PD World Record - Largest Fish Caught From A PD

PD World Record - Largest Fish Caught From A PD
By Darby & Morgan Routh
9-16-06 record 15" and 19"

Michael Storer of PDRacer.info and StorerBoatPlans.com recently suggested that we add a fishing world record for size and weight. I live in the desert, so there aren't a lot of fish here, and the typical big bass is heavily hunted, so I suspect that they get caught and removed often. Thought about going after Bluegill or Texas Cichlid, my daughter caught a 10" one once which would be worthy of recognition. Then it struck me that back at the last cardboard boat race, we saw what looked like a 3 foot long carp. I have never fished for those, so emailed my friend Boyd and he sent me this link to the CarpAnglersGroup.com After a bit of reading, it sounds like carp aren't fished for very much in the USA, and they grow fairly big, like up to the 4 foot / 30 lb range. Just what I am looking for, and the fishing technique is more kid friendly - you are supposed to chum the water and attract the fish to you.

First I did a little experimentation - my kids wouldn't eat some brown sugar oatmeal that I bought for them, so I mixed some of that into a dough ball and tried feeding it to my pet goldfish. They gobbled it up, so I figured that I was heading in the right direction. But then again, those fish gobble up cat foot, lunch meat, my kid's boogers, and just about everything else I toss in there.

Decided to head down to the lake in the evening, we found a nice spot near a boat tie up where my wife sat, we chummed the water with bits of the dough ball & corn. The breeze picked up a bit so we sailed around while waiting for the chum to attract the carp.

Originally we were going to anchor underneath one of the bridges, but since my wife was here, we tied up near where she sat. Ate the dinner we brought in a cooler, and it was time to try and catch some carp.

Darby is the younger of my daughters, and she is a real fidgeter. She couldn't hold still for 10 seconds if she had to. From the carp website, the tip is to just leave it on the bottom and don't mess with it. So she would drop the line in the water, do a few cranks, yank on it and say that she thinks the fish were looking at her bait, and she wanted to check it. Also with the big weight on the end of the line, if she would gently tug at it, it would feel like something was nibbling on it so she had about a dozen false alarms.

Then on the umpteenth time she was telling me she had another bite, and I was thinking that the website I read was either pulling my leg, or I was doing something wrong... her pink barbie rod went ZZZZZTTTT ZZZTTTTT (the clicking sound of her drag pulling out). She had a carp on and it was running !!

She held on for dear life and cranked when she could. This is the carp she landed, I forgot my measure tape, so we used her arm as a reference. Measured the arm when we got home, and this fish came in at 15".

My line was the second to snag something, wasn't as big as Darby's, but still was good size.

My older daugher Morgan was kinda bummed and thinking that she might never catch anything. We chummed the water some more, and a few minutes later she said "Uhhh... I think I have one". She did a crank and the drag started ticking off "yep, I have one". She has a Scooby rod and that thing bent WAY over as she fought it. This one ended up being 19" long.

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