Alec Smith and John Shepard of Midway have caught a large number of fine carp in Pee Dee River in the past few days. They use trout lines, four in number on each of which are about 100 hooks. Five grains of corn are used on each hook as bait, the corn first being boiled slightly to become pliable for putting on the hook. A deep pool below the Blewett ferry is used by them as a fishing ground. During the five days ending Monday, 42 carp had been caught in this way, each carp averaging about nine pounds. One caught weighed 14 pounds. They sell for $1 to $1.50, depending on the size.
A carp is a soft-finned, physistomous fish. It feeds chiefly on vegetable matter and attains a great age and large side. Its mouth resembles that of a sucker, small and round. Hence the ease with which these Midway fellows caught them with grains of corn. The carp is exceedingly prolific and tenacious of life. It came originally from Asia where it is esteemed as a food. In many ponds the carp has proved a nuisance, destroying the natural growth of water plants and increasing to such an extent that other and more valuable fish cannot exist.
Smith and Shepard say they are going to try a new method of catching them, using corn meal baked just long enough to prevent dissolving.
From the Rockingham Dispatch, as reprinted on the front page of The Mount Airy News, Thursday, Sept. 29, 1921
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