Your in for bliss when you get into your first lean upper teener. Multiply that fight in magnitudes for sporting pleasure.There are baits that will put the catfish to carp bite ratio in your favor.It's a smelly science.Go for a good pineapple flavored bait such as pineapple corn or boilie. Avoid fishey flavors.Flavors can be bought online from carp fishing outfitter such as K-1 baits, Big carp tackle and many others. Also some of the Kool-Aid flavors might work but I've had good luck with pineapple.You can boil deer corn and add the flavoror buy the flavored corn from the companies but these are best used with a homemade hair rigand a cheap baiting needle from these companies. You could do it with a bit of effort.I pretty much taught myself from reading post and researching the internet but it took some time to get it down.

My old stomping grounds - GP

Some decent carp in Mountain Creek, but Grapevine and White Rock hold the biggest of the dfw lakes

Young grasshopper you are following in my own footsteps. K-1 baits can get you the goodies to you in just a few days. Big carp tackle is even closer and about 2 days.The pvc setup will work fine it is still what I use and I think I can still brag just as loud as any one on my teams results I narrowed down from a three rod PVC setup to a two rod setup and also have no problems at times just using 3 dollar banksticks..It's about having fun not about the most expensive gear.Don't worry about filling up an expensive 4 rod setup. If the fish are there cut your cost in half and ease of setup and take down and go with a two rod setup.Believe me once you are really on to the fish a two rod setup can keep even a 2 man team very busy.I often go with just a single rod when fishing solo to avoid too many doubles if the fish are there.I have been using a 4 pack of Chinese alarms that I bought many years ago for less than 30 dollarsfor all 4 They can be purchased on ebay. I really like the ones that use 9 volt batteries,They are reasonable durable and have been down to the bottom of the lake and back many times from carp rippng the rods into the water when I forgot to put my baitrunner switch on my okuma 50 baitrunner reels. They mostly still work reasonably well even though I abused them.Here's a thirtyseven + pound freight train that my son I cpr'd on lake Austin a couple of years back.Guys out there don't always post there captures here but this is the biggest lake Austin capture by far posted here on the forum in years, hard pressed to find even a thirty posted here.