[My Final Carp of 2014]

Tony, it's wonderful that your daughter enjoys fishing with you. I hope she stays with it. Mine is getting to where she can finally sort of reel in a few bream once I hook them for her, and even a few on the fly rod, but she's a long way from being able to reel in a carp. I'm sure you were kidding about the down side thing, but I enjoy helping my loved ones catch fish and even outfish me, more than I enjoy catching them myself.

I haven't caught a single carp this year. I only started catching these monsters out of this place in fall of last year, as they weren't biting in the warmer months, but this year all I managed to catch was turtles, even on boilies and hair rigs, because this place is overrun with turtles. I landed one turtle that must've weighed 30 pounds or more. It was easily the biggest turtle I've ever seen in the outdoors. I caught so many I have given up fishing there until the fall when those turtles apparently go dormant ot something, because I only catch them in the warmer months. Of course if anyone has any ideas on how to get around the problem, I'd be willing to try it, but even the smallest turtles were getting hooked on my hair rigs and boilies. Usually just bread on a hook is fine in the cool months, and I tried the hair rigs and boilies as a way around the turtles, but no luck.

[GA "Outstanding Fish" Contest - 2014]

Thanks! I'll look into it. That's exactly the kind of place this is. It would be interesting to see if they could be fooled with it.

[GA "Outstanding Fish" Contest - 2014]

I would definitely be interested in trying one of those flies. I'd like to see if it would fool those carp, because they are quite discerning and fixated on bread. The same time I was tossing bread out to them I also threw out several pieces of popcorn and I watched this same carp come up, inspect a couple of pieces of popcorn and actively refuse to eat it! They are mighty picky! Plus I haven't seen these fish feeding on the surface before or since that one week, although I only started fishing there this summer after it was good and hot. I'm hoping I will go over there at the right time this spring and find them feeding on top again.

[GA "Outstanding Fish" Contest - 2014]

Wow, thanks a lot! The other guys here had some great catches too and were every bit as deserving of the gold. Congrats! I wish I had known how to catch carp when I was their age. There is no telling what kinds of great catches they'll be making, because the ones they showed us here were awesome and these two guys have a lot of great fishing ahead of them.

I wish I had been able to get a better photo of that fish, but I was all alone, pumping adrenaline, and my arms were like noodles after fighting that fish on my fly rod. I wasn't thinking too well at that point, because that was easily the biggest fish I'd ever caught, so I was freaking out and I just wanted to hurry up and get a quick picture and get her back in the water. I stuck my foot in the shot as a reference point and you can see that fish is three of my feet long and I wear a size 10 shoe. In contrast, the fish that I'm holding in that other photo was two and a half of my shoes long, even though I've had some people tell me it looks like the bigger one. Trust me, it's not even close! Lol.

It's pretty interesting how I caught that biggest fish. After discovering these fish, I got up really early the first chance I got to go after them, and I was chumming the water and making presentations for probably an hour and a half. This fish was actually coming up every few minutes and eating chunks of loaf bread right off the surface of the water, so I was sight fishing, trying to catch this one specific carp. There wasn't a school of carp feeding with her, she was about the only fish feeding like that this particular morning. Finally she came about two feet off the bank, came up and sucked down a chunk of bread I had tossed in, then came up and ate another. The next piece of bread she sucked down was on my #8 hook, so I made the hook set and it was off to the races. She made several runs and it took me between five and ten minutes to net her. I was really babying her and trying not to hoss her in and it's a good thing too, because upon releasing her I checked out my leader and it was stretched pretty thin in one spot! It was a 1x leader which means it was about ten pound test. I was very fortunate that it didn't break and very fortunate to find these fish feeding on the surface that week!

Again, thanks so much, and if I have any other good catches this year I'll be sure to share them in the forum. I posted the final big carp carp I caught for 2014 in the main GA forum if anyone is interested. It was a whopper too.

[My Final Carp of 2014]

Yes hopefully we'll have a warm spell and we can get out again. If it gets into the 60s one weekend day and I have time we'll be fishing and hopefully you can join us. I am really excited about what the new year could have in store. I hope when spring comes around I'll find these fish feeding on the surface again like I did that first time, because I'd love to catch another on my fly rod.

[My Final Carp of 2014]

Thank you! By the way, I meant to say I caught this carp over the holidays, on Dec. 27th.

[My Final Carp of 2014]

Hi all, I'm new here and it's a bit late for this post I suppose, but I just wanted to share my final carp of 2014. This was my first year trying carp fishing and it was really tough at times - almost depressingly difficult - but very rewarding at other times. I caught some big fish this year - the biggest fish of my life. I'm very much looking forward to doing it more in 2015. Hopefully I'll be out again doing it the first warm spell we get on a weekend afternoon.

I caught this one on what I guess a lot of folks call a pay lay rig, on a #8 hook with a wad of hamburger bun on my hook. I guess this fish must have been pretty hungry, because I bet I didn't have my line in the water for ten minutes when he hit, and it was the only rod I had out at the moment. Got him landed pretty quickly for how big he was, probably under five minutes. I weighed him in my net with one of those analog scales with a handle on one end and a hook on the other. The maximum the scale would read is 15 lbs and the fish and net had the scale pegged to the bottom, past 15 lbs, as far as it would go. Not sure how accurate that scale is, but it's what I have. I measured the fish and it was around 30 1/2 inches. My little girl is in the photos, as I'm trying to get her hooked on fishing as well. She's getting into it more and more, although she likes catching bream a lot better than carp.

[GA "Outstanding Fish" Contest - 2014]

Hello everyone, I'm new to the forum, been lurking around a bit, and needmotime2fish had asked me to join up a while back, and I thought it was about time I did. I just started carp fishing this year and I'd like to submit a few of my catches to the contest if you don't mind. It's been an interesting year for me, chasing the carp. The first outing I had was in the pouring rain on a cold January morning. All I brought for bait was some loaf bread that I quickly realized was too dry to stick to my hook! So I started fishing with just anything else I could troll around in my kayak. I went to a spot I knew was good for carp and believe it or not, I caught my first ever carp on a pearl superfluke stuck on a 3/8 oz jig head!

I then got away from carp for a while, but went back at it in the summer and was having a really hard time getting a fish to bite. Then when I finally got some bites, I got broken off like three times, right at the bank. Then one day I stumbled onto some carp in a place I wasn't even looking and over the course of the fall caught a couple of really nice fish in there. I'd like to submit these three fish for the contest.

First entry:

Brian Hall

January 2014

Commerce Watershed Lake

Estimated 24 inches, 5 pounds

Caught while trolling a superfluke on a jig head in my kayak

October 11, 2014

Commerce, GA

Estimated 20 lbs, 36 inches (Biggest fish I've ever caught)

Caught on a piece of loaf bread floating on the surface, fished on an 8 weight fly rod

November 9, 2014

Commerce, GA

Estimated 15 lbs, 30 inches (second biggest fish I've ever caught, WOW carp fishing is awesome!)

Caught on a "paylake rigged" wadded up piece of loaf bread.

Thanks for your consideration and very many thanks to Barry for all the advice he has given me this year!