The Gauntlet has been thrown

[barnyard]

Jim C. aka Roughfishman, has accepted our invitation to bring his Euro equipment to our big fish spot. We will be able to compare the pros and cons of Euro carping vs. Americanized carping.

To be far to Jim, we have quit fishing the spot, but are feeding the fish twice a day in preparation of the big day. We will also share our bait, so that the only difference will be the equipment. We are hoping that big fish will be the rule of the day.

It will also be the first time that we have baited a spot for more than one day before hitting it.

In the meantime, we are hitting one of our 'numbers' spots. In 2 hours, we caught 5 'cookie cutters.'(cookie cutters are what we call typical sized fish for a given spot. Our big fish spot has 12-15 pound cookie cutters and our numbers spots have 7-10 pound cutters.) Had lots of line bumps and saw lots of fish jumping.

We are confident that tomorrow we will have our first 20 fish day of the season!

Hopefully the weather will cooperate on Saturday.

Tom B

[DTro]

anxiously awaiting results...........

[barnyard]

Jim C and Joseph made the trek to St Cloud. Throughtout the day we had anywhere from 4 to 6 people fishing. We landed 32 carp (31 if you go by ACS rules.) The largest was just shy of 21 pounds and there were a couple more in the 19 pound range. Lots of teeners that were in real good condition.

Euro techniques landed half the fish that picked up. Circle hooks did a bit better, though there were 2 good runs that did not result in caught fish.

We could see where some of the Euro techniques could improve our effort, but not significantly.

There is a difference in the philosphy that Jim and Joseph have compared to Tom and I.

They approach a spot and fish it for the biggest fish in the area. Once they determined there strategy, they stuck with it. Had they had more time, they would have prebaited with their style of bait, which probably would have lead to more fish being caught on boilies.

We rarely fish boilies, so the fish at that spot did not hit them.

Our strategy has always been to find a bait (field corn) with the right flavor that would call fish in and, hopefully, bite our hookbaits. Our style almost always produces good numbers, but rarely really big fish.

We also have always tried to do our fishing on the cheap. The less effort and cost the better. Most of our experiments consist of cooking field corn with different flavors to see what will outproduce what and what draws them in fastest.

We also rarely prebait by more than a few hours. Most of the time, we get to a spot, spod out a bunch of corn and fish. We determine a baits effectiveness by how much time it takes for the first fish to hit and the numbers that we end the day with. I don't see that changing at all.

All in all it was a great time and I had a very good time. I hope that we can fish with them again.

Tom B

[barnyard]

Forgot to add.... several of Tom and I's perceptions of carp fishing were shattered yesterday.

Our experence has been that carp feed when the sun is out. We would not have fished yesterday had it not been for the fact that Jim and Joseph were coming up. It did take more than an hour for the first fish to hit, but we did catch alot of fish, even though it was mostly cloudy all day long.

Later in the day, it started raining. We NEVER fished in the rain. Ended up catching 3 more fish, including one on a boilie.

We also saw the incredible effectiveness of a new corn flavor that we have been goofing with.

Tom E had the experimental corn and left for a bit. He came back a couple of hours later. We caught a few fish, but he caught another within 5 minutes of returning and his rod had the most action all day long.

We had been comparing his bait to our old standby for a week and I think that yesterday's action showed how effective it is.

Wonder is we can find it in pineapple flavor???

Tom B

[Guest]

look here for more info and pic's-

http://www.carpanglersgroup.com/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=31&t=6438&s=d7c12498c5fe630ecb0945e2885436b2