Is a carp a carp?

[wasabi_VA]

I’m tired of watching these massive carp mill about at one of my bass lakes. Time to try and put a hook in one and see how they fight. I’m in Virginia - are these giant carp a special type of carp or just a regular old carp? I’m going to try and use corn since that seems to work for a lot of folks but wondering if they way I’ve heard folks call them ‘grass carp’ means they are different than a regular old carp that will eat corn? 

[TnRiver46]

Grass carp eat microscopic level stuff and are somewhat rare except in ponds.  There are several varieties of sucker fish : common carp, small and large mouth Buffalo, white sucker, blue sucker, northern hog sucker, several species of red horse, quill back, highfin carpsucker, river carpsucker, and a few others I probably left out. Common carp love corn and bread, the rest are tough to catch with any methods . Sometimes even common carp are very hard to get 

[Bluebasser86]

Could be plain common carp, could be grass carp, or if you have them, buffalo will get up on the surface or in the shallows where they can be seen and also grow very large. Carp are minnows, buffalo are in the sucker family. All can be caught on rod and reel, but how you go after each will be different.  

[Captain Phil]

Back in the nineties, our State officials stocked grass carp in the Harris Chain's Lake Yale.  They did this as part of the State's "War on Hydrilla".  The grass carp ate all the hydrilla. After that, they ate up all the shoreline cover including the reeds and bullrushes. They turned that lake into a featureless bowl of water the color of coffee. The great fishing this lake was known for went away.  Some of the grass carb were nearly 40 pounds.  I know because I ran a few bow fishing trips at the time.  They ended up using plastic fences in an attempt to restore the shoreline grass.  Eventually, the State recognized the problem and started using air boats to net out the carp at night and the lake has recovered.  If your State talks about stocking grass carp, tell them this story.