Counting Fish Can Be Like Weighing Fish

What is a "full day" of fishing?

I'm 62 years old; I'm in good shape but that has to be qualified with saying that I didn't start out with a Russell Wilson, Lebron James, Michael Jordan sort of body.  There was a time when I could fish for 10 or 12 hours.  I can fish for 8 hours now but only if I'm in my boat.  Six to seven hours is about as much as I want to do when I am wading for Carp.  When I am catching a lot of fish during one of these longer sessions I think I may get a little fuzzy on just how many I actually caught.  It's all good; I feel incredibly blessed.

Committing myself to getting video of "the take" this year has been intimidating.  I fished a couple Wednesdays ago and posted a report about it.  I kind of eased into recording again by carrying the camera on Wednesday but not turning it on.  I fished the next day, Thursday, and had the video camera going most of the session.  In the interest of fairness and full disclosure I was in a target rich environment most of the day.  There is no other way to catch a lot of Carp on the fly.  To catch a lot of fish there has to be a lot of fish available.  Period.

I only saw a couple fish the first half hour.  I moved down the reservoir and then I started seeing a heck of a lot of fish.  When I spooked the fish near me I didn't have to move far to find more.  If I changed my tippet they came and found me.  I got a lot of shots on this day.

There is a lot of discussion or even overt criticism in the blogosphere about estimating the weight of Carp.  Nothing settles how much a Carp weighs like a scale does.

If I catch 4 or 5 fish in a session it is easy to remember how many I caught; heck I can even remember each individual fish.  When I start to catch a lot of fish and I'm not focused on counting, by the end of the day it is  an estimate of how many I caught.  I really think I'm a pretty good estimator of how many fish I have caught in a day.

This day I worked hard to get video of "the take".  I had the camera on for most of my casts.  When the day was over I felt I had the camera off during four takes.  I estimated that I had recorded about 12 takes making a total of about 16 fish.  When I got back to the Carp Lodge and went through the videos of the take I realized I had recorded 16 of them.  Add the four or five I didn't have the camera on for and I was up to 20 fish.

It turns out recording the takes is like weighing fish.  It sure settles how many I got.  By no means am I saying I always underestimate my numbers but I will say I was surprised to be so far off on my estimate.  Heck, maybe I've caught way more Carp these last 10 years than I thought I had.  Maybe I have had 20% more fun than I realized I did.  But wait, what if I have overestimated some days?  Hell, it probably all evens out and I have had exactly as much fun as I thought I have had.  What a relief.

It was simply a wonderful day of Carp fishing.  The sky was clear, there was only light wind, and there were Carp visible.  Oh, and they took Black Betty like it was some of the best grub they had seen in days.

Here is a video of one of the takes from that day.  Damn, I love Carp fishing!