Fatties All Around....

So I finally broke my slump and landed a nice fish, despite a whole mess of tangled lines and messed up rods. Here's how I remember it.... Brandon had hooked into a big ol' fish ten minutes earlier and it was givin' him a real nice fight. Then it decided to run in hot and ended up wrappin' the line around the others that were still in the water. After gettin' him up and off the hook, we snapped a couple of pics, let em go, and tried to undo the rats nest we had been left with. The jokes about getting a monster fish while everything was still all tangled up were out there, and we just tried to get it all straightened out as fast as possible. We were slowly making our way through it, and all of the sudden one of the rods started bending toward the water. I snatched it up and felt the heavy swimmin' on the other end, so I gave her hell and set the hook. I reeled two or three times, and then it just stopped. I tried again and nothin'. I looked up and saw that I had probably twenty yards of line from three different poles all wrapped up around the tip of my rod and pulled down into my reel by now. I could still feel the fish swimmin' so I dropped the pole and grabbed the line and stated pullin' it in by hand. It was comin' in super easy so figured it was on the small side, and I just kept pullin'. I got it right under me and hoisted it up and out of the water, it was all wrapped in line and hooked only through the whisker....And it was hooked with a line that was not the line that I set in the first place. If that can give you any idea as to just how tangled our lines were, I managed to set a hook on a line that wasn't even tied to the hook that ended up in the fish. That is some luck, I ain't gonna lie, but hey, in a pinch, I'll take it anyway I can get it.

I think this picture sort of illustrates both the mess of lines we had on our hands and the lucky ass hookset I managed to get. The green line was the line that I set the hook with....

These are the two that Andy and Brandon had caught the night before, all from different parts of the river. So, fatties all around, I guess.

The Rats...

Here we are...minus a couple.

Wait For It.....Wait For It

Oh, The Carnage

The not-so-pretty side, but damn, that is a sweet picture of a big ol bloody carp.

All The Pics....

Hey, if you like fishin' as much as Andy here likes his sheephead, you can see a whole mess of other photos here.

Odds & Ends

Gimme a kiss...

Channel Catfish.....
Ictalurus punctatus

"Um, I think I got me a walleye, fellas..."

This here is the first walleye we've seen at this particular spot, and to think that Andy wasn't gonna get out that night...
Sander vitreus vitreus

The Clinic is Still On....

Like I said before, Brandon kept raising the bar, and he just simply could not stop catching fish...

As frustrating as it was, sitting in a slump, it sure is nice to see some nice ass fish coming out of the river. Here's Brandon with his monster channel....What is Up!!!!!!!

Snapper....

I fell into a slump for a couple of days, and all I could do was look on as Brandon kept on catchin' fish. I think when I landed this fella, I ended my dry spell, but I don't think that he was all that happy about it.

The Clinic is Open....

We switched up the tactics, and Brandon just kept killin' it. The fish keep gettin bigger....

Logs....

Brandon got this one.....

And this one here is all mine....

Zack Learns A Valuable Lesson...

Zack had told us that this was the first fish he had caught in like 15 years...we had tried to explain about the sharp fins and barbs on little cats...and then we told him he could throw it back.

He gave it a big 'ol football throw, and it looks like the fish got the better of him. That shit don't hurt, man.

Nic's First Fish.....

I don't even know what to say....He caught that one and then he got this.....

French Kiss....

Nic's family hosted a French foreign exchange student this summer and we got 'em down to the river. Theibeaux gets lucky with a nice little carp....He caught a couple of fish, like this nice little smallie right here....

Andy's Monster Carp....

Here's the hand off...Right before this happened, we were all getting ready to go. Then all the sudden, Andy started mumblin' sumthin' about sumthin'....All he had to say was "Hey, guys, I think I have a fish...." After about five minutes, (which felt like an eternity)and some serious fightin', Andy had backed up some twenty or thirty feet from the shore and halfway into the woods. And this is what he came up with...

No scale but I'd say about twenty pounds.

River life ain't that easy I guess. I know for a fact that the carp is highly revered in many cultures and for many different reasons. This one here proves that the carp is hard-handed and tenacious, to say very least.

Gettin' Bigger....

Brandon started raisin' the bar sometime in July. I was just tryin' to keep up.

Smokin' Bullhead....

Mikey and friend....

Writing 'bout all this.....

I will hopefully get around to filling in all the gaps eventually. The fishing is more important than the writing right now, and I think I will let the pictures speak for themselves. Catchin' fish is what it is all about, and that is what we will be doing, at least until the ice comes....

Some New Fishin' Buds...

For me, alot of the magic is in the simple fact that we can sit on a river, taking in a magnificent view of downtown, and have all of this around us. Ducks and geese, beavers and muskrats swimmin' by, owls and bats and herons....it's unbeatable.

Some Sweet Ass Close Ups....

Whaddup....

Lil flathead....Pylodictis olivaris...otherwise known as yellow cats, opelousas, mud cats and shovelhead cats....

Cool lookin' photo of a little channel cat

Ugly....and beautiful...and ugly again....the Common or European Carp...Cyprinus carpio

Did I Say A Mess of Fish...

Freshwater Drum...A.K.A. sheephead, sheepshead, shepherd's pie, silver bass, gray bass, grinder, Gasper goo, Gaspergou, grunt, grunter, and croaker. Aplodinotus grunniens..

We were all just catchin' a mess of fish. And we were all catchin' a little bit of everything, bullheads and smallies, cats and carp, even some sunnies for good measure. It's just kind of a potluck at the river, you never really know what you're gonna end up with, but you know for sure you're gonna end up with somethin'.