the new spot

with the weather as warm as it is i decided to look around for somewhere close to home to go fishing for the day. me and cyndie have been staying at her brothers in west st. paul lately and the mississippi river is only 5 minutes from the house. so i looked around a bit on google maps and found a few parks in the area. we decided to head over to one for a few hours before cyndie had to head out for work. i fished crawlers at first and managed a few small channel catfish. i could see some carp jumping close to shore and many of them looked big so i changed over to corn. it did not take long before i got a bite. i set the hook and my drag screamed for about 10 seconds and then *SNAP* my line busted off. next bite i had was similar but the fish didn't feel as big i got it just to where i could see it and saw that it was a smallmouth buffalo a species i've been chasing for years. sadly the quick glance at it was all that i got. the fish rolled sideways on the surface and tossed the hook. i recast and again the bite came quick. this time i managed to get a solid hookset in the fish and was able to land it. not the buffalo i was hoping for but still a good sized carp. i managed two more carp as the day went on and cyndie got skunked. we had several fish that we hooked that seemed just too big for our tackle. three more times during the day we would hook up only to watch line peel off the reel only to end abruptly when the line snapped. i was only running 8lb braid on both reels and we learned quickly that won't be enough with the size of some of the carp we hooked into. i will return next week with a heavier setup.