I caught a new pb yesterday on the river. I know there is blood in the pic, but fishy did survive. I also had two smaller ones, Ill put them to good use .
23# and about 35" when measured right. As usual, I was the lonly fisherman and I am not in the pic. I don't seem to ever catch anything when I have people around anyway.

congrats, thats a fat bastage!

Very nice fish!

nice job!

Yeah, definitely a nice fat one especially being a summer fish.

Congrats!

Nice carp! Congrats on the PB. With any luck you'll catch a PB of another kind on the smaller fish hehe.

The Sabine is a pretty amazing body of water, huge fish from it and all it's related water bodies and drainage's.

Nice little pig there. Looks like the tail has an old injury, gar snacks maybe?

Nice catch Dawson.

very nice

good stuff Dawson

Nearly every fish I catch down there has some kind of injury or tail damage. Therea are a number of things that can cause it, gar bites being one of them. There are trotlines up and down both banks, most of them still have hooks on them. This could cause damage, espeacially during the spawnn when the fish get "drunk" and swim around the bank rapidly. Also, it is full of snags, some of them are pretty nasty looking, as you can see this fish hit them a few times on the way in. The time before when I was down there I saw a 5-8# carp floating down the river that had the section from the vent on towards the tail missing. That could be gar, alligator or maybe even the fish died on a trot line and was chewed by turtles. There were alligator tracks in my swim this time. Rawr! About the size of my palm, minus the fingers.

I need a servicable big fish net, how much am I looking at? I would prefer one that doesn't cut the fins since I do release some fish. I don't use a net right now, just fingers. Used a bucket to get the last fish of the day, but that is going to cut it on some of the fish that this river holds, and I don't mean the gar.

your looking at 60$-100 for a good net with fish friendly netting

nice catch Dawson

Dawson I like the net from Scorpion Tackle. It has a wide opening to net large fish (largest we've netted in one is about 25lbs) and has a long handle (probably every bit of 4 feet or so) and will run you about $70 shipping included.