Ladies and Gentlemen, We Got 'Em: Part II: Cyprinus elusivius

If there was in fact any sort of monkey on my back, he's been given a decent ass whipping by now. These carp have been bugging me since last year... when I had an aquarium view of a perfect take by the biggest fish in the bunch, only to have my tippet knot break on hookset... and all through the remainder of the summer and fall when they would play spooky-carp with me and elude me constantly.

So today I took a little stroll, and found no carp in the water I usually search. Good lesson learned today though - explore new water whenever possible. I kept walking... found a beautiful carp nosing in some pond weed. Very cool. I presented LOD... and spooked him. How could I screw that up?, I asked out loud. They gave me a few more chances, as there were a number of carp around... Presented the fly to a fish up near the top of the water and got a great take... set the hook and saw only a pause and the tell-tale head shake of something was in my mouth but I felt no resistance. That prompted me to look at my fly... and I saw that the fuggin hook was broken off at the bend. I was then foreshadowing stories of the curse of this water - broken tippet knots, spooked fish, broken hooks.... damn baby. Playin tough is what they were doing. I had them spooked a bit so they had dropped back almost out of sight into deeper water... but they were still hanging around, and they weren't on to me fully I guess you'd say. So I threw a brand new LOD out and let it sink to approx carp head level... and then started to gradually pull it toward me... fish on! I figured right away that I must have snagged it right in the peck fin, but lo and behold when I rolled the fish to the top I saw the fly lodged right inside the mouth. I had no net. Took my shoes and socks off while fighting the fish, and jumped in. I fought the fish for a legitimate 10 minutes. Those minutes featured some very strong, but not very long runs. I could see my backing most of the time, but none of it left the spool. Very strong and very determined fish... a match for the 7 wt and 3x. I had a great waterscape to just let her run and have her way for a while. I didn't want to horse her in but I thought I could gradually see more and more of the fly each time she came into my sight, so I was afraid maybe it was slipping/pulling out. Put the screws to her a bit then and got her up near shore... did a John Montana on that ass then and ran over to her in a mad dash and trapped her in a little tidal pool I guess you'd call it. Great fish - nice big buglemouth.

No less than 31" and no more than 32" according to a pretty accurate measure against my rod. My weight estimate is ~13 lbs, +/- 1 lb.

Not a bad bit. Here are pics, in order taken. You can see the spray droplets falling in one of the photos - pretty cool.