Late Summer Carp Fishing - Lake Erie

After a 3 week hiatus due to some traveling and family duties (including my nieces' wedding), I was able to get out for some carp fishing today.

The first several fish were catfish. For reason the catfish were h-u-n-g-r-y today. It took the carp a little while to warm up to my bait offerings, but I was able to land a few carp later in the day. Two of the carp fell for my homemade almond/vanilla/Southern Comfort flavored deer corn.

I caught 7 catfish, 4 carp and 1 small mouth buffalo. In case you are wondering that is more catfish than I have ever caught in one session before. Although it's not what I was hoping for, since I was targeting carp, it was kind of cool to set a new personal best for catfish.

The catfish were hitting everything I threw at them early on. Butternut flavored ground bait, wild cherry berry, bumble berry, sweet plum, anise, and peach hook baits. I switched out butternut ground bait for pineapple and finally broke the string of catfish. Then I landed a couple on my homemade almond/vanilla/Southern Comfort flavored deer corn as hook bait.

The carp did not look too healthy for some reason. Many of them were scared up more than usual with lots of redness that is not typical for this location near Lake Erie.

Here are a few pictures from today's session:

 

A little worn down looking, which is rare at this venue

Low teens carp

I have learned that a small amount of pressure on the fish when preparing for a picture
 helps them relax and they stop flopping around / risk hurting themselves

Mid teens small mouth buffalo

Ranger net

Low teens common