fine water

Closing up shop.

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 05:06:00 +0000

Sort of.

I'm not sure about the best way to do this, so I'm just going to rip the scab off and be done.

I have decided to shut the Finewater blog down. Finewater was started several years ago by me and another troutbum, Geoff Bragg. We were hardcore trout guys, spending days and occasionally weeks chasing wild trout on mountain streams in Tennessee and Georgia. Geoff has since matured into a responsible adult with a mortgage and a picket fence. He rarely posts here now. I on the other hand have evolved, or devolved depending on who you ask, into a diehard carp angler.

Maybe it's just me, but a carp blog called "Finewater" seems a bit incongruous. In any case, I've never been able to reconcile those two things in my head. To make matters worse, I've had this idea bouncing around in my head for awhile about Carp Aficionado. So I guess the fall of Finewater was inevitable, as was the rise of this new blog:

Not to worry. I promise to maintain my usual rigorous standard of posting content with little or no value. I truly hope the handful of folks that follow Finewater will follow me over to Carp Aficionado.

I'll have a link for Finewater at the top of the Carp Aficionado home page. You know, so we can reminisce about old times and such.

But from this point forward, I'll be posting over at Carp Aficionado.

Woven nymphs for carp

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 03:54:00 +0000

The problem with fishing small nymphs for carp is that sink rates for these flies are often too slow. A slow sink rate can be an advantage with carp, but lately I have found myself in scenarios where the nymph drifted harmlessly above the carp's head because it just didn't sink quickly, causing me to then hazard another cast to get the fly further upstream and allow more sink time before it got to the fish.

This not an issue with a larger carp fly, wherein bead-chain eyes and the weight of a few rubber legs drop the thing like a stone to the muck. The best you can hope for with a small nymph is maybe a few wraps of lead around the shank before you dub and/or a beadhead. And since I don't like using beadheads on my flies, I'm doubly screwed on this front.

Which is why I started thinking about woven nymphs. These flies are dense, heavy, and designed to sink like stones. In other words, exactly what I am looking for. I also like the two-tone color pattern with woven nymphs. You can make the belly of the fly a light color and the back a darker hue as is often seen with natural bugs. Also, these are typically tied with embroidery thread, so available colors are endless.

Bottom view

Top view

Here is a link to an excellent video tutorial on tying these cool flies.

Michigan - 2 days, 1 carp, 0 tetanus shots

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 17:57:00 +0000

Day 1 - Torpedoes

I have come to the infamous Toilet Bowl stretch of a certain carp-infested Michigan river with the equally infamous Miles. As you might guess, this water is not what you would call pristine. I think "extremely degraded" was the term I saw in an article describing this area.

It's snowing. Or rather it has snowed and is snowing some more, a thing that I would normally piss and moan about except that I'm distracted by the large torpedo-shaped shadows slowly cruising the edges of the Toilet Bowl. Carp. Big ones. And, it goes without saying, tough. These fish are no push-overs.

Accordingly there was a beat-down, with the carp doing the beating. We only recorded one take between the two of us. Miles stuck a nice fish that promptly broke him off and that was that. My only action of the day was a foul-hooked mirror carp that broke my 9 weight.

If there was good news, it was that neither of us had to run The Gauntlet. That would come on Day 2.

Day 2 - The Gauntlet

Carp at the Toilet Bowl hang out in a hole that is largely inaccessible, meaning there's no place to land them once hooked. When you stick a carp here, you must make your way to the other side of the river to land him. To accomplish this, you climb a flight of stairs, traverse the 200 ft cat-walk that spans the river, dodging joggers, hikers, etc. along the way while at the same time maneuvering the rod and line up, over and through various obstacles including - I am not making this up - a building. Once you have lifted/finagled your line around these obstacles, then you can make your way down a steep (and extremely slick I discovered) hill to stand among a jumble of break-ankle boulders and land your fish, who has been waiting patiently out in the middle of the river for you to run this gauntlet. The Gauntlet.

Day 2 is a solo day for me, Miles having previous obligations. Given the beating on Day 1, I changed tactics and took a more subtle approach. I added three feet of 8lb flourocarbon tippet to my leader and tied on a #10 unweighted hare's ear rather than the larger, heavier flies we used the previous day.

