Carp gear selectivity Part 1

Unlike the Match tournaments, the carp tournaments are scored by adding up the weight of all the carp caught during the tournament period. Because carp take so long to land, maximizing this weight means optimizing for lbs per minute, rather than fish per minute. If the gear affects the size of the fish caught, then the gear used would be important for being competitive. Ultimately, the optimal gear loadout (for any of the tournaments) will require a lot of fishing to develop, but I present my results of my mini trials on this blog as I go. Anyone with an interest in specific gear combinations can leave a comment. Note that I do not have any of the DLC.

Methods

This week's online carp tournament is at Manor Farm. The online tournaments are 60 min long, and you have a maximum of 3 attempts. Because the catch summary is not displayed at the end of the round, I recorded fish weights and lengths as I landed them.

I fished the online tournament twice, once with the Krank 2 rig on all three rods, and once with the Korda DF 6 rig on all three rods. The spot I fished had a gravel bottom. I kept all three hooks in the water at the same spot, and used the spod rod (with sunflower seeds) when I did not have a fish on a line. Other than hook, the equipment setup was kept constant as shown below:

All fishing was streamed to my twitch channel.
Watch live video from tfernando77 on www.twitch.tv
After the tournaments I used R to analyze the data graphically, and by using T tests to compare mean weight of fish by species/hook combination.

Results

In the hour fishing with the #2 rig, I caught 20 fish weighing a total of 558.81 lbs. All of the fish caught with the #2 rig were carp. In the hour fishing with the #6 rig, I caught 26 fish weighing 581.75 lbs. Four of the fish caught with the #6 rig were tench, weighing a total of 36.68 lbs, leaving 22 carp for a total carp weight of 545.06 lbs.

The following figure shows the length and weight of individual fish caught. The symbol indicates the 'species' of fish. Black indicates fish caught using the #2 rig, while red points indicate fish caught using the #6 rig.

The T test found no significant difference in weight between hooks for Mirror Carp (t = 0.8171, df=15.81 , P = 0.426) or Leather Carp (t = 0.5112, df = 2.485, P = 0.651). However, Common Carp caught on the #6 rig were significantly smaller than Common Carp caught on the #2 rig (t = 2.944, df = 6.11, P = 0.026). The mean weight of Common Carp caught using the #6 rig was 15.95 +- 4.37 lbs (Mean +- SD), while the mean weight of Common Carp caught using the #2 rig was 23.81 +- 4.59 lbs.

Discussion

I lost at least one fish which escaped it's hook while I was recording data on a fish I had just landed with each rig. If not stopping to record, the overall weights may be slightly higher. Also... a way to land the fish faster may have a bigger impact on harvest per unit effort than anything else. Carp take a long time to land.

Although Mirror Carp and Leather Carp are biologically the same species as Common Carp (and Koi), the game does not necessarily model them the same way so I treat them as being distinct species. Interestingly, the one named trophy fish I caught (The Pretty One) was not the heaviest fish of the night, although it was the longest.

The distribution of fish weights with the #6 hook was wider than the distribution of weights with the #2 hook. The #6 hook caught more fish overall, and caught several fish that were lighter than the lightest fish caught with the #2 hook. Without more trials, it's not possible to establish a variance, so I can't conduct significant testing for CPUE or harvest per unit effort. Ultimately, for the carp tournaments, harvest per unit effort is what I want to maximize. Interestingly, the #2 hook selected perfectly for carps (in this trial... I have caught bream and Wels Catfish on the #2 hooks before), while there were a few Tench caught on the #6 hook. As a result, the carp harvest was lower on the #6 hook than the #2 hook even though the overall harvest was higher.

On the Fishing Sim World forums, Mousaka_H (who I believe has won the online carp tournament in some weeks) suggested using a mix of #2-#6 hooks. The idea behind his strategy is to bring in small fish continuously while having a chance at the larger ones. If the #6 hooks are effectively catching the large fish, that mix may be unnecessary, particularly if bait selection can exclude the Tench.

I keep my data in a Google Sheets document here. I'd be interested in sharing data with anyone else who is keeping records.

My next fishing will be on Lake Travis in preparation for online Match tournament. I'm not sure how to target bluegill and crappie (I've caught them in the game only when fishing for bass), so I'll be experimenting a little more, and while I'll be keeping records they may not be as usefull (except for length/weight model assessment).