FLATHEAD
Captain
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2002
- Messages
- 3,245
I rarely paste a link to our web site but this is truly awesome. A couple of our local guys are big into carp. Louis posted this thread on the board. A great read and unbelievable numbers and total weights of fish. Also a cool news clip of these two fisherman. Thought you guys might enjoy.
American Carp Society NE Regional Tournament report
? on: May 22, 2007, 01:33:20 PM ?
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So as I mentioned in a previous post. There are tournaments for carp, and they are very serious. They are harder to come by than bass tournaments, do to the young nature of the sport here in the US so I do a lot of driving to make it to them. I've gone to Oklahoma, Chicago, Austin, and NY a few times each. I fished the World Champs in 2005, it came to the US for the first time ever. I always have a blast.
Anyway, last week was the Regionals in Baldwinsville, Upstate NY. It's nice that it was so close. Carp Tournaments are different in a lot of ways to others. First off, most are several days long. 24 hours a day. it's an endurance game. especially in this case as you will see. Most are 3-5 days. This one was 2, and for good reason as you will see. The reason most are so long, is because these are all bank fishing tournaments. There are several ways the location might be chosen for the anglers, but either way, it takes time to learn the topography of the area you end up in, and the feeding routes of the fish, and more time still to draw them in and catch. It's always catch and release, and if a fish is severely injured, it doesnt count. you save the fish in mesh bags in the water, where they stay perfectly healthy, until a weigh marshal comes, then they are weighed and released.
Many of these competitions are fished as 2 man teams. My partmner for this event and several others in the past was mattc from this forum, a long time friend of mine. We came very prepared. I pre fished 2 weeks ago and caught over 100 carp in a few days only fishing daylight hours, and taking off for lunch, sleeping late etc. The seneca river is a ridiculous fishery.
This contest was 50 hours long, from Thursday at 9 am to Saturday at 11am. Only fish over 10 lbs count.
Matt and I arrived in B-ville last Tuesday before noon. Our first stop was the Red Mill Inn, which I described in a thread about my trip there 2 weeks ago. Some of our friends from CAG were there already fishing. Check in wasn't until 3, so we started fishing too. Matt went up to the dam for some lure chucking. I ordered some new end tackle after my last trip up there. I had come up with some new theories about hook pulls etc, and i wanted to practice with this new end tackle set up. So I went straight to carp fishing. I caught a lot. Like 18-20 fish in an hour. When matt came back to get into some carp, I found out he'd landed a 20+ inch brown up at the dam, and other guys were catching loads of small mouth, some drum, and even a pike on micro jigs. (those pictures are on al st. cyr's camera and should come around some day) very cool. As soon as Matt got his rod set up, A TV crew showed up, and interviewed us. We got on the news (Thank you Sarah for posting the link) http://www.9wsyr.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?videoid=196707
Lucky me, I caught 2 20's while they were there. One of them made the clip.
The peg draw wasn't until the following day. So we had plenty of time to hang out at the local bars, talk to other anglers, townspeople, old friends, etc. It was so much fun. The next morning Matt and I both went for some micro jigging with Pat Kerwin and Al St. Cyr. We caught some nice fish. I was devastated when i foul hooked the biggest smallmouth of my life. close to or over 5 lbs for sure... but hooked square in the back. i let it go before taking a picture because i was mad. I caught some others though... and Matt hooked a nice largemouth... I'll let him tell the story. It's a really funny one, I'll never forget it:
one of many...
later I got back to carp fishing... after landing probably 150 fish at this place in th last few weeks, I finally got a mirror, and a full scaler at that! only 1 lb under my PB full scale mirror from OK last year... this one was 13 lbs:
Then we went to the draw. The townspeople were so psyched. they had singers and presenters of all kinds. we pulled peg 17. not good. it was at the center of a stretch with 17 pegs. End pegs are always better, and pegs not in a huge pack are best. Fishing didnt start until the following morning. But we were allowed to go check out our locations. I was very dissapointed. We were very close on one side to the next peg. It's hard enough competing with others on an open feild, but to have to try and get the fish away from your neighbor is even harder. Oh well. We knew we'd do our best, but I already didnt expect to win.
