Erick S, and Erick M went on a pre-birthday session for Erick M, and this is in short what happened. We arrived at the lake about 4pm friday, and located some deeper water (12'-15') and put out about 150lbs of maize and seed mix along with about 5lbs of boilies.

Not much happened until after midnight; however things went ballistic after that, the temperature dropped to high forties by night, and halted the fish for a bit until the temp had risen again. Our hookbaits ranged from bottom bait maize, pop up maize, and boilies; however after hearing how well Richard had done on artificial baits I decided to order some and give them a try, and to my surprise the glugged artificial baits out fished regular maize and boilies (significantly.)

Erick S was reluctant to try artificial baits; however after banking 5 to his two carp plus one catfish, the difference was clear! I'm not trying to endorse a product, or brand; however with the presence of turtles artificial baits gave me much surety that the hookbait was always present.

We were set up between two boat docks with little room for any fish handling error, my 3.5tc Chimera's were put to the test on each fish. During our second night I lost a fish in a wake buoy, the whole situation was sickening. The fish was exhausted and wrapped around twice, every now and then the buoy would lunge, I was determined to not let this happen again. The only solution was to kayak out to the fish and attempt to net it; however upon doing this I noticed how bad off it was and decided to just remove the hook and let it go, and then clean the excess line from the buoy. This was the best option and I felt content knowing that I didn't get a pic, but the carp wasn't just left to rip the hook from it's mouth, after this I just kind of paddled back to the bank expressed myself with some four lettered words, and got right back to it.

The following morning saw us with about 6 more fish, and only two being below 20. Erick S now had a fish wrapped around the buoy, being cavalier, and upset over the last fish I decided to go in after it. At first the water was about chest height, but then dropped steeply at the buoy, I could see a 20+ fish tethered right below me, whilst treading water I swung the lead core around the buoy and freed it, freezing my a$$ off and nearly becoming entangled myself, I realized how awesome that moment was.I truly believe many card carrying PETA members would have found appreciation in this move.

Fishing stayed steady the remainder of the trip, on the very last night I had few bleeps and steady run, the fish surged towards the buoy but didn't entangle itself, then made a far run to the right and was pinning my braid to a boathouse beam, I had figured this would be the worst of it until it made a steady straight run to deeper water, I eventually lost the fish to a hook pull, but after seeing it surface a couple times, I'm almost afraid to even guess at the weight I believed it was. Being beaten and battered after two and a half solid days fishing we opted to just take the evening off and go out to eat with my parents, and have a few drinks and look over the photos and take care of ourselves instead of the fish.





[img]http://www.flickr.com/photos/90519941@N00/5094466137/[/img]

[img]<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/90519941@N00/5094464909/" title="IMG_3883 by ericksname, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4126/5094464909_a923a9e618.jpg" width="500" height="333" alt="IMG_3883" /></a>[/img]

















[img]http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa410/theerick45/IMG_3906.jpg[/img]

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Edited to fix photo tags

great session Eric!!

Thanks, there's more.

[img][IMG]http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa410/theerick45/IMG_3884.jpg[/img][/img]

Sounds like a cold yet good session

great session guys!

erick (smaller eric. s?m?), i may be wrong but i feel like ive met you before?

Very cool!
I have also been tempted to try artificials.

Erick S, is Erick Salazar. He isn't on the TFF but I fish with him regularly. Where do you think we've met?

over at the hostel on LBL in austin.

Nice kippers Erick'S Thanks for sharing your successes!!

or maybe ive seen pictures of you before and just met a guy who looks like you? are you from the UK?

I don't believe I've ever been to the hostel? I haven't fished LBL in ages, since maybe 2002? It's possible we've met elsewhere, I've been in and out of Austin for a bit.

wow looks like a lot of great fish in that session.

Some nice fish guys, well done!

Nice Session. Well Done.

Chad

Great stuff Erick(s)!