MJL

Congrats on the PB Channel Cat - What did it weigh?

 

007

I didn’t put it on a set of scales but it felt like it was around the 10lb neighbourhood (at least compared to the 10lb dumbbell I have in my room). It was surprisingly dense for a fish that fat. It loved the maize so much, I could barely open its mouth to get the hook out. My former PB was a 2lber caught last year at Hamilton harbour.

Heres one to think about, you might like to consider using slightly different tactics, 50lb line will certainly put off a lot of fish and after all action is what it is all about. Even on the snaggiest waters 12lb was my max, not saying I am any good but I certainly hooked more fish than the others who were using thicker lines.

 

When we fish in France for some of the monsters that have seen a lot of pressure even taking into account you can loose lots of tackle to the rocks and mussels I used to let the fish run for a bit, sometimes they head for a snag and sometimes I believe they just sit there not sure what to do next?? after all they are hooked but may not know it as you arent trying to pull their head off yet. Then get into a dinghy, great fun with a mate rowing until you can get near it and then wind down on it and let it tow you round the lake for a bit, only another slightly different angle on an excellent hobby.

 

Not trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs like as you certainly know what you are doing.

 

Regards Clive

That’s some good advice Clive. I firmly believe that carp can become educated quickly and can spot rigs if they aren’t presented well. I do a lot of stalking and see carp do things that most wouldn’t believe. I personally use 12lb mono/copolymer/hybrid lines for about 90% of my carp fishing. I usually bump up to 15lb if I’m having slight problems with zebra mussels. It was on the recommendation from most the carp guides that work the St. Lawrence (like Jeff Vaughn, Paul Hunt, Tessa Bowling, Bernie Haines + a few others) to use braid/superlines in the 50+lb range (some recommended snag leaders up to 120+lb braid). Jeff Vaughn uses 80lb PowerPro throughout. The 50lb PowerPro that I was using has the same diameter as 12lb mono. I did get cut-off twice during the trip and lost everything, but it was most likely my fault for not checking the line before casting out.

The tip about letting them run was spot on. Dennis who firmly believed in the lock and hold method got cut-off more often than the number he landed. I let my fish run till they stopped or at least till they slowed down and I applied enough pressure to turn them. The thing about fishing the St. Lawrence was locating the underwater shelves and plateaus and making sure you knew where each was so that you could steer the fish (hopefully) away from the steep zebra mussel covered ledges – The area we were fishing at distance dropped from 35ft to 77ft in a matter of just a few feet.

how's the new spod rod?

Slim, sexy and very powerful...Sort of reminds me of myself

Who would have thought... that a coarse fish would deserve that sort of report.... Man your hardcore! While I dont understand some peoples obsession with carp fishing... (No really I dont) I was a wicked report all the same!.. thanks for sharing it with us man...

 

Gerritt.

As far as fishing for carp over “gamefish”, it’s what I’ve been doing most of my life (I do fish for steelhead the rest of the year). I got bit by the carp bug as a 5yr old at the local m.a.r.s.h and never looked back to panfish and bass (though once in a while I do put on a worm and fish for them). The fact that they can be caught using various techniques is the reason why I like them so much. You can be stalking around the margins, fly fishing on shallow flats, using float and match tackle, top water fishing with floating dog food and bread, plunking down and sitting in the shade when it gets hot, etc. For shore anglers, they provide an excellent opportunity to catch big fish throughout the spring/summer/fall without requiring a boat + motor + trailer. For kids (And basically anyone in general), they are an easily accessible species to catch because of their widespread nature across the province – There’s no need to drive 2+hrs from the city to catch fish as large as 60lbs in some areas (Yes 60+lbers have been recorded in this province). You can make carp fishing as easy or as complicated as you want although a snoopy rod might only be suitable for smaller fish (There are a few Snoopy rod junkies out there that would disagree).

As far as being a Carp junky goes…Don’t worry, most of my friends still don’t understand – Then again they have yet to catch a big carp…We all have different things we live for in life. Different strokes for different folks…I always thought the people who fished for bass were a little strange, passing on the chance to catch a 30lb fish.

It was last week my dad and I confirmed our camping trip to the Long Sault parkway for Aug 14-17. Neither of us had ever fished that particular stretch of the St. Lawrence before. We read great things about that location from other people and the fact that both of us were free this week we were up for trying it out.

July/August usually is a hit or miss time of the year for carp and some of the locals had mentioned that the fishing was on/off with little in the way of big fish being caught (30-40lb). The few reports that we managed to find on the net weren’t overly positive…Then again…You can’t catch fish sitting on a lazy boy in front of the TV.

