I've been thinking about this subject as of late. Fishing pressure on Decker has been getting pretty heavy as of late. A lot of people have been hitting it pretty hard over the last month or so.

There are not that many swims there and I know some of them are getting fished as many as 3 or even 4 days out of the week. As of yet the swims are still producing, but I reckon its only a matter of time before they start wising up to our methods.

Have you ever had a swim that stopped producing that you are convinced was because of constant pressure? How much pressure do you think is required to shut a swim down? How often do you think it is ok for a swim to be fished?

Im just curious to hear some others opinions on the subject. Discuss.

i think depending on how many people, the lake and number of hours,days,weeks fished, id say 6 months to a year. when i started at whiterock, numbers was good even great, now it seems your doing good if you even catch. alot of the normal whiterock guys have been fishing bachman lake cause whiterock has been dead. i think over time carp learn when there being fished for and know how to avoid rigs, just like in the uk.

It definitely happens, just look at Town for a perfect example - ten tees of non-stop pressure has changed the carps habits drastically.

Fish can def be conditioned and become wary of areas. Emma might be victim of that. We've seen a decrease in fish being caught as of late.

I personally think that buffalo are not even close to the intelligence level of carp so the buffs wouldn't be as affected as the bigger carp.

What makes you think carp are smarter than buffs lol

had them take an IQ test!? haha

But back on topic i have often wondered this myself, one of my spots on gvine gets hit hard n its mostly by people who keep them rather than put them back. so it may also be due to that

I've wondered too when you keep them obviously it should speed up the process. Curiously enough, I had a swim that last year was an awesome numbers swim for me for carp up to 15 lbs or so. This year it was completely dead and I am the only person that ever fishes for carp there.

Nick, on Clear Creek that may be more to do with the drought and the salt water moving up stream more that last year.
I do think that fish can become somewhat conditioned, but I don't think the with the numbers of fish we have around here and the few times they get caught, that they are going to affected too much.
All of the lake we fish are pretty good sized and if the fish are moving consistently its amazing that we catch them at all.
I tend to think along the lines of the guy who wrote in the last couple of USCarpPro mags that carp are not as sly as we give them credit for.

That's why I have a secret swim and secret bait, and secret method! lol


In seriousness though, I was wondering the same thing. It seems that everyone has fished it in the last month or so. The thing is, Decker really is only good for 4 or 5 months of the year. The rest of the year in the warm months, the water is like 100 degrees. The weeds grow like ...well, like weeds. Not only that, but the lake is packed with swimmers and drunks.

The coots are our friends!

Brian,

Rereading my post, it came off wrong. The point I was trying to make is maybe that the carp are not as conditioned, and that lower numbers may mean something else is going on. I tend to think along your lines.

Eddie fished the same swim for years ( 3 to 4 days a week). It seems as long as the hole was baited once a week or so the fishing was mostly good.Back them we did not have a problem with weeds- lake was open 24/7- night fishing was better than day in hot weather- all fish were kept & the hole stood up but we only fished that one spot. In the summer we caught 5 to 1 carp over buff-
You guys are catching more buff than we did but Eddied caught 2 that were in the 70's. It is just a matter of time before someone gets a monster out there.

Stay after em
TW

When you keep all of the fish you catch, they don't become conditioned...

Anyway, I've seen several times posts where a carp was caught twice in less than an hour, and sometime on the same baits! So, no, I don't put carp's intelligence as being very high. Fish just don't have much in the way of brains.
To me it is more a matter of fishing where the fish are...when they are eating.

im kind of iffy about this one my explanation....
i fish a river by my home i use to catch lots of carp there until they got use to me i since have used so many diffent types of flavors and nothing i can see them but they do not bite at all anymore to me is that they got wiser.
now my iffy i fish at the dam almost all the time and i can catch carp there nono stop anyday of the week and so does anyone around me so i do not know the right answer to this one at all.....

also they have let the minium amount of water all summer long out and there is no way any kind of fish is going to get thrown over unless its a minnow or shad

No doubt in my mind that overfishing can kill a swim, and eventually turn off the whole water body. Now don't get me wrong, I don't think that Decker is gona be dead in a few weeks or anything. I would say with in about 2 years with the constant pressure in those swims that are fished often, it will be much less productive than it is now. Like Keith and Scott said, look at LBL and Emma. Now are there other possible reasons that Fishing has slowed? Sure, change in structure and bottom contour could explain Emma and certain swims at LBL that have produced well in the past and have slowed down. However, this would not explain why LBL on a whole has produced far less than last summer. Now I don't know who fishes where and when, and who catches and how much they catch, but I know that I have not seen a post on here in a while of a single quality Common caught out of LBL (fish near 30). I know myself, while I have not fished as often there as in the past, have caught much less numbers as well as smaller fish since the pressure has gone up in the past year. Could it be a coincidence? Yes, but I am inclined to believe that fishing pressure is the culprit. That being said, only time will tell for sure whether Decker swims stop producing, and with all the people fishing it, I think we will have our answer pretty soon. Let's hope it keeps producing for years to come though!

Caught my pb 33-8 in November from LBL...

Rich a few high 20' and Brian's 30 were caught in November. Town lake has def changed. I still think there are a few high 30's in there and 40 or two

Thats one...I know that last year leading up to ATC I had 3 30's and knew of at least 20 more 30+ caught over the summer and winter.

Congrats on the PB by the way

I guess i need to go fish there more often then...

I just got used to catching 10 fish in a session an landing a fish over 25 every day i fished...spoiled!

i deffinatly saw a huge difference between last summer and this summer on LBL. i can only speculate on why the fishing has decreased for me this year? it could be one or more of many different reason that i dont really care to think about :P (yes im that lazy!). there is alot of lake inaccessable to bank fishing on LBL... even more so on decker. the area of fishable bankspace on decker is puny compared to the overall size of the lake. i dont think the lake is in danger of being fished out, our regular spots maybe? but its doubtful that were going to make a dent in the population out there...