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Wildwater adventures A movie by Gábor Döme part 14.
Carp under the shadow of skyscrapers part II.
Third Day of Fishing
After two days of unsuccessful days of fishing, we are moving away from the noisy city to the suburbs.
We started early this morning by scouting the area and settled down where we saw fish rolling and jumping.
We started off by ground baiting two areas. I already have two rods in the water
Istvan is still getting ready with his setup. I’m hoping today that fishing will be more productive.
It's very hard! The first fish has arrived!
I’m holding the rod tip up because about forty yards from the bank there is a steep ledge and I have to pull the fish over that.
The fish is pulling really hard. The bottom drops from seven feet to twenty-five. Feels like a good sized fish.
I’m going to try and bring the fish out of this dangerous zone by pumping the rod.
I cannot predict what kind of fish it is, but it is shaking its head vigorously. It’s fighting hard.
I’m curious as to what kind of fish it is. Now it’s over in the shallow.
The fish is shaking itself.
I was expecting bigger fish and this is why I am using a braided line on my reel with a thin hook link making the setup complete.
It just surfaced. It’s going to be a carp, and from the looks of it, not a small one.
He’s carrying some green vegetation with it showing us where he came from.
We have got it!
What a beautiful common carp. We still can see the bait, the florescent pineapple pop-up soluble pellet.
It hooked perfectly. Here is the first carp of the day. We hope that its larger siblings will follow.
Here you go, back to your home.
Peter! Come! I got a fish on the line!
The fish takes off vehemently. You can never stop them for the first couple of yards.
I am gently trying to force it to change direction.
The weather may not be the nicest today, but this may be the perfect weather to catch fish.
Finally things got going, I just lost a fish while landing it, but here comes the next one.
It’s hard to judge the size of this fish. I can tell that these fish are in good shape, they put up a good fight.
It just reached the ledge. Because of the weeds I have to pull it much harder through this stretch of water,
then I’ll try to pull it up to the surface.
I got you! Another nice common carp.
Slowly but surely, the size of these carps keep going up.
Haha, it’s just going around in circles.
It might be interesting to explain what we are trying to change after two unsuccessful days.
This day has started up much better. The single most important factor while fishing on wild waters is choosing the right fishing spot.
When we are talking about thousands of acres of water, it is impossible to attract the fish
to our swim in a matter of hours no matter what and how much bait we are putting into the water.
We have to find where the fish are for the given weather and water conditions.
What kind of clues can we use? The most obvious one is seeing the fish rolling and jumping.
When I got here this morning, we observed the most activity at this spot.
The next one is the right choice of ground baits and hook baits.
I always start of with simple natural baits such as sweet corn I bought at the local store.
Then I move up to flavored corn as well as a variety of pellets.
Sweet, smelly, spicy and sooner or later the fish will answer the question, which one they like the most.
I’m following a similar strategy with the method mixes.
I have tried four different method mixes, Vad Ponty, Nagy Ponty, Tuzes Ponty, and Pelletes Fekete.
The two that have been working are the spicy Tuzes Ponty and the Nagy Ponty, specifically formulated to attract big carp.
A small but very important detail that makes this rig work for these conditions is the way we present the bait.
I started off by placing my hook bait on the bottom or by balancing it out slightly lifting it off the bottom,
and then I switched over to a very short hook link fully popped up floating over the feeder cage.
I’m using a #10 Fox Curo Hook with a matching sized pellet.
To ensure that the pop up bait is floating as close as possible to the feeder, I cut off the bottom two inches of my feeder.
The fish I have been able to catch was with this exact setup.
And last but not least precision placement of the bait is paramount.
Even the best bait will be useless if we cannot put it back each and every time precisely to the baited area.
To accomplish this I clip my line before casting. Then I unclip it because the aggressive bites could pull my rod in.
I can find the very same position on the line next time by marking the line with a marker.
By using this strategy I am fishing the same one to two square yard area seventy to eighty yards out.
These small objects, perhaps not that small, used systematically will bring success.
The day is young, hopefully our effort will be rewarded by bigger fish.
So much for the quiet stretch of the river, these brave Americans come out with their boats and jet skis not deterred by the bad weather.
It’s amazing, I had a bite on two rods at the same time.
I asked Istvan to help me tire out the fish. In less than a minute apart, both rods had fish on them.
It looks like that a school of fish has entered our swim. Istvan has his fish closer to shore than mine.
It isn’t easy to pull the fish through the hydrillas. Patients will yield carp, a very nice one too!
These two carps were caught in less than one minute apart. Istvan got his out faster.
-Only because it was the smaller one. -This one is the bigger one.
It’s hard because I have a tree right above me. I use a bait boat to carry my baits in, so the tree is not an issue for me.
Gabor need the clear space for casting. - This one is going to be a nice one! - I hope so!
The rain has stopped and the surface of the water is as smooth as glass. The fish are showing themselves.
Now it is my turn to pull the fish through the hydrillas.
I cannot pull the fish in aggressively because I’m using a monofil line.
The hydrilla is a much stronger weed that we got used to in Hungary, the stalk of it is like sandpaper.
I’m coming over to your spot since your rods are not in the water yet and the fish swam upstream quite a bit.
What are you using for bait?
Nagy Ponty hybrid pellet with an artificial pop up corn.
Even at the end, the fish still continues to fight hard. Haha.
It just doesn’t want to give up!
The water is warm and the fish are active. That’s it!
Fishing finally got going for me too!
It can go back now. It tastes just like the carp back in Massachusetts.
Off you go! Ciao, back to your friends.
It is past four o’clock, work is over and people are starting to come out.
As far as the eye can see, people are fishing everywhere. People are mainly spinning for bass.