It worked. I put the hare's ear above and ahead of a cruising carp, where the current brought it to him. I couldn't see the fly, but when the carp turned suddenly I set the hook. A heavy weight throbbed up through the line and it was at this point that I truly began to consider the challenges of The Gauntlet. It was also at this point that I noticed that the upper two feet of my 7 wt. was missing. At first I thought the TB had claimed another rod in addition to the broken 9 wt from Day 1. However closer inspection revealed the rod was not broken. The tip section had apparently come loose and simply slid down the line when the big carp bent the rod double.

Trouble.

I'll spare you the complete play-by-play, but here are several things that occurred in the ensuing minutes after the initial hook-up:

-The fly rod, its length now reduced by two feet, was not long enough to work the line around the obstacles of The Gauntlet. I got around this by feeding the carp slack and allowing him to run far, far out into the middle of the river. This increased the angle of the line to the rod so that I could, barely, lift the line over the obstacles as I crossed the cat-walk.

-Getting the line over the final hurdle, the building, required multiple trips up and down the aforementioned steep snow-covered hill, working line along the roof a few inches at a time. I fell down a lot during this. A lot. Several passers-by stopped to watch. Some didn't stop at all and quickened their pace, apparently not comfortable in the presence of a frenzied madman wielding 3 pieces of a four piece fly rod.

-I finally freed the line and began working the fish in. Amazingly, the tip section of the rod had somehow worked itself back up the line and was now frozen to the long length of line bobbing in the air between me and the point where it entered the water. Eventually it came within arms length and I reattached it to the rod, finishing the fight from there.

-I landed the fish - see below. Behind me in the distance, on the other side of the river, you can see the opening to a culvert (or Poop Chute as Miles calls it) that dumps into the Toilet Bowl. I hooked this fish a few feet in front of that culvert. We came a long way together baby.

Epilogue -

The next day, on my way back to Georgia, I get a text from Miles - "1st cast. Got one. In the chute. I'll send a pic." Here's what he sent. Nice.

Dry/Dropper - alternative set-up

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 04:24:00 +0000

I suspect Dan and Jay may be on to something in their comments on this previous post. So I've been looking for an alternative rigging for the dry/dropper combo and found the below video. Hopefully this will result in fewer misses on the dry fly since the nymph dropper is not tied to the hook bend of the dry as with the traditional rig that I've been using.

In any case, I've noticed I get a little queasy when I'm tying that dropper on to the dry fly hook. I realize now that I don't trust it. A trout taking a dropped nymph is one thing, but a carp is an entirely different ball game. I can't get past the feeling that I'm asking for trouble. The below appears to be potentially a better alternative:

Once more, with reeling.

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 05:50:00 +0000

I thought 2012 was done. But then I got inspired. One final visit to City Lake today, despite my misgivings about the overcast skies and the front-driven winds roiling the water on the main body of the lake. Went to a favorite flat that is often sheltered from the wind by surrounding ridges. For the first time this fall, my feet went numb while I was wading around. It eventually gets cold even in Georgia.

Winding down. Maybe.

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 03:04:00 +0000

Northwest Georgia received a significant amount of rain this weekend, around 2 inches by some counts.

Multi-day rain events around here often bring the carp up into the shallows. No news there, of course. That happens in a lot of places, and not just with carp. The prevailing theory seems to be that the rain washes a few more food items into the buffet as it scours the shoreline and drains into the lake.

Rivulets draining from far up the shoreline and into the lake.

I'll buy that, if for no other reason than after heavy rains I often see carp in places where they usually aren't found, nosed up tight to the water's edge and in serious feeding mode.

Like yesterday. The carp were on a flat that, for whatever reason, is typically not on their scheduled daily rounds. I have, for example, searched this flat thoroughly over the past couple of weeks, seeing no carp. Not one. Then yesterday, following the deluge, they were there.

And I caught them. Not all of them but enough to count the day as an unexpected late-fall bonanza.

As I landed these fish, I realized that there is a good chance that these were my last carp of 2012 and felt, weirdly, a twinge of sadness. If you're not careful you can get sentimental about that sort of thing, as if a December carp is somehow more significant than, say, a February carp.

Still, I took a few extra seconds to admire these fish. They may or may not be my final carp of 2012, but I couldn't overcome the urge to savor them just a bit.

