A 12-lb mirror carp
Today was the first time I had an opportunity to fish at my favorite local water this year. The session planning started on Tuesday when I stopped by after work to put a few pounds of range cubes into my favorite swim. I repeated this on Wednesday. Then on Friday Rod and I met up to get our fishing passes before putting in a little more bait. This morning I arrived at the water only to discover that my choice swim had already been taken. I setup in another swim I had invested some bait in earlier in the week as a backup. Unfortunately, this "backup swim" wasn't any good. Rod stopped by after a few hours of blanking and quickly caught a trout on the only rod he carried to the water, which was still setup for crappie from our last trip to Tennessee. After chatting for a bit we noticed the guy leaving that had occupied my favorite swim a couple hundred yards down the bank. Before we could even consider moving someone had already moved into it. After that disappointment, Rod suggested we move to get closer to the baited area. Since the range cubes were tossed pretty far out we could fish very close to the same areas while occupying another swim. This would turn out to work perfectly, for Rod. I ran everything down the bank in two quick trips. I decided to test casting in that area just to make sure I could get close to some overhanging branches on the opposite bank. It turns out that the opposite bank wasn't quite as far away as I thought, since I managed to snag two rods REALLY high up in the trees. After Rod stopped laughing and I got the rigs sorted out, we got three rods close to the opposite bank and began to the waiting game. At some point after setting back up, Rod asked me to run to his truck to grab his throwing stick so that we could have some fun with the boilies he brought. By the time I got back he had one of my rods in his hand and a fish in the net. It was only fair that he land the fish, since we were sharing three rods (only two are allowed per person) and he did bait and cast that rod. The fish he caught was a recapture of a mirror that was first caught by Ohio Carper on 4/8/06 and weighed 17lb 4oz at that time. Ohio Carper named this mirror Mandisa and the second capture was by my old coworker, Chris, who caught her on 9/16/06 at 21 pounds. Well not to be outdone Rod managed to land her at a fat 26lb 12oz. Aside from Feisty, this is the only mirror that was been caught over 25 pounds, though I suspect a few other 20s from the past couple years are near that mark now. After everything was taken care of I rebaited that rod and one other. Using a different rod I hit the exact same spot the big one came from and managed a 12lb 8oz mirror that I think Ohio Carper may recognize as Rectangle (please let me know if this is the fish). This fish has an interesting story that I can't share here, but it is a sweet looking little fish with a rectangular bald patch on both sides. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get anything else. After the swim I wanted was free I tossed in a few more range cubes in hopes of getting there early tomorrow. Today was a good start, but I need to get a larger mirror before I can move on to another water this year. Hopefully I will have even better results tomorrow.