Fishing big carp with home made boilies

A pair of visiting Americans hired me to take them out to fish carp for the day. With the weather on a warming trend and some rain on the forecast, I was hoping the carp fishing would warm up as well.

The 3 of us fishing together would allow me to test some new boilie recipes I cooked up a few weeks ago.
During the outing, we fished 3 home made boiles, and 1 store bought boilie. The contrast in flavor and scent mixes was very noticeable.

Cory has fished quite often in the past, though he'd never caught any carp. His cousin Ismael had never been fishing, so he'd never caught a fish in his life. I was determined to change that...

Got the lines set up about 9:30 AM, using a garlic boilie, maple boilie and cocoa/vanilla cream boilie. These boilies were all home made. Fishing was extremely slow, no surfacing, not a fish in sight. Eventually switched the cocoa/vanilla cream boilie for a store bought Scopex boilie.

First hit came around noon, on my home made maple boilie. Cory landed his first evercarp, a nice 25 lbs female.

The bite died down again. Around 1 hour later, I noticed some surfacing starting in the shallows. After 45 minutes, we decided to move over an set are lines up in the shallows. When we got there, I notced dozens of carp just under the surface. Surprisingly, they weren't spooked at all, despite my casting right near them with hefty sinkers. They didn't even flinch when I catapulted boilies directly in front of them.

Unfortuantely, they weren't feeding, they seemed quite happy just under the surface, probably warming up with the increasing temperature. After 2 hours of nothing but some accidetal line bumps, we moved to our 3rd spot, as the wind had picked up, and my guests were starting to get a taste of Canadian spring. We set up out of the wind around 4:00 PM, using home made cocoa/vanilla cream and garlic boilies, as well as the store bought Scopex boilie.

Sure enough, the garlic boilie caught the next fish around 5:30 PM. It was Ismael's first time ever holding a fishng rod, and he handled it very well for a rookie. Unlike the first one, this carp gave a spectacular fight, Ismael kept his cool and brought it to shore. Landed the big female, she weighed in at 24 lbs.

Now that's a great catch for anyone's first ever fishing outing, the 2 cousins are extremely thrilled with their first visit to Canada!

I was glad to show them what carp fishing in Canada can be like, and although the numbers weren't what I had hope for, the sizes of the catches exceeded my expectations. Also thrilled about the success rate I've been having with home made boilies.

With the pike opener tomorrow, looks like I'll be switching target species for my next outing.