I’m sure most carp anglers in America have had to deal with their fair share of carp hating rhetoric. Most of it is ill informed, overblown, and ridiculous. None of it is very fun, which is why we fish, right?

One of the first times I fished a favorite lake of mine, the head county ranger of the park when hearing I was fly fishing for carp told me to “just throw the damn things on the bank and let them rot!”. For a variety of reasons, that was a very interesting conversation, not least for the fact that I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to kill fish just to let them rot on the bank, or at the very least morally and ethically just wrong. This rhetoric is also coming from the people getting paid by our tax dollars to protect the natural resources of the area. This is a lake inside county lands that doesn’t allow the hunting of highly invasive wild boar, but just killing carp for the sake of killing them is considered fine.

For me personally, nothing is more rewarding than catching fish out of a 2,300-acre reservoir with acres more surface water just waiting to be discovered... My surrounding area has a ton of water that will forever keep me looking for bigger and more beautiful carp. There are some reservoirs that I have not discovered yet that reach up to 4,000 acres… Plenty of exploring yet to do and that’s exciting!

My name is Brandon Curtis, I have been an avid carp angler for just a little over 3 years now and I’m located in the Southern California area. The amount of knowledge that I have gained with carp angling is incredible, it amazes and reminds me that anything is possible.