The Fishing Thread

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Hoss

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anyone fish for carp? live basically on the river, so thinking about daily chumming with some boiled feed corn for a few days. reading about adding jello/kool-aid to it, never seen that used before.

Boiled feed corn? Do you let it go sour? I used to use sour mash and it would attract catfish and carp and baitfish. The baitfish naturally attracted everything else eventually.

When I was a kid we fished for carp but never to eat. Supposedly a chinese restaurant would buy them but we just killed them and threw them up on the bank. That was the law that if you caught one it could not go back in the water. Not even once it was dead.

The only carp fishing that interests me now would be bowfishing.
 
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Dr.Retarded

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You should check out these two channels for carp fishing info:

https://youtube.com/c/CarlandAlex

https://youtube.com/c/Catsandcarp

I think Carl and Alex have a sub channel about simply the techniques for fishing carp, and fishing in general. Luke from Cats 'n Carp covers a lot of carp fishing techniques as well. One of the things they always talk about is using a method lead with a hair rig, and then using sweet corn/ panko pack bait mixed with Jello mix. Looks like constantly chumming an area is going to improve your odds as well.

I've been interested in trying to target carp with a fly rod. There's a couple of guys at my local orvis store that go after them in specific bodies of water during the summer. At least with fly fishing, the trick is just a very specific small type fly, because carp have a very small range / zone that they can physically see. On the fly it's all about sight casting, and dropping that fly sensitively in that zone. I've never caught one yet but it's definitely something I would love to do.

I guess with traditional tackle it's all about scent and carpet bombing the area to get the fish to move in via chum. I've seen the Carl and Alex guys use a little torpedo device that they fill with corn or bookies, cast / retrieve, and dump a bunch of attractive bait for the area they want to fish.

I'm sure there are simpler methods, but the guys that really get into it seem to have it dialed in, and it's a whole different world. A lot of the same things will apparently work for catfish as well.

Best of luck if you get into it and post the pictures of your catch if you don't mind. Would love to hear of what methods work best.

Edit: here's the other sub channel that just simply talks about techniques:

https://youtube.com/c/FISHINGTUTORIALS
 
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Goatface

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was looking up the laws about carp, they are unlimited keep as long as dead, no rule about live release, but found this, next county to me

It shall be lawful for any person holding a current license to fish to shoot suckers, redhorse and carp with a rifle, during the hours of sunrise to sunset, from April 15 to May 31

thanks for all the tips, will try in a couple of weeks when the river lowers to normal
 

Cleetus-Meetbeetus

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I've fly fished the Eastern Slopes in Southern Alberta most of my adult life. I started in Waterton Lakes Park near the Montana border and worked my way north along the Forest Trunk Road to Jasper. I've caught everything from trout to pike, to white fish, to grayling on flies, streamers, and nymphs. My grandpa used to take me fishing on the Waterton River when I was just a grub, using just a split shot and maggot on a snelled hook. He also had this ancient 14 foot split cane fly rod with a wind up spring retracting reel. I've tried to figure out the make going just from memory, but it's beyond my abilities. But I've seen what Orvis split canes are worth, and I'm pretty confident that today it would be worth a small fortune.


west castle.jpg


The West Castle River near Beaver Mines Lake. It recently became a nature preserve so everything is catch and release. Since then it started to produce some decent cutthroat; one of few natural cutthroat stocks left.

cutt.jpg



Bathing.jpg


Bathing Lake near Pectin. It's a put and take pond you can cast across; but springs in the middle mean it doesn't winter kill so it produces some good-sized rainbows. I caught this one just off the beaver dam in the middle, but I've caught up to 6 pound trout here.

float.jpg
 
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Dr.Retarded

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I've fly fished the Eastern Slopes in Southern Alberta most of my adult life. I started in Waterton Lakes Park near the Montana border and worked my way north along the Forest Trunk Road to Jasper. I've caught everything from trout to pike, to white fish, to grayling on flies, streamers, and nymphs. My grandpa used to take me fishing on the Waterton River when I was just a grub, using just a split shot and maggot on a snelled hook. He also had this ancient 14 foot split cane fly rod with a wind up spring retracting reel. I've tried to figure out the make going just from memory, but it's beyond my abilities. But I've seen what Orvis split canes are worth, and I'm pretty confident that today it would be worth a small fortune.


View attachment 350621

The West Castle River near Beaver Mines Lake. It recently became a nature preserve so everything is catch and release. Since then it started to produce some decent cutthroat; one of few natural cutthroat stocks left.

View attachment 350625


View attachment 350623

Bathing Lake near Pectin. It's a put and take pond you can cast across; but springs in the middle mean it doesn't winter kill so it produces some good-sized rainbows. I caught this one just off the beaver dam in the middle, but I've caught up to 6 pound trout here.

View attachment 350627
Man, that's awesome. I would have loved growing up with that type of country available. Grew up in the South, but it has its own charm and opportunities.

