TheOkieAngler.com

I was hanging out with Dad over Father’s Day and he informed me I was being called out by an 8 year old…

My Dad is in sales and was visiting one of his feed store customers in a small OK town last week (which will remain nameless, figure it’s probably not a good idea to offend my ol’ man’s customers) when someone brought up fishing. My dad mentioned I was really into carp fishing these days and the store owner’s son (the 8yr old) immediately chimmed in “Hey! I know a great carp recipe, wanna hear it?” Obviously the reponse was “Well sure… let’s hear it.”

The kid continued:

“Well, it’s hard, but first you clean it up real good. Then you put it on some cardboard and season it up so it won’t taste so fishy. Once you’ve seasoned it up the way you like it……… throw away the fish and eat the cardboard!! Why’s he fishin’ for carp anyway!?”

True story. Wonder if he’ll ever come around?

After spending quite a bit of time on the water the past couple weeks, I figured I needed to tone things down a touch and spend a little more quality time with Reese. I managed to get a guilt free fishin’ pass on Thursday though… an opportunity that DEMANDS to be taken advantage of!

I’ve been wanting to scout out a few new areas I’ve been hearing about (stay tuned!), but I decided to stop off at my favorite local golf course pond to get in a big fish fix. It had been over a week since I had seen the backing on my reel; obviously chasing down some big carp and/or catfish was in order. The LMFR wild rainbows were a treat, don’t get me wrong… but there’s something addictive about hearing your reel scream and finding bruises on your stomach from fighting fish.

The water was a couple feet lower than the last time I had seen the pond and the fish weren’t feeding in any of the areas where I had seen them before. I only had a couple of hours to fish and was worried I was going to strike out. I kept walking along the bank and found some promising activity in the form of a tail flicking around above the surface. I figured it was a carp, but upon closer inspection it turned out to be one of these:

Cat tailing along the bank

He had his head buried under the edge of the bank most of the time, giving me a great chance to get above him and highstick/dap a crawfish imitation (headstand) right next to his face. He didn’t look twice, grabbed it almost immediately and was off to the races.  He wasn’t a monster but still managed to put a solid bend in the rod.

Meow

I didn’t have too much success following the catfish so I took off to a different area of the pond… Spotted a shadow moving around a few feet off the bank. I tossed one about a foot in front of his nose and hoped it was a big carp. Gave it a few strips and saw the shadow turn… set the hook and the water exploded. He went on a decent initial run, but began running 30-40ft back and forth along the bank with an occasional run into deeper water. I wasn’t sure what I was hooked into until I was able to finally drag him in close.

Throwing off a nice vortex... headed on another run

He wasn’t a monster, but the fight lasted long enough to put a few bruises on my stomach and for a few different groups of golfers to finish the hole I was fishing near. I don’t know that I’ll ever get tired of catching these fish.

Sayin' hi