Jerome

Can't do it this year, due to a conflict with a planned celebration for my wife's birthday (yup, a round number), but I wish good luck to you all. You're in good hands with Frank as organizer extraordinaire.

And next, the special prizes. Congratulations to all winners!

Here is the list of winners in a nicer format, a certificate that you can print, frame and put on the wall... First, the Big4 winners.

By the way, I just figured out that Craig Welch wrote a great article on his session at Dale Hollow where he landed most of the fish that made up his impressive score. A truly excellent read.

I'll issue a better formatted post later on, but here is a snapshot of the leaderboard, sorted by Big4 combined weight. Click on the image to see a larger version. Well, it seems that I won a few prizes! As to the big mirror, it was won by Craig Welch with a beautiful 30-9lb fully scaled. Congratulations to all participants!

Hm, sorry about that. Will make sure this is fixed. Please send me an e-mail at <jmoisand@gmail.com> and I'll give you a direct contact.

LAST REMINDER!! Time to make good use of the leaderboard (click here)...

Young fellow, it seems to me that you should write an article for a carp magazine... Not only did you catch amazing fish, but you also write well... If interested, send an e-mail to naca@carpanglersgroup.com...

Six more days to go... One last week-end... Good luck to all participants. Please log your biggies on the Leaderboard ASAP.

Folks, if you have troubles uploading pictures to the leaderboard, please check this thread for guidance: http://www.carpanglersgroup.com/forum/index.php?/topic/57810-big-4-fall-2017-bragging-thread/&page=2&tab=comments#comment-731299

I don't think I'll make it... Don't hesitate to give my spot to somebody else.

They were in PNG format. I saved them to JPG, uploaded them again on your behalf, and you're good. Barry, Brad, Chad and David, you have a few pics that didn't upload well. I did too (fixed now)... As far as I understand, where a picture doesn't upload properly, this may come from: 1. Wrong format, please use convert to JPG 2. File is too large, please reduce size. 3. A cell connection issue, try again. If nothing works, please do the same thing as Todd, post your pic on this thread with the exact weight, and I'll try to fix it. Or e-mail the picture & details to Willem at BIG4@JOINCAG.COM. This needs to be completed by Nov 15th at the very latest.

That sounds like a wonder spot indeed, winter or not. Trouble is you can get all the criteria matched, and yet they go elsewhere for whatever reason we don't understand... Keep trying!

Well, if only I knew. I spent many years and many frustrating hours trying to find 'FFF swims' (swims where we can catch nicely on Jan 1st!), and I really didn't find a lot of them, and it is really hard to establish a pattern. I *think* (?!) that the main factors are: a. DEPTH: the 'go deeper' thing holds some truth because of the water stratification, warmer water around 38F sitting on the bottom, but it takes some depth for the stratification to work. So yeah, 15 to 20 feet. BUT this is clearly NOT the only factor, and more often than not, other factors prevail, and I caught a lot of them in 6 to 8 feet of water... b. WARMTH: the easiest idea is of course a warm water discharge. Now that can be magical. And it doesn't take a lot of warmth, a sewage outflow pipe coming from a city might be a couple of degrees higher than the water of the pond or river it goes into, and that's enough. Trouble is post 9/11 security issues closed the door to many water discharges from plants. c. OXYGENATION & NUTRIENTS: solid oxygenation keeps them feeding. A water outflow (pipe, small tributary) would do the job. But this has to come with easy food (nutrients), because carp don't like to spend a lot of energy in the winter to go find food. Sometimes, it can be a slightly different combo. There is a magical bay on the St Lawrence, where wind churns the water, and there are a lot of mussels and the likes, and this is where one guy caught 375lb of fish on a single Jan 1st in an absolutely dreadful & freezing weather. We followed suit, and had the time of our lives. While freezing our respective butts (and nets and bait buckets and everything else). d. NUMBERS: carp clearly congregate in the winter, in large numbers. This makes them harder to find (less proper spots, not necessary accessible), but when you find them, this can be golden, and you'll catch one fish after another. And the great thing is that they are not going to move away! All this being said, this is truly challenging to find such a spot that actually works.

The overfeeding thing is about mid-winter, not about late fall. I fished in November many times, and fish certainly feed actively if you can find them. The difficulty is that they tend to move to or near their winter's quarters around that time, and disappear from many usual Sep/October hot spots. If you can find them don't hesitate to feed them as usual. But you need to find them, and that is the hard part. PS. actually, even the winter thing is not always true. In a nicely oxygenated holding area, they can go through a full bucket of maize in a few hours in a near-freezing temperature. I'v experienced that numerous times.

Welcome to the 100+ club, Todd! Well done!

So, as I hinted at last night, the BoD had some active discussion on the split of the monetary prizes, and we ended up deciding to acknowledge the Big4 2nd to 5th place a bit more. Here is the FINAL split. No more change, this is cast in stone now. Sorry for the last minute changes, but this specific point raised by David was very valid.

Whoah, those are absolutely superb fish! Well done!

Since I'm still on the east coast after all... Iain, please add my name as tentative... At what time would we start?

Having thought more about it, and exchanged a few thoughts with other parties, I'll post a slightly different breakdown of the monetary awards tomorrow morning. With a bit more money for the 2nd to 5th place. This will be final.

I communicated on the fact that there would be a monetary prize for Big-6 and for the five top big4 results back in October 3rd, see this post: http://www.carpanglersgroup.com/forum/index.php?/topic/57779-cag-big-4-prizes-fall-2017/&tab=comments#comment-731176 So I am NOT going to change that aspect now, this is for sure. This was and is my call as event coordinator, and it is way too late to complain about it. I also don't see as obvious at all that the Big4 winner will win the Big6. Multiple times, we had a Big4 winner mostly because of one especially large fish. Other times, 2 or 3 folks were pretty darn close to each other with the Big4. Big6 math could easily change such dynamics. Seemed a fun experiment to me... No change here. Now, as to the prizes being too skewed towards the top places, that I am more open to feedback. Prizes were clearly way too diluted in the past, maybe I went too far the other way.

CAG allocated $500 of its budget for the event. BCT will provide $800 worth of discounted gift certificates for such value. Here is the prize breakdown. Note the Big6 extra prize and the honorary certificates for the top 10 finishers, so... keep fishing! You have until Nov 15th to submit your big catches on the leaderboard (by the way, if you didn't register yet, then it is more than time to do so!).

You made my day today! Not exactly due to your post (which is very good, thank you for that), but this small mention under your profile that I never noticed so far: Who Referred you?: CAGI And this reference to the old CAG Invitational (CAGI) event perfectly resonates with your post. I'll share this with the rest of the BoD.

Yes, in large river systems in the US, the distribution tends to be between 1% and 2%. So if you caught ~75 carp so far, it isn't entirely surprising that you didn't catch one. Just a bit of bad luck, or quite possibly location, as the previous poster indicated. There are a few rivers and reservoirs in the US where mirrors form the majority of the population, but there are not that many. Just keep fishing in various locations, be patient, and one day, you'll strike gold... Mirrors are very cool indeed.

Big 4 participants, if you didn't do so already, it is more than time to register to the leaderboard! Everybody should be registered at least one week before the end of the event (Nov 15th)... FISH SUBMISSIONS Please make sure you are registered on the New CAG Leader-board. You only have to register ONCE, if you've already registered, let's say for the ATC, then all you need to do is Log in and add the Big 4 event to your name. Instructions on how to use the leader-board can be downloaded here: Leaderboard Instructions Any questions, e-mail Willem at: BIG4@JOINCAG.COM