Sunday/Monday

I prepped the bait, spooled the reels with 50lb Power Pro, organized various rig components into small plastic boxes for convenience and portability, etc. I had reels, swingers, hook packs, tubing packs, swivels and various leads ranging from 1/2oz to 4oz laid out on the treadmill (my makeshift table).

Maize soaking in buckets… Not knowing how many spots we needed to try before we hit fish or the number and size of fish currently in the system, I had 40lbs of maize soaked for 48hrs and boiled for 20min…Needless to say it was a late night for me.

A few of the leads we brought with us

The baiting tools of choice.

Spods

Sling shot with 10lbs of boillies

Baiting needles and drills

My dad made the menu and took care of the other non-fishing related things associated with camping.

Tuesday

Woke up at 4:45am and left the house at 6:15am with a fully packed car - Probably over packed by most standards.

We arrived at the Long Sault parkway at 10:15am and scouted the park by driving around the various islands. Looking at our campsite we found out that it was unsuitable for fishing…There was a massive expanse of weeds as far as the eye could see in very shallow water. I took the canoe out + fish finder and couldn’t find water that was more than 3ft deep. Fish at this time of year usually retreat to deeper waters. There was also very little in the way of a bank we could set up our gear or safely land fish (For both us and the fish)…Back to scouting.

We finally found 1 vacant campsite that looked promising. I took the canoe out and turned on the fish-finder. The water looked great on the screen and so we booked the site…BIG MISTAKE…The bottom was quite level however it was thick very dense weeds that covered it – I should’ve plumbed around with a marker float first (I jumped the gun on that one). I spent an hour trying to find the open 4ft by 4ft patch which I managed to hit once in every 30 casts (50 yards out from shore) …I walked over to another site down the road and saw another angler fishing for carp. He was getting a few fish and invited us to fish in the neighbouring campsite – We booked it fast and so we were set.

We set up our gear. The angler that tipped us on the site happened to be none other than Lakeview carping regular, Denis. He was doing alright hooking into fish but he was losing quite a lot of them to the zebra mussels with 50 and 100lb test PowerPro…I wondered how we would fare during the trip with only 50lb PowerPro – We had a spare spool of 65lb if need be.

The view from our campsite

I baited up the swim with maize and method mix and within 10 minutes I got my first fish of the trip. Not very big but the fight was unbelievable for a fish that size.

Through the rest of the remaining afternoon and early evening I managed to bank a total of 9 fish from 13lbs and under (losing only 1 to a hook pull) and my dad landed 4 about the same size (losing 1 fish to a very sharp zebra mussel which sliced through the hair rig – also 50lb PowerPro).

Then night came…While my dad and Denis opted for sleep, I chose to fish through the night…Glad I did

One comes to net

Final result is a tiddler but you wouldn’t know it judging by the great tussle it put up.

During the night I managed to hook onto something different. Very strong with very sharp head shakes. Also short blistering runs with a lot of rolling…I knew I didn’t hook into a carp. It turns out to be my PB channel cat which fell for 5 pieces of maize on a hair.

Conditions weren't the greatest to be fishing in...I spent the night in cool gusting winds (to about 40km) and on/off rain while sitting on my bait-bucket - I was worried that my lawn chair would've blown into the river (which it has in the past)…Doing an all nighter sitting on a bucket is probably something I won’t be doing again for a while – my back is still a little sore. All I can say is Gore-tex kept my @$$ dry

My final tally for the night between 11pm and 4am was 10 carp, 3 bullheads and 1 channel cat. I didn’t feel tired at all…Coffee puts me to sleep so it was pure adrenaline and concentration keeping me up. The raccoons kept me occupied with their attempts at getting into my bait buckets…Sneaky devils they are.

Wednesday

Dawn breaks and sunlight pops through the clouds. At 6:30am after a short 2hr lull in the action, I’m back into a fish (Donning waders, the air temperature was too chilly for shorts and sandals)

During the night the winds pushed a floating mass of weeds by shore and I had to change my pod setup with the rod tips pointing skywards to get over them. We weren’t having problems with the zebra mussels but that setup also helped to avoid the problem of cutoffs – You can keep much of your line off the bottom away from the zebra mussels. For the euro-tackle techies, I swapped the front legs for long banksticks.

We also had our share of furry visitors

This one eating our maize

This one making love to our water bottle

A non-furry visitor (well mostly)…This chap swung by our campsite. He and his father were day-tripping around the park looking for carp without much luck. My rod went off and I let him at it. A nice clean fish that took him down river before it was banked.

The action died around 9pm and being more than satisfied with the fishing I opted to retire to the tent. My dad and Dennis did the same (they are old and tired anyway)

Thursday

Glint of sunlight through the clouds

Woke up at 6am and casted my line in. Within minutes my alarm indicates that I have a super charged carp at the end of my line. Notice the size of the tail in proportion to the rest of its body. It’s not hard to see where they get all of their power from.

