Monday, May 24, 2010

Brown Lines.



On a recent outing, I spotted a rather large carp in the middle of the lake. I stripped line off of the reel and into a pile at my feet before double hauling out a good portion of it into the lake. Stripping a few more yards out, I arched a cast into the vicinity of the shadow. As I patiently, waited a ten foot section of fly line sank below the surface of the water like it was a piece of t14. This left the shooting head and running line floating while the sinking middle portion pulled them towards one another. My indicator promptly took a dip and ten and half feet of switch rod couldn't even make up for the belly in the line. I lost the carp. In fact, I never even had the carp. With two years of abuse, I brought in a formerly chartreuse green steelhead sharkskin fly line for inspection. It resembled nothing of its former glory. The rough sandpaper like coating that once cut my fingers to pieces barely left a scratch. The hard, almost segmented exterior shell was worn and cracked in multiple places. The once electric glow of awesomeness had morphed into a line that looked like it went through a pile of feces. All good things eventually come to an end. Fly lines included. Cut that time in half, for lines that regularly work in less desirable conditions.

New & Old.
Fresh & Abused.

My Nemesis.
The Elusive Koi.

Found A New Lake.
First One.

Sweet New Place.
Large Population.
Small Size.

Number Two.
Twice as Ugly.

Coarse Scales on This Guy.

Another.

Very Coarse Scales. Weird.

Sucker Spawn Scores.

Trip 2#.
Pouring Rain.

Two Handed Carpin.

Nemesis No Longer.

My First Koi.

Moby Dick.

All White With a Flash of Orange.

I'll Be Back.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

you are living the dream brutha

Bigerrfish said...

Dude you been a carp slayin foo,, I want a two hander.... that white thing looked wild... so what are you doing? sight fishing to these things like bonefish?,,, share share!! seriously help me out I want one!!!

Mark said...

biggerrfish-

Adam made this post over the summer.

http://thisriveriswildflyfishing.blogspot.com/2009/08/dos-and-donts-and-ins-and-outs-of.html

That should sum up a lot of the carp fishing we do on the blog. Not all carp water is the same though. We prefer unweighted patterns, while a lot of other bloggers (roughfisher, carp on the fly) use weighted patterns. Different scenarios, waterclarity, structure, pressure, feeding, and so on all call for something different.

If that fails, check out other blogs that carp, or click on our carp tab. It doesnt have all our posts on carp but a large portion of them.

Its a learning process, it takes a lot of time. However, once you get in sync with the quarry, the fishing is hard to beat. We sight fish for carp 100% of the time.

Good luck.

JMP said...

Mark is right about that unweighted flies. The most weight I use on my nymphs is small bead chain eyes. I think carp are way harder to catch than any other species I have chased as well. Each water is different for sure... We also sight fish for our carp 100% of the time.

John Montana said...

Awesome koi. Brings me back to the highway cone days.