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<p>Anybody have any specific personal goals for the contest this year? A species count or a specific lifer or personal best or whatever?</p>
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<p>I'm gunning for 30+ species, I doubt I have time this year to crack 40. I do intend for some trophy Hogsucker fishing and to attempt a couple lifers (most not to be named) - if I get a chance I might have the opportunity to lifelist a Grass Pickerel, probably one of my top goals for the contest - though that is only a maybe. </p>
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<p>Anybody else?</p>
Well, as always, I gotta get to double figures here, or I'll have to drown myself.
I also really wanna put up a Wels and/or Barbel for the Contest. Not sure how many tries we'll get to put in for Barbel, though, and the last few years we've hardly caught any...
And I'd like to get all the species I put up in June on rods that I put together myself. I think that would be coolish.
Fishn sure is neat
You must have enough self-built rods now to make that a possibility
I'm actually going the opposite route, going to catch as many as I can on fixed-line (poles). That was my Grandpa's weapon of choice - I had fun one year, maybe 15+ years ago, fishing with one on the Mississippi - catching mooneye and saugers and catfish and such. I want to get a Shovelnose and maybe a Bowfin on a pole
I'm hoping to cross off another species from my signature.
Eli
Eli - you and I share one target, maybe we can both stick a Grassie this year. I know almost nothing about Shortnose Sturg, are they targetable somewhere or just one of those fish you have to "chance" into?
waxworm - yeah fixed line fishing is definitely different, fun to force thinking in a different direction. Absolutely deadly on stream Trout, among other fish
My goal is 10 species with one of them being a musky. I only have caught one in my life and I did not even have a camera to take a picture.
I didn't choose the Carp life, The Carp life chose me.
Would like to catch another shovelnose, only caught one up to this point. Also a flathead cat is high on my list. I'm in a major flathead drought.
"There's always a bigger fish"
How did people's goals shake out?
I'm one of those people who tries to set goals pretty much out-of-reach. If I meet them regularily I feel I failed goal setting. This year I rocked goal setting... I didn't really reach any.
Came up short on 30 species, could have topped it easy but I restricted myself to really local waters this time (LRC/Chip and local tribs of the two), which made that much more difficult. No lifers, though it wasn't for lack of effort... Hopefully I'll make for that yet this year... I fixed line fished less than I hoped, only got 7 species that way.
I did, as unplanned learning begin to learn some thing about Quillback that are leading to more consistent success for me. More on that later, I have more "research" to do yet this summer. I want to try things on other spots and other waters to keep my research as rigorous as possible...
Did not reach my unspoken goal of 28 species to best my personal record. Fell waaaaayyy short of that one. If I would have taken a couple trips down to the Root area or just gotten out more I most likely would have reached that. I think I fished 6 times in June. Getting Lyme disease two weeks into the Contest sure put a damper on my efforts, but I regained some mojo by taking one nice trip down to the lower Miss with Avidfly. Felt like crud pretty much the whole time down there, but caught some good species.
Had a lot of fun watching the Contest as always!
I wanted to catch 10 species, and I topped that (caught 14). I know I didn't "enter" the contest, but I still felt like I was a part of it.
Thanks to Tony, I learned so much about riverfishing (and fishing in general) that I'm confident that I'll come back next year and blow this year's total out of the water :)
...and I'll pay the money to support the site this time....Heck, I might make a phony extra entry to make up for this year :)
will give more detail in my end-of-summer post.
I think my best year ever was only 23. So I set the bar this year at 25. Really fished a lot this year, but my primary river was very high and dirty. At times it was literally unfishable. So there was one speicies I never caught. One that is relativley easy for me to catch. The channel cat. Never even got one. Plus I spent a metric shitton of time at the Black Redhorse spot only to get blanked every single time there. Then the black bullhead and green sunfish spot.....that never produced for for me either. But all in all, I had a very good time this year and found myself not wanting it to end. Because after the derby was over it just seemed like goin fishin, just to go fishing wasn't as fun as the quest for another specie.