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Posts posted by Zoomie
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It was a great day indeed. Much of my fishing time is spent grinding for big fish in really crappy surroundings. Clearly not what carping is about, but the path that I have chosen. I had just returned from a weekend at the land o' the 50.
And I was tired. Frankly, I was exhausted from laughing myself silly all week after watching Brad get bucked off of a Grassie. Still, I couldn't miss the E Tennessee fish in !Charlie's fish-ins are a fantastic vacation from my current carping path. Instead of weeks of planning, careful bait selection, and hours of study, I flung a few rods in the back of the truck, grabbed a few bags of pre-mixed grits, and brought my three favorite flavors. If I catch something, great! If not, it is a great day to chat with people and sit and watch the world go by.
This is the first time that I have fished the TVA side. They put in a beautiful little park out on the point. I actually got to safely run around barefoot a bit, versus pulling nails and glass out of my river shoes and boots.
I arrived to see Charlie and Brad. In addition we had some great guests. These guys were impressive. They came to catch fish and were dead serious about it. One guy even had a cigar clenched between his teeth just to show how serious he was !
Thanks to Charlie's magnificant baiting strategy, fish were rolling everywhere and I mean EVERYWHERE. It was about a 50-50 mix of commons and buffs. Nothing gets your heart racing like watching roll after roll.
Our weather was stellar. Maybe the best day of the year for 2012. Low 70's, sunshine, and 5-10 mph breezes. It was so beautiful that I found myself pining for my bed chair to pull up under the shade of one of those magificant oaks. I would have slept like a baby.
I was invited to jump in to the middle of Charlie's prime baited area. Instead, a moved to the outside of the group. I wanted our guests to have lots of swim area many choices in cast angles.
I tossed 2 rods out and was..........um..........rewarded with a smelly Buff. For some odd reason, I didnt mind catching the buff. That happy face of his kind of set the tone for day. And there was no reason to be irritated as my fearless fishing partner Brad just loves loves loves to do water releases for anyone that catches a buff. Catfish too. He is the Mother Teresa of releasing all things smelly and slimy. He feels it important to sacrifice his nice clean clothes for those of us unfortunate enough to catch those "other" fish who should only be mentioned only in hushed tones.
My second fish caught was a Mirror. My first out of Kingston, and the second for our group of the day. I have been chasing a Mirror out of Kingston ever since I was told that show from time to time. Finally!
In between my Buff runs, I watched Charlie & Brad hold court and helping our guests out. It was not so long ago that these very same gentlemen that invited me out for my very first dedicated carp trip. I caught so many fish that I actually had to pull my rods and rest. Sounds kind of silly to say but it brought a huge grin to my face watching them help new folks just like they did me. I really am blessed to know and fish with them both.
I continued enjoying the breeze, the sun on my face and yes, even the buffs as my captures continued to climb. In the end, what arrived at the bank was only ancillary to the incredible day.
Charlie, I tip my hat to you, sir. Every single person that came to fish, caught, guests included. A feat not easily achieved, even with a group of veteran carpers.
And I thank both you and Brad for all that you have taught me. I have managed to catch some remarkable fish thanks to the both of you!
I could sure use a few more days like yesterday!
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It had to be one of best weather days for fishing ever. Low 70's, 5-10 breezes, and stellar company. Once again I must tip my hat to Charlie for his hard work in pre-baiting. Every single person there including our guests pulled in a few. I'll wait for his report before commenting on the rest of the day.
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On the road in 15. Look forward to seeing everyone today.
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OMG ! It's Tom !
Tom, I just told Tosh the story about me sending a PL alarm to it's watery death during the BVille tourney last year and you walking up to our table and explaining that all of those alarms false but can be fixed with a 2 cent rubberband. Critical bit of info..........PRIOR to being launched in to the river.
Hope that all is well with you, sir.
