FFF in a New Town 2015

Columbia, South Carolina. If you had asked me at the FFF in 2014 where I would be fishing it in 2015 (there was never a question of not fishing it!), I would never have predicted Columbia, SC. But here I was. Starting off I was very dubious of my chances at catching as I had had very little time to spend on the bank, so did not know of many good venue options. There are rivers, but given the amount of rain we have had lately they are high and very hard to fish, with lots of grass carp that get in the way. There are lakes, the closest being Lake Murray from which I have not heard of a single common carp being landed on hook and line, and the other lakes being too far for my meager gas budget to allow. There is a creek, but I would not feel comfortable fishing there in the middle of the night without body armor, and all the carp I have seen there are small anyway. The only place that I could think of was a small pond in a residential area that contains carp of an unknown number and size structure, but was 1) close to my house, and 2) did not make me feel like I was taking my life in my hands. So to this venue I turned my attention. In preparation for the event I started baiting every couple of days about a week before up to every day for the three days prior. My bait of choice was bread and sweet corn due to their near universal attraction and good performance in cold water.  I really didn’t have any idea of how many fish were in there, so I didn’t want to over feed them – just give them enough to get a taste for the bait – so I added bait sparingly.

 

During the time leading up to the 1^st I had been trying to locate someone foolish enough to fish with me. Despite all the obvious appeals of sitting on the bank in sub-freezing temperatures during the middle of the night while fishing for a fish most people have not even considered fishing for, no one was interested until I was talking to one of my wife’s friends who said that her husband would love that sort of thing. So I sent him a text and sure enough he said he would love to… the poor fool. Chris had never fished for carp before, but was eager to give it a try. After some communication we decided to meet on the bank at 11:30pm. I arrived at 11:20pm to get my mass of totally essential gear down to the bank and allow time to set it all up. Chris arrived at the assigned time of 11:30pm with his two catfish/surf rods and a positive attitude. I got him rigged up with some lead core leaders I had set up days before (did I mention I was looking forward to the event?) and some plastic corn on the hairs, which was the same set up as what I had decided to use. This arrangement was topped off by a bait bomb of liquidized bread.

 

 

 

By this time it was only a few minutes until 12:00am so we got Chris’s baits into position by the inflow at the top of the pond. Much to my horror it was now 20 seconds after midnight and I was late with my first cast! I hurriedly got a bread bomb on my hook link and tossed a few more balls of bread into a likely looking area. My cast seemed to land a bit short, but it was dark so I just hoped it would be close enough. I got my 2^nd rod baited and was just about to cast when the alarm on the first rod starts making a lot of noise. I dropped the rod in my hands and grabbed the fishy one which feels like a decent fish. After a fight of 5 or 6 minutes I have a nice looking mirror carp in the net. At this point I get some photos of the fish (which turns out to be 16lbs 6oz) and work on getting my other rod out only to see Chris’s rod bouncing on the rest.

 

 

I yell something and Chris is on it. At first it seems the line is snagged and then it come loose of the snag and it seems there is no fish, but false alarm—the fish had just run toward us. No other issues occurred and Chris now had his first ever carp on the mat.  At 11lbs 4oz the mirror was not a bad way to start carping! After this I get my rods back out and things really died down.

 

 

After a few hours of absolutely nothing we see a carp hit the surface down the bank. Chris throws in some bait in the area and moves his rods. In maybe 5 minutes he has another run and has carp number two on the bank. A nice 13lb 7oz fish.

 

Well, I would like to say that we continued to catch fish until we fell over but it did not happen. We continued to fish until around 4am when Chris had to head home. I fished for another hour without any action, and the effects of being up for 24 hours began to get to me so I figured that in the interest of public safety I should drive home sooner rather than later. You know when one of your indicator brackets seems to be swaying form side to side it’s time to pack it in.