Traditionally we do this trip on the long weekend in May, but with new schedules we had to put it off. With a somewhat of a last minute decision Birdee, Ariel and I made the trek down the 401 to the mighty St. Lawrence River.
We always stay at the campsite along the Long Sault Parkway as it allows us to get setup for Carp right on the site and sit back and relax. This trip is more about relaxing with the odd interruption from a grazing Carp.
Being that it was mid-week the camping areas were virtually barren. Another nice perk to having mid-week days off! We were setup and fishing by 6 on the Monday night. A quick trip to the local Chip Stand to taste the local cuisine was in order so that put a dent in our fishing time but filled our bellies nicely.
We weren’t back long when we banked our first, Ariel with the honours.
Now I knew things would be a lot different than our May trips of the past. There was a giant milfoil weedline out front of us now that made for some tricky fishing at times. Also I expected the larger female Carp we’d see in the spring would be long gone. Sadly I was correct, but we didn’t care!
I snapped up the next one as Birdee was busy with something at the time.
We settled in for the evening and had the fire rolling.
We pulled lines around 9, sat out for a bit then hit the hay. The girls read while I began to saw logs apparently!
The next morning I woke and set the lines out, I was shocked to see it was 9 when I woke. I haven’t slept until 9 in years! It wasn’t long before the Carp were frolicking over our bed of corn. For baiting the area we use simple hydrated whole corn. We bait the area heavily with the use of a baitchucker that allows us to bait out to about 75 feet, plenty for this area.
On the business end, I use a few different setups on my hair rig. Usually it is this setup, two floating corn bits and two pieces of real corn.
Throughout the day we landed 6 of the 9 fish we had take us for a run. They would bury themselves in that weedbed and being forced to pull them from it led to some hook pulls. Ah well.
Some of the highlights.
We hardly kept count of the amount of fish we caught over the few days because it really didn’t matter. Some relaxing family time was just what the doctor ordered!
