AnnaWerner

Pumpkinseed are TOUGH fighters on light tackle, as are all "panfish"/sunfish. They are also delicious. The weirdest things I ever hooked were a turtle and a Round Gobie. The Gobie ended up as Gull food.

I am not a Basketball fanatic, but I was disappointed as heck anyway that MSU lost. MSU is my school, after all. Everybody is depressed on campus today; we were all looking forward to a bit of a celebration today.

For me, it's two things, in order: 1. weird people (I carry a large knife on my belt whenever I'm night fishing.) 2. slipping on a slippery spot that I can't see in the dark and blowing out my knee again (This is actually a perpetual source of paranoia whenever I go fishing, day or night. I've done it before, and the pain is beyond belief.)

Are you allowed to laminate your licenses? In Michigan, we're allowed to laminate our fishing licenses as long as they're properly signed first. Ours are also rather flimsy if not laminated, but lamination makes them the same size, shape, and stiffness as a credit card, not to mention that falling into the river won't hurt a laminated license a bit.

Didn't know where to put this story, but Carp are somewhat involved, so here it is: I tried a spot on Monday that I had not fished in I-don't-know-how-long, and with good reason; it has always been extremely steep and overgrown and dangerous to get to. It can easily take an hour to move just 50 feet along this stretch of bank because one has to navigate gravel slides, crawl under bushes (or whack at them with a machete), avoid slippery spots where you could fall in the river, climb over deadfalls, scramble from one "safe" spot of ground to another, and avoid breaking bones, twisting knees, or falling in the river, in many places at about a 70-degree angle. I twisted an ankle once down there, and boy, was it a chore climbing up again on THAT! Getting around down there with a rod and backpack is EXTREMELY difficult, so you can see why I hardly ever go there anymore. Despite the danger, though, it's a beautiful place. It has become SO dangerous that bums and kids don't go down and trash the place, and garbage from topside can't get through the undergrowth to roll down to the water. There are loads of critters down there to see: squirrels, Muskrats, 'coons, Mink, turtles, Woodchucks, myriad bird species, and, of course, fish. It's shady and quiet; even though you can still hear people on on the River Trail up above and cars on the street just upstream and see the backyards on the other side of the river, you still feel like you're in a howling wilderness. So, having given the description of the spot, I should talk about what I caught! I had taken only a light-action spinning rig, a quill float, redworms, and corn. At the first spot I tried, I got no hits for a few minutes, then the little 'gills hiding under the submerged concrete slabs started grabbing at the worm. Finally, I got a gopod hit, set the hook, and thought I had a bass on, except that it didn't fight like a bass, but came in side-on like a Bluegill. It turned out to be THE BIGGEST BLUEGILL I HAD EVER CAUGHT!!! He was coloured as if he were still on the bed, as long as my hand with the tail fin extending down past my wrist, and very wide and muscular. I didn't measure anything, as usual, but there is no doubt it was my PB Bluegill. I was fumbling with my camera bag for a photo, and the fish wriggled off of the barbless hook, bounced down the concrete slab, and hit the water with a splash, leaving me cursing with the camera half out of the bag. I'm still in shock. I COULD HAVE caught a Carp there as well, for I saw two cruising just a couple of feet from shore. I flipped my redworm out just up-current from them, intending for it to drift in front of their faces, but the worm had no sooner hit the water than a stupid dink Bluegill zipped out from under a log and inhaled the worm. The commontion, of course, tipped off the Carp to my attempts at catching them (though they probably already had seen me crawling along the culvert toward them), but they didn't swirl away with a splash or anything; they simply began veering out into the fast current and sank slowly out of sight before I could unhook the pesky Bluegill. I never saw another Carp that day.

I had a customer who wanted 50 lb braid for Carp. I think he was off his rocker. I'd use no heavier than 20, normally closer to 15, especially for fish in the 25 lb range.

Like any other bait, peas might be ignored totally in one area, but snarfed up in another. GIve it a go, I'd say. I'm planning on trying golden raisins, and I recently had a bit of luck on canned garbonzo beans, so who knows?

I agree, though some generalizations about bait types might be made. This time of year, the Carp are either preparing to spawn or recovering after spawning, and so are eating an awful lot. They'll probably key in particularly to protien, so live bait (i.e. worms, maggots, casters) and meat (luncheon meat) might be good options. Scopex Pescaviva works well for me, and I believe it's because Scopex is a meat protein. Nightcrawlers (LARGE earthworms) also perform well for me here, though every other species gobbles them up as well.

