I arrived at about 10:30am. At the location, I saw someone I met last fall. He is a bowfin angler and we had talked about some bowfin tutorial for me.
It was great since he took me around this back bay looking for bowfin. We saw some very well camouflaged bowfin. They are sure hard to spot! But after an hour of learning, I got an idea of what I need to look for. My teacher decided to fish some new waters. I rigged up to fish for some carp.
It wasn't even 10 minutes when I had a good rip on my float. Fish ON! I forgot how hard carp fought...it was a fun fight for sure! Trying to net the fish solo was a challenge though since the distance from my float to the hook was about 6 feet long (I was using a 9-foot rod).
This fish had a strange mouth...could be due to injury during juvenile years...it also had a nasty sore on the side of the body...
Solid 27" fish.
That was it for this spot. I was there for a good 1.5 hours only to see some carp in spawning mode and others trying to warm up on the surface.
So I made a move and found some feeding carp. I chummed up the area a bit and tossed my rig in. Not too long later, I had another fish on!
This one got me beat though. As soon as it was hooked, it went into a bunch of nasty snag in shallow water. I had the fish pulled out slightly 4 times...but each time it dove into the nasty branches again. At the end, my line was just too worn out and it snapped.
This is where I gets a little interesting. My previous fish was caught on a hair rig tied with a #12 octopus hook. I thought I tried even a smaller hook to see if I can get more action. I made a hair rig with #14 octopus hook and tried that out. Well, I had 4 solid hits between 1pm - 4pm...and farmed them all
The hook gap was simply too small for a good hookset.
I didn't have any #12 hook with me...so I took one of my old hair rigs made with a #8 baitholder hook. I chummed the swim some more and at 4:10pm, I had a nice surprise.
This fish fought just like the one that snapped me off...except this time I really put the beef to it...with the mentality that I'd rather snap my line putting too much pressure than to have the fish dig too deep into the snags...because I would lose the fish either way so I have nothing to lose.
Luckily, I was able to horse the fish out even though it did run into the nasty stuff twice. When I had it in the net, I realized why it was giving me such a long fight (over 5min).
What a thick fish!
It was 80cm long...
...and 61cm around...
Fish calculator said 16.5lbs! That's a nice way to start the summer of carp fishing!
I fished until 7pm and farmed one more fish while I was on the phone with a friend...damn distractions!
I may head out again tomorrow with some worms to see if I can catch those bowfin. I had a XH pike rod with me today with 65lb PowerPro...and the bowfin didn't like the heavy braid so much. I'll have an extra rod with 8lb mono and 8lb fluoro leader tomorrow...hopefully I can find a bowfin