cool responses, thanks folks

Way cool pics, especially that nice flathead

here's a carp story so don't read it if you have something better to do…..

I once worked where the back wall of my office was a slider door that led to a balconey abover a big local river. Straight down to the edge of the river, coworkers fed ducks while I smoked ciggy butts and with my trusty polorazied shades I watched the carp under the ducks. Got to thinkin….

People throw food, ducks show up and eat most everything, carp follow in and hope for scraps. Most the carp that come in shallow are no big deal, maybe a few 5-10 pounders. But, with my shades I can see that the real tankers never come in the shallow water, they stop following the school into shallow water at the drop, why I don't know. But there are some occassional glimpses of REALLY big fish. The ducks ond smaller carp eat up all the crackers and bread as soon as it hits the water. But those big shadows, they got me thinkin….

So I go the local dollar store and buy a bunch of cans of the cheapest possible canned dog food, about a quarter a can. I begin feeding the carp twice a day from my office, when I arrive and when I leave. Dollar can opener and a table spoon to heave the dog food out in big chunks. The ducks scamble but the chunks sink and they can't find then as the current rolls the chow into the deep. The ducks have a real hard time with the sinking and slowly exploding hungs of dog food. Fine, part of the plan. I want the tanker carp to get the food as it rolls into the deeper water. And guess what…

After 2 weeks of feeding the fish I come back with my daughter we're wearing hip boots 'cause we gotta stand in deep muck fishing from that side of the river. We're into the fish right away but we can't land anything big. I brought steelhead rods with heavier line but the prob is that the fish are straightening out our hooks. We stop early 'cause we can't bring in any big fish.

Next day we arrive with one main rod, my jig/creature musky rod loaded with 40#PP and very small (#12, #14?) 3X hooks I use on pike tip-ups. As we become covered in mud and just a couple leaches my daughter proceeds to catch a few carp around 10#. No prob, the drag is needed at times but she knows what to do. So we take a few pics, we're gettin muddy, the fish keep coming and folks are starting to stand on the far shore to watch her. Cars are stopping over there. Then she hooks a big one.

This kid* can fish. She can fish spooky good. And the fish itself was a great fight, 30 minutes of singing line pointed up and down the river with a crowd of people cheering on the far bank. We had it to the shore a couple times and at the net it would turn and run up or down river for 30-50 yards, then the fight to bring her in would start all over again. More cars are stopping on the other side of the river to find out what's the hap?

Well we finally netted her carp, we figure somehwre between 20 and 25#. The folks on the far bank were cheering, no shit, as we were taking pictures, but they went silent as we released the fish.

I have hard copy pic here and will try to post a copy but I have a hard time w/ pics so…

Thanks!

* This is not your average kid around the water. The only turtle she can't catch, no matter how big the turtle or how nasty the mire, is a bigger leatherback. And the only time she can't get them is when they outswim her in open water, they simply swim faster than she can. But otherwise….

You can be near the water and someone says, "Wow, look at the size of the head on that turtle!?" we all look out at a big snapper and the next thing you hear is a big splash, my daughter is after that turtle. Her favorites for sure are the big bad snappers. They just go to ground and all she has to do is go down to the bottom, determine north and south, then grab and wrestle them to the surface and then swim the angry turtle back to shore. You can hear the turtle hissing and see the big white mouth snapping as she somehow swims backards until her feet hit the bottom.

She brings 'em home, checks them out for a while, then turns them loose in the lake in front of the house. One Fourth of July she let one go so big the neighbors came over to complain, all the small kids and dogs and such in the area, right? So I told her and she watched the lake for a while from the deck. Then she calmly walked down the shoreline and out on a neighbor's pier and into the water, jeans, shirt, tennis shoes, just walked off the pier. 14 years old. Swam out to where she last saw the turtle, dove down a few times then caught and dragged that big snapper turtle back to shore once again. Dragged it home past 50 neighbors and holiday guests and asked, "Well, what now, Dad?"

We let it go in a nearby swamp. Then she pulled off a few leaches and asked when we were going to go walleye fishing again. (Rachel won the DnR Walleye Division a few years ago; she pulled a 30"+ walleye from 30' deep on 3# test line.)

Thanks guys, especialy the laugh out loud on yers, Jim. Funny. I am proud of all my kids.