Ladies and Gentlemen, We Got 'Em: The Sunning Carp

Actually not that big of a deal but I like that line, and these carp were sticking in my brain since they whipped me on Monday. Swung through on Friday then and gave them another go of it. I didn't have much time. Longer leader, smaller tippet, smaller fly and even softer steps is what I put out there.

The water was up a bit, and it was slightly more turbid. That put a good number of the fish I saw on Monday out of the range of visibility. There were some around though, nearly all doing this:

When I first saw those fish, I passed on them, hoping to find some that weren't hemmed in by 15" DBH logs in the river. I didn't really find anything better though, so I circled back and starting putting flies on them. I got refusals and spooks, but not as blatant as the last time... I got the feeling that I was going to get a take, and it worked out in short order. Fish's head was right by a snag and I was blocked from seeing the mouth... but I guessed on the hookset and it was there. Good feeling - I had missed a couple fish and for a while I thought I was going crazy and losing all ability and reflex to set the hook. Only problem was that I had to jump down a vertical bank of ~5 feet to land the fish. Did that.

Next I fished to this guy for ~15 minutes. He was feeding, so he held my attention.... mouthing around in the branches and leaves of the newly-fallen snag is what he was doing... pretty deliberate movements of body and mouth - cool to watch. He was so into it though, and there was so much tree in the way, I just couldn't get him to take a fly. I think if I'd had a clean shot to lay it down in front of him, he'd have eaten it. I eventually just left him to do his bit and I moved on. Cool fish. Hard to believe a guy would consider hooking a fish in that mess. My plan (that wouldn't have worked) was to try to haul/ski him up over a log after hooking.

Got lucky with the second fish of the day. Walking without much caution downriver on a fishy stretch... came right up on a solo feeding fish, pointed right at me in dead still water. I thought for sure the spook was coming... flipped the LOD out there, 8 inches up and 8 inches to the left of the fish, and the cat pounce was on. I got to watch all of that one. I forgot my protractor at home, so I'm planning to call IGFA to have them determine whether or not this is a fair hooked fish... hehe.


Little monkey was on my back... not a big deal, but he's kind of off now. I shouldn't be fishing to this mood of carp. Need to find some feeding fish. Need to find a flat somewhere.