thinking maybe the carp would be sticking around the islands and along the river edges.
A few more hours passed and we squeaked out a few small commons and some more gar. We joked throughout the night that our team should have been in the All Out Gar Out.
Even though the first half of the night boasted less than stellar carp results, our team was still smiling thanks to a few large gar and our success on other species, like catfish, that we normally couldn’t shoot in Wisconsin.
It was midnight when Kurt called an audible, “let’s head to the gas station and get the lake map out to pin-point our next spot.” About 15 minutes later we rolled into a second launch (along with about 10 other teams who were having similar success and the same idea).
Unfortunately our move produced similar results to the first spot, lots of gar, shad, bowfin, and only a few small commons. We spent the rest of the first night covering lots of water trying to find a more promising area. The lack of carp really had us scratching our heads.
On Saturday we filled up on Triple R’s Bar-B-Q alongside Team Fruend (also from WI) and those
North Carolina Boys. Then we started preparing for our 2nd night.
We decided to try a brand new spot that we hadn’t scouted at all. Thankfully Saturday’s weather was much nicer than Friday’s, with sunny skies and tempera-tures near 70 degrees.
We hit the new spot by 5pm and rolled right up on carp so thick they were bouncing off the boat.
It wasn’t peak spawn by any means, but it was CARP! I checked the water temperature, and sure enough the water was in the 60s now. We had to resist the temptation to shoot fish for 2 hours until the 7pm start. Need-less to say, our team was pumped!
We fired up the lights at 7pm and we again noticed the same thing: extremely muddy water, this time due to the carp spawning activity.
We rolled over a submerged weed bed and near the bottom we barely caught sight of a school of carp and just like that we had a few decent size commons (just shy of 20lbs) over the edge of the boat, but unfortunately it didn’t last.
We shot some more gar and lots of shad thanks to Kurt. By night’s end we had a decent barrel full, however nothing large
enough to weigh in based on the
Facebook updates we were receiving.
We found the Facebook updates to be very unique. It’s interesting how social media impacted how teams scouted, fished, and what they weighed-in. Without these updates, a lot of time could have been wasted bringing in fish that weren’t competitive.
Let's switch gears to a team that was far more successful. Team Lethal Injection made up by Chas Higdon, Matthew McCrary, Trent Green, and Daegan Phillips hit the water early in the week for a couple of days of scouting.
The team had their boat in the water from sundown to sunrise, marking spots on the GPS when-ever they spotted a large com-mon carp.
Using their kicker motor to cover as much water as possible, the team logged over 20 miles of shoreline prior to the tournament even starting.
After studying these marked locations and discussing their plan of attack for game day, they decided to fish the banks of the main river where fish were hold-ing on rocky points in 4-6’ of water.
Friday night they maneuvered their Blazer 1760 Alweld boat along these banks and the big
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The prize table held treasures from many of the major manufacturers in the bowfishing industry.
14
April, 2015