Carp Carp Carp Carp

Every year I look forward to spring and a new season of carp fishing.  While not the most glamorous or beautiful fish in the water their wariness, hard to fool and easy to spook nature has earned my utmost respect for these great game fish. Yes I said great game fish.  They will teach a wild brown trout a thing or two about wiliness.  If you want to hook one on the fly you better bring your A game and be willing to put in some time.

 So with the beautiful temps of late an early season recon was in the works.  We found tons of carp, thousands of carp.  For most species this would the holy grail, the so called elephant grave yard, but with carp it is a bit of a curse because with so many around you always end up spooking one you don't see and that ruins the opportunity for the one you have in your sights.  So we had hundreds of carp in our midst, but we had a hell of a time getting any to take.  Usually we sight fish to mud plums or tailers but with so many around and the water being slightly off color we resorted to blind casting.  We each missed some takes but eventually we boated a couple of golden bones and a surprise visitor. 

 Fish on!

 Our surprise visitor a bullhead or as we know them back home hornpout

Getting Ready

Yeah I know I have spring fever like most everyone else. It’s hard not to given the mild winter and now the high late winter temps. Since the fall I have only swung flies for steelhead, and there is nothing wrong with that, but in my mature years I have come to appreciate the benefits of variety. Some of our so called warm water denizens require a little checking up on. Somebody has to go and see if they indeed have survived another winter and if they are in their usual haunts. So my tying bench has been whispering my name lately to tie up some early season trout flies and carp flies in order to be ready. Given my overfull fly boxes this is somewhat of a joke, but one doesn’t ever seem to have enough flies because you just never know what one might need out there on the water.

The top fly is nothing fancy just an effective black bunny tied with lead eyes so it rides upside down.  One can catch just about anything on this pattern.

 This is one of my crayfish patterns that also seems to catch just about anything. 

Lesson Learned

A few weeks ago I went out in search of hawks to photograph.  Every since I was a young boy I have always enjoyed watching hawks.  I got very lucky and had a light phase rough legged hawk land on a telephone pole right by my car.  In my haste to get the shots I must hit the selector switch on my camera and switched modes.  I ended up with a way too low shutter speed.  I am slowly getting over this mess up.  Somehow I did manage to salvage two photos of this magnificent bird.  I guess the only good thing from this mistake is that I will be unlikely to ever make the same error again.


Atop the pole and looking for food



Leaving the pole in search of

Goldstock Flytying event

Went to Goldstock's Annual Fly Tying event today.  There was so much tying talent in the room it was scary.  Here are some of the pictures that I took that came out well.  I missed some of the other tyers but I will have to wait till next hear. 

                                     Bill Wemple's Dingleberry isonychia fly

                                      Jungle Cock Neck

                                      Bob Mead's realistic Praying Mantis

                                      Bob Mead Mayfly

                                      Geoff Schaake's Grey Heron

                                      Geoff Schaake's Lady Caroline

Pat Cohen's Punk Rocker

Mixed Bag

Hit the river again recently with my buddy Matt.  This was his second trip ever for steelhead within a week.  His casting definitely improved as did his general understanding of the complexities of swinging flies for steelhead.  He did manage to hook one but his tippet broke so it goes.  All I can say to him is welcome to the madness of swinging flies for steelhead.  It isn't an easy thing to do with any real consistency.  It has taken me 5 seasons of swinging to finally feel that I have sort of a clue as to what I am doing.

While Matt didn't land any my outing was one of my better ones.  Strange how I had a better day mid February than I did one day early November.  Such is the fickle nature of chasing these fish with a two handed rod.

Connected with one bright hen and two chrome browns that fought like steelhead, not the usual dead weight browns that often inhabit these waters.  One of the browns jumped and given how it fought I would have sworn on a stack of bibles that it was steelhead.

Hittin It

 Introduced my friend Matt to Spey fishing for steelhead recently.  Having an eager learner was a great experience as I realized how much I have learned and now take for granted when I'm out.  As the old saying goes if you want to learn something teach it.  We met up with our friend Adam Kyrder of Raw Water Productions and did some filming for their upcoming video.  Here are a bunch of pics from the outing.

 

Heads or Tails?

Got out to chase some winter steel if you can call the weather that we're having winter.  Managed this nice hen that ripped some line off of the reel.  Felt really to connect with a fish since I haven't been fishing since last year.

Tails or

heads?