From Bluegill and Bass, to Common Carp

When I was a young boy we had a farm pond on my family's property and I spent many afternoons there catching bluegill, bass and occasionally a catfish.

Fishing is inexpensive entertainment for people who had very little money to spent on traditional entertainment like movies, restaurants and traveling for family vacations. People now think nothing of $12 (per person) for stadium seats at the movie theatre, $25 for dinner (per person), $10 for a 6-pack of locally brewed craft beer, but for someone growing up in a farm family in the mid-1970's spending money on those things was unheard of...so we fished. We fished a lot.

The only direct cost to the 6 year old me involved the time spent getting a shovel from the shed, finding an old coffee can and asking my grandpa to join me in our favorite worm-digging bed behind the chicken house where the rain ran off the roof and the red wigglers were always plentiful. (A single hook would last all summer long.)

As a kid who counted everything from the number of fence posts in a particular field as we drove by, the number of tractors I saw between our house and grandma's on the way to Sunday dinner, to the number of airplanes I saw on a Saturday afternoon and yes the total number of worms dug with grandpa on Sunday after church; I was serious about worm hunting. Our record worm find was 105 in about 15 minutes. My grandpa made worm digging much easier. There is something to be said for his bigger boots, bigger biceps and stronger back compared to my smaller size and strength that made the search so much better.

I didn't worry so much about the size of the fish we caught, but of course I always wanted to catch the biggest possible. We ate the fish we caught. Mom had a rule, "You catch it, you clean it." The bigger fish were much easier for me to clean. By big, I'm talking adult palm-sized bluegill and 2 pound catfish. Big from a farm pond, but not big by a river size at all.

My bus driver liked to talk about fishing. Catherine, and her husband, Clyde, spent most Sunday afternoons creek fishing in various local spots. She talked about perch, catfish and carp. Hearing her stories were the first time I knew there was fish called carp.

She caught carp with hominy, corn, grubs and even worms. And from the sounds of it, carp were pretty big fish. I remember asking my mom and dad once if we could try creek fishing for carp, but they were not supportive. To them, the farm pond was fine.

It was almost 40 years later before I actually saw my first carp. I was fishing alone when another local fisherman had a fish on and asked if I wanted to reel it in.

I ended up landing a 16 pound mirror carp. The biggest fish I'd every caught by at least 13 pounds!

I took the information I learned that day and headed back out on my own 2 days later. Within a few minutes of arriving to the spot and casting out, I had another carp on the line. That fish weighed in at about 14 pounds.

My first carp

 And from that day forward I have been a carp fishing fool! I have always had a love for fishing, but catching carp is much more exciting.

Carp are pretty smart. They don't fall for plastic lures, or for worms on a hook and bobber float set-up very often. They are leery fish and seem to spook easily so the tactics required offer a challenge that goes farther than the "flip and rip" style of fishing used to catch bass.

Landing a carp on rod and reel takes some finesse. A double digit pound fish doesn't give in easily. They will go left, go right and every other way looking for an escape. Snags are popular destinations and if one is close by they will find it, resulting in a break off or "hook pull" that is a common frustration for carp fishermen.

I used to watch a lot of fishing shows on ESPN. They would be fishing for tarpon near Fort Myers, peacock bass in Costa Rica, bonefish in the Florida Keys, or redfish in the flats of Tampa Bay; and I was so, so jealous. "Some day" I'd say, "I'm going to do that." With carp, someday came a lot sooner.

I've heard some people refer to carp as "fresh water bonefish" and since fresh water is everywhere, that means I don't have to drive to Florida or fly to Costa Rica to catch exciting sport fish. You can catch carp in a large variety of states, rivers, creeks, lakes, reservoirs and even ponds.

Here are some more pictures of my "red neck bonefish" catches.

20 pounds

12 pounds



24 pounds

Carp Fishing Near Lake Erie

After the fiasco in Davison MI on Friday, I headed back out on Saturday to drown my sorrows with some carp fishing at a local spot I know very well.

Here are some pictures:

My spot on Saturday taken about 8 a.m.

The first cap I landed at about 2:30 p.m.

