My first Carp

So after thousands of bluegills caught using white bread was getting old, I've decided to follow what the "nighttime" fishermen would show and tell me.

Some days it would be these two Asian guys with a bunch of fishing rods and these two other white guys; and some days one of them wouldn't be there at night but still they were catching a lot of bullhead catfish. The baits that they were using ranged from white doughbaits, wheat doughbaits, worms, doughbait dipped in bacon oil/fat, etc. 

So one night I fished there by myself. I think they stopped fishing for them because there were no more catfish. An hour has passed and still nothing on my white doughbait, but for sure I was getting bites. Suddenly, one of the bites was typically hard, but the line got really loose. So I picked up my rod and started reeling it in, and I felt something slowly tugging the line. The tug was constant, and it was slowly pulling my line and my rod towards the water; I had something BIG. The tug was so strong and constant, it lead me into the water, where I finally figured out how to loosen the drag on my fishing rod. Keep in mind it is pitch black dark. I thought I hooked into a zombie or an alligator, I have to admit I was pretty scared. So once I loosened up the drag, but it was still running. It ran probably about 150 feet to another bank, and kept running along the bank away from me. I did scream for help because I know a couple of the fishermen that catfished at night lived nearby, but no one showed up. So after 7 minutes of running, I decided to tighten up the drag, and slowly reel him in like I was deep sea pumping the rod. You know, Jerk, reel, jerk, reel, repeat. After about 3 minutes of doing that, the thing was somewhat next to the bank; but it was too big to be directly next to the bank since it was really shallow and my line would snap if I pulled any harder. So in my mind, the only way I could land whatever it was, was to go next to it and grab it; which I did. Once I got close to it, I saw the face and remember the pictures of carp being caught here, and I picked it up by the mouth and body:

I put it in a bag to use my scale and weighed it. It was a gigantic 18 lb common carp. I have never caught something so big by myself. I know I caught a 30 lb chinook, but I was on a boat with some people to help me; so this carp was more important to me. Keep in mind that fishing rod is 5.5 feet long with 8 lb line. That fish is half that fishing rods length, if you want to know how big it looked.

I was able to catch 4 more smaller carp after, but my phone died.

 From then on, I became obsessed with Carp.