Friday, July 4, 2014

360 lbs of carp!

(Note that this post isn't in chronological order in comparison to that last post "Lakes of Legends". This is a post I made on Oregonfishingforum.com and it should've been before "Lakes of Legends". The fly rod I was using in this was actually backwards and I was using a left handed fly fishing reel and connected it as a right hander since it wasn't reverse-able. The carp were much harder to fight since I had no drag and I used my hands as a drag which was pretty painful.) 

First and foremost, I'de like to thank the admin of this forum for one, not kicking me out, I got kicked out of carp.com; I guess it serves me right for trying to cheat on this forum; and two for having this forum be really really intuitive. I mean that "Restore Auto-Saved Content" button just saved my laptop from me throwing it out the window after finishing this thread and accidentally exiting the window. 

I understand why @John Montana is so addicted to fishing for carp using a fly rod. It's just a totally different story/style of fishing in comparison to other techniques. It's hard, tough, you cover a lot of water, you stalk the carp, you see the take, the fights are on another level of difficulty, especially with my extremely cheap fly rod setup in which the drag is horrible and causes me to have to feather the line/reel when I got a "larger" carp; and then I get burnt fingers or hands. 

So I got my double rod fishing license and I usually take advantage of it by ledgering two rods. For those of you who don't know, the term ledgering is just another term for still fishing off the bottom. These days since it's summer, the fish are highly active and highly aggressive. So now I usually ledger one rod, and roam with a fly rod; and it's been landing lots of fish for me. I usually don't stay put for long on my ledgering rod, and end up moving to a different spot or even different lake every 30 minutes or so. Summer has been really great to me this year, since I think I am becoming better and better at knowing where carp are the second I hit a lake, or a certain part of the river. It's almost like I could feel where they are. I guess a summary pattern on how I find carp could be like this: Determine if the body of water even has carp, sight fish on where the carp are, if you find spawning carp, the feeders could be either in deeper water or shallower water, I always cast near ducks since I use bread, and ducks follow the bread, and the carp stalk the ducks for bread, fish covers like near rocks, boulders, or overhanging trees which could yield carp feeding off the surface, and look for flats. I'm pretty sure this technique is working, since I've been losing count on how much carp I've been landing lately this Late Spring/Early Summer, until one lucky day....

Day 1 aka not an epic day of fishing by any means...but it's always great to have a family affair regardless:

I took my little brother, or should I say older brother since he is taller than me, out for some carp fishing. There was a 25% chance of raining that day, so I was pretty stoked to fish a bright sunny day. Yup you've guessed, IT STARTED RAINING! Not only was it raining, it was POURING! We ledgered two fishing rods and I roamed with the fly rod. We ended up catching only 1 small carp and 1 catfish. O well, just the idea of fishing with your family means a lot to me, so catching bigger carp comes second. Then again, there was this smart carp probably almost 20 lbs that kept feeding off the surface, but I couldn't get her to bite with the fly since it was raining so dang hard. 



Day 2
Definitely MY MOST SUCCESSFUL day of fishing in terms of numbers hands down. I went down to a lake connected to the Columbia fishing by myself. I can't tell you how many times I get startled by groups of deer that prance in front of me. I just hope I don't run into a bear or something, but luckily I am extremely fast at running. Anyways, I set-up a ledgering rod and roamed with a fly rod, but I never knew it was going to end up being strictly a fly fishing day. I ended up catching 40 carp, averaging 9 lbs! So doing the math, that's 360 lbs of fish! It was a ridiculous day and they were all on my fly rod! It's so great feeling the constant runs when using a fly rod. Some of the carp even took my reel all the way to my backing and a few almost snapped my line!

I'm definitely not going back to fly fishing for trout or bluegill anytime soon. I know a lot of fisherman go fishing for mostly the scenery, so trout fishing is a perfect fit; but I'm there for the fight.