My dad with his biggest of the trip at around 17lbs – He hates touching carp

Our lunch for the day – To think like a carp, you must eat like a carp

The action died down mid-morning and after lunch my dad and I left to check out the carp shop at the Long Sault motel. Jeff Vaughn is the owner and has setup a great operation, The Canadian Carp Club. If you’re into carp and need specialty tackle, he is one great source. You can visit his web-site at:

http://www.canadiancarpclub.on.ca/

and

http://www.longsaultmotel.com/

His carp shop is about the size of a small motel room but as Dennis put it, “it is an Aladdin’s cave of carp goodies.” I picked up a few hard to get items like marker floats, jumbo corn, tubing threaders, rubber corn + other bits and bobs of stuff.

In the afternoon, the skies turned dark with the ominous signs of a stormy hell approaching. We took cover in our car from the lightning, torrential downpour and the hail.

The ground was literally covered in hail the size of golf balls and smaller. At times the rain was coming down so hard we couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of us. We were lucky to have stashed all of our gear in the trunk before the onslaught hit us. It was the worst storm I have ever been in…There are a few small dents on our car. A small tree branch also fell on our car but luckily there was no damage.

But as soon as the storm passed…

We were greeted by a beautiful sky

A beautiful moment

A beautiful fish

Although the fishing was slow most of the day, it challenged us to switch up our tactics and try new things. We noticed that fish were rolling 80 to 90 yards from shore. While the tackle that I brought with me wasn’t designed to throw long distances (2.5 and 2.75lb test curve rods) I did manage to hit those distances after a few minutes of practice and trying out a few techniques like pendulum casting. I was able to hit the sweet spot 1 out of every 3 attempts. I must say, I am a perfectionist when it comes to presentation and each cast that didn’t hit the mark was quickly re-casted, sometimes with the result of fish taking the bait even before it hit bottom. My dad with a bad shoulder couldn’t hit close to those distances so I did the casting and spodding…Needless to say spodding and distance casting takes a lot out of you and my shoulder is now feeling it.

Spodding equipment used

- Greys spod rod

- Daiwa Emcast 5000 Big-pit

- 50lb Tuffline XP

- FOX big spod

I wouldn’t recommend using a large spod with anything under a 2.75lb test curve (3 is better, 3.5 even better, specialty spod rod is best)

After all the hard work of baiting at 70-80 yards out, I was rewarded with the biggest fish of the trip. It was the only fish in the 20lb range we managed to land. It took 2 grains of maize with 1 piece of rubber corn.

Fish continued to hit through the night and I was treated with a few dozen brilliant shooting stars but fatigue started to catch up with me and I went to sleep satisfied.

Friday

We had to leave for home at 7am due to another engagement. I had a blast and my dad (who has never been camping in Canada for the 35+ years he’s been here) also had a great time camping and fishing. We must have landed around 40 fish in total between the 2 of us (I did manage to be the luckier one though ) but the numbers never really mattered. I enjoyed the experience of battling the hardest fighting carp that I have ever come across in Ontario. I also had much fun fishing with Denis and his wife Marian both of whom are wonderful people. I must say if it wasn’t for him, I probably wouldn’t have had the results that I did this week. All in all it was a fun trip.

Great pics 007

Riding in a float plane looks like a blast. Too bad about the neighbours though. You do run into total jerks from time to time but more often than not, it's usually not the case. Convince your wife to rebook for September. All you need is some wine, massage oils, easy listening music and some chloroform...A good back for heaving her into the car is always good.

Great report Rich! Belated congrats on the little one...I see a carping phenom in the making

Great report and pics dude! You're a lucky guy to have a lady friend who also likes to fish.

Great report Mike. Good to see kids having fun in the outdoors.

If that frog didn't turn out to be a prince, I'm sure he would be would stew up real well with the right ingredients.

Great pics Cliff...Congrats on the little one getting second place...You've got a match fisher-person in the making.

WOW! Those are some real pigs!

What kind of forage do the smallies in Simcoe feed on to get that football shape?

WTG guys

WTG guys...Those are some nice pics.

As far as tying the loop for the hair, you can always tie a bigger loop so that you can get your needle and bait stop into it easier. The loop need not be small provided you've got the correct length for the hair (And even that usually is variable)..Instead of tying a small loop at the end of the hair, you can also whip that piece of line over itself when using the knot-less knot to create 1 large loop as a hair. After you whip over the knot, you can take a lighter and glob over the tag end so it doesn't come undone - Trying to get a baiting needle through a tiny loop at night is a pain.

Congrats on Christening your new toy Beans

If all else fails you can give this a try

http://www.flysim.com/flysim/flysim_features.html

A BWO hatch 24/7.

