This River is Wild: Two Saturdays in September

River carpin...

Summer has a way of flying by, even for the teachers that don't have to work. My two months went by so fast, that I neglected a favorite river of mine and the many carp that call it home. Technically, my summer was over by the time I got to fish this body of water but I was able to eek out two Saturday outings with my girlfriend and her Australian cattle dog mix, Zoey. Fly fishing for carp from a SUP with your girlfriend and her lovely dog is not the best scenario, but I made it work nonetheless...

Spot number one has turbid water that obscures even the largest of carp in a few feet of water. It is a wide river and we paddled close to two miles before finally finding an ideal spot that was shallow enough to reveal the tell tale out lines of the golden ghost. The river is loaded with big boulders and formations of sedimentary rocks that protrude through the surface. In between these vast formations of rocks, you can occasionally spot a feeding common with his head down and tail up, a perfect scenario to catch one on fly. If they are not actively feeding, they are on the move using the deeper water between the rocks as highways to get to where they want to be. The best river spots tend to always be in slack water adjacent to deeper moving water. Here, the fish can feed with relative ease and still have the safety net of retreating to deeper water. It is rare to find them in really skinny water because they deal with the constant threat of a bald eagle or osprey making a meal of them. Having lived with this threat for their entire lives, they know where they are safe and where they are not.

After landing two fish and spending some time guiding, I resumed my SUP stalk by paddling around an unexplored piece of slack water besides the main channel. I made sure to get the sun at my back and glided into position. The largest carp I saw all day was making a ruckus turning chocolate milk into dark chocolate milk. My first cast was pure and the carp was lurching towards my fly as the wake of a passing boat came onto the flat, scaring the hell out of a shot at a twenty pounder. I look up to see the guy on the boat waving at me and I gave him a wave back. Carp blocks like that used to bother the hell out of me, but over the years I've grown numb to their impact. It is just part of the game.

Twenty minutes later, I spotted a respectable fish doing the same thing. This fish had the opportunity to eat and immediately peeled line off my reel into the current. My fly line got caught on a groove on a boulder and I immediately lost all control and leverage of the fish. My backing knot ticked through my guides as I began paddling towards the obstruction with one hand on the SUP paddle and the other holding the rod. Once removed, I regained my fly line, parked the yak, and landed a robust fish whose tail gleamed of Fall...

Spot number two features much cleaner water but only if you can time everything right. Time it wrong, and you'll find yourself wasting a few precious weekend hours of fishing. If it is too sunny, clear, and calm, the carp will be nearly impossible to catch as they school up in vast formations and seek the safety of deep calm water. If you find them, it only takes one errant cast or refusal to send the entire battalion on high alert. In these situations, they rarely calm down enough to resume feeding, especially if you are hovering near them in a SUP that must look like a UFO (unidentified floating object). The best days are partly cloudy skies with a slight wind. The chop on the surface of the water will have the carp feeding during the day in areas where they can still be seen and caught with a fly rod. The fish tend to stack up in any current break where they feed aggressively on freshwater clams, snails, crayfish, and a host of aquatic organisms.

My most memorable catch came as I scanned the main current of the river from atop a large boulder. The sun was obscured by cloud cover and I simply stared at the water where a large rock created an shelf that one could spot a fish on top of. Like bonefishing, I'll often use my peripheral vision to spot cruising carp against an unmoving backdrop. I spotted a faint shadow that I thought was moving, or maybe it was just my sixth sense. I casted well ahead of the target and dropped my fly several feet in front of his intended path. When the mirage seemed to stop in the vicinity of my fly, I instinctively set the hook into a nice fish in the mid-teens. I maneuvered the fish past Zoey and then held it up for her to give kisses too. She obliged, before watching her new friend swim away never to be seen again.