With wind and rain in the forecast, our first musky outing of the season was cancelled, we decided on carping instead. We headed off to the Long Sault area, my favorite carp fishing grounds, got a late start, as we had some errands to run on the way.
We got there in the rain, the carp were jumping everywhere. At times we saw 3-4 jumps at a time, they were even jumping 10-15 feet in front of us. The bite was on too, I went 5 out of 6 and my buddy went 2 out of 2 within the first couple hours. Most carp were smaller than what I'm used to in that area, only 2 of the 7 were over 10 lbs. The rain stopped, the sun came out and that was it for the carp. The stopped jumping and taking our baits. After about an hour, we called it quits and headed back to Lancaster to take the boat out, as the whitecaps had died down and the sun was now shining bright.
We started off trolling, my buddy caught a small pike on his first pass. Next, I decided to try a pretty wacky combination of putting my spinning reel on an 8 foot extra light fly rod. The casting wasn't too great, but you sure feel when a fish hits. Call it Murphy's law, I cast a top water using this weird setup, first cast I get hit by the biggest Largemouth bass I've seen in the Raisin River to date, it was over 4 lbs. I didn't get the best hookset due to the extra wobbly action on the fly rod, the but did manage to get the fish to the side of the boat after a couple nice jumps. When it saw us, it dive straight down into a huge clumps of weeds. The fly rod bent under the boat to the point that the tip almost came out the other side. I had no control of the fish whatsoever. Unfortunately, the bass came off in the weeds, I was left with a bunch off grass on my lure.
My buddy managed a small walleye a couple casts later, I switch outfits to try some more topwater action. All I managed was to raise 1 pike in the 4-5 lb range, it slapped my Jitterbug a couple times, then left in a hurry when it saw us.
All in all, the day was full of mixed species and experiences, I was glad to be back on my boat.
2 comments:
Nice! I can just imagine that big largemouth bending that 8foot fly-rod in half under the boat.
I saw a school of carp in front of my dock the other day just hanging out in our little bay. The water there is really shallow. There must have been easily 15-20 of them and they were all HUGE, like 20 pounds. I've never seen so many there before. I tried throwing everything I had at them but nothing could get them to hit. I've always wanted to try carp, what kind of bait do you use?
I catch them on canned corn nibblets. I thread them all the way up the hook so it's completely covered with nibblets. It is also good to chum the area with corn on a regular basis, it will condition them to eating it. Leave your rod in secure holders with a baitrunner reel or extremely loose drag. When the carp take off with the bait, they will start peeling line at high speed. That's when you tighten up and set the hook. I usually fight them using moderate drag to avoid ripping the hook from their mouths.
On clear water like St Francis, stealth is the key, if you can back away far from the dock while waiting, even better, just make sure you can get to your rod on time otherwise it will be gone. Bells and bite alarms help too.
Post a Comment