Michigan Fall Carp Fishing

I have been looking forward to autumn for a few months. The leaves are turning, college football is in full swing, Thanksgiving is just around the corner and the chances of breaking by personal best weight for common carp increases to way above average. Last year I caught my current personal best of 26 pounds 10 ounces in October when the weather was very similar to our current temperatures, winds and cloud cover.

I left the house at 6:30 and arrived to my favorite fishing spot about 7:10 after a stop at the convenience store for snacks and soda to tide me over for the next 10 hours or more. With the thermometer registering 39 degrees, I was appropriately layered up, gloved up and wearing a stocking cap to keep my bald head warm.

I started out with peach flavor for my ground bait and peach flavored maize for my hook bait and had lines in by 7:35 and my hopes were high.

My strategy was to feed them and feed them some more and keep on feeding them until I landed a couple of carp. I had a 5 gallon bucket full of panko bread crumbs and lots of cream corn so the race was on.

I re-casted every 75 minutes until the first fish was landed and then backed off to every 90 minutes. With water levels lower than normal, I had to cast out 70 to 80 yards and started hooking fish shortly before lunch time.

I made a miss-cast one time and the bait landed about 15 feet from the bank. I decided to leave it and see what happened. Well guess what happened…20 minutes later I hooked a fish. Unfortunately I didn’t land that one due to a hook pull.

Overall it was a very good day of fishing. I hooked 12 fish, landed 10 and had 2 hook pulls. My second hook pull was a very good fish. I am kind of bummed about that one. I would have loved to see just how big it was. I am sure it wasn’t new PB material, but it was very likely the biggest fish I hooked today.

My smallest fish weighed 10 pounds and the largest tipped the scales at 19 pounds 5 ounces. The majority of the fish caught today weighed in the 16 to 18 pound range. The average size for this time of year is lower than in the two previous seasons. I am sure the commercial fisherman who cleaned out the lagoon back in June impacted the average size. It will take a while for bigger fish to move back into the lagoon from the main lake.

Here are some pictures I snapped during the session. My photographer had to work today, so I had to do my best with the 10 second timer function on my cell phone. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing. Hopefully I’ll have my photographer back for the next session for some better snapshots.