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Willem, Mrs. Zoomie has spent more time at the No-Tell Motel near Kingston than those vamps in short skirts. She brings her laptop, cellphone and tablet and goes in to a clucking frenzy marathon with all of her friends !
Charlie, if you're asking for votes, I'd like to try the grassy side as I have never been able to fish it due to the ash spill. Seems like we'd have a bit more room and I won't be forced to throw over Brad's lines in order to ninja a sweet spot out of his unofficial peg. Besides, I can outcatch any of you bums when it comes to Buffs and Cats no matter where we fish. And in all fairness, it's been a while since I have rolled an ankle and the rocky edge looks perfect for it!
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I'm going to do my best to be there. Brad will be there.
Remind me to tell you the story about Brad getting bucked off of my 40-12 Grassie. I could have made a fortune on YouTube with the video.
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Third year in a row for me. How I could I possibly miss it !
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I'll be fishing Kingston TN for the 2012 FFF.
Let me know if I'll have company!!!
I have fished it the last 2 years at Kingston so yes, I'll be there. So will Charlie.
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A little birdy told me that some Nash freak just busted the TN CAG Mirror record. Ugly thing too. The carper, not the fish !
Interestingly, it was caught exactly 365 days after I caught the 32-12.
Should be a good story.
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My friend, I answered each and every question you asked me pre-event.
I thought you had your resident paylaker as runner anyway?? 
Tom.
Tom you had no way of knowing. It was funny as the thing was driving me crazy for two nights and you just matter-of-factly told us to use rubberbands.
Thanks again for all of your help !
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BVille is like a sickness. The mud wasn't even dry on our gear and by the time we completed our death drive back to TN, Brad and I had most of next year sorted.
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Fantastic job guys !!!
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First Jerome, thanks so much for all the work you do to get this ready for us, editing out dead time.
I have never been a fan of the L.A. rig, however, I'm the same idiot that runs a blowback rig for so many improper presentations.
In the end, we use confidence inspiring rigs.....meaning those that bring us what we perceive to be the most success.
And I agree with Ohio above. Hooks can't possibly be too sharp !
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If a alarm that looks like this is found in the Seneca river please send me a pm and I will give you the address to ship back to the owner in Tn. lol
Mike is just being plain ugly now. Why ya gotta push me, Mike, huh ?
I'd pay money to have that alarm shipped back just to relive the experience and spine tingling thrill of pitching it in to a different river!
I forgot the punch line which was Tom Brooks chatting with us after the tourney and saying, "Oh yeah. They do that all the time. I just put a rubberband on it!" This would have been CRITICAL pre-tourney knowledge.
Barbel, if you remember nothing else about carp fishing it's that bacon rules!
Respectfully,
A deeply scarred member of Team 23!
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I now have a good feel for what you have to deal with in this tournament.
I admire you all --- just pleased it's not me doing it!
Phone and Craig, thank you for the kind words. Brad, you owe me an alarm.
Tim, I think that one of the reasons that Brad and I (and now Mike) love this tournament so much is because of the psychology of it. My little pea brain (and I suspect a number of other folks) find that with self-imposed pressure, our brains will do everything in their respective power to derail any potential success. You're running on little or no sleep. Things NEVER happen as fast as you'd like. So you start thinking about tweaking your plan, changing strategies, etc. More often than not, this leads to screwing up whatever is working for you. I will give you an example.
We ran a particular flavored puff. It was outcatching a plain puff three to one. We then elected to add just a hair of this flavor to our pack bait while running our normal pack. We watched very carefully to see if we could denote any improvement. In the end, it killed the bite for these particular rods while the other continued to pull when fish were in the area. We immediately changed back.
All of this stuff is going on while you're physicially and emotionally exhausted. You're wet and muddy. Everything you own is wet and muddy. You don't want to eat for fear that it will be wet and muddy. After a while, you just start doing the Baldwinville Zombie shuffle. Everything is automated. By the time that the end of the tourney rolls around, you become comfortable operating in this manner and want to do it for another three days.