Hunting Dinosaurs, by Louie Psihoyos and John Knoebber. (I like dinosaurs as much as fishing!) The book has been a favourite of mine since I was a kid: It's about the new directions (as of the nineties) taken in the study of dinosaurs, and the people playing roles in it (paleontologists, amateur fossil collectors, artists, writers, Hollywood, and old-time bone-hunters/scientists). It's full of exciting new theories (Actually, being from the nineties, many are considered outdated now.), humour, historical trivia, and fun stories of paleontologists and their field-and-lab adventures. If you like science, you should check it out.

Here are some of my favourites: "[Fishing] Licenses [prices] gone up yet?" (There's a lot of scuttlebutt about Michigan licenses prices "doubling" and "tripling.") Election Poll, Obama, Hillary and McCain "War on Terrorism" weight-loss "Did you notice that gas has gone up ___ cents since yesterday?" (I think, "How about taking the bus, genius?") And that's just a few . . .

It's to be expected, I think; people are going to check out the topics they're already interested in. I am a fish-off-the-bank freshwater angler, so I'm naturally attracted to the Course Fishing and Session Carp topics. People who live closer to the ocean, do more traveling, or have access to boats may look more at the Sea Fishing or Kayak topics. There's a TON of information on AnglersNet, so our visitors can be expected to be a bit split-up.

How in the world does he "peck" with that size of a "pecker"? Seriously, that is weird, and I doubt it was caused by pollutants. Probably just a genetic screw-up that could happen under any circumstances. His girlfriend must be impressed!

So Kooky Kevin's NOT the only one who uses gold line?

Carp can be unpredicatable. A good number of people here have caught them through the ice in the middle of the winter, if that tells you anything . . .

Saturday was a GORGEOUS day, and I decided I had had ENOUGH of sitting aroung waiting for the "perfect" day to go fishing. (Saturday is never perfect, as it's usually so busy at the shop.) So, I waited until our employee arrived at noon, threw together some stuff (forgetting my log book and unhooking mat ), and ran for it! Settled on a spot where there was barely enough room for two rods and myself if I parked all my other gear a bit up the bank. The spot was pretty close to a spot I had tried and never had any luck at, but I figured it still couldn't hurt to try it. I had one rod already rigged up for doughbait and another with a hair-rig, and I was too lazy to cut off the doughbait rig, so I slopped some molasses doughbait on the one line and both garbonzo beans and Pescaviva Scopex corn (the last I had!) on the other. Threw out a few handfuls of mixed garbonzos and corn (trout-pellet-flavoured, as I'd put the last kernels of Scopex on the hair), sat, and waited. At least 3 hours. Scared the crap out of a muskrat when I cast, which kept me giggling for a while. Dozed in the sun. Jumped about a mile when something messed with the doughbait but didn't really pick up. Finally had to stand up and stretch my legs, and as I was wandering around, the rod with the corn and garbonzos went off. Fish was just a little guy (about 5 lbs), but it attracted a crowd, all of whom thought it was the biggest fish they had ever seen. AND it was my FIRST CARP OF THE YEAR!!! SO, I had some guy take a picture for me, even though the fish was small. Poor thing; I could NOT get the hook out, even though it was just hooked in the lip (totally embedded), so I had to cut the hooklength, then the fish flopped so much he got his dorsal fin spine tied up in the net mesh, and the effort of getting it out actually busted the spine. So, he learned a PAINFUL lesson that day. Karma got me, I guess, on Sunday, when we went up to the Rifle River for some sucker-fishing. Maybe because I had sorely injured a Carp the day before, I had the WORST luck: leaving behind schedule, a raging headache, tangles, snags, and overall bad mood. But finally I caught one sucker, so I was tied with Dad. After that, all else was forgotten because I HAD TO BEAT DAD! I did, too, 5 to 1 (maybe because I hadn't killed the Carp, just beat it up a bit ) It was also great experience in fishing a fast-moving river around lots of other people, something I had never done before. It was also a hoot finding white goo on my pant leg after handling a sperm-laden male sucker . . . Pictures to come, but I have to get a disk developed with my 35mm film, being as I am still living in the Stone Age.

