I have been real fortunate in being at several different waters on many occassions to watch carp spawn. I seems during my days of working at ‘Walkers’ most of the carp decided that Wednesday’s were a good day to spawn (my day off) so I was treated to the spectacle almost yearly.

I have also watched and filmed my carp at home spawning. As you say – they seem oblivious to almost everything. It’s difficult when you watch them smashing themselves up and losing scales etc but at the end of the day this is what they do. The carp need to rub against things to help release their fluids.

I once watched in horror at a carp at the LEVAS pit rubbing against a barbed wire wrapped fence post – I couldn’t watch that and ended up scaring it away from the post.

One very interesting thing watching the carp spawn at Murphy’s was the amount of un-known fish which suddenly displayed themselves in the margins. During the first few years I fished there I had decided there were around 6 commons in there. Imagine my surprise when a shoal of 20lb plus commons appeared from no-where like a shoal of chub. These fish didn’t appear to be spawning but following the spawning mirrors eating the spawn as they went. I lowered a piece of breadflake in front of one of these commons and it took it straight away which obviously scattered the shoal of half a dozen or so. It was a 20lb common and that fish and the others which it swam with were previously un-known to me and do you know what? I never saw them again either untill spawning time the following year. I don’t think any of those fish were ever caught apart from my breadflake capture.
Strange creatures are carp – very strange.