Well, really fishing was S-L-O-W. I fished for a about 2 hours...from 7:30pm-9:30pm. Caught 10 crappies, 5 bluegills...and a minnow.
A muskrat had been swimming along in front of me, and kept splashing everytime I would move or cast...but he'd come right back up and continue to swim around in front of me...like 20 feet away. Finally, it swam along the shoreline to my right and then swam to the bank, where I could no longer see him. Just a couple minutes later, I hooked something big...and it splashed a several times, and I was sure I'd hooked that darn muskrat. It swam across in front of me, so I turned on my cap light...and it was a fish! The minnow. BIG MINNOW!
It was a trick to land by hand, alone in the dark, but I managed. The "minnow" was a 29" Grass Carp. SWEET!!
Plugging the length into a couple of weight-to-length conversion equations specifically for Grass Carp yields an average calculated weight of 12 lbs. Not bad for the 5wt fly rod!
I used a yellow boa yarn leech pattern again, although I had started off the evening trying something like a Thunder Creek minnow pattern tied with yellow calf tail...(had some bumps on that, but no fish).
