Independence Day Carp Fishing

I am always torn about fishing on July Fourth. The parks are usually very crowded and people who fish only occasionally usually decide to sit up right next to me on the bank, even though there may be plenty of space a little further down. But this year I couldn't resist the chance to go fishing and my wife tagged along to help with netting and photos.

Here are a few pictures from the day's activities.



The small mouth buffalo show a redness this time of year  for some reason.
I don't know if it is due to spawning activity or something else. But it seems
to show up in warm weather. This redness is not present in the cool weather months.



A second small mouth buffalo I caught

I'm not sure why I wasn't smiling. Catching this fish made me pretty happy.

What's up with the smiles? I need to work on my fishing facial expressions I think.

And here's the same fish after running the picture through a few minutes of lighting adjustments in a free photo filter software.

The picture is still backlit and not great, but the filter helps a lot. I used Repix for this one.

My rig and bait that produced very well