Valuation of the Catch

Spring has been delayed a bit, as we still had more snow. I am getting frustrated, as I remember that early May has always started my stillwater season. Let's see if the ice is going to melt in the next three weeks...

Anyway, on with my ramblings. I have been asking myself questions about what should we value in our carp catches. I think when considering just the fish and it's value, it can be divided into three things: weight, looks and the strength of the fish. Take away any of these three values, and you can easily understand what my point is. If you get a monster fish, that fights well, but looks like... well... a monster (in a bad sense), you won't be satisfied with the catch. I have seen numerous pictures of carp that shouldn't have been photographed at all. 

If you catch a nice-looking small fighter, you wish it had been bigger? What about if your carp record, beautifully formed would just wobble into the net, without putting up a scrap...

It's not rocket science, but I reckon people tend to value these things differently. My valuation is biased to having good fighting carp on the end of my line. If I just want to hold something heavy in my hands, I think I'll try to lift my car... Don't get me wrong, of course I love catching big carp.

I think I caught the hardest fighting carp ever last summer. It was the same night I had a double run... But anyway, I woke up to my alarm. When I got to my pod, the carp had ripped easily 50 m of line from my spool. I lifted the rod and set on the drag. The carp just went on... I put on more drag force and tried to increase the pressure with my forefinger...  The carp just went on.

After I had taken the rod into my hands, the fish took 50 m of line before it stopped! And I had my 0,40 mm mono screaming for mercy all the time! After it stopped it had me fighting for every meter of line. At the time I had it in my landing net, I was completely exhausted. My shoulders were sore and numb. The fish was about 8,5 kg. But it had been the toughest of them all. Trust me, I will remember that fish until the day I die.

Common carp tend to put a harder fight than mirrors or leathers. All released with the hope of seeing again someday...

Bite alarms

I ended my last blog with the promise of writing about bite alarms. Well, I can say something about them, but yet don't consider me as THE ultimate guide on bite alarms. I have had experience with a few different models, and discovered some evident pros and cons with bite alarms for different situations.

First, you should consider the need for electronic bite alarms. If you fish at daytime and use visual bite indicators, you can easily do without bite alarms. But most probably you end up with bad results, as carp are a nocturnal species by their nature. I reckon I have had 90% of my bites at nighttime.

So using electronic bite alarms is a must, if you want to fish efficiently. Remember - finnish lakes are big and the fish densities are relatively low. So you need to be efficient in order to catch a carp.

You can buy a alarm set without remote alarm system. But after a few sessions, you discover that you really need the remote alarm. Sometimes the conditions are really windy and the surroundings and your tent/bivvie will make a lot of noise that prevents you from hearing the beeping from the alarms. And what about beating rain... no hope for hearing the sounds of carp bites. Don't mess with the non-remote systems. It's just a waste of money. And yes, go for the WIRELESS remote alarm systems. The soundbox/wired versions are in my opinion, also a waste of time and money.

What are the most important functions in a wireless alarm system? Well, I'd start with good battery life. You don't want to go changing the batteries every other trip. Besides, the batteries are quite expensive. Bying a set of good batteries for the bite alarm system will cost you around 20 euros. And most importantly, you don't want to find your rod pod in a situation, where one reel is almost empty of line and the line is snagged somewhere really far away. And you never heard a sound because the battery was empty.

Some alarms advertise their capacity of wireless alarm reception as far as 400 m or 1000 m away. Seriously. Given the average conditions in natural terrain and the average condition of a carp angler, how much time would it take to reach the rod from 1000 m away? 800m track record for David Rudisha is 1 min 44 seconds. So I bet a time of around 5 minutes would be a good result. In that time a carp would have reached dozens of snags and emptied the spool. So anything above 100 m reception is more than enough.

I appreciate the sensitivity setting in bite alarms, because you don't want to be alarmed for every time a fish swims on to your line (line-bite). Volume adjustment is also very vital for the alarm and the receiver. A quiet lake is best to be kept quiet. If you use your 100 dB alarms all the time, people will not like you. Although here in Finland, it's more like keeping a low profile and not giving away you whereabouts on carp fishing spots. Again, gillnet fishing has accounted for too many carp deaths here in Finland.

I have been using the Prologic Polyphonic 4+1 bite alarm system for a few years now. It has been reliable, and I like the low battery warning system and the natural (polyphonic) sounds. I think a frog sound blends quite well into the natural soundprofile of a lake. So if you hear a quiet sound of a frog or a duck, look around, because I might be fishing nearby. I have really enjoyed using this alarm set. The low battery warning system is really nice. Although I can fish almost two seasons without changing the batteries.

My trusty Prologic Polyphonic Wireless alarm set. The remote unit is the one on left. The set here was originally 3+1, but i bought one separate alarm, so it's now 4+1.

My new bite alarm set is the Prologic WUSB 3+1 system. It's the first alarm system to use mp3-files. I mean, you can put ANY sound into the remote alarm to be used as the alarm sound. Quite nice. I have finally chosen a few songs for my next season to be used for my bite alarms. They are "Ice, Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice, "Maggots in your catapult" by Sir Bob Nudd and ... well, you could propose a song that I could pick. So please comment and write your suggestion as my third bite alarm song for the season 2012.

So this is my new Prologic WUSB alarm set. It has three individual alarms and one remote, which uses mp3 files as alarm sounds. I haven't tested these ones in real carp action yet. There's the small thing called winter here in Finland, so no carp fishing until april/may. :)