With the kids off from school for passover vacation, and a warm sunny afternoon in the forecast, I took my 15 and 9 year old sons for their first outing of the year. As usual, we hit my early season spot for some ice out carp fishing.
While my bait of choice for catching carp in near freezing water temperatures are normally my fireball boilies, I was not able to use them for this outing, due to passover restrictions. My next best choice was frozen corn, which would limit me to fishing a bit closer to shore than I typically would.
We headed to my spot in Ontario, where I was able to take advantage of the new rule allowing for up to 3 lines per person while carp fishing, instead of one. While were were technically allowed 9 rods between 3 of us, I was fine putting out 4 lines to keep things manageable.
Arriving shortly after 11:00 am, I got set up within 1/2 hour or so. I put out two of my standard 12 foot carp rods, and two shorter 8 foot rods, making it easier for my younger son to fight any carp that may hit those.
The ice was still thawing across the river bank, so water temps was quite close to freezing.
About 2 hours into the outing, one of the shorter rods went off. Was very nice to have the bite alarm singing with the first run of the year. I set into the carp, and coached my 9 year old son through much of the fight, though he still needed a bit of help. Luckily for him, carp are sort of lethargic when water temperature is that cold. He landed the 18 lbs carp within a couple minutes, with my 15 year old son on the net.
One hour or so later, the same rod went off. This time, my 15 year old was up. He did a fine job fighting the fish, as he is well experienced by now. I netted the bigger carp, which weighed in at 22 lbs.
After a couple more hours, we got another run. This time, it was my turn. Not much of a fight from this smaller carp on a 12 foot rod, probably in the 10 to 12 lbs range, didn't bother weighing it.
Having all caught our first carp, I didn't bother sticking around, as the kids were getting hungry. We headed home happy with our successful carp fishing trip....
After some unsuccessful carp fishing outings closer to home in much colder water, I headed back to Ontario with my friend Warren, hoping to put him onto his first carp of the season.
Again, we took advantage of the new regulations, setting up 5 lines for carp between both of us. Baited with a variety of corn, boilies and popups, I was curious to see which would do better. Sure enough, my fireball boilies and sweet dream boilies got hit first as expected. After fumbling on the first fish and a couple missed runs, Warren finally landed his first carp of the year, a chunky 21 lbs female.
I followed up with a smaller carp that hit just as Warren was releasing his. Low teens, I didn't bother with the pic.
Warren hooked the next carp, this one put up a bit of a better fight, and ended up weighing just over 20 lbs.
I ended the outing off with this decent mid teens carp.
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