Today I spent my last day of Friday 2021 vacation time carp fishing on the Detroit River. From here on it's Saturday or nothing fishing-wise (fingers crossed its not raining).
The potential for catching big carp in the river requires carp fishing equipment that's up for the job. I used my 12' rods, reels with 25 pounds of drag pressure, carp fishing hooks, and 50 pound braided fishing line.
Despite being prepared to catch big river fish right out of the gate, I had a couple of mix-up's to early in the morning where I didn't perform well resulting hook-pulls. (For anyone new to catching carp, a hook-pull is just like it sounds - pulling the hook from the fish's mouth.) I was trying to steer the carp in snaggy shallow water, which wasn't the best choice. From that rough starting point, we changed fishing strategy and began walking the fish downstream a little ways to deeper water. It worked. We had no more hook pulls.
My third fish wasn't a carp, but rather a good-eating-sized catfish we didn't photograph. The remaining fish from today are in the photos below.
The first carp we landed was a hard fighting fish with a deformation that is stunting his growth quite a bit. The fish looks much bigger than it weighed on my scales (22#'s), but it's convinced me to replace my 7 year old Rapala scale from K-Mart.
The second fish weighed 21#'s. The third fish isn't looking like a carp (to me). I think it's a hybrid goldfish variety. The head is more buffalo than carp to my eye, but goldfish hybrids are becoming pretty common locally.
Given the free time, and good weather, I am sure there are much bigger carp to be caught from the river. Low to mid-30#'s would not surprise me at all, but the vastness of the river makes it a daunting task if shore fishing.
The weather is beautiful this week. I hope you get a chance to get out and enjoy it.
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