You really should give it a try Tim. You will be shocked what you learn about yourself.
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I'm glad you mentioned it rained. I had already forgotten that small detail
It takes people with a special illness to endure that type of rain.
I am surprized that only two teams left early. Brutal !
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Sunday, it was still raining. Brad found a sweet spot and commenced to put on a Clinic. It wasn't so much that he was pulling fish volume, but he consistently began pulling out mid-upper 20's. What was I doing? Hand feeding young Brad bacon to keep his stength up. While I could do nothing to garner a strike, when you're tourney fishing, you don't care who's catching as long as the team is catching. Heck, I would have wiped Mike's brow while he made bait, if it helped the team.
Our deteriorating peg
Some more of Brad's beasts
By Monday afternoon we only had a 200+ pounds. None of the other teams in the marina had caught a single fish. While we clearly were not competative, we were over 100 pounds for Big 4 and were very competative. And then, the ever continuing rains got stupid again and killed the swim.
I guess that now would be a good time to discuss the incident known as The Alarm That Failed to Float. This incident has already reached legendary status. Sadly none of it is factual.
Certain unnamed people claim that they were there and witnessed everything. They will tell you that I, in all my Delkim snottiness, had a canniption after experiencing a second night of endless false signals on a pay lake POS alarm. They will then lie further by saying that I yelled at Brad for laughing at my plight and promptly sent the alarm out approximately 60 yards in to the Seneca. This is just not true. Here's what really happened.
I was dealing with the cantankerous unit and pining for my Delkims which were in the truck. I had removed it from the stand for the 45th time, checking the foam I had inserted in the switch to keep it from falsing. At this exact moment, Brad asked me where I wanted the ground bait. I said, "there." Brad again asked where I wanted the groundbait. Apparently Brad has a hearing disability. I pointed to the exact spot and in a clear and deliberate tone, yelled, "THERE!", this time with authority. In addition, I pointed at the area to bait quite forcefully to give Brad the visual cue he clearly needed. I had another visual cue in mind but thought it best to just point to the spot. Somehow, the offending alarm "ACCIDENTLY" slipped from my rain soaked fingers and launched itself out in to the middles of the river, commiting electronic suicide. At no time did I take a kind of perverse pleasure as it blinked one last time under cover of darkness before sinking to the bottom never to offend living thing again. As you can see, those that insist that I 'murdered' the alarm are all mad. There is only so much that a carper can do when a piece of gear realizes that it is a complete and utter failure and elects to end it all.
We did have activity all night. Sadly, the small carp moved in to our swim, likely drawn by the haunting alarm light that was likely blinking underwater. We had a number of throwbacks and only managed to bank a 2 more legal fish.
With mere hours to go Tuesday morning I heard that Ritchie had caught back to back 31 pounders. We knew that his previous big fish was 24 pounds so we were in a dead heat for big four. Since Brad was our resident big fish banker, I told him to get busy and yank another high twenties out or all we would have to show for this tourney was a couple of grand in receipts.
Young Brad hiked up his big boy pants and within an hour, yanked another 27 out. Don't you just hate show-offs? A quick calculation revealed that we were a hair off 110 for big four fish at 109-15. We suspected that Ritchie's team had us beat by 1-4 ounces. This left us twisting in the wind in second.
Before we knew it, the tourney was over. At the awards ceremony we heard the dreaded news that Ritchie had in fact beat us. In addition, someone bagged a huge 30 at 10:59, one minute before the tourney ended. This pushed us in to 3rd place for big 4 and you guessed, no money!
Despite that our end results were craptacular at 16th place with 293 pounds, we were very satisfied with so many of aspects of our fishing and performance. Surprisingly, we really enjoyed fishing pay lake style. The only real problem with this style is that understanding line bumps and hits is an art which requires much time to truly understand. It is not something that can be learned quickly.
We are already excited and planning our return next year. Being a Baldwinsville Zombie is my favorite part of the year !
