That meant that I fished yesterday which was Friday. It ended up being quite an extraordinary day. I left the Carp Lodge at a casual pace meaning I didn't start fishing until almost 11:00. I returned to my stillwater roots and am so glad I did. It was an exceptional day, simply exceptional. Lots of things go into saying a day of Carp fishing is extraordinary. Certainly catching a good number of fish is at or near the top of the list. It's not always at the top of the list though. Yesterday, I did catch so many Carp that I was weary of reeling them in. My wrists hurt and my left shoulder still hurts. (I have a hard life.)
For a day of Carp fishing to be truly exceptional I want lots of things. I want the opportunity to cast to tailers, grazers, and shoppers. I don't want them all to take. I want some of them to take and it is very important to me to see the take. "The Take is the Premier Moment." I also want clear sky, good visibility in the water, light wind, and warm temperatures. I want to catch a good mix of sizes and I want some of those fish to be large. I don't want to snag any fish and if I do I want them to get off right away.
With the exception of playing two snagged fish all the way to the boat, yesterday I had it all. Everything just came together. It was wonderful.
Still, something else happened to make Friday probably my most extraordinary day of Carp fishing ever. When I got back to The Carp Lodge yesterday evening, I sat down to look through my pictures. I couldn't find my camera. I looked everywhere and realized that somehow I had left the camera at the lake. I was disappointed because there were a lot of fishing pictures from the last few weeks, there were pictures of The Carp Lodge being finished, pictures of my son and his wife helping us assemble IKEA furniture, and pictures of my Mom at her 88 birthday party at our home. I wanted those darn pictures more than I wanted the camera.
Realizing that the camera was "at" the lake meant that Katy and I took a long drive this morning back to the lake to look for the camera. I hoped it would be laying there in the brush where I had collected my gear before putting in the truck. It was NOT there. There were some other boats on the lake. One of them came in pretty fast because he saw us walking near his truck. He wanted to know why we were so interested in his truck. I explained that I had lost my camera and had been parked exactly where he was the day before. I said I was looking on the ground for my wayward camera. He was suspicious of me and I must confess that I was suspicious that he had my camera. Thinking he might I gave him my cell phone number and told him that if he found it later in the day to give me a call. I offered to pay him for it.
Just like clockwork about 2:00 my cell phone rings from someone with a 509, (eastern Washington) area code. I am doing some real estate work over here but I have those numbers in my contact list. My comment to Katy as I picked up the phone was that it was the guys from this morning, they miraculously found my camera, and would sell it to me.
Answering my cell phone as I always do when I don't recognize the caller I said, "Hi, this is Jim." The caller said, "This is Mike; I have your camera." I said, "Oh, you're one of the guys I talked to this morning and you found my camera after I left." Mike said, "No I was just there a couple hours ago, I wasn't there this morning, and I found your camera in about a foot of water." I asked him how on earth he figured out it was my camera if we hadn't talked. He explained that he and his wife went through all of the pictures on the SD card, 341 of them, and one of the pictures was of the IKEA boxes in the garage of The Carp Lodge. We had the boxes delivered so every box had a label. He could read my name on one of the labels so he Googled it. He found my real estate web page which has my phone number, my Facebook page and this blog. I was speechless. He even offered to mail me the camera. Can you believe it?!! I still can't.
The camera is a Pentax Optio W80. It is not the newest, jazziest model out there but it works for me. It is also waterproof. The manufacturer advertised at the time I purchased it that it can be under 6 feet of water for up to 30 minutes and still remain waterproof. They didn't say anything about how long it could be under one foot of water.
Katy and I drove to Mike's home; we spent most of the day in the truck. For Mike to have looked through my 341 pictures the card still had to be dry. The camera came on and it still takes pictures! The case stinks like lake mud and the spare battery is toast. But that darn camera sat in 12 inches of water for 22 hours. 22hours! And it still works.
Okay, I got to cast to tailers, grazers, and shoppers. Many of them did not take due to my bad casting or just because they are Carp and they don't like flies landing near them. Some of them did take, enough that I knew I could have caught at least a couple more but I was just too tired. I got to see them take and that is such a thrilling part of Carp fishing. The sky was clear, the water visibility was pretty good, there was only light wind, and it was a warm day. I got a good mix of sizes with three of them being under 10 pounds and three of them being over 17. The rest were mostly 12-15 pounds. I also got three Mirrors which is very unusual.
Oh, and did I mention that my camera sat in a foot of water for a day, some guy I never met found it, and then he found me of all things. Now that's an extraordinary day of fishing. You know, getting my camera back to me was a small thing in the grand scheme of things but it made it not just an extraordinary day of fishing but, on a simple level, an extraordinary day of life.
Oh, I did catch some fish yesterday and here are a few pictures. Pictures from my camera that spent a night in the lake.
that sounds like a better day than ive ever had! if i found your camera i would have only returned it if you gave me some fishing lessons. congratulations, you are an amazing fisherman (and a lucky one at that)
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