Three and a half hours is a long quick hitter or a much-too-short expedition. I had this slot of tweener time last night to myself, as family was visiting predecessors in northern Iowa (they are true Iowegians). I opted for the no-driving approach and hit a local carp water.

Conditions were semi-dogmeat: somewhat overcast and water still very turbid. I am going to name that new rod first cast though, because I walked up and right away saw a feeding fish… put cast beyond and dialed up the old guesswork again. This time though, I learned what a guess can do when it runs afoul: masterful snag in the dorsal fin. That really sent that carp for a jigger though – ran like a mad hound dog through one foot of water for quite a while. I actually tried to pop him off but the hook was too tight in the fin. Landed and released… then lapsed into a dry spell of spooked fish and screw ups. I walked to some other water and found these fish:

I couldn’t cast at them given the setting, so I tried to heron-walk on their asses… that actually worked and I was able to dangle flies in front of faces. Two of them moved in a direction that would lead me to believe they were interested in eating the fly but both times I set the hook and found nothing. I eventually bleeped up all the fish and they went along their merry ways. I shouldn’t admit it, but I returned to this spot later after some reset time and replayed all the same events.

Back to the main water though… it’s cool because there are plenty of fish there. They are hard to see, but I discovered some valuable information regarding where the fish hang out according to various water levels. I found two fish that were “parked” – don’t see that very often: almost sitting on the bottom, dead still with water just over their backs. I couldn’t tell which end was which on one of them – I think head and tail were in sediment and I could barely see outline of back… I put fly at each end several times and got not one flick of movement. Finally the fly touched the carp and he had to use his legs to actually walk off the sediment flat – took him forever to actually swim – pretty cool indeed.

Later on I was back up high and I finally saw a nice BIG fish cruising/eating. Right in perfect range he was… Then from out of the blue a fuggin mallard came to his rescue and made a big ruckus to warn him of the homo sapien preying upon his golden ass. I was shocked and all I could manage was “you fuggin duck!”

19:38 rolled around though, and it was getting really hard to see. I persisted though. I saw one fish feeding and moving away from me – I figured I had no chance, but I had nothing better to do so I started casting… It was one of those rapid fire cast-and-pick-up in succession bits that usually doesn’t work… This time though on about the fifth cast I put it out there just right and I saw a slight pause in the fish’s path… Set the hook and right away knew it was no snag-bag. Zonker’s swimming clouser was money there.


On the way out I got a non-fishing bonus: a whole mob of little gang-banger looking kids had taken over the park with a tackle football game. There was a lot of high-pitched chatter and smack talking… pretty funny. It sounded like this: “Hey mutha fugga – if I touch that ball I’m runnin’ through you biches.” I had to laugh… but some of those guys were actually pretty quick and slippery.

Some other bonuses included a pretty little fish and an encounter with some wild mint. I put some sprigs of mint under my cap and ate a bunch of the leaves on the spot, in the hopes that I could camo my smell and be even sneakier.




I’m getting pretty tired of this one little carp water and I need to explore some other geography. I opened a bit of a new dimension last night with some discovery, but I need some new settings. OR – I need conditions to change so sight fishing gets better. OR – I need to figure out a way to catch those carp that seek refuge between the flood control walls that are 3453 feet high and a bane to carp fishermen.