Even more epic-er than I thought

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 13:42:00 +0000

I knew that the fly fishing issue of USCARPPRO magazine would be really good, but I am, to be honest, stunned at the variety and extreme quality of the content. Here's the table of contents:

Wow. I'm very grateful to have a short piece in this issue, but I realized I was running with some pretty fast company when I scanned through that author list. Tons of good info by several carping legends in there.

And it's free. All you have to do is click on the photo below and start reading.

Epicnicity.

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 03:01:00 +0000

Mr. P put a great post up about the December issue of USCARPPRO magazine coming out in a few days. This issue will be flyfishing-centric and promises to be epic.

Check out Mr. P's post right here.

Then hie yourself to http://carppro.net and click the subscribe button on the left side of the page:

The subscription is free. Nothing to it but to do it.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas (if Christmas came in June)

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 02:43:00 +0000

70 degrees today. Amazing.

Warm weather this time of year always feels weird. I mean, everything looks like winter. The trees are mostly bare. The sun follows a low arc during the course of the day. Wind is a constant. Everything is grey and drab and carries a general sense of dreariness. In other words, winter.

Except that I'm wearing a t-shirt and wet wading comfortably.

This makes me feel oddly off-center. As if my brain can't reconcile the barren trees with the warm water lapping around my knees.

The carp don't seem to care either way. Although not as plentiful as you might see in spring and summer here, they were not hard to find. Water levels have dropped quite a bit as of late, and I'm again finding fish mainly on the shallow shelves near deep water. This is apparently a low water pattern I've noted before.

They were tough and I failed far more than I succeeded. Still, a few were brought to hand.

Cloopers. Elk Hair Caddis. Fail.

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 04:34:00 +0000

Last weekend I found a pod of carp rising to the same seeds I saw on the water a few weeks ago in this previous post. (A little research revealed that these are probably seeds from the sweetgum tree, the bane of every barefoot kid here in the South during summer).

Sweetgum seeds - tiny suckers.

Up close and personal.

Seedpods from the sweetgum. Wear some shoes.

I was more or less appropriately rigged for this scenario with a two fly set-up consisting of a #10 Elk Hair Caddis and a #14 Hare's Ear running point. Sweetgum seeds are tiny and the EHC of course dwarfed them, but this was not a factor. The seeds tend to clump in the surface film and carp slurp these clumps down rather than bother with the individual seeds.

Although not a perfect match, the EHC was apparently close enough. Several carp rose to it. Not one or two but several, which sounds like a wonderful thing. Except that they could not eat the fly. Absolutely could not eat it.

The carp would open its mouth, the fly would go in. The carp would close its mouth, the fly would pop right back out. The fish would follow, opening and closing, the fly popping in and out, until finally it gave up and moved on. Sometimes the fish would make a couple of attempts and then back off a bit to have a good long look at the fly. Then he would give it another go or two before leaving it alone.

And yes, I tried several times to set the hook. The fly always pulled out, often without even spooking the fish. Finally, I too gave up. I resorted to casting and watching the fish take the fly without setting the hook. It was an interesting scene to observe and honestly kinda comical.

My conclusion is that the fly was too bouyant, and the inferior position of the carp's mouth makes it difficult to eat a fly sitting up high on the film. The fly enters the carp's mouth riding on a cushion of water. As it closes its mouth, the water is expelled and the fly rides this same cushion right back out. This happens quickly. The fly in this situation usually does not go very far into the carp's mouth, sometimes not even passing the lips completely before it is pushed back out.

At least that seemed to be what was happening. This suggests that a dry with palmered hackle may not be the best choice. A dry that sits down in the film like Turck's Tarantula is probably a better option. That said, I have had two takes on the tarantula recently and missed them both. Yet another nuance to consider when fishing for carp.

I did manage one fish on the Hare's Ear, so the skunk was avoided. That makes 12 straight months with carp brought to hand. Not that I'm counting.

CarpPro Podcast Number 3 is up!

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 00:34:00 +0000

Excellent interview with Barry Reynolds on fly selection for carp. Doesn't matter what you're fishing for though. His advice for selecting flies in different situations will help any angler. Check it out here:

Carp pockets.

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 04:36:00 +0000

View from the main lake.

In the pocket.

Small pockets off of the main body of the reservoir here nearly always hold good numbers of carp. The pocket pictured above is especially productive and has saved otherwise fishless days for me many times.