I know I got a TONS more pics, but I'll just post these:








On another note, most carp fishing lakes right now are either deep in spawn which allows the bigger fish to "do their thing" and maybe if they get to chance, get a snack, and it would allow the smaller carp to feed. So I developed a ledgering setup, one specific for smaller carp in between the range of ounces to 7 lbs since their mouths are a little too small for my Igquick rigs. It's basically a rig set-up with two really small trebles, one leader being significantly longer than the other. I use it method style with bread, and have the smaller leader just peaking out of the method bread ball as a trap, and the longer leader dangles farther and freely as a floating trap for the carp. I always expect it to land something within 20 minutes if I'm at the right area. So if anybody is interested in this rig, feel free to contact me and I could make an Ebay listing for it. I'll probably show it on my next post?

I've been selling on average 30 Igquick Rigs per week so sometimes it takes away from my fishing, but at the same time it pays for my fishing trips so at least I've been fishing for free. The ebay listing is fixed and all ready to go.

Tight Lines

Lakes of Legends

I named this the Lakes of Legends because their are infinite lakes/ponds all across the coast that hold these massive carp in it; but most of these lakes require permission to fish in them so buyer beware. That is all Im going to talk about in regards to location since, as of now, is your best chance to catch a carp since the massive heat wave is causing lots of areas to produce aggresive feeding carp. So if I were the typical fisherman that is trying to get into carp fishing, all I would have to do is slap on a pair of polarized glasses, go to a location on carp spots on my signature or in the links I will display:

p.s. any location that says there is bass or catfish in it, also has carp...Links below:
http://dfw.state.or.us/resources/fishing/where_how/50_in_60_portland.asp

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=109540522836721970470.0004679994ee2773579ba&ll=45.468318,-122.590942&spn=0.28026,0.576782&z=11&dg=feature


Sorry I couldn't get any better photos, I decided to only snap a picture of every fish caught because the 25 lber I landed nearly died; I had to sit there and revive her for about 15 minutes, and struggled to swim for another 15 minutes before she came to. Also I was alone for all the fish except the 21 lber





17 lber


18 lber




In the two picture collage above, guess which fish is bigger before you read the rest of the post?




The next two pics are of a 21 lber, 35 inches long

25 lber, 3 feet long

Same 25 lber, but just next to my 8'6" fly rod. By the way that is my 3rd net in a year. My first net, a grass carp bolted through the net, and it was kind of too small for large carp in the first place. That net was probably between 10 to 20 bucks. The second net I bought for 20 bucks and it bent in half on around the 100th lbs of fish. This 3rd net pictured above is a 60 dollar net from Fred Meyers, made for salt water fishing, salmon, and sturgeon. So far it's doing pretty good, already over 400 lbs of carp landed so it was well worth the expensive cost, although right now my car smells like rotten milk and dead fish. 

The original set-up I bought was a 5/6 weight fly rod combo with a left handed reel from Wal-Mart for 60 bucks. I bought this new Okuma Sierra S5/6 Fly Reel from Bi-Mart for 30 bucks and it was well worth it! Plus, I had never been to Bi-Mart for fishing supplies and boy do I love it there more than any other store I've been to. In my opinion, they had almost everything I ever needed to go fishing, it was organized, and it didn't have millions and millions of isles full of clutter. So far my new reel is putting in work, so far handling 5 fish averaging 22 lbs. 

Same 25 lber showing how chubby they are

Now here is the real beast. A 37 inch long, 30 lb Grass Carp. I went to an entirely different lake and found an area just to relax and take in the whole trip, until I spotted, heard, and saw a fish tailing in about 3 feet of water right next to the bank, so money in the bank. At the end of the fight, I had the guts to loosen the drag a little, put the rod down, run 50 feet to my car, open my trunk, get the net, and run back to my fly rod. Something I learned about using hooks with barbs and fly fishing is that if I set the hook twice, there is no way they could spit that hook out unless they break my line or rod. When I landed this fish, it looked like the 25 lber I caught if it took growth hormones. 

Here is a little comparison "two-picture" collage showing the 25 lber 3 foot fish on the top pic, and the 30 lber 37 inch fish in the bottom pic. 

Here's a little blast from the past:
30 lb grass carp vs. 25 lb common carp
190 lb igquick vs. 155 lb igquick