I really liked the scales on this fish. The picture definitely do them justice.

An perfectly scale pattern on this fish

Two heads close-up (better than one)

The first fish on Saturday was a small catfish

The second fish on Sunday was another slightly bigger catfish

I hadn't been "finned" by a catfish in more than 20 years, but this one got me when I tried to hold him for a picture. I guess I got a little too familiar with holding him for the shot with one hand and snapping the picture with the other. Needless to say, I didn't end up getting a picture after all.

I did clean the puncture with some anti-bacterial wipes I keep on hand while fishing and my hand was fine in about 90 minutes. I didn't get any swelling or numbness at all. Cleaning the wound was a great idea, because the last time I got finned I remember my entire hand swelling up and it being sore for several days.

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

Scouting a New Spot

A couple of weeks ago I headed out to a new spot with high hopes. It was a river location that feeds into Lake Erie near the park where I decided to fish.

With the warmer weather and relatively shallow waters, the moss and weeds were very heavy. Although much heavier than I like, recent reports regarding state record fish being captured in this location convinced me that it was probably worth overlooking the weeds and giving a shot.

I started the day with rods casted near, far and medium distance. After an hour of no bites, I tried 3 in close. Then I followed that with two at far distance and one medium. Although I could see fish, the bites were non-existent. As luck would have it, I was seeing spawning fish just a few feet from the bank. They apparently had other things on their mind than eating my panko, field corn and butternut offerings.

Just I had almost packed up everything to leave, I had a nice run on my right rod. It also happened to be the rod farthest out in the river just past what I believe was the edge of a big bed of weeds.

I was rewarded with a fish weighing just under 20 pounds.

Caught on three pieces of flavored corn and a piece of fake orange maize.

I cropped this one a little tighter to show the size of the mouth a little better

I was casted out at least 70 - 80 yards in the river and although there was no current to speak of it still took quite a while to land this fish. An audience developed on shore consisting of several others who always hoped to catch a carp there, but never had the luck or skill. At least now they know there are some higher quality fish to be had from that river spot.

There was zero boat traffic while I was there. It probably had something to do with the 3 feet depths, which is pretty shallow for any motorized boats of size. I do think this spot is pretty popular with kayakers at various times of the year.

Mirror Carp

A very cool scale pattern on this fish. It's only the 3rd mirror carp I have every caught, so I was pretty excited to see it in the net.

Mirror carp

More Saginaw River Pictures from 2017

I found a few more pictures on another camera from the Saginaw River trip. Between phones, cameras and Go Pro I sometimes forget to download them all.

Mirror Carp

I was lucky enough to catch this very nice mirror carp this past weekend in the Saginaw River.

Mirror carp

I am going to post some other pictures from the Carp Anglers Group Midwest Regional tournament in the following days.

The 2017 event is definitely my favorite so far.

2017 champions

Detroit River Carp Fishing

We in the Detroit area are lucky to have such great access to a water with tremendous potential for big carp: Detroit River.

I like to fish the river a few times a year at least. Truth be told...I'd fish it even more if I ever find a spot where I can catch fish consistently.

My friend Bill and I fished the river last weekend. We both caught fish, which is never a bad thing.

Here are a couple of pictures:

My spot on the Detroit River



A quality carp I caught from the Detroit River





2nd Common Carp in 2017 - Lake Erie

It's been a strange spring this year. We had upper 60 degrees in February and 6 degrees in March. It's rained a bunch in April too, which has made fishing challenging.

I got my first fish in February, but didn't get the second until today. It was worth the wait I guess because it was a quality common weighing 22 lbs. 11 oz.

My 2nd carp for 2017

The fish was caught with panko pack bait with cream corn, chicken feed, peanut suet, a few chopped up homemade boilies with habernero and jalapeno and a couple of Hungarian paprika boilies, with anise hook bait, tipped with a pink piece of Enterprise fake corn.

Catch and release carp fishing

First Carp of 2017

With a forecast of 60+ degree weather for this weekend I couldn't resist the chance to get out and try to land my first February carp and first carp of 2017.

I scouted a few spots last weekend and settled on a shallow pond connected to a small river. It was completely ice covered on Saturday of last week, but on Sunday the ice was a very thin layer.

