After two years, I finally got one!

I headed out Thursday night after the kids were finally asleep in the darkness to stalk some nighttime risers. I stopped at a few spots with street lights and noticed two things, extremely low clear water, and no fish. I guess the bait chuckers were really wiping them out.

I headed down to the old foot bridge were I was chasing carp over the winter and I saw a few rises. Perfect. As I walked to the stream I also noticed it was really muddy. I then saw a ton of monster carp mudding along the edges of the stream, digging for food. I opted for the bigger species :)

I tossed a small crayfish imitation named "Skip's Dad" that I got from the Instagram Fly Swap. I swung it in front of a big carp and a smallie came out of nowhere and smashed it. OK, not what I was looking for, but I didn't get skunked.


This wound up happening a few more times, with dink smallmouth taking the fly. After a few minutes I saw a window of opportunity with two big carp heading towards the same big rock. I dropped my fly perfect between then and saw a slight pull on my line as the small one inhaled it.

Once he was on, I realized that I had made the mistake of not really having the gear for this fight. I had a 4 weight and 6X tippet. Not something you want to realize when you're backing deep into an 8 lb carp.

I took my time, played him right, and safely landed him. I was so freaking excited. After two years, I finally got my first carp on a fly. I let out a giant "YES!!" even though I was standing in the middle of a dark park by myself with no one else around. This was a night I won't soon forget.


I watched him swim away with a giant smile on my face and noticed the trout starting to rise again just upstream. It didn't matter. No trout in this stream would repeat the fight I just had.

Some tasty Saturday morsels (well..at least the fish will see them as tasty)

I spent today over at the Calvary Outdoors Expo with my son. Unfortunately, the only fly fishing stuff there was a booth by Mainline Fly Tyers. There was lots of camoflage, dead stuffed animals, and soft plastic fishing baits, none of which are really my thing. I did pick up a really nice LED flashlight for $4 though.

I am a little tired, partially because I was up last night tying like a madman. Here's a couple that came off the vise around 2am.

First up is a BWO looped wing emerger. I wanted something different to trail a BWO dry so I thought I'd give this a shot. I tied a similar midge emerger pattern that cleaned up a few weeks back.

Size 18 emerger hook
Green goose biot
olive 12/0 thread
CDC - light dun
Z-lon, dun (tail)
a tiny bit of Jan Siman peacock bronze for the head


Next up, here's a pattern for carp that I recreated from looking at Roughfisher's website. He calls it the carp crack. I won't list this recipe here because if you really like it, you should go buy a few from him :)

I would have caught a carp, but.......

I'm on my way home from work tonight and stopped dead in traffic. It appears that everyone and their mother in a 20 mile radius had to go to this one bar to celebrate the fact that they aren't irish but are wearing green anyway (for the record, I'm about 30% green blood). I pass by the park with the pond and creek that is full of carp and figure I might as well wait out rush hour by scouting for fish.

As I'm walking down to the bridge under the road that is backed up with cars, I notice a pod of fish holding tight against the concrete wall. I see two really small bass, a handful of bluegills, and then I see a carp, probably about 5 lbs. I was peaking at the fish from around a tree and they didn't notice me at all. This was the first really warm day we've had so far this spring and the fish were just starting to wake up, but still pretty lethargic. I darted back to my car, grabbed my 4 weight (which is the only rod I had in the car) and headed back behind the tree. I figured that something big would spook the carp, and that since they are still in quazi-hibernation mode, something small and easy would be the ticket. I rigged up a tiny san juan worm, trailed by a glass bead head pheasant tail. I figured that would sink really slow and give the carp a chance to take notice.

I get a perfect roll cast around the tree and a perfect drop near the only fish over 6 inches long. the PT starts to drop, and I see the san juan just holding sub-surface. After about 10 seconds, it starts to slowly drop as well. Visibility was only about 2 feet and they were holding in 4 feet of water. As soon as I see the flies drop out of site, I watch the carp slowly start lowering, following the worm.

As he gets out of view I see something slowly drag my line down and I'm thinking "game on! I'm going to land a 5 lb fish on my way home from work!"

WRONG.

I set the hook like a champion with a strip strike, and prepare for the biggest battle I've had in a few weeks.


The little fish spooked the carp and he took off. I waited about 5 minutes, saw him appear again, cast at him, and the whole thing just repeated itself. Another darn bluegill.

Oh well, at least I didn't get the skunk. Two fish in 10 minutes is better than I've been doing almost all year!

The magic mystery egg, and some carp flies

Let me set the stage for you. We are at the Fly Fishing show in Somerset last month, and my brother-in-law and I are having a discussion with one of the featured fly tiers there on epoxy use. All of a sudden, a very short, very old guy walks up and slams a jar full of water on the table. Inside it, there are about half a dozen of the craziest looking egg patterns I have ever seen. They look like they are covered in yolk, and almost glowing.

He said he was selling them for $12 a dozen and would not say what they were made out of. The tier we were talking to, and the one immediately next to him instantly grabbed their wallets and bought a dozen of them without question. They were that awesome looking. One of them said to us "We do this for a living, and this is some crazy sh*t. You don't come across stuff like this too often." I was already maxed out on my spending limit, but Nick decided to pick up a dozen.

I had all but forgot about them, but then Nick lets me know that he hit two trout on them yesterday and everyone else got the skunk. He went out today, and landed another 4 bows without changing flies all day. I asked for one so I could try to figure out WTF it was made out of.

The good news is, I think I figured it out. The bad news is, I need some of the material to see if I'm right. They really don't look like much when dry.



But, once you get them wet, they absorb the water like a sponge, almost doubling in size, and have this crazy glow to them.


I'm going to pick up some of the material this weekend and try to recreate them. More on that later.

In other news, there's a very small creek that is a few minutes away from my work. It's in a township park, and it runs alongside this small lake (ok..more like a large pond) that holds a good amount of largemouth, crappie, bullhead cats, and some pretty damn big carp. The thing with the lake and the park is that it's basically on a flood plain, and more than an inch of rain means the lake overflows into this small creek. Over the years, some of the monster carp have made their way into the creek and have pretty much just stuck around there, along with bass, cats, and even a few odd goldfish over a foot long that people have released over the years.

I've never taken a carp on a fly rod and I'm ready to go after them. I stopped by this creek tonight on my way home. It was almost dark but I saw exactly what I was hoping to see, a few carp, between 6-10 lbs, surfacing and pretty active. That made me get pretty excited to knock out some carp flies. I started doing some quick research on them, since I barely know anything about them. I remembered seeing the "armored car" san juan pattern and I found it on Rough Fisher's site. I dig this pattern, and I think it might even work on trout. It would be nice to fish a SJ without needing shot. They were fun and easy to tie as well.

Lightening Strike Scud hook, size 8
Uni-Thread 6/0 (color to match chenille)
Ultra Chenille
Brass bead
UTC ultra wire - medium (color to match)