A big fishing story.

 

November 24th, 2024… It's 54° out and extremely windy. But for whatever reason I still decided to go fishing for carp. So packed up my three favorite rod and reel sets. A bucket. And a couple of types of bait and set out on a walk to Lake Luxembourg which is only about a half a mile away. Now, the current state of the lake is not overly great. There's been a month and a half long drought going on and it's definitely taking a toll on all of the fishing spots in the area. This year. The water has receded at least 200 feet in the last couple of weeks, leaving a rather muddy mess in its wake. But more on that later. Setting up for carp fishing is pretty straightforward. You need bait, in this case I choose sweet corn and worms and set up one or two rods that you know can handle the load of a larger fish like a carp. Because it often takes quite some time for carp to get hungry and want to bite always prop them up on fishing holders. Which is exactly what I did for this occasion. For the worm bait, I chose my 12 LB capable spinning reel and my 15 LB capable baitcaster. I Doubled up on my usual sinker weight so that I could cast out further and after setting up my carp rigs I also set up one of my smaller rod and reel rigs for spinner lure fishing in the hopes of maybe pulling up a bass or too. I spent the next two hours with no success on any fishing front But was treated to a most unusual sight. Maybe 1000 feet away from where I was fishing I saw two, let's call them ‘gentlemen’ who decided to do some mud racing with their wranglers and immediately, and I mean a literally immediately got themselves stuck. So as I sat there maintaining my lines I witnessed one of the most ridiculous sites one can see of two men trying to get their stuck vehicles out of the mud and only making things increasingly worse. After a whole 45 minutes of this downright comical scene, I finally got a huge hit on my Sweetcorn rigged baitcasting reel. And when I say a big hit, I mean it yanked the rod out of its holder and started dragging it into the lake and I was just barely able to get my hands around my gear before it disappeared forever. When I started to reel in my catch, I realized I had a real winner on my hands. After a moment. Minute or two I pulled up a three foot long 15 LB common carp. Probably the biggest fish I've ever pulled out of Lake Luxembourg. And what I didn't realize at the time is while I had been working on landing this fish. The Park Rangers and police had shown up to deal with ‘mud riders.’ So now I had quite the audience. It was quite Something else really. I spent another hour or so just chatting with this crowd about fishing and other things (like how on earth they were going to get those cars out of the mud) before realizing how surreal the whole thing was. So to sum it up, it was a most amusing and successful fishing trip. And by far the largest success I’ve had with that baitcaster reel and with using sweet corn as bait.




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