This evening my fishing partner was still ill, so I went catfishing and got blanked there. too.
There was an extended family of southeast Asians fishing next to me along the river bank and having a ball catching carp, which they threw back. That's all they were doing fishing for the fun of it. It looked like uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces and nephews and a couple of ankle biters tossed in running around, all just having a good time together. They probably landed a dozen and a half carp up to close to 30" this evening with a double going a couple of times. Using medium to medium light spinning tackle they tied into some carp they just couldn't turn.
All they were using were doughballs made out of instant oatmeal and a very small amount of water and they held together real well. They showed me the secret which is to use as little water as possible and squeeze it real good to made a good hard ball and then that stays on the hook. They offered me a bit they had left over and said they were otherwise going to toss it; so I took them up and tried it out.
Once I figured out how to make a hard ball, it took about 5 minutes to get hooked up to a good fish. And about 20 minutes to land it. 26" carp on on a 32nd oz jig head with a size 6 hook on 4# ultralight crappie tackle is a fight, but that is all I had besides the big catfish rod. Special thanks to some generous people. From now on I will just keep a box of instant oatmeal in the car with the rest of the backseat tackle, but I think I will add a little heavier rod and line to fish it with.
I think I will go back there tomorrow afternoon and see if the carp still want to play.