Freakish fishing

Carrie, D$ and I headed back to the lake Sunday morning for a couple hours of fishing. It was excellent, save for a lot of aggravation with new line on my little collapsible rod. It kept propelling itself off the reel and getting tangled.. Eventually I tied the end of the line from the working reel to the bad reel and wound enough line on there to make do. While I was fighting with my jacked-up reel, Carrie, of course, caught a frickin' monster with some worms. Not quite sure what kind of fish it was, but it was big enough to extend from tips of my fingers a couple inches past my elbow. It had a huge mohawk-like bony protrusion on its head, a little mouth and big scales. Thought it was a catfish at first, but no whiskers. Carrie thinks it might be a little carp. She didn't want to hold it up though.

Update: Dave thinks it might be a freshwater drum, though I think the fish was a bit more narrow than that. I'm also not sure it had that front dorsal fin. Closest ID I've seen is a grass carp, though it doesn't quite have the bony mohawk like Carrie's fish.

(click to see the whole album)

Then D$ caught a bluegill. She was using worms too.

And FINALLY, I caught a fish. I was using a Rapala Shad Rap (shallow runner floating minnow) and kept getting bites but no fishies. Switched to a smaller diving minnow and two casts later this little tiny largemouth bass landed at my feet.

Julia tried to eat the fish, and chased them out in the water after we released them. I think she wanted to be friends with the big freak fish.

Also, here's a map of the lake. We spent all of our time today near the little point just south of the fishing dock.

My camera is broken, and I forgot Carrie's, so all these photos were taken and e-mailed from my camera phone. Nice.