Ummm smallies are the ones with the big red tail right?
Seriously I have canoed a few rivers here and in Iowa and have seen larger bass cruising the flats with schools of carp. I thought I was going nuts the first time but now have seen it a bunch.
As for what to do with carp I'll ussually throw them back. I do use a few for fertelizer ever spring though. Drum are a little different. Drum will eat minnows. Yesterday I fished the Mississippi down the street from my house. When I got there the river was just a constant boil from minnows and drum feeding on them. I am not sure what type of minnows they were but they looked like little carp. After reading an article on the Illinois river recently I sure hope they were not Asian carp.
The Asia carp are probably the #1 threat to our sport fishing in the USA today. They do not eat any minnows, bugs, or crayfish but they feed on the plankton that everything else eats. This article stated that up to 90% of the Illinois rivers bio mass was Asian carp in places. That is just plain scary.