Thoughts about chasing big carp

Just on of the many big carp
caught this week by many carp fishermen

Last week’s carp fishing can only be describe as epic. Without question it was the best week I’ve ever had. I landed seven carp over twenty pounds. I also broke my personal best carp by two and a half pounds when I caught the 28 ½ pounder last Friday. For one week everything lined up perfectly. I found the right spot that big fish were feeding in. The weather was changeable with many ups and downs on the barometer. The temperature has been just cool enough to keep the carp on the very verge of spawning, but not quite warm enough to spawn.

   I’m also getting extremely lucky. I caught one fish in five hours Friday, while my friend Dave caught 5. My one fish was a new PB. On Saturday, once the word got out where I and a guy named Ryan were catching big commons, a bunch of guys showed up. Five guys fished almost all day. I caught five carp; two of them were 21 pounds. The only other fish caught was a fifteen pounder.  Ten rods in the water, all guys that know what they are doing but five fish found my corn and not theirs… Luck

   I have always been one of those people to notice when “once in a lifetime” things are happening. On Tuesday when I brought my friend Eric fishing and we ended up with five twenty pounders, I explained to him how amazing the fishing was. We realized we were into something special and soaked it all in. It turned out to last all week.

    I know things lined up perfectly for me. I also know some of it comes down to luck. That said I fished hard everyday last week. I was going fishing straight from work packing sandwiches for supper. I found the spot I was fishing and baited it up.  I missed three great striper tides where one of my friends caught about sixty fish. I wanted to dedicate the week to this carp train and ride it till it stopped.

   Although I had a terrific week, I was not even close to only one. A guy named Ryan caught five fish topping twenty pounds. All told I know of almost twenty five carp caught in the last week over twenty. That is insane .My friend Dave caught two twenty seven pounders and Kevin W caught a 30 pound female and a twenty seven pound male. All this can be attributed to the weather I mentioned above, but also the sharing of information by some really skilled fishermen. The guys that put in the most bank time for the most part caught the most fish.

   Here is why I am writing this post. I know a lot of people that fish for carp. Most of my closest fishing buddies are carp guys/gals. They are always searching for the “big one.” I know people that look at a carp in the high teens and it means nothing to them. All they are searching for is a thirty pounder (which is the Holy Grail in Rhode Island waters). With so many big fish caught last week a twenty pounder barely raised an eye brow to some of the people looking for a big one. A couple fishermen I know would consider a twenty pound fish a disappointment. Unless the fish is in the mid-twenties or higher, it was not what they are looking for. That is a shame.

   I have said before that I would never say the phrase “only a seventeen pounder”. By using the word “only” it trivializes the smaller fish (and seventeen pounds is not a small fish). I want to catch giants too, but first and foremost I want my alarm to scream. There are too many blank days on a carp calendar to not appreciate ANY carp. True, catching big ones was easy the past week, but you know what, in a couple weeks when the weather is hot, we will all be scratching for a fifteen pound fish. Catching carp of any size will become much harder very soon.

   You may think since I finally broke my PB, that catching a fish in the teens would not mean as much to me. That is simply not true. Maybe it’s because I started carp fishing in the canal for five pounders, or because it took a few years to catch a twenty pounder but I truly enjoy my alarm going off and feeling the fight of the fish. There are many places I fish where nothing over ten pounds swims. The fish are fun, aggressive and fight like hell.

   As for fish topping out over 20 pounds, in Rhode Island, that is a pretty good feat. There are not a lot of bodies of water that have fish weighing that. I did not take for granted any one of the ones I caught. I know how unusual it is to catch them that size, I know how much time it normally takes to catch one. Some of the guys were absolutely giddy over catching fish that size. Others would be“ho-hum, it’s not a PB or a 30”. Personally, I side with the giddy folks. I love hanging around with enthusiastic fishermen instead of giant hunters, whose only goal is a monster and anything less is a failure.

   As I have said before carp have the largest average size of any freshwater fish in New England. The only other fish that can reach its trophy sizes consistently are pike, which are far less common over ten pounds. There are some dedicated carp anglers out there that love the sport. There are others that just want the trophy and don’t want to put in the work to find it. Either way we should all remember and appreciate that a fifteen pounder may not be huge for a carp, however for a freshwater fish it is a monster. I think we should all take a step back and realize how lucky we are when we get to tangle with an average size carp.