This week I decided to do some carp fishing. Tuesday after work I headed out to a lake we know to hold some monster carp. I got on the water at about 5:00pm. Immediately I opened a can of corn and tossed nearly half the can in the water to get the carp chummed in. Corn in recent years has by far been our favorite carp bait. My preferred setup is as simple as can be, just a small bluegill hook threaded with 3 pieces of corn or so, no weight or anything else. I toss it out as far as I can into where I threw the chum, typically this isn't that far since I'm not using any weight, 15-20ft or so. At this point I leave my spinning reels bail open allowing line to come off. If your not going to be watching your line intently you can clip a piece of styrofoam to your line for some added visibility of a bite however this isn't necessary if you plan on watching your lines closely. At this point its a waiting game.
I waited and waited with no bites. I could see some huge ones swimming around near the surface lethargically. They didn't seem to be interested in my corn but I knew there had to be some out of view that were. About 2 hours went by and I was on the verge of retiring to fishing for bass or bluegill. Finally just before I decided to leave I got a short tug. This was enough to get my attention and I decided to stay a bit longer. Ten minutes later my line started slowly pulling out once more and this time it didn't stop. I picked up my rod and set the hook and it felt like a good fish. It quickly splashed the surface after being hooked and I could tell this carp was easily 20lbs. It immediately started ripping line off my reel, my anchor didn't hold in the shallow water and the fish pulled me 50ft out into the middle of the lake. Holding on for dear life I reached down and dropped my anchor down to stop the fish from pulling me out any farther. At this point the fish probably had 30 yards of line out. I slowly worked the fish in closer and closer. Eventually I got the carp within 10ft of my NuCanoe, to the point where I was thinking about picking my net up. I could see now that the carp was pushing 30lbs. The fish was not happy about being that close to my NuCanoe and off it went again, ripping line off like it was nothing, so much that I started to think it was never going to stop. This happened time and time again, I'd get it close and off it would go another 20-30 yards out. I battled the carp for about 10 minutes like this. Finally, as I had feared, It made its way into a fallen tree and broke free.
I was disappointed but at least I knew they were biting. I set back up and threw out some more corn. This time I hooked my anchor on a small tree to ensure no fish was pulling me anywhere. An hour passed by and I once again started losing hope. Again, right before I decided to give up, I got a bite. I hooked into another carp that felt much smaller than the previous, but still pretty decent. After a few minutes I had it in my net, to my surprise it was a mirror carp. Mirror carp have a genetic mutation causing there scales to be inconsistent and unique. This was my first mirror carp ever as they are fairly uncommon. It weighed in at 16lbs 12oz and measured 28 inches. The carp was also good enough for my third different Fish OH species.
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| 16lb 12oz 28 inch Mirror Carp |
I took the opportunity to try out my camera mount and attempted to get a picture of me with the fish. They didn't turn out well but I didn't realize that my timer only turned on for one picture only.
Before checking the pictures I released the fish. Right before hooking this carp I had tossed out my remaining corn so this concluded my carp fishing for the evening. I ended my evening casting a small crankbait around and found 1 largemouth and 1 crappie to conclude my day.
Thursday after work I went out for round 2. Day two didn't go as planned. I waited 2 hours without any bites once again, but this time it was windier and I couldn't see any carp on the surface so I decided to move on to bass and bluegill fishing. Like Tuesday, I tossed a small crankbait around and caught 3 bluegill, 2 largemouth, and 1 crappie before calling it quits.
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