Today for example there were 8-10 carp milling around in there. They were not easy. A couple of them had interesting reactions to the dropper. They simply rose to it and stared without taking. I've read where fish are not suspicious when they rise to a fly and study it without taking. They're not saying "Hey, I think this might be a fake. I better take a closer look!". Instead they're looking for confirmation, some sign that this thing they've risen to is alive and/or a known food source. They're simply trying to identify it as food or not food.

A fine line? Maybe. But a line nonetheless and I was thinking about that line as I watched these carp hover an inch from the hare's ear dropper. I tried to provide the confirmation they were looking for and gave the flies a twitch. Nope. They spooked immediately.

In the end I only caught one of the 10 or so fish in that small piece of water.

Elsewhere I did well and stuck several fish. November continues to be one of best months of the year so far.

Relatively painless move to new domain.

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 05:25:00 +0000

I just moved this pile of drivel from the old blogspot URL to our new address at www.finewaterflyfishing.com. The old URL will redirect to this new one, but I figured I should communicate the change.

The only casualty seems to be the blog roll, which has disappeared for some reason. I'll have to piece that back together at some point. Hopefully that's the only hiccup.

Rising up.

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 15:50:00 +0000

Probably running this dropper/dry deal into the ground here, but its effectiveness continues to amaze. Yesterday I put the dropper on a carp cruising in 2 - 3 feet of water. The hare's ear was only suspended 12 inches below the tarantula and this fish rose to eat it. I've assumed the nymph dropper needed to be at or within a couple of inches of the bottom to be effective. Not necessarily true.

I honestly did not expect the take here. The fish was little more than a fuzzy shadow easing along a steep bank. Then the shadow paused directly under the tarantula and took on the distinct features of a fish as it came up through the water column to get at the nymph. The tarantula trembled slightly.

He was the only fish of the day. He declined the photo op.

Nope.

Hare's ear hammered.

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 04:44:00 +0000

Another victim of the hare's ear dropper.

Took the dry/dropper combo back to the carp today and hammered them. One of my best days of the year in terms of sheer numbers. The dry fly adds a visual cue to the mix that makes strike detection much easier. Some thoughts on that:

-The obvious piece of this is that the dry acts as a strike indicator. Gregg Martin has long espoused the use of strike indicators and uses them himself with considerable success. This method works extremely well with a dry fly as the indicator. The carp sucks the dropper in. The dry twitches a bit. You set the hook and the fish is on. This happens about 50% of the time.

-The other 50% of the time, the carp sucks the dropper in with no discernible movement of the dry. This seems amazing but is apparently no big deal to the carp because they pulled this stunt off repeatedly today. However there is a visual tip-off here, albeit one you have to manufacture yourself. If the fish moves to the dropper or otherwise appears to have eaten it without moving the dry, give a short slow strip. If the fish is on, the dry will immediately begin to submerge. When you see this, that small strip should morph instantly into a hard strip-set.

-Interesting note about the above scenario: On a couple of occasions, the fish was not on when I did that short strip. But the pull moved the nymph around, inducing the take. A nice bit of serendipity.

-In short, visual cues from the fish are still needed most of the time. As is the ability to read those cues accurately.

1 ft. in depth throughout and carp-infested

-I have been dropping the nymph about 10-12 inches from the dry. This seems about right, although I may shorten that to see what happens. The fish that I am targeting are in about a foot of water, so the nymph is suspended an inch or so from the bottom. One of many variables to experiment with here.

-There is no guesswork as far as where the nymph is. The dry fly tells you exactly where it is regardless of water clarity. Another piece of information that lends itself to strike detection.

-Although the nymph dropper is the primary player, there is a dry fly in play here too. I've never caught a carp on a dry fly and one reason for that is that I almost never use them for carp. One of the great attractions of using the dry/dropper combo is that I'm putting a dry fly on every fish. Gonna be a pay-off with that eventually. Almost happened in fact on my last trip.

Good to the last dropper.

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 02:14:00 +0000

Educational weekend on the carp front.

