A Boyd Lake Boat Day Boat Ride and a Day of Getting Skunked Both Interrupted by Big Fish

 Reports are coming in about highly successful days of fishing at Boyd Lake.

Below, Jim Barborak, who organized this month's Boat Day, shows off a mixed haul of white bass, walleye and trout caught by him, Bill Rottman and Doug Money during Thursday's Boat Day. 

Jim adds: "Doug has a great story too, about hooking a big walleye and losing it near the boat. He reeled in his line to find that the walleye was actually hooked on (someone else's) lead line and had a perch shad rap in its mouth for who knows who long. Doug actually caught the lead line with the fish and lure on the other end, and the fish broke free of the lure. Doug reeled in just the line and lure - so he got about a $10 Rapala lure but no big walleye."

A few days earlier, Jim had been despondently casting for white bass and walleye near the pump house, on spinning gear with 8-pound test line. He was about to leave "when I hooked the biggest fish I have ever landed in Colorado ... a 47-inch long grass carp!" He figures the carp weighed about 35 pounds, and that looks about right. See below.

Jim needs to check with Bob McHale, who runs the Loveland Fishing Club's annual big fish competition, but I ran the numbers and found the qualifying length for a Grass Carp in the Colorado Master Angler program is 30 inches.

• A 47-inch fish is a whopping 157% of the minimum qualifying length. The state record is 57l8 pounds caught in 2013.