Moonlightin’…

This past Friday night was an unlikely candidate for a fishing session.  First, I had to work a production that lasted until 5:30 PM (instead of the usual 4 PM).  Second, I had been under the weather since Wednesday with a scratchy throat, congestion, and noticeable fatigue.  Third, when I arrived home to an empty house (everyone else was at one of a couple different events), I walked into a kitchen piled high with dirty dishes!  I decided that I had to clean up that kitchen first as a matter of course.  That took a good hour—by the time I was done, it was around 7:30 PM.  I decided to reward my labors with a little later-than-usual Friday night session!

I decided to fish for both carp and cats simultaneously.  I fished my 12’ crappie ultralight spinning outfit for carp, rigged with a #10 hook baited with a single kernel of yellow Evolution Carp Tackle plastic corn under a 2” glow-stick-rigged puddle chucker.  I cast it about 20 feet off shore, then catapulted three pouchfuls of prepped deer corn around my float to get the carp feeding. 

For the channel cats I fished my usual 6½‘ Ugly Stik spinning combo with a glow-sticked slip float and a #6 treble hook baited with punch bait.  As usual, I started a series of fan casts from the left shoreline and gradually working my way around to the right shoreline.  I started with a depth of 1 foot, and increased my depth by 6” every cast to hopefully quickly find the depth where the cats were feeding.

This night was particularly gorgeous.  A ¾ moon glowing brightly cast its soft glow over the entire lake and shoreline stretching before me.  The lake itself was mirror-still—not a breath of wind, and none of the minnow-chasing predators that were tearing up the surface a few nights before.  The only sounds I could hear were those of the human residents along either bank.  Here and there a snatch of conversation, a door closing, the occasional car passing through the apartment parking lot across the lake.  From time to time, the relative stillness and silence was punctuated by the loud crashing of a breaching carp—and I noticed something specific this night that I had not before—all the breaches were near the far shore.  I called to mind how, nearly every morning since spring, as I arose from my slumber and looked out my second-story bedroom window, I would often see multiple sets of ripples emanating from the near shoreline, revealing the presence of carp feeding in the margins.  The idea occurred to me that, during the spring, summer, and fall, perhaps the carp followed the sun, feeding first on the western shore where the east-rising sun first shone, then following its warming rays to the eastern shore as the sun slowly sinks into the west.  At this point, just a theory, but the morning observations were certainly very consistent.  I will have to continue to observe whether the evening breaches seem to be concentrated on the far side, or if that was just a one-off on this particular night.  Of course, with the changing of the season, that pattern—if it is indeed a pattern--may shift as well.

By 10:30 PM, I had caught two small catfish near or on the bottom, both around 15-20 feet off the near shore.  My carp float had budged slightly here and there, but never the confident moving off that characterizes a typical carp take.  About an hour into the session I changed up my yellow plastic corn kernel for a glow-in-the-dark one, but that change did not change my fortunes on this night.  While a bit disappointed and surprised, especially at the lack of carp action (Were they all on the far shore as the breaches seemed to indicate?), I could not but help be elevated and satisfied at having experienced such a beautiful, peaceful evening on the water.  Maybe the next evening session I will break out the carp rods, which can cast further to where the carp were breaching, and see if that approach will net more bites (and fish!).  Back home and in bed by 11 PM.  Goodnight, Friday!