If you have info you can give to further enlighten us on this subject then please do post it on here and not via pm. I for one would be - indeed, am very interested in this thread, although at this stage i have nothing constructive to offer.

Hi Spodder,
Nice to see you back on here....
Wouldn't you say that how a carp feeds is dependent on:
1. What it is feeding on..
2. The medium it is feeding in.. ie: silt etc
3. How much pressure the fish has been subjected to...

A carp feeding in an unpressured, confident situation is vastly different to how we often encounter them.. Not talking how a carp sorts its food either..
We, as carp anglers, have a great influence on how a carp picks up its food..

I agree in essence PeteB, but feel that a carp will APPROACH its feeding habits due to these above points, but will nonetheless feed and clean the object/food item the same in all instances. of course if a carp is feeding on huge masses of daphnia then it just opens up its mouth and swims around so this has to be taken in context.

RAFLEE (Carp God in my own bathroom)

Mark....Could be a specific Genetic modification..Protusible tongues evident in 72%
of carp from Frail Pool when I fished it in the 60's.

Point taken RAF,but I've watched carp hoover up nuts from a hard clay bottom, very little sorting etc.. they just go straight back to the Pharyngeneal teeth.
I think it was Bob Baker who gave Happy and myself a diagram showing this trapping of food items about 5 years ago, interesting, but getting round how a carp approaches a bait is the real problem..
Moving on then, given that a bait has been taken into the mouth and the item is trapped against the roof of the mouth.. how many rigs that have the bait close to the hook function as described?? I would guess at.... none...

Hi all, I've been following this topic with great interest as this topic is something that I knew nothing about.

Today my missus dragged me and the kids around a garden center, which was well boring!!
Anyway, I insisted (in a groveling way) that we should go into the water center next door, which she agreed to and I was able to observe carp feeding for about 20 minutes.

They had about 10 carp (between 10 - 15lbs) in a large tank which was at eye level.
I was able to get within a couple of inches of them feeding, it was great. It put a whole new perspective on feeding for me as I'd only ever seen carp feeding from above.

The 'tongue' was immediately apparent and I then observed them sucking up gravel about 10mm in size.

As the carp sucked, the 'tongue' would drop/lower right down into the base of the mouth. In went the gravel and a lot of dirt. As the carp opened it's mouth to eject the dirt the 'tongue' could be seen right up in the roof of it's mouth.
The carp then ejected the dirt first followed by a second ejection of the peice of gravel.

On the first ejection (when it ejected just dirt) the peice of gravel was not being held in place as the 'tongue' could be seen right up in the roof of it's mouth and the gravel could be seen rolling down forwards/outwards, but was stopped by the fish closing it's mouth before it rolled out.

It was as if the carp was sucking/rolling the peice of gravel to the top or peak (pointed bit on top) of it's 'tongue' to taste it in some way. And with the 'tongue' right up at the top there was no way that the gravel could get past.

I watched two or three carp do this a dozen times or more and the same thing happened each time.
I know that the gravel isn't food, but after ejecting the dirt it seemed to have another 'taste' of the gravel before ejecting it.
Absolutely fascinating!!!

So after watching this I would question the 'holding' of the bait and would say that the 'tongue' is sensory organ and also a physical barrier.
The missus started to drag me away, but I want to go back there and ask if I can feed these fish and take a digital camera.

Incidently, I also watched them turn on their sides and beat/flap a small patch of the gravel with their tail fin, which disturbed the gravel and dirt.

Hi Pete,

None if the Carp has twigged that it can't afford to risk moving, if it has not yet sussed this you are going to get the Rafsters accidental 'scissor' capture.

There are some rigs around at the moment, touted by very high profile, successful anglers that on paper seem to rely on movement or hookbait ejection to provide an initial prick after pick up, they are however very effective or so it would seem.

I suspect you are hinting at a fair degree of separation between hook and bait, in that case you are relying on the fish not detecting that the bait is tethered and taking it to the back of the throat.

I think you are definitely correct in stating that not all fish will feed in the same way, which leads me to form the conclusion that we cannot afford to fish the same rig on all two or three rods. To optimise our chances we have to cater for the confident feeders which move off in search of the next bait as soon as the last one is inside the mouth.

We can now call these 'non accidental captures' as we have designed our end setup to catch these fish. Our other rig can have the necessary seperation to deal with the more experienced fish. Sounds allright in theory I suppose so I hope all the fish are reading this and are ready to behave as I expect them to.

Still if I'm struggling there's allways the 'Jimmy Saville Big Fish Bent Hook Combi Rig' to fall back on eh Rafster. What is the easiest thing for a fish to pick up ?

Gaffer,

glad to see we've got your attention mate those photos would be an excellent addition to this thread - get on it mate this will put extra fish on the bank !