I need to thank some people. First, a huge thanks to Tony Crawford and Tom Brooks for openly sharing things that some anglers are very uncomfortable discussing. Also, I had 2 absolutely remarkable conversations with Ritchie about the specifics of tournament watercraft. For those that have never spoken with him, he is a brilliant stragetist and I am still giddy about so many of the things he shared with us port tourney.
Most importantly, I need to thank our fearless runner, Iron Man Mike Turpin. I don't know how we would have survived without him. He worked even harder than we did, on even less sleep. While Brad and I tried to catch a brif nap during a slow spell, Mike kept an ever present watch on the swim. He kept us on schedule for our plan, and helped us to make some subtle tweaks to our strategy. If you run into a runner from Baldwinsville......any runner, you better give them a hug or bow. These people are amazing.
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We got up early on Saturday to scout the pegs. The Seneca was at flood stage. It quickly became clear that the fish were not where you would expect to find them. We took very detailed notes. After getting back to the hotel, Brad, Mike and I spent quite a while arguing the strengths and weaknesses of each swim. There may or may not have been some shots to the bread basket and some hair pulling. In the end, we all shook and agreed that we had graded the pegs as accurately as possible, based on our experience and watercraft skills.
During the draw Saturday afternoon, I decided to take notes for each team. Specifically which peg each team took and which they elected to throw back. It's a great opportunity to identify pegs in which we failed to see something that we should have seen.
We drew 21st. One acceptable peg and one train wreck. It was a pretty easy decision. Tony Crawford drew a very promising peg. Tom Brooks drew his tourney winning peg from 2009. John and Colin pulled and ugly peg and an even uglier one. While Colin has won this a couple of times, this tourney has been John's nightmare. He is more than capable of winning but has the uncanny knack to draw the toughest swims on the Seneca. Don't ask John Bramley to buy lotto tickets for you, is all I'm saying.
We arrived at the peg Sunday morning at the allotted time. The more we looked at the peg, the more we liked it. Carp bubbles were everywhere. There were so many that we thought for sure that something was gassing off of the bottom of the river. These bubbles were moving upstream.
We got set up quickly and Mike began working on our ground bait. We were as ready as we could be. At 8AM, the forecasted rains came in. I swear that I could feel the pressure change. It was not a good sign. Our bubbling friends immediately left our swim before the tourney even started.
And then the rains came.
Before we knew it, the tourney began! We were oblivious to the rain, staying focused on our plan. We tested two different hook baits. Our ground bait and pack flavor remained consistent throughout the entirety of the tourney. I stood staring at our cute little (wannabe) carp rods for hours. We rebaited and we stared at them some more. We had four pegs in our immediate section at the marina. We took little solace in the fact that none of the pegs in our section had a caught a single fish.
At 2:30 that afternoon, the unthinkable happened. I finally had some action. Before we knew it, we had knocked the stank off with a 21 pounder. Not long after, I caught a second...this one a teener. And then it started pouring with some unfavorable winds and once again the swim died.
One of the most interesting things about fishing tournaments with the caliber of the carpers that fish Baldwinsville is the psychological aspect of the tourney. You spend every free second evaluating your swim and reevaluating your plan. There is always the ever present danger of flushing your plan and jumping on the screw up the swim train. From my perspective, it is tough to try to discern if what you're selling is not what the carp are buying, or, the fish just arent in your swim at that particular time.
At some point that evening, we received a text that for our section (O Park and the Marina), we were in third place with a mere 49 pounds. Bogden and Mihai had jumped out to an early tourney lead but had less than 300 pounds. It still was anyone's game.
Late in the evening, the rods started picking up with lots of activity but mostly pecking and line bumps. Brad got into a really nice 27 and got him banked. The rest of the morning was pretty quiet.
Brad getting slapped around a bit by nice 27
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I am almost back among the living after returning from the WCC Baldwinsville tournament. Thought I would share a little about our second year there. In order to do so, I must back up a bit.