Fourth Day of Fishing
Wow, this is going to be a big one!
I hooked another feisty one.
Finally everything came together, the place, the baits, the setup and now we are catching tons of fish.
Yesterday we landed all together eight nice fish.
This one is already the third one of the day.
The fish has never been hooked before. It’s really putting up a good fight.
I had to switch my line on this rod from monofil to a braided one because I lost so many fish in the hydrillas.
It is impossible to pull the fish through the hydrilla field with the mono line.
The fish seems to have taken a break in this spot at the edge of the ledger.
Now it’s gotten out. Every bit of the rig is set up to match the incredible power of these fish.
The SPRO Special Pellet Feeder rods are taking the beating very well.
That’s it!
Based on the success we are having with the Nagy Ponty and the Tuzes Ponty method mixes,
I decided to give a try to the Tuzes Ponty Pellet Pack.
It seems as if the fish are very much attracted to this.
This fish came so quick that the pellet didn’t even get a chance to dissolve from the feeder as you can see.
It’s easy to see that the result of two days of precise baiting, the fish are concentrated in our swim.
They are feeding like crazy in the morning hours. We have pulled out a number of fish already.
It’s coming out slowly and it is not shaking its head like the others.
I’m pulling some weeds with it and it seems to comfort the fish.
Now we got of the weed and we can now see that it is not a small fish.
Maybe its eyes were covered and didn’t fight hard while being pulled through the danger zone.
Maybe its eyes were covered and didn’t fight hard while being pulled through the danger zone.
What a nice one!
Check out the dorsal fins.
Gee, it’s a large one!
This is definitely the biggest fish of the trip so far. It takes two people to lift it.
What a large fish. Wow! Look how nicely this fish was hooked with the small hook.
Istvan has a fish again.
This fish has never been hooked before.
The small hook caught the middle of the bottom lip holding this big fish without a problem.
This is a large enough fish to be weighed.
Eleven kilos. - Istvan, we’ve got the largest fish of the trip! - How big?
- Exactly 11 kg.
We haven’t seen yours yet though.
Istvans fish has been pulled out and is just a bit smaller than mine.
It is a male while mine is a big female full of eggs. Lets let these beauties go!
A beautiful couple in the crystal clear water.
Congratulations, it was fantastic! Hey, watch, what is that? You have a bite!
You’ve got it?
It appears to be the case.
It’s coming in smoothly through the weeds.
We’ve got this one too!
Things have sped up significantly one bite after another. We didn’t even have time to put the lines back into the water.
This one is a fine male. You can feel these bumps all along his body. It feels like sandpaper. They are ready to spawn.
They say that success is separated from failure by the width of a hair.
I started off using hooks that were much bigger than this one.
I used Fox Kuro type three hook which is a strong, very sharp, wide gape hook.
Unfortunately it wasn’t strong enough for these conditions.
I switched over to my regular big fish hook, the Korda Wide Gape #6 hook.
But I did not have any success with it. It appears to be that the fish was able to eject it.
I tried to find a very strong but small hook tied to a fine hook link.
It was a Gamakatsu G Carp A1 size 8 camouflage hook that suited the situation perfectly.
The hook link was the Haldorado Braxx size 0.10 mm line.
This fine line was enough to land even the largest fish under these challenging conditions.
The fish couldn’t notice this fine tackle while feeding on the method mix.
Look, check it out, see the rod tip. And we got it!
You got a very direct indication of the bite with the braided line.
Many fisherman don’t like to use them, but for conditions like this, nothing else will work.
I had to get replace my monofil quickly because I was losing so many fish.
It’s true that the monofil lines are flexible and stretchy, but by far not as strong as the braided line.
My flexible rod is compensating for the lack of dampening effect from the unstretchable line.
The combination of the properly set drag and the flexibility of the rod allows it to fight the fish with ease.
We can easily tire out the fish in the shallows now.
This is another nice specimen with a perfect hook hold.
Just the edge of the lip, but that’s all it took.
I think this one is over ten kilos too! A big old common carp. Let’s weigh it and let it go quickly.
10.24 kilo fish.
I got this one!
- I just got it past the weeds. - Is it a sizable one?
I cannot tell because of the weeds. I’ll quote you as you always tell me when I’m asking you, 12 kilo 33 decagrams.
One cannot tell. It doesn’t seem to big to big. A catfish!
- What a nice catfish! - Well, carp isn’t the only fish in this river. - We have got a different fish.
Here we have got a nice channel cat fish. Fisherman in Hungary would be very happy if the local catfish grow this large.
It’s starting to get darker and fishing is coming to an end.
We had a busy, exiting, and by the end, a very successful fishing trip.
We had difficulties finding the fish initially, we landed only one fish in two days,
until we found this spot where there was a plentiful amount of fish to catch and release.
It was interesting that a spicy method mix and pellet combination
and a method mix formulated to catch large carp proved to be the most effective bait.
The best hook bait was clearly the Haldorado soluble florescent pineapple flavored pellet.
This bait was unbeatable on this water regardless of what was in the method cage.
We have one more challenge ahead of us, packing up and make sure everything gets sent back home safely.
This trip wasn’t a walk in the park for the first two days, we had to work hard to find the right spot and strategies.
We finished on a very successful note. Thank you so much for your help Istvan.
Thank you for organizing this exiting trip.
Your welcome Gabor, I’m sure I enjoyed this trip as much as you and Peter did.
From my standpoint, it was much more complicated to get things organized two thousand miles from my home.
I think we did very well. This is not enough, we will raise the stakes next time.
Next time I’ll make sure the next trip will be even more challenging.
- I can hardly wait Istvan. Well, it seems as if I must go now, thanks! - Safe travels and I am eager to meet you again.