Mmm.... Crawdad. I'm glad you guys used the carp to at least catch something delicious. I've never had Carp, just assumed it wouldn't be very tasty. Around here, if they're in smaller lakes, they're off-limits and have to be returned promptly to the water as they're used to keep the algea and whatnot under control.
I'm generally in the same boat (haha) as most of you, if it's big enough to keep, I'm keeping it. Have to watch the rivers though, most of 'em are too polluted to be real confident about eating the fish. We eat quite a bit of fish, and what's better than free fish? We're mostly Bass (Largemouth, Smallmouth, and the occasional Kentucky), catfish, and bluegill around here. We have tons of other fish around here, but for bank fishing, that's about the best we can do. I'm working on a little aluminum Jon boat that I bought pretty cheap last fall, but it leaks. Like most of you, I'm "cheap", and don't want to spend a dime that I don't have to... so a little elbow grease and some JB Weld and I should be in business on that one pretty soon.
Keep the fishing stories coming, it's warming up and time to get a line wet.