last day of fishing for a few weeks

so tomorrow i am getting two inguinal hernias surgically fixed and my recovery time is 3-8 weeks. knowing id be out for a while i tried my best to have the last few days of fishing till the surgery be good trips. i kinda failed at that. most of them i got completely skunked. aside from a few small browns and sauger i didnt catch much of anything. i made it out for one last day and stuck a little closer to home. this spot is really where i should have been going in the first place.


there were shad surfacing everywhere in the thousands so i threw a bare treble hook on my fly rod and instantly had bait. i put the wounded shad on one of my lines and corn on the other. within minutes the line with the shad got a solid bite. the fish felt pretty heavy so i was expecting a catfish. to my suprise it was a very large drum.

i really wish i got better pictures. this doesn't do the fish justice.

for a while during the day i couldn't even rebait my cutbait line because i was getting too much action on the corn. i didn't really take much for pics because none of the carp were all that big but i must have easily caught 20 of the things in only a few hours of fishing.

average carp from the spot

after a while the carp slowed down so i had time to go snag another shad and bait up my second rod. i got a shad of about 5 inches chopped it in half and threw the bait into the middle of the channel. about 30 minutes later i got a bite. very strong fish so i was thinking flathead. as i got the fish closer it came launching into the air and revealed itself. a lake sturgeon and a pretty good one. i waded out to about my waist in the water and attempted to grab it by the tail to land it. ive done this before but not with one this big. the fish had other plans and shot between my legs. i managed to pull off the whole "stand on one foot rod through the legs 180 degree turn" maneuver and luckily it worked and i didnt snap my rod. my next attempt to land the fish was much more successful. 

most of the carp i caught and my sturgeon all had large lampreys clinging to them. i pulled them off and placed them in an empty container. the idea is that they might not be bad cutbait for a later trip.