# Fishing at Pine Hill 10/29 (Mason, Ohio)



## TimJC (Apr 6, 2004)

After blanking on my last few trips to Pine Hill, and having to deal with the ridicule of Rod, Ak, and my protege Chris, I knew something was wrong and my ego simply can't handle that. Every time I fish there with Rod, I end up blanking. He still has yet to catch or witnessed a large carp or mirror caught from the larger pond. For this I get blamed, but I think Rod is bad luck. Add to this the stories of "the student surpassing the teacher" by Chris and something needs to be done. Chris catches a 32 pounder from Pine Hill and suddenly he knows everything about carp fishing. I needed to get into some fish last weekend and came up with a strategy.

Saturday I made one of my last few trips of the year to Tractor Supply to fulfill my baiting needs. From my experiences earlier in the year, I learned to blank on Saturdays only to return for some fish on Sunday. The fish seem to be getting harder to catch after a year of being targeted, but it could be that we spent many more hours on the bank last year. So, anyway, I decided to cut out the blanking Saturday session since it was fairly cold and very windy to fish a warmer, and calmer, Sunday session. Saturday afternoon I decided to make a few method balls and bombard the swim I hoped to fish Sunday morning. I ended up saving two dozen method balls to freeze for the next morning and I put 50+ in the swim with a couple gallons of loosely prepared particles, and a half pound of Red Demon boilies.

Sunday I arrived to a cool, but sunny morning. One of the regular trout fisherman was in the swim I prepared the day before, but I knew he would only fish for an hour or two. I decided to to talk to Frank, the park volunteer for an hour before loading myself up like a pack mule for the hike ahead. When I arrived at the swim I immediately put in the 2 dozen frozen method balls and started mixing the fresh method I was going to use for the day. I ended up with a method feeder on one rod and boilies on the other rod with a PVA stringer of freebies. The boilie rod was cast to the far bank which contains some snags and has produced quite a few fish for me this year. The method rod was cast about halfway across the narrow swim where the fish frequently patrol.

After a couple hours I started to notice quite a few spots around my method rod where bubbles were continually rising to the surface. This, I hoped, was a sign that carp were feeding in the area. It didn't take much longer for me to begin questioning the choice and location of the boilie rod. The first fish of the day did come on the method rod, but it was a channel cat. Thankfully I had a second run on the boilie rod before I had a chance to pull the rod in and change bait. This second run would be the last of the day, but it yielded an undocumented, sorry Neil, 14 pound mirror. Not a bad way to end a fishless streak at a local water. The only thing better would have been to land the CAG state record that resides in the pond, but there will be time for that after she puts on a few more pounds.

Hopefully Jetson will be able to confirm that this isn't a fish he has caught before. Most of my Pine Hill fish records are on my dead desktop PC at home, but from looking at my ID pictures/ I was unable to find a match. Maybe it is time to have a naming competition.


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