-I spent much of my time experimenting with a dry and dropper rig, specifically a hare's ear dropped from a Turck's Tarantula. I have been thinking alot about this combo and its possibilities for cruising carp. As the weather cools, cruisers seem less receptive to a fly dropping on the dinner plate and often steer clear. My thinking with the dropper is that I can lead the fish a bit more and reduce the risk of spooking him. He comes up on the nymph suspended in front of him rather than having it drop on his head. Results thus far are promising.

-I found several pods of cloopers in one arm of the reservoir. In every instance the surface of the water was covered with a mat of small seeds, or something, blown from nearby trees, and the carp were feeding on this. I tried the dropper combo here with some success. I hoped I might get a take on the tarantula since these were rising fish, but that was a no go. In fact any cast in the immediate vicinity of these fish would put them down. But a cast that put the dropper in the cruising lanes between the mats of seeds would occasionally get a take. Hit and miss with no consistency. But it would work if you could summon the patience to stick with it.

Not sure what those tiny seeds are, but carp like 'em.

-I fished each day from late afternoon to dark. As dusk approached, significant hatches of large cream midges came off. Also about this time I noticed large mud plumes boiling up here and there near the shore. These were not small isolated plumes like a single fish makes. These were large strips of stained water, the kind of thing you might see from the wake of a boat when it passes an exposed and eroding shoreline. And in the middle of this, creating it in fact, were numerous carp. They were difficult to see because of the dingy water, but they were moving around quite a bit and I got glimpses of them as they finned around, their sides flashing as they turned on their sides to intercept rising midge larva. At least I think this is what was happening. I don't think the hatch and this aggressive feeding behavior occurring at the same time is a coincidence. The dropper did not work on these fish, but a stripped nymph did. A couple of times anyway.

-I figure I should make it a point to fish until dark more often. This is something I rarely do when I'm fishing for carp.

-One final note on the dropper. Just before I reeled in and headed back to the ramp, I found an isolated carp crawling a steep bank. I dropped the flies in a few inches ahead of him and he, unbelievably, came up to the tarantula. But he didn't take. So I gave short strip. He followed but still didn't take. I stripped a few times hoping, I guess, to imitate a fleeing insect. The fish followed briefly, but then sank out of sight. I knew that I had overplayed my hand. So I sat and waited for him to show again. Ten minutes later he was back. I cast and he again rose to the dry. This time I went for subtlety and gave the fly the slightest of twitches. And he sipped it right in. I nearly fell out of the boat. My immediate concern was a large pile of brush nearby and of course he headed right for it. And then the fly pulled out. Just pulled out and he was gone.

Dammit.

I have the plan, but not the stones.

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 02:39:00 +0000

There is a somewhat seedy little amusement park not far from here with name of Lake Winnepesaukah. Supposedly the name is derived from a Native American word for beautiful or bountiful water. Locals call the place Lake Winnie for short.

The owners of the park hold fireworks shows several times during the summer. When I lived on Missionary Ridge I could hear the booms of these pyrotechnics going off and it was not hard at all to imagine Bragg firing his batteries at Grant's men as they stormed up the slopes of the ridge and overwhelmed the Confederate positions. Not hard at all.

Anyway, there is a lake in the park. A small body of water unremarkable in everyway except that a significant population of large, and I mean large, carp resides there.

Which is where the plan comes in. Each summer I work out a scheme in my head to sneak in a travel rod and a handful of flies. I'm thinking #10 sulphur dries ought to do the trick since these fish will often rise to a bit of popcorn pitched onto the surface. I'll stand in line for the paddleboats and when my turn comes I'll paddle to the middle of the lake where I can assemble the rod discreetly. And then I'll give those brutes a go. The only real question from that point is whether or not I could land a fish before security got to me.

Each summer I try to convince myself to pull it off. What's the worst that could happen? Probably a lifetime ban from the park. Confiscation of the rod, etc. I'm not sure they would, or could, do much more than that.

But I still have not been able to summon the guts needed to go through with it. Not yet anyway.

Our man in Michigan. With the pink butterfly net.

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 15:46:00 +0000

Just received the latest report from Miles. The season up north continues to go well, if the beast above is any indication.

Apparently this was the second fish from this particular trip. Miles lost the first one when the tippet snapped as he was trying to land it. With a 6 inch pink(!) butterfly net.

Not surprisingly, he has been a little sketchy with the details on this.

Podcast!

