next trips

 Yay new post! This one will cover my last week of fishing.


          My fishing week started on Thursday with a trip to Dick's Sporting Goods and Walmart. While at Dick's, I only planned on getting a pack of jigheads (hooks with lead weights molded on to provide weight), but ended up also getting a pack of Berkely Gulp minnows (small soft plastic lures, soaked in powerfully scented juice, that are meant to be used on jigheads). After reading an article from Field and Stream about ultraviolet paint on lures, I really wanted to try it out. So I got a rather expensive Rapala Shad Rap (very similar to the one that I lost in my first post). The thing is that the more I spend, the more I want to spend. So I ended up finding more and more until I had $20 worth of stuff. I knew that I had to cut back, but I decided to go to Walmart- just in case. I really felt like a kid in the candy store by this point, but I managed to control myself and keep it under $10. There was something interesting that I found though. You see, I have a rod with a broken tip, and I found a rod-tip replacement kit. The kit comes with three tips of various sizes, only the smallest of which I could use. When I went to replace the tip, I accidentally broke the end of the rod. Now that I had effectively destroyed my rod, I decided to improvise. I found out that the binding that holds the guides in place is flammable. So I burned it off and tried using a larger guide. Hope my stupid idea pays off.

         The next day I went to Rocky Ford, where the water is now at extremely low levels. I had a feeling that the fishing would be good, and I was right. In three hours I had caught 20 fish, most of them channel catfish which were about fifteen inches long. They hit the new minnows (that I just bought) so hard that the minnows started getting shredded by their mouths. They even bit the tails off.

Picture showing the damage taken by the top minnow compared to what it should look like

        The largest fish was a 22in. channel cat that took about two minutes to fight. I decided to move to Tuttle Creek at 6:30 to try to get at one of the schools of wiper that like to hang out near shore in the evening. I decided to try out my new UV Rapala and in not-too-long, I had a little wiper on the rocks. I then thought "Hey, I should document this for mah blog" (my thought process while fishing is highly informal). I went to get the camera and I turn around to see the fish gone and my lure sitting high and dry on the rock. "O snahp" my brain intelligently remarked. I eventually hooked into two more wiper using the minnows, but I lost far more minnows on the rocks than the number of fish I caught.

       The next day I went out to Tuttle Creek, this time with my dad and the kayak. I started out in the kayak, using my new UV Rapala. I started blindly casting in open water hoping to find a feeding school of wiper. Unfortunately, it didn't work, and I still have not caught a fish from a boat. I started fishing on the bank, and I was soon hooked into a huge blue catfish that took me at least four minutes to land. It was 28in. and weighed 7 pounds. While I was examining it, I found line hanging out of it's mouth. When I pulled it out, the end of the line had a jig that I had used (and lost) yesterday. The fish must have found it on the rocks and liked it enough for a second try.

        This week saw one record broken (biggest blue catfish) and another challenged (fourth most fish caught in one day). And the water isn't even cooling down yet!

*if you go to www.basspro.com and search Rapala Shad Rap, you can see what they look like