We went back to the bar next to the hotel and BSed with all of our buddies... and while matt turned in at a respectable hour... I stayed out with Frank Warwick way too late. It wasn't easy getting up at 5:30 to get to our swim. But we managed.
Our bank was treacherous. There was a rip-rap rock wall at the bank, but a muddy mote behind it. in some places it was a few feet deep. in some just an inch.. but the mud below the water was over your ankle. Matt forgot his boots. Mine didnt do much good anyway. We both made walkways out of sticks and rocks to get to the water and our rods.
Matt's set up:
Mine:
our camp, matts side anyway. see my 2 spare rods ready to go. and matt gobbling raisins because we barely had any time to cook.
Out of the baits we brought, we did best with Dynamite "monster tiger nut" boilies. and even better still with pva bags of grits mixed with creamed corn mixed in. We fished either single boilies or pva mesh sticks with grits for most of the event.
Matt hops across the stick bridge and is into a nice fish:
It's our biggest, a 19. we had 1 18, a couple 17's and a million 8-13's
matt had this bad *** mirror, also one of our biggest fish:
and another soon after.
a few hours haul all sacked up:
and I got a nice mirror too. almost no scales.
We did our best. we had a hard time at first. the fish were not in our area to start. I saw a school crashing during set up time in front of the next peg. this happened to be Mike and Emanuel from NC.. 2 of the best paylake fishermen around. they held the fish in front of them and it was hard to get any over to us. I eventually went to wal mart to buy some grits because that's what they were throwing for bait and I figured if they ever didnt have enough in the water for chum, the fish would come looking for more of the same. it was a tough decision, because it meant pulling my rods out for an hour. when i got back, matt had had a few fish in my absence. we were up to about 5. this was about 8-9 hours into the competition. the guys next to us had more fish than we could count already. it was hard to watch. depressing... humbling anyway.
well. once we started using pva bags of the grits... we caught 10 fish in an hour. and many, many more for the rest of the tournament. we overtook Mike and Emanuel. which to me is a meaningful accomplishment. they were so far ahead of us.
and we didn't catch a single fish over 20. most teams had several. our biggest was a 19. Mike and Emanuel had lots of 20's to 27 lbs. our average size was probably 11 lbs. we caught so many fish under 10 lbs... which means they didnt count. only fish 10+ count, it was a way to lighten the load of the weigh masters... something that was a real concern. but... it hurts. we weighed 3 fish that were 9 lbs 15 oz. imagine this.... its your second night of almost no sleep- 4:30 am. trying your hardest, cold and wet, feeling terrible but determined... you manage 10 minutes of sleep... wake up to your alarm, land the fish. tangled with your other rod so you need to cut it all off. the fish weighs 9.5 lbs. it's so painful. and it happened a lot. saturday i caught 16 fish between 4 and 6 am, and 5 didnt count. by the time te marshal came around we had nearly 20 fish bagged up. we had to put 2 in a sack because we only brough 11 sacks.
i had 4 rods set up. while 2 were in the water i put pva bags on the others. matt did the same. when one of us caught a fish, the other would net it, and take the rod. the catcher would grab one of the spare rods and put it out while the other unhooked and bagged the fish. matt was accurate.. we were totally robotic. in the middle of the night we'd do this and never say a word to eachother. once the fish was in the bag we would just walk away from eachother back to our tents and go to sleep again... for 5 minutes.
our peg was hard to work with. calf deep mud, and rocks along the whole bank. hard to cast and net every fish. matt forgot his boots and although i had mine, i can not beleive i didnt bring my waders. lesson learned.
the winners had 3008 lbs of fish in 50 hours. second was close to that. one of the teammates got sick from being up all night 2 days in a row winching in fish. we ended up 6th with over 1000 but thats all i know. the final numbers are not yet on the internet. we had well over 100 fish that counted.
i have never heard of a fishery like this. i reccomed a visit if you want to test your carp rigs or skill at playing the fish...