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 17:00:00 +0000

The newest podcast from Dan Frasier over at Carp Pro is out. Interviews with Barry Reynolds, Trevor Tanner, and Ty Clifton; the Chance in Hell feature; fishing reports. This is "can't miss" stuff. Check it out here - Carp Pro Podcast.

My carp runneth over

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 01:18:00 +0000

....and darn near spooled me. This dude had some starch in his shorts and just about scorched the reel off of that 5 weight. Nice.

Several significant rain events over the past couple of weeks have recharged the flats with a few inches of fresh water and the carp have moved back up in decent numbers, which seems to support the pattern theory I mentioned a couple of posts back. Water temps are in the seventies and the fish are clearly in the mood to eat. Took a few cruising commons like the one above on an unweighted MF'er.

An added bonus to the rain is that several stretches of the flats are again underwater after being high and dry for much of late summer. Quite a bit of foliage filled in during the dry spell and all of that greenery is now submerged. Grass carp like that. The grassies have nosed up into all of this suddenly available forage like hogs at a trough. They're tough though. Even more so than usual. Grassies are near impossible to take on a fly when they have plenty of readily available green stuff to feed on. At least around here. They beat me down like a rented mule and seemed glad to do it.

Carp Nation – State of the Confederacy (This is Georgia. We don’t use the word “union” around here much).

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 04:41:00 +0000

That rumble you hear in the distance is the burgeoning growth of Carp Nation. Lots of good stuff going on out there. To wit:

There are a couple of noteworthy conversations going on right now in the Flyslingerz forum over at CarpPro.net: One is the thread “The Perfect Fly”, started by the Carpfather himself, Barry Reynolds. After reading through the comments several times, I’ve concluded that it’s a borderline miracle that we’re able to catch these fish at all.

The other is in the thread "What are normal carp, normal water, and normal strategies" by Jim Pankiewicz (more famously known as Mr. P. - see below). This thread is just getting cranked up and should be very interesting.

(By the way, you’ll need to join the forum to see the threads, but you should do this anyway if you’re at all interested in carping. That place is a gold mine of info. Just click on the "Forum" button at the top left of the page and sign up.)

Speaking of CarpPro, Gregg Martin, chief practitioner of the dark art of carping with “Gregg’s Eggs”, was recently in the spotlight on their Personal Tails podcast. Great stuff in Gregg’s feature and definitely worth a listen.

And speaking of Personal Tails, Erin Block over at Mysteries Internal was also featured recently. Really cool to hear Erin do a reading of her work.

No need to join anything to hear these podcasts. You can find them here.

We'll stay on the CarpPro theme to somewhat belatedly pass on the news that John Montana and Trevor "Shin Guards are for Sissies" Tanner have been selected to the Carp Pro pro staff. Congrats to those guys!

And finally, if you've ever wondered all the fuss is about carp, go check out the video Mr. P posted on his blog. Speaks for itself.

Word.

Patterns.

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 02:20:00 +0000

The carp have (mostly) moved off of the flats over the past few weeks and are oriented to areas where they have immediate access to deep water. Initially I thought a spate of back-to-back-to-back-to-back cold fronts pushed them out of the flats area, but I see now that this is incorrect. I have in the past attributed the periodic abandoning of the flats to changes in water temperature, but after considering this under various seasonal scenarios I now think the main reason for the move is actually water levels.

This time last year, for example, these same flats were loaded with tailing carp. This year though there are very few carp here and it seems clear that water temperature is not the culprit. If anything, the temperatures are dropping right into the carp's wheelhouse as far as active feeding goes. The only real difference that I can see between September of 2011 and now is that water levels were considerably higher in 2011. Bottom line - it's incorrect to say that this is a temperature pattern. It's actually a water level pattern.

This rocky bank drops off abruptly not far from the water line.
I normally don't find a lot of carp hanging around here.

4 lbs. of carp folding up a 5 weight.

A bunch of these guys were crawling the rocky bank in the top pic.

I suspect this is a security deal. Even though they have an entire reservoir to their backs, these fish feel a lower level of security on the shrinking flats. This is further evidenced by the fact that any stray carp on the flats right now is guaranteed to have his full schizo on and be wary as hell. I've managed to stick a few of these fish, but only after dropping to a #18 unweighted pheasant-tail and 12' 5X leader. Even then most of them spooked the instant the fly hit the water.

