily fish for carp with hook and line 
on Quincy Bay and all along the Illinois River with great success. 
i have found the best bait to be a dough ball made by boiling cornmeal to a good stiff 
mush, and then working the ordinary cotton batting into it until it becomes hard and 
stiif, and then rolling into little round pellets about the size ofa marble. Bait prepared 
in this way will not be easily dissolved by the water. I use the ordinary Carlisle 
hock fastened on the end of a good strong line and three or four inches above the 
hook, attach quite a heavy sinker which will take the line to the bottom and allow 
the bait to flow up away from the bottom. Another good bait is the ordinary ship 
stuff from the mills, boiled stiff and dough rolled out in sheets and then cut up into 
litle squares, perhaps three-fourths of an inch square. Fried potatoes, sliced raw 
and fried until they become stiff, not brittle, also is a fine bait. Anyone conversant 
with the hook and line at all, will have no trouble in earp if this bait is used as 
indicated. 
On Quincy Bay I have seen as many as two hundred people fishing for carp along 
the shores, and nearly all of them get good fair strings. The carp when hooked is a 
very vigorous fighter, and care must be used that he does not break the hook or 
break out the hook from his mouth. I would advise the use of the landing net. 
They are daily taken on trout lines, using the same kind of bait. 
Since your request for information as to the carp from an angling standpoint, I 
have given the matter a great deal of attention, and have been greatly surprised at 
the extent to which carp are caught with hook and line. From Cairo to Dubuque 
on the Mississippi River I have found shores at all the towns lined with people 
fishing for carp, all catching them. One day last week, from the lower end of 
Peoria, Illinois river, to water works point, a distance of three miles, I counted 
1,103 people fishing with hook and line, and on investigation [it] developed that a 
large per cent of them were taking carp. The majority of those caught weighed 
a pound and as heavy as five pounds, all of them probably used as food. Permit 
me to introduce here a letter from one of the best known sportsmen in the State 
[Mr. M. D. Hurley, of Peoria, Ill. ]: 
‘“‘Carp fishing with hook and line has now taken its place with bass and other 
kinds of fishing. All along the river in this locality carp are being caught freely 
with hook and line this year, and to say they are gamey, is not half expressing it. 
For the past month I have made it my business to go along the river and take notes 
of this particular kind of fishing and talked with no less than 25 different persons 
who were busy catching carp, and in every instance I was told it was rare sport to 
hook a carp, as it was quite as much of a trick to land one as it was to land a bass; 
dip nets were used generally to land the carp, as the activity of the fish when jerked 
out of the water would tear the gills and free the fish quite often. The bait used 
when fishing for carp is dough balls and partly boiled potatoes, the latter being best 
in the opinion of the majority. The carp will bite on worms quite freely also, and 
in two instances, I found carp had been taken with minnows, something that has 
been considered impossible heretofore, but in these two cases I am certain it was 
