A Fine Buglemouth

Prelude to the day: biking to work with Redington poking out of backpack. Biked over feeding carp. Could not leave said situation without engaging carp. The fish were feeding with gusto - ramming heads into substrate, creating these beautiful upwellings of silt and bubbles... Just frolicking in the small stream ecosystem is what they were doing. I walked up thinking I'd count down some flies on the plumes... didn't have to though - was approached by a slow cruiser. Fly was flipped. Fly was pounced on. In a very strange happening, the head came out of the water in the least exclamatory take I can remember... just kind of slowly dragged the head up with the hookset. No reaction from the fish. Funny. Then my fly broke off at the knot. I got on my bike and pedaled the rest of the way to work.

Fruit of the day: Well, I explored the beyond a little further today. That is, went away from the little corner of this water that I'd been fine-tooth-combing for the past year and headed to some heretofore not-navigated bits. I went past where I'd gone yesterday... stopping to dap at the carp I tangled with prior. They were exhibiting some very cool behavior - sitting tight to the bottom, literally hiding underneath submerged aquatic macrophytes (SAV for the TMDL crowd out there; seaweed for others... hehe). At one point, I swear I became a sixth-sense carp hunter: I was ready to continue on my way past a weed bed, when something made me stop - really - and look at a particular location... after a few seconds I indeed made out the dark scales of a cyprinid, nestled tight in a green cocoon. How cool was that? Pretty cool. Tough to get them in that mess though. First - not active; second - tight spots for flies.

So I heroned my way along. Then it got funny. I mean funny as in "oh, there's a giant tail..." and "ha - there's another one." Hehe... laughed and fished my way through a few spooks, but the fish kept coming. Finally saw two great fish feeding near a weed bed... blew the first one after a good presentation... and then cast past this one, drug fly back to position and let it sink... LOD stuck that sowish carp in short order. Again - no net. Had to battle and battle and battle... just wouldn't come in. No long runs, but just bullish power. Bulling and bulling... this time I came prepared with wading shoes, so I jumped in and just played it out. Beached the fish, and on removing the hook (from the lip no less), it BROKE at the bend... wow - hooks breaking everywhere lately.

Took a few photos. 33" seems to be the ceiling for the local carp contest. I measured this fish against my rod, and then taped it later... pretty much right on 33 inches. There is some error involved, but to the closest inch, it's 33" I think. Guess on weight is somewhere in the mid-teens. Probably 13-15 lb.

Beautiful scale pattern, and big ol' bugle mouth just singing away.