So I checked an area that I fish infrequently. An area where I only occasionally see carp. An area that is mostly a shallow shelf along the bank with rapid drop-offs to deeper water near by. And there they were. In good numbers. Feeding like crazy.

Good to know.

"Dealing with the lumber." or "In the lumber, dealing."

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 04:37:00 +0000

The scenario today was this - several carp milling around in the back end of this small pocket off of the main lake. Not much wider than my canoe and both banks littered with downed brush (or lumber as Miles would say). Maybe two feet in depth throughout.

I am fitted for disaster with a 5x tippet and a willingness to put a fly on these fish despite the circumstances. My first cast is off but turns out to be close enough. A loner breaks from the group and casually picks the fly up. As expected, the carp makes for the lumber on the hookset and dives hard into the branches. And I let him. Encourage him, even. I lower the rod tip and feed him line. He weaves in and out of the woody maze and then stops, I assume, to consider the situation.

At this point I slowly begin unraveling the fly line from the branches while the fish sulks, pausing here and there to reel in line gained. As I near his lie, the carp moves deeper into the jumble of limbs, taking back a few feet of line each time. We repeat this process several times. Each time he moves further into the brush, he also moves closer to the open water of the main lake. When we finally reach the end of the line of brush, he bolts for open water and loses his advantage. The end game follows fairly soon thereafter.

This year I've lost several fish trying to turn them from submerged obstacles like downed trees, etc. Trying to turn a hot carp during its initial burst is often a losing gambit, especially when a light tippet is involved. And wrestling a carp from the brush rarely works. In both instances the tippet usually gives.

So I've been rethinking this approach and have been experimenting with another tactic. Rather than attempt to turn the fish, I just let him run into obstacle. I let him run the fly line into the limbs and then begin the process of working it free after he stops and settles down. If I'm patient and constantly keep untangling the line and moving toward the fish, eventually he'll break for open water where I have the advantage. I have been astonished at how often this works.

Some thoughts:

-The fly line bears most of the pressure and abrasion from the branches, not the leader/tippet.

-Even when a fish is in the brush, there is enough spring and bounce in the twigs and branches to protect the tippet to some degree.

-Given the spongy mouth of the carp, the hook is unlikely to fall out as you give the fish line and slack as he moves through the obstacle.

-With the pressure suddenly released as you play out line, the fish often stops his run short and hunkers down. This also protects the tippet.

-As long as you're patient and continue to work the line through the brush, the carp will eventually make a break for open water.

Anyone else use this tactic? I've landed more than a few fish with it in recent weeks in some very brush-centric situations.

Hey man, did the hair on the back of your neck just stand up?

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 14:19:00 +0000

Welcome to the Bungle.

noreply@blogger.com (Ty) — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 03:55:00 +0000

Carp demand patience. They require a thoughtful plan and a deliberate approach.

To do otherwise is to muck it up. Blow your shots. Fail.

Yesterday I did otherwise.

Summer has shriveled the flats, but the fish remain plentiful. However the mood has changed. The carp are, if possible, even more neurotic than usual. I suppose they sense that their world, for reasons beyond their understanding, is shrinking. Maybe they get from this a general feeling of unease even though several hundred acres of reservoir remains at their backs. Maybe things have simply become unfamiliar.

Mud flats in July

Mud flats in September

In any case, they spook at the slightest provocation. I observed peacefully feeding carp erupt suddenly in fear for no discernible reason. They simply bolted, tearing muddy trails through the shallows. I saw this scenario play out several times in the two hours I was there.

A day then, that required a light touch. And I went in swinging a hammer.

I'll spare you the details and just say that I did not fish well. Finally, because I didn't know what else to do, I knelt in the mud and waited. More than one car on the road behind me slowed briefly. After a while, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, there was a tail at twenty feet, twelve o' clock. Then ten feet, a gold shiny back now breaching with the tail. Then six feet. I dapped the fly and the fish wiggled noisily forward, his belly undoubtedly pressed hard to the mud in those few inches of water.

I didn't bother with a photo. I measured and scaled him and dropped him back. Eighteen and a half inches, 3.2 lbs. - the sweet spot in this particular water. The thirty or so carp that I have recorded here over the past two months have averaged right at 18 inches and 3 lbs. A diminutive bunch in carp terms, but no less demanding.