Another big carp fishing with my boilies

Took out another customer for a guided carp fishing outing yesterday. As he prefers to remain anonymous, I won't mention his name, nor post any pictures of him. My customer hasn't done much carp fishing in recent years, as he moved here from Eastern Europe about 20 years ago, and has been quite busy setting up and managing a successful business. As he gets on in life, he decided to get back into fishing. After finding me online, he decided to try carp fishing in Canada for the first time.

Got started shortly after 9:00 AM, found some people fishing on my first spot of choice, so we picked a spot further away so as not to interfere with them.

Set up two lines, one with hazelnut vanilla cream boilies, the other with garlic pepper boilies. Added some PVA boilie stringers, with a fair amount of baiting 12mm and 16mm boilies in the same flavors to the spots I cast to.

My customer wanted to see how it's done before attempting to hook and land a carp, I and grabbed the first rod to go off, which took about 1/2 hour. landed the carp within a couple minutes, a small 10 lbs carp. My customer missed the hookset on the next carp about 10 minutes later, but made up for it by hooking and landing the following carp, a good 15-16 lbs. Next carp cut him off in the rocks, followed by a hit from a very small fish that spit the hook, probably a channel catfish.

Being from Eastern Europe, my customer decided to keep the first couple carp for the table. He mentioned a couple different recipes they use, and eventually proceed to start the big job of cleaning the fish when the bite slowed down. He came well equipped with a giant cutting board, oversize cooler with ice, filet knife, etc. As he was cleaning his fish, one of the rods went off, so I grabbed it to set the hook. I offered him the rod, he declined and told me to keep fighting the fish. Brought it on shortly after, a nice 26 lbs female.

I'm a firm believer in selective harvest, especially when it comes to carp. I always suggest that my clients release carp over 15 lbs, though the choice is ultimately up to them. He was debating whether or not to let it go or keep it for it's roe, which I guess is highly valued by some people originating from that part of the world. I could see that he was struggling with his decision, but he made the "proper" choice and decided to release the big carp. I revived it, and it swam off nicely. She will surely grow bigger, and hopefully, I'll meet her again when she's put on a few pounds.