A few months ago, I was out with MCWrestler chasing big smelly Buffs in the Carolinas. Why would we be chasing big smelly Buffs you ask? That is simple. To catch the largest Buff possible so I would never be forced to pose again with one of these beasts.
We joined Tony Crawford of Midway II for three days of wild water madness. Tony told us to leave all of our gear at home as he would supply everything. Brad and I arrived to find these silly little short rods standing on some really tall and skinny stands. The mighty pay lake set up. I had been forewarned that if we wanted a shot at a 50-60 pounder, I would have to fish for them in a very specific manner.
As I stood in front of these "contraptions", Tony informed me that the bite is barely perceptable. In order to detect bites, he rolled up and attached a tiny ball of clay about 36 inches from the tip of the rod. Much of the day, I stared myself cross-eyed waiting for the putty to move. Throughout the day, Tony would repeatedly point to the little ball and with great passion, repeatedly say," Look ! Look ! Look ! Look ! Look!" Interestingly, I was unable to note the subtle movement of less than 3 microns. To me, it was akin to pointing at a poor dead squirrel that I passed on the way to work and staring at it waiting for it to scurry off.
At approximately 3PM that day, I was finally able to tell the difference between a line bump, a pull, and a 1.8 mph breeze. While so many folks will mention that pay laking is carp fishing in purist form, they fail to mention that detecting line bites is truly an art.
On the dinky rod
At some point I got broke off. I wandered back to the truck to re-rig. Upon completing the re-rig, it suddenly dawned on me that pay laking was extremely efficient. I retied, baited and recast in 30-45 seconds. Heck, it takes 5 minutes to do that with Euro gear. After chatting with Brad a bit, we decided to do an experiment and fish Baldwinsville fishing 100% pay lake.
Since Tony had won BVille in 2010, I asked if we (young Brad and I) would be foolish to attempt such a feat with so little experience. Tony explained that we would be foolish NOT TO. And with that, he was kind enough to share everything that he thought we could absorb in order to attempt to get us ready. He took his time. I am absolutely certain that he shared things that take people years to learn. Fishing with Tony Crawford should be added to your bucket list. It is one of the most polite, genuine, and passionate people that I have ever met.
Our host Tony Crawford. The only man to take my Reuben Heaton over 40 pounds.
I wish that I could say that we were 100% confident in our approach but that would be a lie. We were terrified. Between Brad and I we have caught hundreds if not thousands of carp. All on Euro gear. While we are technically Euro Lakers fishing pack baits and hair/bolt rig combos, making the jump is daunting.
We then contacted Tom Brooks and had a number of conversations. Tom asked if we were screwing around, or dead serious about attempting to do our very best. I explained that Brad and I don't go to BVille to sit on the bank looking pretty. We are very serious about paying our dues. Further, sooner or later we would be in the money. With that, Mr Big asked about our intended game plan. He then made some corrections after pointing out some gaping holes.
As Brad and I were driving up to BVille, we were confident in our plan. We were not confident in our ability to deal with any potential problems. Fortunately we sweet-talked Mike Turpin, one of the fearless Virgina chairs, to come up and be our runner. He has extensive pay lake experience and would be able to help us deal with any unforeseen problems. Yes, he took great pitty on us.
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Thanks Mike ! Cory and I will be there. I am sure that Brad will be there if he can make it.
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Awesome job Tosh and to all that attended. Looks like everyone had a great time.
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Is this a triple top-secret location or do you plan to announce a venue to we little people?
Probably out hogging all the stinkin monsters for yourself. Don't make me get Melissa on the phone to put her foot in your......bait bucket.
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As always Horace, I loved the story!
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You mean like this ?
Tn Spring Fish-In Results(Kingston)
in TN Fish-Ins & Social Events
Posted
I know. It was like we were trapped in a parallel universe of goodness!
And I am only temporary Buffalo King since Bri was unable to attend.