Do you have any pics of your grandfathers rod? Sounds like a big spey rod. Just curious what it looks like, and I'd imagine it's a hefty beast.
 
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OhSeven

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If you're going after carp in the US, don't fall into the trap of all the specialized carp gear out of the UK. Brits look at carp the way a lot of the US looks at largemouth bass, a lot of the gear is to catch fishermen, not fish.

Dr.Retarded Dr.Retarded is ace with the Catfish and Carp recommendation. I use a modified version of his pack bait. Oatmeal, panko, corn, and strawberry jello. I find the oatmeal makes the mix not dissolve as quickly which is nice when using multiple rods.

Hair rigs are nice, but I do recommend artificial corn if you use one just because it's a bit of a pain in the ass to bait up with real bait. Method leads are overpriced, get regular egg sinkers for lakes or no roll sinkers for rivers and pick up some 50lbs rated drywall anchors and cut the tips off them. No. 7 barrel swivel pulls right up inside it nice and secure.

Few carp from last year.
20200726_081456.jpg

20200830_073455.jpg


Catfish love it too.
20200802_072503.jpg
 
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lurkingdirk

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Guy is really doing a service taking out the Lion Fish. Team fishing with firearms seems to have a lot of possible negative outcomes...
 

BrutulTM

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It's probably safer than most kinds of hunting. Bullets don't travel very far at all under water.
 

Hoss

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was looking up the laws about carp, they are unlimited keep as long as dead, no rule about live release, but found this, next county to me



thanks for all the tips, will try in a couple of weeks when the river lowers to normal

Should look harder. With that rule it sounds like they want them dead.

I forgot to post the recipe for the bait we used when I was a kid. Raisin Bran, Vanilla Extract, Big Red. I can't give exact measurements, but all the big red and mix it up with the raisin bran till it's a dough. You need enough vanilla extract so you can smell it. Then put it on a treble hook. You can use bran flakes too, but the raisins gave us something to hook into which we felt made them bite harder instead of nibbling it off. The raisins also make you need a little more big red as they'll be the place the dough falls apart.

It could catch catfish too.
 

Cleetus-Meetbeetus

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Man, that's awesome. I would have loved growing up with that type of country available. Grew up in the South, but it has its own charm and opportunities.

Do you have any pics of your grandfathers rod? Sounds like a big spey rod. Just curious what it looks like, and I'd imagine it's a hefty beast.
Unfortunately Grandpa died in the mid 80s and everything is long gone. I know in Europe the long split cane rods were mostly used for salmon, often without a reel -- just line tied to the tip -- but this one had eyes and a reel seat, and broke into four pieces. I only remember seeing it a few times when I was quite young. He used to carve and paint his own rapalas for pike, and there was the skull of a 50 pounder he caught mounted over the door to his garage. He also held the record for the largest lake trout caught in Waterton Lake -- 49.5 pounds. It hung in the visitor's center until it burnt down a couple years ago in a forest fire.

He had an uncanny knack for reading water. He would give me the rod and point to a spot in the river and say, "Put it right there and let it drift down past that rock. If you see the line twitch give it a yank." I'd hook something almost every time.

Grandpa was a fine country gentleman in the old tradition. He lived his entire life in a two story log cabin he built with his father in the early 1900s. He hunted and fished and grew a giant garden, which fed 10 children. For most of his life he ran a trap line on Lee Creek between Beazer and the Montana border during the winter and logged the Castle area to make mine props for Leitch Colliery during the summer. After he died my uncle took over the trap line and ran it up to about 10 years ago when he died. He was teaching a local teenager how to do it and now he traps the line; it's shame none of my cousins were interested in doing it. My mom would tell stories about summer camp and dragging timber down Carbondale Ridge to the saw mill with a team of horses. She told of a different era: remembered round trips from Hillspring to Lethbridge when she was a young girl taking almost two weeks by wagon (80 miles one way); how they got electricity in the 40s when the village installed a generator -- which ran two hours a day (they could take those giant old cylinder batteries to the generator shack and leave them to get recharged); how they dug a pit and lined it with straw so they could cut ice blocks in the winter and have ice for the ice box all summer.

But I'm rambling. I wish I knew more about grandpa's fly rod; just finding this thread triggered memories about simpler times. I've converted a Dodge Caravan into a camper unit with a house battery and laptop station, and I plan on traveling around to different fishing spots when it gets safe to travel again. If and when I'll post some pix.
 
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TheBeagle

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Got inspired by all the carp pics. Lake Tawakoni, middle of the spawn. They put up such a good fight, lots of fun.
IMG_20210501_092510768.jpg
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TheNozz

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This is kinda off topic, but I'm trying to confirm something:

That new Resident Evil game has a character that looks like he's wearing an old school portable fish scale from his neck

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Can anyone confirm? I think he's wearing it with the weight indicator facing his body
 
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Hosix

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5lbs smallmouth caught fishing under some docks with a leech. Light gear so my son had a great battle.
 
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