American Carp Society NE Regional Tournament report
? on: May 22, 2007, 01:33:20 PM ?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So as I mentioned in a previous post. There are tournaments for carp, and they are very serious. They are harder to come by than bass tournaments, do to the young nature of the sport here in the US so I do a lot of driving to make it to them. I've gone to Oklahoma, Chicago, Austin, and NY a few times each. I fished the World Champs in 2005, it came to the US for the first time ever. I always have a blast.
Anyway, last week was the Regionals in Baldwinsville, Upstate NY. It's nice that it was so close. Carp Tournaments are different in a lot of ways to others. First off, most are several days long. 24 hours a day. it's an endurance game. especially in this case as you will see. Most are 3-5 days. This one was 2, and for good reason as you will see. The reason most are so long, is because these are all bank fishing tournaments. There are several ways the location might be chosen for the anglers, but either way, it takes time to learn the topography of the area you end up in, and the feeding routes of the fish, and more time still to draw them in and catch. It's always catch and release, and if a fish is severely injured, it doesnt count. you save the fish in mesh bags in the water, where they stay perfectly healthy, until a weigh marshal comes, then they are weighed and released.
Many of these competitions are fished as 2 man teams. My partmner for this event and several others in the past was mattc from this forum, a long time friend of mine. We came very prepared. I pre fished 2 weeks ago and caught over 100 carp in a few days only fishing daylight hours, and taking off for lunch, sleeping late etc. The seneca river is a ridiculous fishery.
This contest was 50 hours long, from Thursday at 9 am to Saturday at 11am. Only fish over 10 lbs count.
Matt and I arrived in B-ville last Tuesday before noon. Our first stop was the Red Mill Inn, which I described in a thread about my trip there 2 weeks ago. Some of our friends from CAG were there already fishing. Check in wasn't until 3, so we started fishing too. Matt went up to the dam for some lure chucking. I ordered some new end tackle after my last trip up there. I had come up with some new theories about hook pulls etc, and i wanted to practice with this new end tackle set up. So I went straight to carp fishing. I caught a lot. Like 18-20 fish in an hour. When matt came back to get into some carp, I found out he'd landed a 20+ inch brown up at the dam, and other guys were catching loads of small mouth, some drum, and even a pike on micro jigs. (those pictures are on al st. cyr's camera and should come around some day) very cool. As soon as Matt got his rod set up, A TV crew showed up, and interviewed us. We got on the news (Thank you Sarah for posting the link) http://www.9wsyr.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?videoid=196707
Lucky me, I caught 2 20's while they were there. One of them made the clip.
The peg draw wasn't until the following day. So we had plenty of time to hang out at the local bars, talk to other anglers, townspeople, old friends, etc. It was so much fun. The next morning Matt and I both went for some micro jigging with Pat Kerwin and Al St. Cyr. We caught some nice fish. I was devastated when i foul hooked the biggest smallmouth of my life. close to or over 5 lbs for sure... but hooked square in the back. i let it go before taking a picture because i was mad. I caught some others though... and Matt hooked a nice largemouth... I'll let him tell the story. It's a really funny one, I'll never forget it:
one of many...
later I got back to carp fishing... after landing probably 150 fish at this place in th last few weeks, I finally got a mirror, and a full scaler at that! only 1 lb under my PB full scale mirror from OK last year... this one was 13 lbs:
Then we went to the draw. The townspeople were so psyched. they had singers and presenters of all kinds. we pulled peg 17. not good. it was at the center of a stretch with 17 pegs. End pegs are always better, and pegs not in a huge pack are best. Fishing didnt start until the following morning. But we were allowed to go check out our locations. I was very dissapointed. We were very close on one side to the next peg. It's hard enough competing with others on an open feild, but to have to try and get the fish away from your neighbor is even harder. Oh well. We knew we'd do our best, but I already didnt expect to win.
