You can’t really keep a guy from carping

Explored new water today. Walked up to the first joint – saw a disturbance by the shore and I figured I’d spooked a fish… but closer examination showed a tail. Two casts into it and I had this 13 lber (digital scale) literally hopping at the LOD. It was a tight spot and I had to navigate out of there into open water… if that carp’d played cards right he could have broken me off pretty easily. Very good visual – portrayal of what is becoming the classic excitement prior to inhaling the fly.

Trouble with this spot though, is that it’s a lot of water and not a lot of littoral area. No real flats. Tough place to fish I think. I know I didn’t walk up and catch the biggest carp in the waterbody though… needs more exploring.

Second spot, here is what happened: I started walking, and approx every 60 seconds I came upon carp. Spooked a pair here, cast at one there, caught one here, stalked a feeding trio there… HAHA, YES MF is what I was thinking. It felt like I finally hit a Rochester jackpot. I didn’t have time to even explore the entire water OR the entire area…. But just in the few minutes I had, I saw at least 15 cyprinids. Spooked most… caught a couple… They looked downright puny compared to the double-digiters I’ve been banking lately. These guys were pretty much all in the high single digit range. The smaller one pictured here was not a watch-it-like-a-movie bit, but rather a cast, wait and guess/figure approach. Right in the mouth though.

I guess I did break my streak of consecutive big fish… it was four, and I’d say they were all 12 lbs or greater. Nearly 60 lbs of fish, by way of four catches… a guy can handle that.

Check out the tail in the last pic.

Taking somebody out fishing tomorrow. I'm afraid maybe I've used up my karma... let's hope not!