Cheers

Mark

Fascinating stuff for sure gaffer, just one observation,

"As the carp sucked, the 'tongue' would drop/lower right down into the base of the mouth. In went the gravel and a lot of dirt. As the carp opened it's mouth to eject the dirt the 'tongue' could be seen right up in the roof of it's mouth.
The carp then ejected the dirt first followed by a second ejection of the peice of gravel"

"the tongue would drop/lower right down into the base of the mouth", my understanding would be that this would allow the fish to inject the food items/gravel/dirt into its mouth, ok with me so far.

"As the carp opened it's mouth to eject the dirt the 'tongue' could be seen right up in the roof of it's mouth."

i would say that if the tongue is in the roof of the mouth and the mouth had been closed then it COULD have been holding an object between the roof of the mouth and the 'tongue', still with me !!

"The carp then ejected the dirt first followed by a second ejection of the peice of gravel"

by having 2 ejections, i cannot see that all would not have been ejected in the first ejection, but you say that the dirt was ejected on the first ejection,i.e as i have been saying it was CLEANING the gravel or object held between its tongue and roof of the mouth.

On the second ejection the fish eject the offending Gravel as well, which could have been a food item in essence !!!! if it had taken a mouthfull of bait or food when it injected.

You still follow my line of though.

Gaffer what you think....- you was there and i wasnot, but from what you have written it would not be logical for what you have said to happen as i have explain above.

Interesting stuff for sure, if what i have said is infact the way a carp feeds, then look at it this way, the hook would very rarely ever take hold and most times the fish is getting away with it as i suspect happens.

Why not try THE ANCHOR RIG !!!! and the hook instead of either lying flat on the bottom of the mouth or suspended in the space left by the tongue and the roof of the mouth coming together, would leave the hook at an angle to the bottom of the mouth below the tongue. do you now see why the Bent Hook rig was so successfull all those years ago !!!!

of course there are so many variables connected with fishing that this must not be the case all the time and i belive that when you catch a fish in its scissors it really is a bonus fish, furthermore, i cant remember the last time i actually caught a fish with the hook in the scissors, most bottom lip or occasionally TOP of the roof of the mouth, which would go along with my theory of the fish holding the bait between the tongue and the Roof of the mouth, just maybe we are onto something here, which could revolutionise the way we fish or percieve the way that a fish feeds on a food item, but to be honest i cant get my head around the above theory when using say using hemp on the hook, do they still feed like this !!! or do they just inject it all to the back of the throat as the items are too small for holding between roof of mouth and tongue...

Interesting stuff would you not agree...!!!!

Gaffer i respect your findings for sure and am very interested, i am not taking anything away from what you have found, i hope this is clear.


RAFLEE

Hi Mark, this could get very revealing and thought provoking.. Just don't spell it out, leave something to the imagination... thoughts that are not worked for are not well learnt...
I am hinting at separation, only it is combined with a hair configuration that forces the hook up or down.. think stiff!! You know where I'm coming from as we've discussed it a couple of times...
There must be a pivot point there as well.. near to the hook...
It would be good to bear in mind the distances involved from lips to pharyngeneal teeth and to mid way.. far more than any rig I've seen publicised...
I think that it's a positive advantage for the fish to ascertain that the bait is tethered... once it's in its Gob!!! especially if ejection is not an option... my last scissor caught fish was a long time ago.... may cause dropped fish on a small fish water, but once they get over mid doubles or so (dependent on strain) there is no way out...
On that subject.. do people think some rigs work better on large fish rather than small ones.. if so, should the advocation of a rig have a target size? There are some rigs out there that should not be let near a single figure carp!!!
RAF, the anchor rig is effective at aligning the point of the hook at the roof or bottom of the mouth but is totally ineffective if the bait is too close.. remember, the bait is the largest mass on a rig (hopefully) and is the source of ejection (pressure on hookhold) with most rigs...
Gaffer, It's great watching carp feed in an unpressured environment, and they definitely do as you say, although they do hold food items in their mouth.. did you see any 'rubbish' expelled through the gills mate?

Hi all, as the Carp ejected the dirt (on the first ejection) the gravel could be seen tumbling down from the top of the 'tongue', way behind the dirt. Now I'm not saying that the Carp didn't have the bait trapped whilst it's mouth as it was closed at the time and I simply couldn't see.
When the Carp opened it's mouth to eject the dirt on the first ejection it's 'tongue' was definately up in it's mouth and was not holding the gravel.

I was expecting some of the dirt to come out through it's gill's, but suprisingly I never saw any.

I'm only putting into print what I saw and I do understand that they are in a totally different enviourment to which we try and catch them.

Also, the only thing in the tank besides the water and the fish was this half inch deep layer of gravel, so they could've just been bored. Possibly going through the motions of sucking and blowing knowing that the gravel is just that, gravel. With this in mind they wouldn't have had any intention of swallowing the gravel anyway and so there would've been no need to hold on to it, unlike something that they would've wanted to swallow.

To be honest I wish I had not only more time today, but more knowledge on this matter. Even after what you lot had already written on the subject of the 'tongue', it was still suprising and very interesting to see and has totally blown my mind!