8/10

This Blog is dedicated to anyone who thinks fish. Anyone who spent all their money on a trip and got skunked, or walked a mile only to lose a big one at their feet. Anyone who's had their line break, their rod snap, or hopes and dreams of an epic bite shattered by the powers that be. This ones for you.

The BassMaster Elite is in town and Mike Iaconelli finished in first place today with 47lbs of bass over the last 4 days. I am not very much into Pro Bass fishing, only a little bit because it's fishing, but since it was in my home town I had to check it out. Went down Friday and Sunday to the weigh in at Penns Landing. On Friday my friend James and I slugged beers and shot tequila and tried to cheer our hero Grant Goldbeck up after weighing in a single 13" fish. I told him that this river sucks for bass and thats why we fish for snakeheads and bowfins. Goldbeck finished in 93rd place with 4lbs of bass. Ouch. Thats better than KVD did though, scoring only 3.6lbs, so in short, many of the countries top pros went home embarrassed and humbled by the river and tributaries that we call ours.

We watched Mike Ike go from 21st place to 1st on Friday, and then watch him take 1st place on Sunday. While leaving the weigh in area on Friday, feeling maybe a bit intoxicated, we ran into Ike finishing up signing autographs and taking pics and kind of hopped right over and took a picture with him. We got a cool picture with the Ben Franklin Bridge in the background, and after taking that picture, James proceeded to spend the next hour taking picture with every stranger we met. which was lot.

I always thought Mike Ike was a dork after seeing him scream and holler over every 2lb bass he catches, but the guy is cool and real and represents Philly, in his winning speech today he gave a shout out to the Schuylkill river, and catching bass out of shopping carts, which resonated deep in the hearts of anyone who's ever fished for bass in Philly. The announcers at the competition said Philly has the craziest fans in all the places they go, and everyone went wild for Ike, the whole time.

I had wondered going into this event how many snakeheads would be caught, and what kind of attention they'd get from the pros. I didn't hear much about any snakeheads, but did come across a picture of a snakehead caught either in the tourny, or in pre fishing, a beast that looks like it could be anywhere from 10-13lbs. Very nice fish, but I think less than a handfull of snakeheads were caught cumulatively by all the pros, on all 4 days. Overall this was a cool event, hopefully it does something positive for our local fishing scene.

Bass weigh ins have been at 3 every day, and in an attempt to win my own elite fishing tourny I went to a hole in a creek today that a friend told me had a large white koi in it. I woke up this morning around 11, laid around for awhile feeling miserable before deciding to go out and try to hunt the koi. I arrived around 1pm and quickly spotted the koi and threw some bread out. The fish was decent sized, hovering about a foot off the bottom in 4' of water, laying suspended in the same spot for minutes at a time. It was easy to tell that this fish was not on the feed. It took no interest in the bread I threw out, but I kept at it. I hoped that the bread falling slowly in front of her face would eventually trigger her (it was ID'd later but a koi expert as a female) to eat. Sunnies were relentless in eating my bread, but in my experiences of carp fishing the manayunk canal, sunnies eating your chum is a good thing because it eventually draws the interest of the carpicus's. 6 slices of bread, crumbled up and thrown strategically in front of the fish so it would fall slowly within eyesight, still no interest. One thing I had working in my favor though was this fish wasn't getting spooked by my chumming, catching sunnies, or walking the bank. It had no interest in eating, but it wasn't spooked. Just dumb and lazy and probably full from eating constantly for the past several months.

I was standing on a ledge that dropped into about 4' of water, and with the koi to my right slowly swimming in my direction, I dropped my weightless bread ball right in front of me. It sunk down past the layer of sunfish and minnows and just off the bottom into the money spot. The koi stayed on route and swam right in front of me, right over to my baited hook. It was the 2nd time in an hour that my bait was in the hot zone, and for the first time, the koi engulfed a piece of bread, luckily, a piece with my hook in it. I set the hook and fought the koi for 5 minutes on my ultra light rod and 4lb test before getting my arm under it and getting it up on to dry land. I quickly realized this koi was messed up... It was the mirror variety and deep red bruises along its back and all in front of its tail. My weight/length estimates are off right now from not catching many fish, but this koi was probably around 9 pounds and 24" long. I wanted to sell this koi to a person to keep as a pet in their pond, but after seeing the condition it was in I had to come up with a better idea. I could release the koi, back into his hole, or maybe to another body of water where It had a chance of healing, but then all the work I just did would have been for nothing. I texted a friend of mine shortly thereafter that has more experience with koi than anyone I know, and he said that if kept in a proper habitat, the bruising and redness would go away. I left the creek with the koi in my cooler, went and watched the bassmaster final 12 weigh in, then continued my adventure to a friends house in a more deciduous area. It was here that I was introduced to the backyard where my koi will hopefully be nursed back to health. 4 ponds of varying size, depth, water temperature and color, with species ranges from grass carp to steelhead, living in harmony and blitzing pellets off the surface. I learned about koi health, water filtration, what makes certain koi worth up to $50k and some ground up for fertilizer, and much more in the hour I spent at my friends house. The koi will stay at that location and hopefully be nursed back to health, thank you to my friend.



Flathead fished last night. It was a full moon, and not just any full moon, but the supermoon, the closest the moon gets to earth all year.. 14% larger and 30% brighter than normal. That means the strongest gravitational pull, highest tides of the year, and in theory, some of the slowest flatheading of the year. I don't buy into the moon phase affecting the flathead bite as much as some internet people would want you to believe, but last night was pretty slow. The river was also flowing at 700 cfs, which is as low as its been all year. Water flow being so low is reason enough for a slow bite, but I doubt a bright moon was working in our favor. Either way, we didn't catch anything good, just 5 or 6 smallish flatheads, biggest one going 15lbs. Others in our area also caught flatheads to 20lbs, but no rogues were seen or heard of.

A couple of my friends were fishing for sharks under the supermoon last night and didn't have any luck, they reported no spot or croakers around, no shark runs, piss warm water, and a very high tide. Any kind of coolwater upwelling we saw this summer is history, and the surf temps are as warm as they've been all year, many places are looking at 75 degrees along the beach. Heard of a good triggerfish bite for one lucky guy on friday morning, and another guy catching keeper fluke deadsticking chicken strips off a pier, but I wasn't able to get down to the salty water to try my luck.

If anyone reading this has pictures, stories, information, anything they'd like to contribute, leave a comment or email me at mcinteechris@gmail.com and I'd be happy to share whatever you've got.