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.

A double digits day and one of the patterns that did it

Something told me to go fishing today. I'm not sure what it was, but I had a hunch that I would catch fish. I decided to take a vacation day and get to the water at 9am.

We've been bombarded with snow, ice, sleet, and all of a sudden on Wednesday, it rained. Flows have been really low, but I was keeping an eye on the CFS of the stream and I figured Thursday would be muddy runoff, and Friday would be high, fast, clearer, and oxygenated, or in other words, the perfect storm for fly fishing.

Well, I was kind of right. It was fast, at least in the morning, and it was clear, almost gin clear. But surprisingly enough, it was still kind of low. After an hour of being skunked, I connected and landed a few fish on eggs. It didn't seem like that great of a day, but then I saw a rise. Then, another rise. It was one of those rare occasions where I was in the right place at the right time. I switched to midge dries and emergers and started working my way down the stream. I honestly lost count around 8 or 9 fish and I'm guessed I landed somewhere between 11 and 13. It was one of the best days of fly fishing I've ever had, and it came in the middle of February on a surface bite. There were some small fish, but there were also some of the biggest fish I've ever pulled out of that stream. Here's some trout porn:









Now, here's the pattern that worked the best today. I don't quite know what to call it, but it's hands down my new favorite midge. I kinda came up with it last night while messing around at the vise at 1am.

Size 22 emerger hook
Body - Uni-thread, black, 8/0
Wing sprouts - CDC puff (natural, looped )
Thorax - sparsely dubbed with muskrat underfur (stole this from the Al's rat)



You can also break up the CDC a little bit to make a crippled version.




I was fishing these guys using 7X, and trailing off a bigger fly. My best luck came from starting off with a size 18 Adams dry. The trout would come up to check out the Adams, nose it, back off, and then rise up right away and smash the midge. They were truly taking it as food, not just biting and throwing it. Quite a few of them had it pretty far back in their mouth when I landed them.

After a long day of fishing, I had to come up and take my whole PC apart. I had a corrupt video card. Dual DVI monitors can burn them out quick. I just got done installing a new Radeon and I dig it so far. I'm tired and need a good night's sleep. Plus, there's fishing to do tomorrow!

Well....as long as Ryu doesn't blast us again..