Buffalo Soldier
Paul & Lisa Hunt
Lake Fork Texas
6
Small Mouth Buffalo Soldiers
My passion for fishing was born on the banks of various lakes in England where I grew up . I pursued this passion and developed it into a career when I immigrated to Canada where I have been guiding anglers specifically for carp fishing for the past 20 years at my venue Canadian Carpin Holidays on the St . Lawrence River which is also known to many as The Larry . The buffalo caught my interest after reading an article about the species written by Jason Johonnesson . After my wife & I did a little research , our intrigue grew with each report and article we read . We could no longer wait to give this awesome species a chance , and we soon found ourselves entered into the 2013 Lake Fork Buffalo & Carp Challenge in the State of Texas . A bold move to enter a competition for a species we had never targeted before perhaps , but due to the similarities between the buffalo and the common carp species we were somewhat confident . After close to a 3-day drive we finally arrived at the lake in Texas , and the competition was underway . The fact that at the time Texas was going through a cold snap with temps below freezing and not having ever fished the 27,000 acres , 315 miles of Lake Fork shoreline before . We knew we had our work cut out for us to rank in the challenge . By the end of day one , we had reports coming in from the competitions marshals confirming that the entire competition was off to a slow start . When you are not catching , you have a lot of time to try to figure out why and you can very nearly drive yourself crazy … trust me ! After days of questioning our approach and the competition coming to an end , the overall consensus was poor weather resulting in a lot of teams blanking , including us . Fortunately , as this was our winter break from the much colder , Canadian winter we had already planned to stay for a few more days after the competition ended . All I can say is what a difference a day makes , with a complete 180 on the weather pattern we were soon in t-shirts baking under the hot Texas sun ! On the first day , we fished a sheltered back bay in one of the pegs from the competition , and we were fortunate enough to bank a total of 7 common carp up to 24 lbs which made our day …. but we still hadn ’ t landed the elusive buffalo ! On day two we drove around trying to look for any showing of buffalo and came across another peg from the competition which had favorable winds pumping into the shoreline . After spending some valuable time looking out over the water , we