My home lake is small and clear and loaded with timber. mini fork if you will but more trees. the last 5 years I've been in the boat when 10's were caught and I myself have caught 8 fish over 9lbs....its a very healthy lake or atleast it was....the forage is gizzard shad and threadfin shad...2 spawns ago (2013) it was so clear we were sight fishing in 8 ft. that being said we saw so many carp...national geographic style of carp flooding the shallows and rolling on the banks (where the bass should be on beds)....after seeing those carp all spawn the last 2 years the large mouth bite has disapeared. I fish this lake probably twice a week and normally could catch fish throughout the year...now its a miracle if I get bit....im wondering if carp in a small lake (300 acres) have a big impact on large and spotted bass???

Are these just regular old carp or triploid grass carp added to control/eradicate vegetation? Did the lake have grass before but not any more?

Outside for grass carp removing all of the grass from a lake, generally carp can't have any affect on a bass population.

Carp and other rough fish tend to root on the bottom and create a lot of silt and damage spawning areas.

They co-exist on my lake but have heard of them hurting fishing on other lakes.

Could be a fish kill from out of whack pH levels or something. Happened to a small private lake I used to fish. The bass died but the catfish and carp survived. Figures.

they look like grass carp but im not 100% sure the fishing has just done a complete 180...it was loaded with spots that would bite year round and bigger large mouth and both are going down in numbers...this lake has a slot I might add...i think I might contact our local state fishery to see if they know some numbers.

Where at I'll come dispose of a few with my bow

durant lake in durant OK. i wish it had some bow hunter activity but they close the lake down at dark i think, unless people are camping.

The title of your post was "How much will carp hurt a lake". If there are too many, they will devour every single bit of vegetation in that lake. (See Lake Conroe)

Can't help you there, go buy one and start shooting them in the daytime it's kinda fun.I don't think tthey really bother the bass tho.Maybe in the spring a little

Common carp won't have much of an impact. The bass are usually done spawning by the time the common carp start rolling in the shallows muddying the place up. And at that point they're just dropping the visibility down which might affect fishing efficiency.

Grass carp could affect a fish community that was adapted to a healthy growth of vegetation by wiping it out. But, if they're "Nat Geo" sized then they probably didn't do that in just two years (by that I mean, eliminate all vegetation AND cause a complete collapse of the bass population in just two years). I doubt the carp are the main culprit, maybe a player, but not the main one. And, you're not sure what species of carp they are yet so it's only speculation at this point.

Extremely clear water is usually not a good thing for fish production and could be the root of the problem, a productivity crash following a shift in water quality or nutrient loading.

Just throwing some things out there. Might be worth hiring a reputable private fishery professional to come out and do an assessment. Hard to consider all the variables with just a paragraph description of the situation and history of the lake.

This happened to Caney Lake near Jonesboro, Louisiana back in the 90's. LDWF decided to control the vegetation it had with sterile grass carp. They released around 250k of them if I remember right in a 7500 acre lake that was producing state record LMB's at the time and had produced four in a very short period of time. Those carp completely emptied the lake of vegetation in no time and that in turn completely killed the fish growth and production. The good news is the carp are dying off now because they have hit their full life expectancy and the lake is recovering. It is starting to produce DD fish again on a regular basis......

To answer the question, most of the time carp will at the very least occupy habitat and inhibit other species to some extent. In many cases you can't tell they are there. In others, they totally destroy the fishery and turn a lake into mud hole.

ESPECIALLY if something like placing a total kill herbicide such as Sonar in the lake. This changes a lake to where the carp can more easily spawn successfully and "take over".

Now, grass carp, another matter. In some lakes they help a lot, in others, they turn it to a mudhole.

Also, even though some vegetation types provide cover, NONE of them is the basis of a food web that ends up as a bass. That begins with phytoplankton, not grass.

As a general rule, when aquatic vegetation is controlled and that energy put back to the food web as plankton, fish populations tend to increase as the water will now hold a lot more fish. May or may not help the bass depending on how this shakes out, but less grass always equals more fish.

Now whether or not they are as easily caught is another matter as well. We saw greatly increased standing crops of largemouth bass in lake after lake after adding grass carp, but also saw reduced catches as the fishermen actually needed to know how to find and catch fish other than "at the edge of the grass."

Saying all that, where I live on the coast, there are two kinds of lakes (all are shallow) weedy or muddy. You CAN fish for bass in a weedy lake....becareful with your weed control programs.,

I think the deal with Caney was they probably could have gotten away with about 10 to 20% of what they actually released. It had a vegetation problem that honestly needed dealing with, that was mainly due to the fact there were lots of chicken houses in the area that disposed of chicken manure by applying it to pastures and hay fields that were also in the drainage basin of this lake. This in turn created a high nitrogen content in the run off water making lots of weeds. Some home owners around the lake had issues getting their boats launched from their boat houses and slips that had lots of clout and $$$$$. They were able to force LDWF to do something and in my opinion the over reacted to the extreme.......

We had a camp in smith branch and Agree the hydrilla wasn't bad enough for us, but some friends had it bad mostly down by the dam and complained until LWDF listened to them. Talked with one of the LWDP Bioligist and they said they put 1/3 of the carp of what it called for and it was absolutely way too much. within a yr or 2 all of the grass was completely gone and them dam grass carp was caught in our back yard flopping around eating the grass (lol). seriously if they would have just added a few at a time and kept watching it I thing they coulda have kept it under control better like you said they overreacted. You know with all the expertise you would think biologist have they could do a better job in some of the programs they run and work on sometimes.
I hear that the carp are dying out and some of the grass is starting to come back in parts of the lake that would be great if its true. would love to make a trip down there in the future in the spring. Im sure there are tons of big bass 8lb+s cause there is plenty of threadfin shad and big bluegill bream and chinks still in there just look at the LDWF fish records and see the records Caney Lake Holds.

Ever heard of Purtis Creek?

Kind of like Caney. The state put in too many sterile carp and it's made the lake very tough. It's proven its still got huge fish but they are hard to catch. Numbers low too.

It depends on the lake and type of carp.