Stories

Have I mentioned the water was high? With my favorite areas neck deep I was scraping the bottom of the proverbial fish in a barrel deal to put WFF and Wendy on some fish. Late in day one we headed to a tiny strip of backwater that I knew held some carp. Typically I fish big, open water with flats and gravel bars...nice big landscapes. This slough was more like an oversize drainage ditch...narrow and deep with just a 50 by 50 area where the carp are catchable. I have found that sunning carp are nearly impossible if they are in deep water, but if you can find those same sunning fish in waist deep or shallower, you can talk them into eating. The slough was just over waist deep, and there must have been 30 carp spread out in the shallow area...sunning. Time for some fancy talking.

First up was WFF. He snuck down the bank like a seasoned pro, armed with instructions to hook the nearest fish and flat haul his ass out of the scrum so we could take more fish from the group. No pictures of this, but I got a sweet video of WFF basically spoon-feeding a nice 12 lber from a rod length away. When the fish took he clamped onto that sob like a dog with a bone and didn't give the fish an inch. Three minutes later and the fish was in Wendy's net.

Quick disclaimer...if I read one more online forum post about a 45 minute fight with a common carp I am going to puke. If you are really taking that long to fight a fish you are doing the fish no justice. I know carp can kick major ass, but don't wear them out for the better part of an hour! If you fought a carp for 45 minutes one of two things is true...you have no concept of time or that fish will be dead 5 minutes after it swims away. End of rant.

Wendy slipped into the area next and I joined him, leaving WFF on the high ground to take some sweet photos. As established in many years worth of past posts...Wendy is a pro and he stuck a nice fish in short order, straining to keep said fish from blowing up the area.





























I slipped up to Wendy and netted the fish, right around our 12 lb avg for the trip. Wendy offered up the area to me but I pushed him forward a few feet, figuring we could get one more fish before they were all spooked. As he lined up a cast on a nice one WFF shouted from above..."big fish to the left!" wendy and I swiveled a bit and saw a massive head sliding towards us, about twenty feet away. I grabbed the camera and flipped on the video mode as Wendy made the cast. By the time I had the camera up the big fish had eaten, the hook had been set and WFF was screaming like a little girl. At this point all hell broke loose. Wendy was leaping around fighting a truly huge carp and somehow dancing waist deep water like JJ does when he sees the ice cream truck. I am hollering like we just won the state basketball title and WFF is nearly in spasms on the bank at the size of this carp. Suddenly Wendy turns towards the camera and shouts "This is the biggest fucking carp you have ever seen!" One more four year old dance step from Wendy, rod bent double and POW. The fish breaks him off. He drops his hands parallel to the water in a WTF gesture, and looks blankly over his shoulder at me. I turn off the camera and we all stare at the water as if we could somehow get that 10 seconds back if we looked deep enough. It was a huge fish.