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Story 2008 Birthday

Page history last edited by PBworks 15 years, 11 months ago

Birthday story... Fully scaled, a couple of biggies and a bumblebee

 

When

April 17th and following days, 2008

Where

A pond close to Boston, MA

Who

Me and myself, then Vinny and Sarah, then Vinny and Kyle, then Scott!

See also

CAG Forum link 1

CAG Forum link 2

 


April 17th

 

April 17th is my birthday, so following my wife's clever suggestion, I took the day off and decided to go fishing. My idea was to go prebait a venue where I had in mind to go fish with Sarah & Vinny the day after, then go fish one of my favorite venues.

 

When I learned that Sarah would be visiting us, Vinny asked me where to go fishing. I wasn't sure, I wanted to go something unusual, but options are limited at this time of the year. I was thinking along the lines of... this is spring time... getting warmer... try some shallow water... but where? And then I remembered a venue where some folks caught nice fish a couple of years ago, and there is a shallow bay from where we can fish. Plus it's reasonably scenic, so... why not give it a try, chum it and see what happens the day after. I drove there in the morning, and started to walk around. I must say I had doubts about my reasoning! I looked at the shallow bay, yeah, well, not sure about it. I kept walking around, quite some bank space is actually private, and I finally walked back to my starting point. And then surprise, I saw a koi close to shore, in two feet of the water, and quickly figured out it was in the middle of a good group of carp, some of them looking pretty thick. I changed my plan of the day right away, opened a can of sweet corn, threw some to the fish (which scattered a bit but quickly came back), then started to fumble in my car to assemble a rod and a terminal rig.

 

I finally cast my rig with two kernels of corn, and oh no, they scattered pretty good, I didn't change my 3oz lead for something lighter... I shaked my head in disgust at my stupidity, turned around, and... What's this noise? My reel! I had a run, right away! I started to play the fish, and it seemed pretty powerful. I dragged it on the side in an attempt to not further scare away the other carp, and finished playing the fish. I finally had a good sight of it, and... I couldn't believe it, this looked like a fully scaled, and a good one. My net wasn't set up, so I had to land this fish by hand. I wore it out a bit more, waded in the water, and yes, grabbed the fish all right. A few pics thanks to a passerby, I feverishly weighed the fish, and cool, this is a 20 pounder fully scaled mirror, 20-8lb to be exact. From a venue where I had never caught a fish before, and from where no mirror was known (as I learned later on).

 

 

I was delighted of course, and ready to catch another one! So I put back this cool fish in the water, taking a good release pic by chance, and recast. Just a few minutes later, I had another run. This time, it was a small common, nothing special except a surprisingly long tail. After that, they were gone for good. So I decided to fall back to my original plan, chum a good deal to prepare for the day after with Sarah & Vinny, and go fish somewhere else in the afternoon
 
 
Well, turned out that fishing was really slow at this second venue. But this was quite pleasant, real nice weather and I was enjoying the day. Two guys came to fish for trout nearby. I had found a way to be cornered into participating to a work-related phone conference though, so I sat in front of my rods, made the call, and warned the guys that I might have to leave the phone conference on a hurry. They didn't really believe me, and we started to discuss work stuff. After 20 minutes, guess what happened? You got it, a great shrieking sound, I screamed "got to go" and got rid of the phone! The fish didn't fight that much (water was still quite cold), but the two trout anglers just couldn't believe it when I landed a 22 pounder, and sure enough, another fully scaled! 

 

 

I finally called back my colleagues, told them the news, but it took a couple of pics the week after to convince them that I wasn't pulling their chain! I resumed fishing, but that was it for the day and a nice birthday, it was. Two fully scaled 20+, including one from a new water where mirrors are very rare, incredible.

 


April 18th

 

Well, days follow each other but are not the same... We had a nice birthday dinner with Sarah and Vinny at home the day before, and they were very pumped up by my stories and pictures, notably Vinny who told me that the very first fish he caught in his life was from this pond, but that he had never caught a carp from there before. Now that's quite a coincidence! So we were full of confidence when we started to fish, but alas no fish was interested by our bait. Vinny tried hard to tempt a few cruising fish to eat bread, but to no avail. So after a few hours of nothingness, we finally gave up for the day, a bit bummed.

 

 


Vinny and his guest Kyle

 

Vinny was still really motivated to catch a carp from this venue, so when his friend Kyle came to visit from New York a couple of days later, this is where they went. Now that was a truly inspired idea. Because Kyle caught his very first carp from MA, and this was... a 27-11lb beauty! Which was a new Personal Best for him as well. In his own words, he was "a little shocked"... They came back later in the day, and this was Vinny's turn to catch his first carp from this venue, and a nice 23 pounder it was. Kyle closed the day with an amazing 29-2 pounder, his second PB of the day!

 

 


Scott and Bumblebee

 

Scott fished this venue a few years back quite a few times, but had never caught a 20+ from it. Well, fish clearly grew up in the meantime as we demonstrated in the past few days, so he was anxious to give it a try himself. Now, remember this koi I saw when I was scouting the venue? Seemed like a black & white fish to me, with big stripes. Well, the bread master did the rest, and the koi was landed and turned out to be yellow & black. A few nicknames were proposed, but Bumblebee seemed like the best! An amazing fish again. Oh, and Scott also caught his first 20+ from this water, a healthy 24 pounder.

 

 

Quite an extraordinary chain of events, isn't it? And all of that as a consequence of my birthday... Very neat.

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