When I was a teenager, we would always go below OLD Hickory dam when the bass went on bed and would always catch lots of BIG carp on 6 pound test and light action rod. We would always use a commercially prepared carp bait you could buy in the local bait shops and it worked like a charm. There would always be Asians down there and they would run up the banks for a hundred yards with their huge dip nets to get the fish and they would even take them off the hook for you. Many days they couldn't even carry all the fish up the bank. Those were the days (when the bass were on bed
).