saxmatt
05-12-2012, 07:55 PM
Many New Jersey fisherman don’t realize it, but we live in one of the best locations in the US to fish for carp. Carp fishing is very popular in many places throughout the world, but for the most part these freshwater giants aren’t sought after by many people in our country. In recent years fishing for carp has started to gain popularity in the US, and as carp anglers grow in numbers and discover untapped fisheries more and more reports of great catches begin to surface. In recent years the tidal waters of New Jersey have produced fish of gargantuan proportions. The combination of abundant food sources and the sheer size of these rivers allow carp to grow into true giants. I have been fishing these waters since I moved to New Jersey in 2007 and have seen multiple 40 pound specimens come out of the Hudson, Raritan, and Delaware rivers. These captures over the past few years have put New Jersey on the map in the carp world as a big fish Mecca. I believe we are just scratching the surface of these tidal waters, and many rivers and lakes in the US remain unexplored.
The month of May tends to be the best month of the year to target giant carp. These pre spawn fish are at their heaviest this time of year and eat as much as possible before they spawn. For the past two weeks I have been fishing almost every day in preparation for a carp tournament I’m fishing in Baldwinsville New York later this month. The fishing has been great the past week. I landed a 33.2 pound carp a week ago, my buddy Chirs landed his personal best carp at 38.8 pounds last Sunday, and Attila my fishing partner for the Baldwinsville tournament landed his first 30 of the year on Tuesday. Unfortunately I can’t share the location of the spot and if you can tell by the pictures please don’t post it. We have had problems with groups of people finding our pre baited spots and showing up the next day poaching fish. I’m not talking about taking a few fish home for your family which is fine, I’m talking about people lining the banks with an illegal number of rods and taking our hundreds of pounds of carp in a day to sell at fish markets, and unfortunately nothing is done about it.
Now onto the story of my monster catch. On May 9th last year I landed my personal best carp of 42.2 pounds, and when I woke up Wednesday morning I never would have dreamed I’d catch a 50 on the 1 year anniversary of that capture. This time of year when the water is in the 60s carp tend to love feeding on oats, so I was using a hair rigged oat ball for bait with a mixture of oats and creamed corn molded around my lead. Around 1:00 in the afternoon I had some bumps on my middle rod so I picked it up and the fish was there. It took about 75 yards of line out and I slowly worked it back in. It sat right in front of me swimming back and forth like a dog on a leash for about 20 minutes before I finally got it in the net. When I saw the size of the fish I knew I had something special. I quickly put it in my weigh sling and put it on my scale…55.29 pounds in the sling. I was shocked. Without the sling the fish weighed 53 pounds 12 ounces, smashing the old state record by almost 7 lbs. I had my old scale on me and double checked the weight to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. I got the fish back into the sling, zipped it up, put it back in the water, and called my buddy down to take some pictures. As I was waiting for my buddy I called Mark at fish and game to see if a biologist could come down to the river with a certified scale. He said they couldn’t make it down, and the scale at their office only goes up to 50 lbs. I would have had to kill the fish and find a certified scale somewhere to register the record, but the fish was full of eggs and to me having the genetics of that fish in the river for years to come is much more important than having my name in a book. My friend Donald showed up a few minutes later and after a quick photo shoot the fish was released unharmed. It was truly the fish of a lifetime and one I’ll never forget.
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8007/7184615540_cb08e7335e_b.jpg
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5272/7184615410_61435948b6_b.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7071/7184614750_8ee942edaf_b.jpg
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5446/7184614104_3f255428c4_b.jpg
The month of May tends to be the best month of the year to target giant carp. These pre spawn fish are at their heaviest this time of year and eat as much as possible before they spawn. For the past two weeks I have been fishing almost every day in preparation for a carp tournament I’m fishing in Baldwinsville New York later this month. The fishing has been great the past week. I landed a 33.2 pound carp a week ago, my buddy Chirs landed his personal best carp at 38.8 pounds last Sunday, and Attila my fishing partner for the Baldwinsville tournament landed his first 30 of the year on Tuesday. Unfortunately I can’t share the location of the spot and if you can tell by the pictures please don’t post it. We have had problems with groups of people finding our pre baited spots and showing up the next day poaching fish. I’m not talking about taking a few fish home for your family which is fine, I’m talking about people lining the banks with an illegal number of rods and taking our hundreds of pounds of carp in a day to sell at fish markets, and unfortunately nothing is done about it.
Now onto the story of my monster catch. On May 9th last year I landed my personal best carp of 42.2 pounds, and when I woke up Wednesday morning I never would have dreamed I’d catch a 50 on the 1 year anniversary of that capture. This time of year when the water is in the 60s carp tend to love feeding on oats, so I was using a hair rigged oat ball for bait with a mixture of oats and creamed corn molded around my lead. Around 1:00 in the afternoon I had some bumps on my middle rod so I picked it up and the fish was there. It took about 75 yards of line out and I slowly worked it back in. It sat right in front of me swimming back and forth like a dog on a leash for about 20 minutes before I finally got it in the net. When I saw the size of the fish I knew I had something special. I quickly put it in my weigh sling and put it on my scale…55.29 pounds in the sling. I was shocked. Without the sling the fish weighed 53 pounds 12 ounces, smashing the old state record by almost 7 lbs. I had my old scale on me and double checked the weight to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. I got the fish back into the sling, zipped it up, put it back in the water, and called my buddy down to take some pictures. As I was waiting for my buddy I called Mark at fish and game to see if a biologist could come down to the river with a certified scale. He said they couldn’t make it down, and the scale at their office only goes up to 50 lbs. I would have had to kill the fish and find a certified scale somewhere to register the record, but the fish was full of eggs and to me having the genetics of that fish in the river for years to come is much more important than having my name in a book. My friend Donald showed up a few minutes later and after a quick photo shoot the fish was released unharmed. It was truly the fish of a lifetime and one I’ll never forget.
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8007/7184615540_cb08e7335e_b.jpg
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5272/7184615410_61435948b6_b.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7071/7184614750_8ee942edaf_b.jpg
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5446/7184614104_3f255428c4_b.jpg