Are mirrors more intelligent/wary than commons?

[mjbarnes12]

I was fishing an evening match yesterday. When I got to my peg, to my delight, there was all manner of fish stirring up something in the margins, so obviously i set up to fish that swim.

 

With my polaroids on I could see fish entering my peg (a lot of them were rudd as my casters started to float out of my groundbait), the common and ghost carp would get there heads down and eat anything going, resulting in 6 between 5-8lbs!! however whenever i saw a mirror carp going into the swim after it had a scout around it would shoot back off!!

Just wondering if anybody has ever witnessed such events.... maybe with two different species instead of two different strains of the same species?? It was a little baffling!!

[Peter M]

I usually catch more commons than mirrors on lakes i fish but not sure if there are more commons in the lake anyway! in fact i suspect there is. there is probably other factors at work here like something was spooking the mirror carp when they came in your swim. whether they are more intelligent i am not sure.

[Dales]

I doubt that mirrors are more intelligent, if anything I tend to find Common Carp are more of a challenge to catch. This may be down to them being more intelligent then Mirrors or maybe just that the Commom Carp is not so common on many waters now and the Mirrors are now the most common strain.

 

However I do think that common carp are a little harder to catch and have have put this down to them just being a little more natural and therfore cautious. I think many mirror carp strains have been bred for the sole purpose of producing a larger fish and so I feel the constant inbreeding of them has resulted in a more domesticated fish that just seems a little bit easier to catch then a Common.

 

I suppose the only way to test this theory would be to fish a water with similar amounts of both strains over a long period and see what the results are.