Saturday, August 15, 2009

Celebrity

I got bored of trying to coax carp into taking sucker spawn and san juan worm patterns even though they can be highly productive patterns at times. I don’t know why it didn’t dawn on me earlier being a seasoned trout veteran and all, why not just match the hatch? I suppose I was reluctant to change from what had been working, I would occasionally use beadhead nymphs but I never dug deeper.

So…the night before I headed out I parked myself in front of my vise and created a hybrid of sorts between a damsel and dragon fly nymph, a size 10 and a size 8. I figured these fish must consume a lot of these critters, the weed choked pond is perfect habitat.

The Hybrid

The next morning I rigged up with the size 10 and started casting to bubbling mud plumes and then I spotted one munching on some debris a foot off shore. I placed my fly, twitched it, he took it. The fish made a powerful run and the slack line at my feet formed the infamous “Holy Shit Tangle”. The tangle flew through the first guide in my rod and stopped dead in the second. Let’s take a moment to thank Orvis for their Recoil guides…..So, now I’m down to one of my newest creations, I tied on the size 8 and went back to work. I picked off a few fish along the shoreline and decided to give the far shore a try. I spied one mudding about 70ft off shore making one hell of disturbance. I stripped off what seemed to be all of my fly line and attached a small black thingamabobber while estimating the water depth. I plopped my rig in perfect position, the indicator tweaked and I lifted what seemed like 100yds of fly line off the water for probably my most impressive hook set ever. The fish erupted in a huge boil and took off, 4 seconds later I seen by backing. After an exhausting battle I landed the monster, got resituated and moved 20 feet down the bank and repeated the process on another…2 for 2 baby…haha.

First Fish of The Day

Backing

Quick Self Portrait

Compliments of a nice girl walking by...

Biggest of the day

Still Holding Strong

Nice Lip Piercing

Last Fish of The Day

Oh yeah, there is purpose to the title of this post. So this one fish I hook into tares me into my backing, I mean this fish is movin’…it was actually on the opposite bank of the pond and this isn’t a small pond either. So there I am with my 5wt rod doubled over trying to do something about my situation and I notice that 2 cars on the road across from the pond actually pulled over and stopped to watch me, Haha. It made me laugh aloud, they stayed for the whole 15 min fight. Once landed, I felt obligated to hoist the fish up to present it to the crowd…so I did. One car gave the thumbs up and the other clapped, haha…ridiculous…I continued around the pond slaying tailers, cruisers, and even the occasional carp sunning itself on the surface (something I haven’t done before).

Towards the end of my outing I hooked into the largest fish of the day. As I’m there fighting the fish, a gentleman came up behind me and declared he had been driving by and seen the bend in my rod and turned around…haha. I looked at him and asked him if he would take a picture when I landed the fish, hahaha. Once I landed the big guy I took another stroll around the pond and caught a few more.

I drove home in disbelief, not at the people, but at how well this fly worked. It brought out the predator in these fish, they would chase down the fly and if they would lose it in the weeds I’d make a second cast and as soon as they seen it they’d shoot over and engulf it, I’ve never seen anything like it. The most fish I ever caught in one day out of this pond had been 3, this day I lost count at 15…

5 comments:

Mark said...

carp slayer.

Matt said...

what do you think it was that made the fish attack this nymph and ignore the ones so similar to it that we were throwing at them for weeks? size tippet? black eyes? rubber legs? freaking frustrating! was this on thursday?

Adam said...

No, Thursday the pond had zero visibility. I only caught 3 casting to bubbles. Friday morning the pond was crystal clear again and every fish was feeding probably due to food getting stirred up by the flood. It was unreal, I was literally choosing which fish I wanted to catch next while landing the fish I was engaged with.

I tied that fly to look as real as possible, thin-skin rubber legs, d-rib, bead eyes...It came to life in the water. I really think it was the way the fly fell, the rubber legs acted as a parachute slowing the fall and wiggling...they were smitten.

Chris Michels said...

Wow, nice job. Gotta love the audiences at the local carp ponds. I'd love to see a recipe for that fly. Looks like a real killer.

Adam said...

"I'd love to see a recipe for that fly. Looks like a real killer."

Hey Chris, I'm about to tie a few of these up, I'll try and get a recipe with pics for you.