We went back to the bar next to the hotel and BSed with all of our buddies... and while matt turned in at a respectable hour... I stayed out with Frank Warwick way too late. It wasn't easy getting up at 5:30 to get to our swim. But we managed.
Our bank was treacherous. There was a rip-rap rock wall at the bank, but a muddy mote behind it. in some places it was a few feet deep. in some just an inch.. but the mud below the water was over your ankle. Matt forgot his boots. Mine didnt do much good anyway. We both made walkways out of sticks and rocks to get to the water and our rods.
Matt's set up:
Mine:
our camp, matts side anyway. see my 2 spare rods ready to go. and matt gobbling raisins because we barely had any time to cook.
Out of the baits we brought, we did best with Dynamite "monster tiger nut" boilies. and even better still with pva bags of grits mixed with creamed corn mixed in. We fished either single boilies or pva mesh sticks with grits for most of the event.
Matt hops across the stick bridge and is into a nice fish:
It's our biggest, a 19. we had 1 18, a couple 17's and a million 8-13's
matt had this bad *** mirror, also one of our biggest fish:
and another soon after.
a few hours haul all sacked up:
and I got a nice mirror too. almost no scales.
We did our best. we had a hard time at first. the fish were not in our area to start. I saw a school crashing during set up time in front of the next peg. this happened to be Mike and Emanuel from NC.. 2 of the best paylake fishermen around. they held the fish in front of them and it was hard to get any over to us. I eventually went to wal mart to buy some grits because that's what they were throwing for bait and I figured if they ever didnt have enough in the water for chum, the fish would come looking for more of the same. it was a tough decision, because it meant pulling my rods out for an hour. when i got back, matt had had a few fish in my absence. we were up to about 5. this was about 8-9 hours into the competition. the guys next to us had more fish than we could count already. it was hard to watch. depressing... humbling anyway.
well. once we started using pva bags of the grits... we caught 10 fish in an hour. and many, many more for the rest of the tournament. we overtook Mike and Emanuel. which to me is a meaningful accomplishment. they were so far ahead of us.
and we didn't catch a single fish over 20. most teams had several. our biggest was a 19. Mike and Emanuel had lots of 20's to 27 lbs. our average size was probably 11 lbs. we caught so many fish under 10 lbs... which means they didnt count. only fish 10+ count, it was a way to lighten the load of the weigh masters... something that was a real concern. but... it hurts. we weighed 3 fish that were 9 lbs 15 oz. imagine this.... its your second night of almost no sleep- 4:30 am. trying your hardest, cold and wet, feeling terrible but determined... you manage 10 minutes of sleep... wake up to your alarm, land the fish. tangled with your other rod so you need to cut it all off. the fish weighs 9.5 lbs. it's so painful. and it happened a lot. saturday i caught 16 fish between 4 and 6 am, and 5 didnt count. by the time te marshal came around we had nearly 20 fish bagged up. we had to put 2 in a sack because we only brough 11 sacks.
i had 4 rods set up. while 2 were in the water i put pva bags on the others. matt did the same. when one of us caught a fish, the other would net it, and take the rod. the catcher would grab one of the spare rods and put it out while the other unhooked and bagged the fish. matt was accurate.. we were totally robotic. in the middle of the night we'd do this and never say a word to eachother. once the fish was in the bag we would just walk away from eachother back to our tents and go to sleep again... for 5 minutes.
our peg was hard to work with. calf deep mud, and rocks along the whole bank. hard to cast and net every fish. matt forgot his boots and although i had mine, i can not beleive i didnt bring my waders. lesson learned.
the winners had 3008 lbs of fish in 50 hours. second was close to that. one of the teammates got sick from being up all night 2 days in a row winching in fish. we ended up 6th with over 1000 but thats all i know. the final numbers are not yet on the internet. we had well over 100 fish that counted.
i have never heard of a fishery like this. i reccomed a visit if you want to test your carp rigs or skill at playing the fish...
