Amazing day at the Connecticut River

My first channel cat. He may not be big, but look at that face. 

All week I hinted to my friend Dave that I really wanted to fish the Connecticut River on Friday if the conditions were right. Dave called me Thursday night while I was surf fishing to see if I still wanted to go. I left him a text to say "hell ya"

We had one of the best days ever. Dave had "the spot" where one rod was just on fire. He caught 12 carp and 2 channel catfish today. I think 9 of them were on one rod. He ended up catching a thirty pound carp and a 32 pound carp. He also had three others over twenty pounds.

My numbers do not compare. I caught a few fish. However, I did catch two over twenty pounds. One of them was a twenty five pounder. The strange thing about it was that it was a Mirror Carp, which is pretty rare for the Connecticut River where Commons prevail.

My other highlight of the day was my first ever Channel Catfish. It wasn't a big one, my guess is that it was just under three pounds. None the less it was a new species, and one I really have wanted to catch for a long time. In Connecticut you can use three rods. I used two of them for carp and one for catfish. The last time I went I used hot dogs and livers and never got a bite. So today, I went au' natural and fished fish. I used a chunk of my bluefish fillet (caught nothing). My other bait was a two inch piece of last night's dead eel. That is what I caught the catfish on.

The carp were caught on a hair rig baited with one piece of plastic corn ( I  used white and pink today) and two pieces of maize. I used a method ball wrapped around the sinker also.

I will post pictures of the twenty and twenty five pounder when I get them. We took the pictures of them on Dave's camera.

Dave's thirty two pounder