I work nearby so I kept an eye on it during my lunch times a couple of times during the week. I did throw in about 9 baseball sized panko balls yesterday, but with the cool water temps I wasn't really sure if it would help or not.

I arrived at the spot at 10:45 with temps at 45 degrees. I had a fish about 90 minutes later caught about 15 or 20 feet from shore in no more than 3 - 4 feet of water.

With the warm weather, I had hoped for a couple more. Apparently the carp had other plans. Here is the one fish I did manage to land today.

One bite, one run, one fish.

First carp of 2017 and the first fish I have ever caught in February

 

Pictures of Carp Caught in 2015

Here are a few of my favorite fish caught in 2015.

More Photo Editing Examples

It's so tempting to edit all the fish pictures that are taken. Sometimes I convince myself that a tweak or two will make a difference, but I am not always right. The two photos below help demonstrate the downside to "over-editing" a photo.

The edited photo has been cropped slightly and the lighting was adjusted to make the fish brighter.

I like the original photo much better than the edited version. The edited photo looks "fake" and even slightly out of focus. The original photo may have been out of focus, but in the original photo it does not stand out and is not as noticeable. The editing emphasizes the lack of focus even more.

On a mobile device, the edited version appeared acceptable, but in the larger format of the laptop or desktop, the photo suffers quite a bit.

Edited photo

Original photo

This appears to be a clear case of "too much of a good thing" actually creating an undesirable result.

I think the photo stands on it's own without any adjustments to the lighting. The photo seems to stand on it's own in hindsight, but if I did anything to it at all; I should have cropped it slightly and be done with it.

Photo Filters to Improve Carp Fishing Pictures

I have been playing around with a photo filter app I found on Google Play Store. Here are a few of my first attempts with it.

Small mouth buffalo with the lighting improved significantly compared to the original cell phone picture.

The filters allowed me to remove most of the green from my John Deere sweatshirt and highlight the fish to a greater degree.

My current personal best common carp at 29 pounds and a few ounces

I will always love it when I catch multiples

Those pictures were some of the photos I experimented with when learning to use the tools available via Photo Filters in Google Play Store.

I have continued to use the application the past few days on various photos with mixed results. I have noticed that photos which look great in the smaller format provided on a mobile device (e.g. cell phone and tablet) tend to distort when viewed on my laptop.

I will keep using the Photo Filter app to "clean up" photos I post on Facebook, but I think editing those photos posted to the carp fishing blog need to be edited in a larger format on the laptop.

Another point worth noting about the free app is that from time to time when you open your cell phone to use it, Photo Filters sometimes displays unprompted advertisements that require me to "exit" them in order to use my phone. I don't really mind it at this point, because the "pro's" do seem to outweigh the "con's". I will, however; continue to be on the look out for a photo filtering app that works even better.

25 Pound Common Carp and 2 pound Wild Feral Goldfish

As we get deeper into autumn I fully realize that every fishing session I plan might be the last one for 2016. After water temperatures fall into the 40's fish activity will fall off considerably and fewer fish will be caught. The chances of catching carp in those cooler temperatures drop off too. But the weather on Friday was quite good with sunshine, few clouds and temperatures in the upper 50's to keep the water temperatures in check.

I caught 11 carp and a catfish with weights ranging from 25 pounds on the high side to 2 pounds on the low side.

Here are my two favorite pictures from the session:

25 pounds



Wild goldfish, 2 pounds

That is the first goldfish I have caught since I started targeting carp several years ago. The scale pattern and metallic coloring were very cool.

Here are some other pictures from the same session:

25 pounder in the carry sling being released



Swim away of the 25 pounder

1 set of two double runs I had (and landed successfully)

The first set of double gold I landed. The fat fish weighs in the mid teens for a reference point on the smaller one.

This was my first fish of the day and I didn't get the lighting quite right for the photo.

I used a carry sling and landing mat for all of my catches. This helps protect the fish from inadvertent injury.

Thanks for stopping by the website and looking around. I hope you enjoyed your visit and I hope you come back for a visit again in the future.