Hello, guys. My name is Angel and I am an amateur carp angler from Bulgaria. I love fishing and grew up doing it on a river perhaps 3 minutes away from our house which we use to go on vacations and relax. Sadly, the villagers don't share the "catch and release" policy like I do - they always take all the fish they catch to either feed their cats, eat or just so they don't release it. In addition, the aforementioned river is simply boiling with illegal fishing methods like using electrical rods and nets. Nobody is doing anything to stop this and I am sure the fish population is severely declining, even though it has been low for a few years now. I also suspect the fish are very wary of any and all disturbances. With all of this said, it has always been a dream of mine to catch a carp on that exact river, ever since I was 5 years old (19 currently). Now, I've caught carp on lakes, usually near our capital, but that was using the pellet waggler method - solid carp around the 5-10 kilo range, but its not as satisfying as landing even a 1 kilo carp on a wild river. The fishermen around the village don't usually chum, don't use dip and attractants, don't use pellets or boilies - they're just people who use fishing as a means to get some food on the table and thus aren't interested in modern techniques or anything, really. Usually they use corn, boiled wheat, bread and worms as bait. I suspect using a waggler and standard baits won't work because of all the small fish on the lake which would get attracted to the small particles. I decided I'd like to fish on standard hair rigs with sweet corn on them. For pre-baiting I plan to use boiled corn, wheat and other seeds. It was recommended to me by an experienced hair rig user here to put corn on the hair itself - 2 sinking corn and 1 pop up. The usual depths are 2-3 metres around the places I'd like to fish. There are a few spots where it can get to perhaps 4 to 5 metres, but they are very few and I've seen no signs of feeding carp there. I was planning on fishing near weeds and lillies on the banks , but I suspect the depths there are around 1 meter at best. Any and ALL tips would appreciated. I've asked around every group here, in Bulgaria, for tips, but this river seems to be of no interest to any serious angler and information is basically non-existent...
