Need I say more?
London, Ontario Carp Fishing
Today Gillian and I decided to head down the street to the river and see if we could catch some carp. There are several spots that I have seen carp swimming around in so I was confident we would find some fish. As soon as we arrived I threw out several handfuls of corn and then we got our equipment ready and started to fish. There were carp in the area within minutes. Despite several ducks stealing the corn, Gillian had a fish on within 20 minutes!
Armed with a Quantum 20 PTi and an UglyStik (a combo I refer to as beauty and the beast) she was caught off guard when line started peeling off the reel. The drag screamed as the fish headed down stream. I quickly realized her drag was set really light since I had last used it for walleye up at LV. After a huge run, I looked down at her reel and could see that the bottom of the spool was fast approaching, Gillian was a step ahead of me though and was already starting to head down the shore in chase.
She was quickly running out of room and needed to scale down a 6 foot wall to get to the shore in order resume her chase. Being nearly 7 months pregnant, this was not an option – she handed me the rod, and I jumped down the wall as the last few strands of line were about to unravel. I grabbed the line and pulled, turning the carp. I quickly adjusted the drag by this time Gillian had found her way down the wall, so I handed her back the rod. The fish was now in the current and despite a legendary effort, Gillian could not get him to move. After several minutes he charged back up stream and Gillian was able to gain back some line. Finally we had a good look at the fish, a solid 7-8lbs – A very nice sized carp for this area of the river. She slipped on a glove and held the fish for a quick photo and a release as a small crowd watched from the top of the wall.
Thirty minutes later it was my turn. I watched a small carp moving straight toward my bait and I held on tight expecting another epic battle. I was using my ultralight rod (5’2 UglyStik) with 10lb powerpro. I set the hook and….nothing . The carp flipped and flopped a couple times and I was able to grab it within a minute. Quite a disappointment after seeing how hard Gillian’s carp fought. We called it a day shortly after, but we were both very pleased that both of us landed a fish. The carp pupulatiosn are healthy and strong here in London, unlike the fish in Lake Scugog.
The first in-utero fish!! My baby boy has got an early start!
Little Vermilion Pike Meet Clive’s Custom Spinnerbaits
If you haven’t read our Little Vermilion Lake 2007 fishing logs, prepare to get pumped up in preparation for reading it! Most of you know by now that Clive has been building his own custom in-line spinnerbaits, not to mention fishing with them almost non-stop, and there is a good reason for that. His lures have been catching fish everywhere he goes, bass, muskie, even a few pike at Toronto Islands.
It is undoubtedly even more exciting to catch a trophy pike on a lure you only built the night before, but the idea of having the ability to build a lure on-the-spot for the conditions your currently fishing is unheard of. Not to mention that when one of the pike at Little Vermilion Lake was hooked very deep Clive simply cut his lure in half and rebuilt it in less than 5 minutes right on the water. I was very impressed.
Without further delay, may I present to you our first of many videos from Little Vermilion Lake. In this video Clive shows off a few of the many fish he caught on his custom lures, none of the fish shown were caught on anything else, and how he rebuilt his lure after having to cut it in half so he didn’t injure the pike needlessly. I think this could very well be the longest video we’ve done so far, and I think it goes without saying that we couldn’t put together a video without at least one of those trophy northerns from Little Vermilion Lake.
I should also point out that Clive gave this lure away to an OFN’er we met on the dock as we were just leaving Little Vermilion. I hope the lure did just as well for him, and I really hope to see some photos and hear his thoughts. So if you’re that guy please contact us!
Of course not everyone has the time to build their lures, or the money for the initial sets of hardware. Still, I’m sure you’d like to get your hands on one of these trophy producing lures and maybe you can. If you’re seriously interested in these lures leave a comment here or email Clive and let him know. I’m sure we’ll see an article all about building custom lures from Clive, and maybe even a price list of some sort in the near future.
Finally, for those of you who would rather see that video again in full resolution (and with better audio) you can download it from our site.
Clive’s Custom Spinnerbaits – Vermilion Lake 2007 (Xvid, 720×480, 128kbps audio, 100MB)
The Full Report – Little Vermilion Lake 2007
I’m sure that everyone has been patiently awaiting the second half of our report from Sportsmans Lodge on Little Vermilion Lake, but you aren’t going to get it today… Instead, we’ve rewritten the entire thing, added some more of our story, more photos, and fixed some of the photos that we posted were for the wrong days (camera’s internal date was a day off). So with all those fixes, and more Little Vermilion content on it’s way, you are now free to read the entire Little Vermilion Lake 2007 Fishing Fury report.
Re: World Record Pike