Anyone here ever fish for Asian carp? I was catfishing below the spillway of Lake Carlyle in IL and wasn't having much luck, so I got out my ultra light to pass the time till I got a nibble. Well, I was using a little panfish-sized rooster tail, and on one of the casts I hit something in the water. For a split second I thought I was hung up, but then the line just started peeling off my reel like it was attached to the bumper of a car or something. The fish peeled off about a hundred yards of line before it got tired and I was able to reel it almost to the shore. But every time it got close to the shore, it would take off again, peeling off nearly all my line. Finally on about the fourth run, it took ALL the line off the reel. I figured the line would break, but instead the hook on the lure straightened out; so at least I got my spider wire back.

Some of the guys along the shore said I probably hooked an Asian carp, whatever that is.

Anyway, I went back the next week and fished all weekend with a bigger rooster tail tied to my baitcasting rig, but no luck. Yet, about a hundred yards down the riprap, there was this one guy pulling in these huge fish, about one every 10-15 minutes. They looked to be maybe 3 feet long and possibly 30 lbs. apiece. I had never seen anything like them before, and the guys said they were asian carp. I was too far away to see what the guy was using as a rig, but it sure looked like tube jigs or maybe curlytail jigs. Yet when I searched online, they said these carp are filter feeders.

So I'm wondering, do they eat anything other than plankton? Or maybe they're bad-tempered and strike at anything that looks like a fish? They're sure fun as heck to catch, I'll tell you that.