We were out for carp again this evening.

The instant oatmeal dough ball had worked so well that the two of us went through almost a whole can in the last three evenings. We also found out that a pair of latex or light nitrile gloves makes it a lot easier to do up the bait. You can make them a little softer, which seemed to produce a better bite. We have never fought so many large fish in such a short period of time, and we had quite a number of good hard freight train strikes, one of which almost cost my fishing buddy his rod. I suppose that in 15 manhours of fishing we landed well over 2 dozen carp with about a quarter of them close to or over 10 pounds each and nothing under maybe three pounds. We have had a ball this week with these fish.

This evening there was too much breeze for the light jigs to hold with any kind of slack, which you cannot avoid with the light weights we were using anyway; so we changed to a drop shot rig of a size 4 octopus circle hook above about 1/8 oz. Once we remembered you do not set the hook with the circles we started connecting pretty regular. We ended the evening with a double. Mine I just couldn't hold on the 8 pound line; so my buddy ended up netting his by himself.

I am amazed that the dough balls hold up well to bait stealers. Most of our fish this evening would nibble at it a while before really taking the bait; so those oatmeal dough balls stood up a whole lot better than I would have guessed a week ago.

Crappies are still my darling, but it is pretty hard to beat the sport in carp fishing when they are biting like they have been for us, especially on medium weight spinning tackle. I had dug out an older medium weight steelhead rod and it had all it could handle on several of my fish while still being able to cast the light weights we were using very well.

A lot of guys use canned corn for carp, but it is pretty hard for me to think it is better than the instant oatmeal, and you can carry over the left over oatmeal in the trunk without worrying about leaks.

BTW we take carp pretty regularly early in the season on crappie plastics, too. Those fish got shoulders and on ultralight with 4# test line your drag gets a real work out. For pure sport it is pretty hard to beat an old carp.