Carp Anglers Group
PO Box 69, Groveland, IL 61535 USA
Call us at 309-387-2277 (CARP)
Call us at 309-387-2277 (CARP)
October 5, 2000
CHICAGO -- Remember that saying about how 10 percent of the anglers catch 90 percent of the fish? Last weekend I got yet another lesson in the truth of it and an up-close-and-personal example of what makes it work.
It came in the North American Carp Championships in downtown Chicago, but you could have had the same lesson at any big bass, walleye, crappie or whatever tournament anywhere.
We had 108 anglers lined up along the Chicago River where we had drawn for assigned "swims" -- 10-yard lengths of seawall where we had to try to catch fish starting at 9 a.m. We stretched two-thirds of a mile from the Michigan Avenue Bridge to the turning basin in Chicago Harbor.
When the Wrigley Building clock showed 4 p.m. and the fishing day ended, only 11 had caught fish. Five were Englishmen and South Africans who made up a tiny part of the group but are the best in the world at this game.
There were a lot of good anglers at the event, including locals who have been seriously bitten by the European bank-fishing bug and fish this river constantly. I was more than a little surprised by the number who showed up with specialized long rods and bait-feeder reels, home-built gear carts and big, mail-order European tackle knapsacks to haul the load that bank anglers must wheel or carry on their backs.
"This is going to be the most competitive year yet," said Gary Gillis, a Detroit area angler who was one of a half-dozen Michiganders in the event. "I'm really surprised by the number of people who obviously are equipped for some serious bank-fishing."
Most of the fish were caught in the first 15 swims at either end of the long line. But anglers I heard grumbling about drawing swims in the center failed to realize that the "ends-of-the-line" phenomenon masked a more significant point -- that's where most of the foreigners happened to be.
Within an hour of the start, it was obvious that the handful of bites to that point had all come on the far seawall 70 yards across the river, probably because all of the commotion on our side had spooked the fish.
The obvious answer was to get ground bait -- chum -- over there, and a handful of anglers were equipped with rods that let them cast small containers called spods and deliver a cupful of ground bait at a time. Naturally, I had forgotten not just my heavy spod rod, I had even forgotten the spod, which I could have cast with one of my other rods.
But the really good competitors hadn't forgotten. Bryan Nordberg of Phoenix, Ariz., was spodding and laying a small carpet of ground bait next to a bridge support across the river. He was rewarded with four carp, a total matched by only one other American.
At one point, a couple of Yankee anglers next to me discussed walking to the other side of the river and dropping a bucket of ground bait along the far seawall. But they let it drop and continued the unsuccessful methods they had been pursuing for hours.
But that's exactly the tactic adopted by Max Cottis, an Englishman who won every major category -- most fish (six), best weight for four fish (42 pounds) and biggest fish (19 pounds, 11 ounces).
He mixed a five-gallon bucket of ground bait (field corn, sweet corn, boiled hemp seed and pigeon feed), climbed three flights of stairs on our side of the river, hoofed it across the Columbus Drive bridge, climbed down three flights on the other side, and laid a table-sized bed of chum across from his swim.
"I just kept casting the bait over there, and it worked out well," Cottis said. "But the key was getting the bait over to that spot and keeping it there. If it was moved off by the current or boats passing, you had to get it right back on there."
Later, I heard other anglers questioning whether this tactic was within the spirit of the rules. Of course it was. The rest of us were just too dumb to think of it or too lazy to do it.
South Africa's Schalk Van Breda finished with four fish and lost two others, one a monster that headed downstream and couldn't be stopped by the 10-pound line.
"You had to be within about a half-meter of the far wall," said Van Breda, South Africa's top tournament angler and owner of Supercast Bait, which is sold throughout Africa and Europe. "If you dropped the bait out a meter or two, you got nothing. The answer was to keep casting to the same place until you got within that half-meter distance.
"You have to look at this thing as if there are 100 anglers and 100 fish. If you want to win, what you have to do is pull some of the other anglers' fish away from them. And to do that successfully, you have to use your head, look around you and make changes if what you normally do isn't working."
After three hours without even a bite in a place where I was used to catching a lot of fish, I was bored, discouraged and going through the motions. I freshened my baits every half hour or so, but if the bait didn't drop within that magic half-yard range of the wall on the next cast, well, I let it lie until it was time to check the bait again.
The scoreboard reflected my ineptitude: "Angler ...Eric Sharp. Fish ..."
And you know something? That fact that 96 others didn't catch fish either didn't make me feel any better.
Eric Sharp
Detroit Free Press