I love May! It's the beginning of my favorite season of crucian carp fishing! It's when they wake up after winter and start feeding like crazy, so you just have to keep casting your line.
Kids love this kind of fishing too—no need to stand around looking for a float (that's boring), but instead, you can cast and immediately land a fish, even big ones. It's fun, and the kids are overwhelmed with excitement! They compete to see who can catch the most and the biggest. And best of all, no tablets are needed anymore, hallelujah!
So, we decided to go to the paid Bioresurs lakes (Samara Region, Lopatino village, Karasevye Lakes). This year, the entry fee was as follows:
- Men - 350 RUR
- Women - 200 RUR
- Children under 12 years old are free.
We could have gone to the wild lakes, but there's a lot of dry grass there, the access is difficult, and there are tons of ticks. But here you pay 550 rubles and just relax:
- Everything is cleaned.
- Neat paths to all lakes.
- There are gazebos and barbecues.
And, yes, of course, we grilled shashlik!)
Biting time
We arrived in the morning. We were already fishing by 9:00 AM. That's when the fishing was best. There was a lull in the afternoon, and by 5:00 PM the feeding frenzy was already underway. At 8:00 PM, we started getting ready to go home.
We also talked to some "neighbors" who were fishing nearby. They said you should arrive at dawn. Around 4 or 5 in the morning. Even the carp are biting at that time. And it turns out we showed up late.
Bait
Crucian carp are unpredictable fish. Today they'll want a worm, tomorrow they'll bite on pearl barley, and a week later, only maggots. We didn't take any chances and took everything. We bought maggots (50 rubles) and worms (65 rubles) at a fishing store. I cooked the pearl barley myself the day before.
Our maggot:
And here's the worm:
As a result, the crucian carp were biting hard on maggots that day. Although the fishermen around here were mostly fishing with worms (and occasionally pearl barley), their bites were rather weak, while we were getting a bite every cast.
Lure
My husband and I had a long debate about this. We initially wanted to buy a bag of groundbait specifically for crucian carp (1 kg starts at 110 rubles). There's a huge selection at the fishing store. They even have 5 kg bags, and the price is fantastic—790 rubles. That's a lot of crucian carp you could buy at the market!)
Then we thought...the bite should be good anyway. And to attract the fish, we could buy some cheap feed at the bird market (it's not far from the fish market).
We bought 5 kg of feed. A guy sold it to us at a discount for 100 rubles.
At home, we poured boiling water over it. It swelled up. That's it. The crucian carp bait is ready. Cheap and cheerful.
This is what it all looks like:
The process of fishing
Everyone had their own fishing rod. Even my son (5 years old) did. The four of us stood up (far from each other so as not to snag each other) and started fishing.
The son was the first to land a fish. His father blushed with pride for his little one! And then everyone else was busy reeling in and casting.
There were snags, too. The bottom was very snag-ridden. And the crucian carp were biting right at the bottom. We had to masterfully juggle the float's height so it wouldn't touch the bottom and still catch the fish. Raise it any higher and the bite would stop. Rubber waders came to our rescue. Muz would climb into the lake and free the stuck hook. And the water was still cold.
Here's our lifesaver, swampers. We hung them on the gazebo to dry:
Catch
Before we knew it, evening had fallen. We'd completely forgotten about the shashlik. We'd gotten so caught up in fishing. I left my fishermen and went to cook on the grill. I even snapped a picture of our catch. And that was only part of it. We also dumped the entire keepnet into a bag, tied it shut, and tossed it into the deep end of the lake to keep the fish alive.
After arriving home, we dumped the fish in the bathtub (my poor bathtub, it’s a pain to clean with soap😂).
And on the way home, we got stuck in traffic. We got home at 11 pm. The kids washed up and went to bed without legs. And we spent the whole night cleaning these crucian carp (scales), then gutting each one, rinsing them, and putting them in a bag for freezing. By the way, there was a lot of caviar. We fried a huge frying pan of it. It was delicious!
This is the kind of adventure we had this May!