As wolf mentioned, you have to dry pretty much everything that will come in contact with the PVA bag or it will melt.

One minor remedy to extend the life of the bag is to coat the bag with some form of oil - Oil will not dissolve PVA. Most people use commercially available oil-based flavour attractants. Salmon oil is another good one provided you have access to a cheap bottle. Needless to say, you and your gear may smell like fish-oil or scopex the rest of the day.

Here's one that left a present at the bottom of my friend's mug while we were camping in Algonquin park.

Great report. It's always great to see youngins taking up the sport and having fun. They after-all are the future of the sport and will be the ones managing our natural resources at some point in time.

Beyond the sources already mentioned, you might be able to get a hold of Mark or Ed Jarvis from Carpins.ca located in Long Sault, On

Their web-site is currently down but you can give them a call at

Phone 613 537 2248

I believe that they normally have PVA products in stock.

Congrats Crazyhook...Landing a carp that size with light tackle (on a fly no less) is quite an achievement

WTG

Yesterday I managed to catch a big turtle while carp fishing at the local pond. It climbed out of the net, probably realized it was too hot out and climbed back in again.

While not involving a net, I've had a few bizarre incidents while fishing for steelhead and salmon.

One of which occurred while wading waist deep in the river (about 25ft from shore). While trying to land the fish, the hook pulled out. The steelhead then swam and beached itself right on shore behind me...I walked back, grabbed it and released it...Not exactly the smartest fish if you ask me. 1hr later, it was caught by another angler further upstream and went home on a stringer. Apparently it fell victim to a hot pink, ping pong sized roe bag...The water was low and clear.

I don't own one or know which stores have them in stock...All I can say is wear the wrist strap on controllers at all times when you're playing (especially baseball)...My friend threw his controller through his brand new LCD TV this past Christmas...There's also a web-site out there that shows many of the wii related accidents that have occurred since it first came out on the market.

On the brightside, you do burn a lot of calories while playing it.

I don't have the luxury of owning a boat or fishing from one often but when I fish from my canoe (and plan to get my feet wet often), I wear Columbia water-shoes

These ones

They come with mesh uppers and drainage holes in the sole. I've never gotten sunburned while wearing them.

I can see it now...Salmon season at the pier

Target acquired...Yellow Kayak within 30 yards and closing! Ready! aim! Launch cleo!

Nice catch btw

http://www.mapquest.com/directions/main.ad...amp;2z=&r=f

 

Brian, Dundee is a long way for you.

Tag on another few minutes for tolls and border crossings...It's especially bad on long weekends.

Awesome...She's thinking outside of the box!

Thanks for the report. I haven't fished there for a number of years but I do remember the sign about avoiding bass/pike fishing. At least you got into fish and had fun. There are other fishing opportunities in that pond. There are also crappies, bullheads, carp, perch and silver bass (or white perch can't remember). Catching fish in summer on ice fishing gear must be a blast.

MJL,

Wow,those are sweet lookin little baits. Kinda reminds me of stealheading exept its for carp instead....Lots of colour !!!

So let me get this straight,you make these out of cormeal with speacial ingredients added and then boiled thus they are called boilies....I get it !!!!Thanx bud....

One more question about the boilies....how do you get the colour into them or shall I say what do you use for colour ????

You can make boillies out of pretty much anything provided that they can bind together into a dough when you add eggs. There are lots of recipes on the net (some better than others though). Technically you could use food colouring if you wanted to, to get them different colours. I find that various ingredients and/or flavourings (like scopex, strawberry, pineapple, etc) also add colours. I stopped making my own boillies when I figured out it was just as cheap to get quality boillies from the local shop. The last 4-5 years, I've been using boillies with formulas developed to provide a high nutritional value to the fish and have been doing well in most of the waters that I fish (even ones where they've never seen boillies before). I can't explain why but perhaps fish know a good thing when they see it.

The ones featured in the pic are some that my fishing buddies from the UK gave me during their trip to Canada last year.

I also had fun at Cabelas. The store layout with the fish tanks and ponds + all the stuffed animal exhibits was impressive. I couldn't believe the sizes of some of the trout they had swimming around (bows and brookies). To be honest, I was a little disappointed with the amount of fishing inventory they had in stock but in all fairness, I was looking for some very specialized items that were not bass/walleye/musky related.

What surprised me was the fact that PowerPro in the US retails for much cheaper than in Canada. I bought a couple of 300 yard spools of PowerPro for $25 each. In Canada, 150 yards retails at most local tackle shops for almost the same amount after tax...Go figure.

Also didn't see too many deals or items priced below what I normally pay back at home.

I also brought my camera with me but unfortunately it died after taking 2 pics of the fish tank...There's always next year