Handling Carp for the novice

In the following article, I am going to give some advice on the handling of carp, from the moment they enter the landing net, to their safe return to the water. It is very important that the novice carp angler, and even some more experienced anglers, learn the basics to follow, in order to preserve the well being of the fish. After all, if the fish suffer, then so does our angling.
There are a few basic pieces of equipment that you will need, and in fact they are compulsory on many of our waters. They are a landing net of a reasonable size, an unhooking mat, a weigh sling and scales if you intend to weigh your quarry, which most of us do. I will talk about each piece of equipment in turn:

Landing Nets

Nets are largely a matter of personal preference and budget. Size will be governed by the size of your quarry. It should be large enough to safely net a carp of whatever size you may catch in your water. A minimum 36" net is required on most waters, and some lakes insist on this or even larger. The material used in its construction does tend to vary a lot and the finer meshes are better for carp, especially mirror carp, as they are less likely to catch on their scales and damage them. Some nets have a larger mesh near the frame and a finer mesh in the base of the net. Try to aim for a fairly small soft mesh. Net frames vary in construction and the better nets will collapse fairly quickly if needed when landing a carp. This enables the fish