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Wildwater adventures
A movie by Gábor Döme part 14.
Carp under the shadow of skyscrapers part I.
We already have 12 hours of flight behind us with three more waiting for us.
We are at the airport in Minneapolis in the United States. Here we are going to meet my friend Dr. Istvan Pulai.
We don’t know what we are getting into, because we are headed to a destination none of us has ever fished before.
Where exactly? We will soon find out.
Our viewers probably have no idea how much work and effort goes into one of these trips.
Especially since we are fishing for the first time two thousand miles away from my home which is over six thousand miles away from Hungary.
We are on our way to pick up some packages full of fishing supplies. These are always exciting moments when we get to see what actually made.
Let’s go!
Here comes the good stuff.
The destination of our next fishing adventure is Austin, the capital of Texas.
We’ll fish the Colorado River which flows through the center of the city.
The special feature of the river is that it behaves like a lake because of a series of dams blocking it, keeping steady water levels year round.
I am with my good friend Istvan and our host Tony Cartlidge, the editor in chief of US Carp Pro Magazine. Istvan, tell us how we got here and introduce Tony to us.
My favorite fishing magazine is US CarpPro. We can find a lot of valuable information about carp fishing in the United States.
This is how I found out about Austin, which I may say is one of the hubs of carp fishing in North America.
I contacted Tony who saw our films made in Canada and Massachusetts suggested that we gave fishing a try in Austin.
We have never tried our luck on these waters, Tony, do you think we will have any luck catching fish here?
Thank you so much for the information Tony. It looks fantastic! We will definitely give it a try, but lets check out all of the other spots first.
First day
Before fishing, we always like to bait the area.
We are preparing for this with Istvan by soaking some birdseed mix in water overnight and due to the warm climate some fermentation has already begun.
We mix this together with this method mix to spice it up. We will use Nagy Ponty, Vad Ponty, and Pelletes Fekete Haldorado mixes boosted with Nagy Ponty Flavor.
We will form some bait balls with all this and we will take advantage of the city scape by throwing them under the bridge.
I already placed a marker close to the foot of the bridge and now we will drop the balls of the bridge near the marker guaranteeing a tight baited area in spite of the distance.
Along with our baits, we will be using Range Cubes.
This is a favorite among local anglers. It is used to feed cattle and has high protein content in it.
It will dissolve in about two hours at these water temperatures.
Ok, lets go Istvan!
We have arrived on top of the bridge not further away than thirty feet from the marker.
I think we can easily do this.
Lets see, perfect!
I think you have never baited an area so quickly, it may be faster than a bait boat.
Shall I hit it?
From early morning, there has been a nonstop traffic jam of kayaks.
We need wait for the perfect moment to cast our lines without hitting anybody.
Right after that, we must sink the line below the surface to avoid anyone tangling it. I do this my dipping my quiver tip below the surface of the water.
No one is coming so I am safe to cast my line. I’m casting my rod precisely to the pre-baited area by clipping my line.
Then I unclip the line and mark the spot with a line marker. Now I must quickly sink my line so no one will run into it.
I have a braided line on one of my reels and monofil on the other.
Which one will be more affective to indicate bites? We will have to wait and see.
I have never fished in such a large crowd in my life.
My friend Tony tells me that probably everyone from the greater Austin area is now downtown.
I have a hard time imagining that we will catch anything here today.
However the fish has no where to go, they must have gotten used to this havoc.
On top of all this, it seems as if we are not alone. We have to share the area with local fisherman. They are trying to fish and so shall we.
On top of all this, it seems as if we are not alone. We have to share the area with local fisherman. They are trying to fish and so shall we.
We were determine to catch fish today, but in spite of trying many bait and rig combinations we had no luck.
This was just one of those days, we won’t give it up and give it another shot tomorrow.
This was just one of those days, we won’t give it up and give it another shot tomorrow.
second day
We are headed to another promising fishing spot most of which are not directly accessible by car.
Best case scenario we only need to walk two hundred yards, other times close to a mile.
After all of this, who can say that fishing isn’t sport.
Ah, finally we have arrived to our next spot called “Voodoo”.
Why is it called this, I don’t know, but it is perfect for fishing.
The special feature of this spot is a side branch of the river that fish just love. Hopefully we find that magical spot and catch them.
This fish ran off to the left and is putting up a good fight.
It had a very aggressive fight and doesn’t appear to be a small one.
It is already close to shore.
Wonderful! We have our first carp! We have ourselves a very nice spotless common carp. How beautiful.
Finally, we have landed our first carp.
It weighs 7.46 kilograms.
Hah! It swam in between the tripods legs.
Those who watch fishing movies made in far away countries might think that catching fish is as easy as doing it on our own waters.
The best example of this is this being absolutely untrue is this movie.
On our first day with our host Tony, we spent a whole day scouting out the whole river just to find good spots to sit down to fish.
We are talking about a large body of water with a limited number of access points for fishing.
The second day went by without even a bite because it was in the middle of a city festival.
Here, on our third day, early morning, I managed to catch a nice carp, but we have been sitting here ever since without a bite.
This shows that we have to work really hard for every fish regardless to where we are in the world.
There are always unexpected challenges. On our first fishing day, the challenge was the heavy weekend boat traffic.
Today it appears to be that this spot is heavily infested with turtles. It feels like we are fishing in a large turtle farm!
Regardless what kind of bait we are putting into the water, in minutes you see turtle heads popping up to the surface.
They can find our bait on the bottom and dive down almost twenty feet to get it.
The nonstop movement of our rod tips indicates nonstop heavy turtle traffic in the vicinity of our baits.
It is easy to see why the fish are scared away from this area because of these predators.
As you can see, I’ve tried everything under the sky. I caught my only fish on this chili and cinnamon flavored Haldorado fluoro soluble pop-up pellet.
Maybe the home of chili, close to the Mexican border also has an effect on the carps living here :) :) :)
Of course we will not give up and try another location tomorrow.
To be continued...