I arrived at the canal at 7:30 with high hopes. It was slightly overcast and humid as all hell, I was the only person there…which was a first. I started to see carp much earlier during my walk down the canal path than I usually did, and they were mudding too. I showed my fly to a half dozen fish…I’d say 8-10lb range, just a few looks and follows. I made my way into prime carp territory and began to see fish cruising slowly around weaving in and out of the weeds. I made a few casts, and since the fish were shoaling it only took one to get spooked and all hope was lost…
I continued walking down the path scanning the water…and I don’t know why, but I turned around and out of the gloom came a monster carp. It was headed towards shore and I quickly put my fly in between. As my fly slowly sank the carp didn’t change direction like they usually do, avoiding the fly, instead it just kept coming and opened its mouth and sucked in the damsel…
During this moment I had an out of body experience, haha. It was like I was watching myself in a dream. Four months of getting my ego smashed by these fish was finally a distant memory.
I set the hook, and the fish was instantly on the other side of the canal trying to get into a logjam. Mind you I’m using my 5wt. with 3x tippet, I put all the pressure I possibly could on this fish to stop him, I never had a fish pull so hard…it was actually scary. The fish finally changed its mind about the logjam and took off horizontally. It was insane how fast this fish was moving, I could definitely tell that this fish didn’t get hooked too often. During it’s running around, a pile of weeds had accumulated on my leader making it extremely difficult to put adequate pressure on the fish in order to direct it my way. Not wanting to lose the fish, I jumped over the poison thicket in front of me into the canal to clean off my leader. The fight overall may have lasted 20-30 minutes, I have no recollection of time…I was too overcome with adrenaline to comprehend anything except how I was going to land the fish. I finally tired the fish out to the point where I could get it close to me without another explosive run out to the middle of the canal, and threw my arms around the fish and drug it close to the bank. I set up my camera on auto capture and took a few shots. Then I realized someone who was jogging was slowing up to see what I was doing waist deep in the canal…I had him snap a picture.
Go Time!
Now Thats A Thick Fish...
3x MaxKnot is the shit...
What A Freakin' Fish!
M O N E Y...
I can’t even begin to describe the feeling I have, not only catching one of the infamous canal carp, but one of that caliber...Haha, two personal best carp in less than a week...I definitely shattered my 12lb record from Saturday. I need to put down the fly rod…
4 comments:
the pic of your hoisting her out with the fly rod in your mouth is one of the greatest pics we've got! congrats on the fish. hopefully we'll have a saltwater species post by the end of the weekend....
Thanks man, good luck in the salt.
Good stuff. Congrats brother... check out that pig: 19kg on a 8weight:
http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u299/SDombaj/2009/FFN.jpg
Story coming soon on FFN.
Cheers,
Steph
Nice carp fly there.
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