Mirror Carp

Before picking up my son from summer camp, I had an hour to spare. And you guys know exactly what I was going to do with that hour. You bet — find a nearby fishing spot. I didn’t want to travel too far, and I wanted to keep the drive back to my son’s place within 20 minutes. With that in mind, my choices were pretty limited. I knew a few ponds in Markham that had produced fish for me over the years, so the goal was to pick the one that would give me the best chance. Even with only one hour to fish, I still treated the outing seriously. I wasn’t just looking for a place to chill and kill time. I came prepared, and I came with a purpose. I set myself a small, achievable goal and went for it. The destination was set: that small fountain pond by Unionville Library. A lot of my friends have laughed at me for fishing such an unpleasant-looking place. The pond is small, the water doesn’t look great, and there’s often garbage and debris floating around. They say fish don’t live in dirty places like that. Of course, the people laughing have probably never caught a single fish from this pond. Today’s goal was simple but still challenging: 1. Don’t get skunked. 2. Catch two different species. With that in mind, I brought two kinds of bait in my tackle box: corn for the vegetarians and nightcrawlers for the meat eaters. As the hour passed, I started reeling in fish after fish. First, a bass went for the crawler. Then a carp came in for the corn. But the action didn’t stop there. Not only did I complete my goal of catching two different species, I ended up landing a whopping five species in total — plus one bonus variety that really surprised me. I included all the pictures in this post. This is one of those short outings I’ll never forget. It reminded me that even with limited time, if you set a clear goal, prepare properly, and go all in, you can still get results.

As we’re due packing away Colins rod screams off