Oh what a difference a day makes!

Got home from church around 2 PM this afternoon.  After watching the early NFL game halftime highlights and eating some lunch, my thoughts turned, as they often do on Sunday afternoons, to fishing.  I was still smarting from my spanking yesterday at the hands of the reluctant carp in the neighborhood lake.  I decided that the best way to deal with falling off that bike was to get back on and start riding again.  All my rods were still rigged from yesterday, and I had the dry ingredients already mixed for a method mix chum.  I quickly mixed up my method mix of dried molasses, old-fashioned oats, and sweet corn into a thick dry-ish mix that, once the liquids were absorbed by the oats, would mold nicely around a purpose-built lead providing a nice little pile of carp goodies with my hook bait conveniently suspended nearby.  Fearing that today’s Facebook post caption would read “Glutton for Punishment”, I quickly gathered my tackle rucksack, rubber knee boots, four rods, net, and a 5-gallon bucket loaded with 1-gallon re-purposed plastic ice cream containers, one filled with a mix of prepared (soaked overnight and then boiled until tender) birdseed, cracked corn, and deer corn, and the other containing my just-mixed method mix.

Arriving at the same spot I fished so unsuccessfully just yesterday, I found it devoid of the three-dozen or so Canadian Geese that had blanketed the ground yesterday.  I quickly got one of my carp rods ready by molding the method mix around the lead—a messy job that requires a tub of water to rinse off and a rag to dry off--so it would not come off during the cast, then cast it out into the right-side spot I’ve been chumming for several days.  I have committed, when I am fishing multiple rods, to always fish at least one rod with artificial baits, and, since this one was still baited with a white plastic Evolution Carp Tackle corn stack from my fiasco yesterday, that was my bait of choice to start.  After casting out into my baited area, I catapulted three pouches of seed mix to get draw fish in.  Then I set my rod on a bank stick with a bite alarm atop and waited for it to scream “Bite!”

While I was preparing my second carp rod, not five minutes later, my first rod’s bite alarm let out a series of short beeps, then a continuous one, letting me know that a carp had taken my hook bait, gotten hooked by the weight of the lead, and started to run.  I quickly picked it up, and immediately noticed that it felt like a nice fish, both by how powerfully it ran and by the considerable weight I felt when applying steady pressure to avoid a hook pull.  After a spirited battle, I eventually netted a very welcome bar of gold—long time coming!  My suspicions about its size were confirmed once I had it on shore.  It was a nice specimen, which turned out to weigh just under 6 pounds—above average size for this lake (3-4 pounds is about the average size).  I quickly unhooked it, weighed it, snapped a couple of pix, and then gently lowered it back into the water in the net, where I watched it glide off into the depths again.

After squeezing another handful of method mix around the lead again, I re-cast that rod back to the same spot, replaced it in its bank stick/bite alarm rest, and then catapulted out another pouch to keep the carp feeding.  Before I was able to get my left rod rigged and cast, off went the bite alarm again!  This one felt even bigger, and, indeed, it was!  After another nice fight, I landed another golden beauty, this one around 8 ½ pounds—one of the biggest I’ve ever caught out of this lake!  Repeated the usual process of unhooking, weighing, photographing, and releasing.

Again I re-applied the method mix and recast.  This time there was a sufficient lull in the action to allow me to repeat the same process with my left-side rod, only it was baited with four kernels of prepped deer corn on the hair (Note: the “hair” is a short loop of line that is snelled to the hook itself, onto which the bait is threaded with a baiting needle.  When the carp sucks in the bait, the hook follows it into the carp’s mouth, where, with its hook point completely bare, it is more likely to catch hold before being ejected.).  This rod was also rested on a bank stick/bite alarm combo.

After getting both my carp rods in the water, and, since they were positioned wide left and right, there was a nice expanse of open water in front of me in which to fish a third rod.  I decided that, since the carp seemed to be biting today, I would use my ultralight spinning combo (rod and reel) to float fish for carp as well (I also had a catfish rod with me, but elected today to leave it idling on the bank behind me.).  I catapulted the usual three pouches of seed mix directly in front of me and about 15’ off shore—a distance sufficient to make the carp less aware of my presence by virtue of being in about 3 feet of murky water.  Then I cast my float rig well beyond my intended target, then stuck my rod tip under the surface and reeled my float into the baited spot.  When fishing, as I was today, with a “waggler” (a float attached only on the bottom of the float), it is necessary to sink the line so that any wind does not make a “bow” in the line that results in too much slack to set the hook effectively.  Since the white plastic corn stacks had already banked two fish today, I thought trying a piece of night-glow plastic corn was a close-enough approximation to white to be a good bet.

Within a few minutes, my float dipped, then started moving to the left.  I quickly picked up the rod, reeled in the slack, and tightened up.  I don’t believe the carp even knew it was hooked, because it took it a minute to really run hard.  It sort of lumbered slowly away from me for a minute before it took off on its first run.  Carp generally run first in one direction, then in the other.  If you’re not careful, they will run right up against bankside shrubs or blowdowns and deftly dislodge the annoying hook.  This one stayed true to the usual pattern, first running left, then right, and continuing this see-saw battle back and forth while gradually losing ground toward my waiting net.  After fighting this one for about five minutes, it was tiring, and I was working closer and closer in, when, after a sudden direction change momentarily caught my line on its dorsal spine, this gave it just enough leverage at the right angle for the hook to pull.  Bloody blast!  Well, I was a little disappointed, but, with the action I’d already had, there was likely to be more.  I quickly got that rod re-positioned, catapulting a little more seed all around the float to keep the carp interested and feeding.

Within ten minutes my float started off again, and this time I succeeded in landing the beastie!  This one didn’t fight very much at first, so much so that I wondered if I’d re-hooked the one I previously lost—who knows?  Once I got it closer in, it decided to get spunky on me, making short runs every time I tried to steer it into the net.  Eventually it tired sufficiently for me to succeed.  This one weighed around 5 1/2 pounds—a third above-average weight fish!

I fished about another 45 minutes or so, but there were to be no further screaming alarms or moving floats this day.  At 5:30 I started packing up.  As any fisherman knows, the rods are the last thing to pack up, as that last-minute bite can come at any second!  As I reeled in the last of the three rods (the float rod), I realized that my catching was over for this day, but what a fine day it had been!  Four carp hooked and three landed in about two hours of bank time.  I will take that any day.  As darkness was falling on my little backyard carp fishing laboratory, I walked the short walk home thoroughly carpisfied.

What made the difference? I was fishing the exact same location.  Exact same methodology and rigs.  Exactly the same seed mix chum.  The obvious difference was the method mix.  Yesterday’s used old-fashioned oats, instant grits, and Wizard brand Kokanee-treated sweet corn (died hot pink!), which came highly recommended by my friend Luke Nichols, who has used it with great success.  Today’s was primarily flavored by dried molasses (Oh—and I added a little liquid plum flavoring as well…).  Was it the method mix, or were the carp just “in the mood” today?  I guess only further “experimentation” to test that hypothesis will tell!  Looking forward to my next lab session…