I doubt it matters. A lot of people swear that, if the fish sees the line, they won't hit. The thing is, though, that ANY line, no matter what the colour, is going to block light and therefore show up as a thin black line, and most colours don't show as anything but black at depth anyway. Ice fishermen here often use bright yellow line, right down to the lure, and the fish don't seem to care. Multiple tournaments have been won with that yellow stuff. Somebody I know even uses bright yellow Poer-Pro for Carp-fishing (which we all tease him for!), but it seems to work for him.

If your line-roller is able to pick up the line and wrap it around the spool, then it's not put on backwards. It sounds more to me like you just had a bad line, or a line that is better-suited to baitcaster (level-wind) reels than to spinning/baitrunner reels. I don't know what brands are available to you, but, if you can get them, I would recommend a couple of old, unadvertised American brands: Mason (T-Line) and McCoy (Mean Green). These are limp, being silicon-impregnated, so they have very little memory and cast beautifully. Another thing that can cause tangle-ups is too much line on the spool. I always try ("try" being the key word ) to put just under the recommended amount of line on the spool, as the recommended amount usually loads the spool right to the edge - too full.

If barbed hooks are allowed, I'd consider using them. They are a bit tougher to get out of the fishe's mouth, BUT they aren't as likely to move about during the fight and make the wound larger or pop out and back in again and create another wound. A barbed hook that hooks properly in the lip shouldn't hurt the fish any more than a barbless hook. I've used barbless myself, but they were a strange type, with a little "bump" where the barb would normally be to help keep the hook in place, but make it easier to remove as well. Unfortunately, I don't think that these are made anymore.

The hardest-fighting fish of any species I have ever caught was a 13-lb Carp, not my heaviest (though that one out up an impressive fight as well). The 13-pounder "bulldogged" for a goot bit, then, to take a break, simply settled on the bottom (probably behind a sunken tree), and just sat there. I played heck getting it to move again, and even then I cold barely get its head up until it was almost on the bank. My father caught a slightly smaller Carp that fought so hard it nearly hauled him in with it and was almost dead from exhaustion when we released it. I spent a good 15 minutes reviving it before it could even stay upright in the water. That said, some of the Bluegill and Smallmouth Bass I have caught might have been just as impressive had they been of the same size as those Carp.

I've kept maggots all summer in a fridge tuned to temps just warmer than freezing, but they were not dyed ones. The coloured maggots don't seem to last nearly as long, no matter what I do.

Hmmmm, weird . . . Were they muscular at all (when they stretched out and became more "wormlike")? Were they segmented? You've really gotten up my curiosity now . . .

My folks would beg to differ. There's a reason why my mother tried to get me to take violin lessons: so I wouldn't join the high school marching band!

I bought a fish guide in Germany a couple of years ago, and I was flipping through it recently, and one of the Carp in a picture looked amazingly slim, though not "skinny." It was just strange-shaped. I think the species comes in quite a variety of forms, part of why it's so adaptable.

I'm not really sure that my mental picture is correct, but it sounds a bit like our leeches when they roll into balls or simply pull themselves to a short length when disturbed. Some species I have seen are short, round, and hard as rocks when clinging to rocks (like LIMPETS, I might add!), but stretch out a little bit when detatched. Do you remember of the creatures swam with an undulating motion when they let go of the rocks, or did they simply drift to the bottom? I'm pretty sure you saw some type of leech, but what species I couldn't say. (There are a couple thousand, I think.) We sell leeches, as many species are very good bait.

I'll tell a little story that is pertinent to this subject: I went out fishing with my father last autumn, with my baitrunners and hair rigs and chum and alrms, etc., etc. Dad had some of the same stuff, but he let it all sit on the picnic table, and just took one of our old 6-foot rods with a Mitchell 300 on it, tied a sz. 6 Aberdeen to the line (no weight, floats, tubing, or leader), put a big worm on the hook, and flipped it a few feet from the bank. Before we knew it, he had on a fine 12 lb Carp that nearly hauled him into the river! That wasn't his only catch that day on the same line and bait; he also landed Bluegill, Bass, and one or two more Carp that day! Moral of the story: Complicated gear is OK for a while, but "going back to basics" is much easier, gives you a chance to relax and really have fun, and can catch just as well!