FishinCary, Greatest Day of Fishing Ever! Catfish and Carp
Oh man, today was my day!
I recieved a small tip from a young man walking his dogs around a lake i fish. He said that when he used to live here before college he fished a certain pond.
So today i headed there after school. I got there and set up baiting the water with 2 tubs of OLD chicken livers. I find that they dont stay on the hook if they have been in the fridge for a few months so they are no good for much other than chum at that point. Apparently it brought in the turtles and i spent the first 2 hours unhooking them. They are not the smartest of creatures, not by far, there was one with a certain knick in its shell that i caught twice. I am 100% sure it is the same one!
Anyways after a long while i finally saw some grass carp swim by and hooked up with one on a floating peice of bread. It was a rather small one probably only 5-7 pounds and i just released him. Caught a few more in the 2 foot range.
Then around 5 pm i was still throwing bread out waiting for some more carp a huge head came up and sucked down a peice. I saw its tail end as it went down and knew it was a big cat. I threw out a piece of bread freelined on a small hook (no time to swap to larger hooks) and "tap tap tap" then the line took off no need to set the hook and the cat kept taking line.
I guess the chicken livers must have brought him in. It was a miracle that that tiny wire hook meant for panfish held against this monster, heavy line, but i was sure the hook was going to straighten out.
Then a few casts later i got this second monster! again on a breadball on the bottom, this time far out in the center of the lake freelined again on my new abu 4600c3, the drag is amazing, it doesnt dish out that much drag either but its almost enough for these fish. But that thing casts a MILE!
Very next cast a third monster takes the bread!
Then a while later i got this guy again on bread, ive tried it all from the fancy homade stink bait recipes to garlic salted liver or chicken breast, somehow ive gotten the biggest fish on bread!
This fish above ^ had the biggest stomach of any cat ive ever seen! It deffinately eats good in that lake.
Nother fish after that...
Then now it was around 7 pm.
The bite slowed down... for about 10 minutes, then zhhhhhh line started peeling out of my bass baitcaster and when i picked it up the fish deffinately did not like the hook in its mouth so it kept going and going. This baitcaster was deffinately meant for bass.... not some giant channel cat so even though i had 65 pound braid on it the drag just was not enough and i had to thumb it constantly to keep it from ripping out to the middle of the pond, none the less it kept pulling and i didnt even get a glimpse at it until like 5 minutes into the fight, eventually got it to shore.
Now i believe the state record channel cat is 18 pounds 5 ounces, out of the neuse by a man from new bern. Im not sure how big this cat is but i may have to get a scale, and if the first time ive ever been there i caught 5 or 6 cats pushin deffinately over 10 pounds... i am kind of curious as to if there is possibly a fish that could be over 18 pounds in there... just thinking
Got one more little one after that:
Then it was getting late and my hands were cut up bad from thumbing the spool and picking up the cats, i learned the hard way not to try to put your hand in their mouth. I dont know how those guys who "noodle" do it, im pretty sure they must have some tough hands! Not to be a big baby, but my hands are pretty sore!
Heres a picture of the reels:
Anyways just when i was done fishing, i was throwing the remainder of the bread in for the turtles, and all of a sudden a huge carp comes up and takes down a whole slice of bread, i quickly floated a piece out near where he was and within 10 seconds that big head came up again and out went the line. After a long fight i finally got him to shore, those grass carp fight amazingly hard!
Thanks for reading, i am beat. If i was older i would have went and bought a lottery ticket today because luck was deffinately on my side. Oh and all fish were released unharmed to fight another day.
til next time, tight lines
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Originally Posted by FishinCary
