End of the Year Summary-2022

 

One of 8 thirties I landed this year. This pre spawn 
tank was landed in April. It was released.

There are two main takeaways from my 2022 carp fishing. This was a year of big fish, my best year ever in terms of the numbers of large carp over 20 lbs. that I landed.  On the other side of the coin, it was a year with far less fish than I'm used to catching.

It was the year of the big carp for me.  Here in RI it is tough, really tough, to land a 30 lb. carp.  Most fishermen who fish RI a lot would be happy to land one thirty pound fish.  We just don't have a lot of them that size.  But, I managed to land 8 over thirty pounds from RI waters this year, the most 30's I have ever landed in RI in a calendar year.  Of all those big fish, I had four fish that would have qualified as RI state records had I chosen to keep the fish, bring them to an official station and have them weighed (sure death for the fish).  Instead, I weighed those fish on my certified scale, snapped a quick photo and let them all go! Those four record fish tipped the scale at 32/8, 34, 36/8 and 35/4 lbs. All of them were caught in April and May.  In fact, I landed 7 of my thirties in the first half of the year and had only one other 30 lb. carp in mid November. The spring definitely fished better for big carp than the fall.

One of the most beautiful fish I landed this year
was this orange and black wild koi. It was 
released in good shape!

That big carp bonanza helped me to placing in the top 10 in both the Spring and Fall National Big 4 Tournaments sponsored by CAG.  I came in 4th place in the spring with 138/4 lbs., the best poundage I have ever gotten in this tournament.  In the Fall Big 4 I ended up in 8th place with 108/6 pounds.

The numbers were not there, though.  I was on a streak of at least 10 years with 700 or more fish until this year.  My total for 2022 was 440 carp.  I had 116 mirrors and 324 commons.  A lot of factors led to those low numbers.  I was targeting big fish in big venues. I landed good numbers of big ones, but the numbers took a hit. Invasive weed killed a lot of my spots, and many of my favorite places were unfishable from early summer to mid fall.  Water levels in the summer were also very low, which combined with the weed made fishing difficult.  The extremely hot weather also did not help. Finally, I found myself fishing in saltwater more for stripers since this was a record year for them.

Here's a few more stats from my logs:

*First carp of the year landed- Jan. 13

*Last carp of the year landed- Dec. 7

*Month with the most carp-  April, 68 carp

*Month with the most carp over 30 lbs.- April- 4 30's

*Best bait overall- one kernel of maize and one white artificial corn on the hair rig

* Number of carp released- ALL OF THEM!