Poling for Carp: A Keys Tool on a Columbia River Boat
There's a picture floating around in most fly anglers' heads of what a push pole is for. It involves a poling platform, a flats skiff that costs as much as a house, water the color of a swimming pool, and a guide named something like "Cap'n Reggie" screaming out clock positions at tailing redfish. The Superstick, and push poles in general, are built for that world. Keys tarpon. Louisiana reds. Bahamas bones. So on and forth.
I run mine on a 16-ft riveted aluminum boat, chasing carp on the Columbia River.
I am aware of how this sounds. Bear with me.
Why Carp, And Why a Push Pole
Columbia River carp (and capr) are one of the most underrated sight-fishing opportunities in the Pacific Northwest (one of the ONLY ones for that matter), and almost nobody is set up to actually do it well from a boat. We have miles and miles of shallow mud flats off the main channel; places where 18 inches of water sits over a soft bottom warmed by summer sun, and big common carp cruise in to feed on nymphs, clams, crayfish, and whatever else they're rooting up. On a calm day you can spot them at 60 feet and watch them eat a fly (though most shots don't require even half that casting distance).
It's exactly the same game as redfish on a Louisiana flat. Slow approach, accurate cast, lead the fish, strip-set, hold on. The only differences are the species, the scenery, and the fact that it's not a particularly popular fishery in the grand scheme of things.
Here's the problem: the standard PNW boat setup is terrible for this fishery.
A bow-mount trolling motor is the default in this region, and it does most of what most of us need most of the time. But on a hot summer afternoon with carp tailing in 14 inches of water on a silty Columbia River flat, a trolling motor is the wrong tool, for a few reasons:
It's loud. Spot-Lock beeps, prop cavitation, motor whine. Carp are not redfish-spooky (well, they do get to that point later in the season), but they're not stupid. Far from it. They feel it and know something isn't right. Run a prop through six inches of soft silt and you've fogged out 30 feet of water and sent every fish in the area away for an hour or more. It doesn't go shallow enough. I can pole into water where my Minn Kota's skeg would be plowing mud. The Superstick lets me fish water that's typically inaccessible to boats my size.
A push pole solves all of that. Silent, no prop wash, draws no more water than my hull does.
The Boat
My platform is a 16-ft riveted aluminum boat, set up the way most Northwest utility boats are: tiller-friendly layout, casting deck up front (I use it as a casting deck... most just use it as a storage area and stick watching trolling rods from the seats in similar boats), bow-mount trolling motor, fish finder(s), the works. Nothing fancy. Definitely no poling platform (though some actual flats boats are starting to show up in the local haunts).
The Superstick is mounted along the starboard gunnel using Superstick's bracket clips. It's out of the way, doesn't rattle, and it comes off the brackets in a single motion when I need it. When I'm running between spots, it stays clipped. When I see fish, I cut the motor, grab the pole, and the boat is in stealth mode in about 4 seconds.
I'm not poling from a platform, I'm standing on the aft "casting deck" with the pole, working off whichever side puts the sun behind me. I have decks on each end of the boat, so often let whoever's fishing stand at the bow while I pole from the stern. It's not as efficient as a real poling skiff, but the casts are typically 25 to 50 feet, the fish (well, most) aren't running 200 yards once hooked, and I'm not trying to cover 5 miles of flat. For carp on the Columbia, it works fine.
What the Superstick Actually Does Right for This Use
It's 3.25 lbs. That sounds like a spec-sheet bullet point until you're holding it over your head for an hour at a stretch trying to ease 1400 lbs of aluminum and human flesh across a flat without spooking anything.
It collapses. A 12-ft pole that stays 12 ft long is a problem when you're transporting a 16-ft boat down the highway. The Superstick retracts to about 6.5 ft with the duck foot on, which fits inside the boat instead of hanging off the back like a flag.
The duck foot works on mud. This is the bottom type the carp are on most of the time. A naked spike tip would just stab into silt and do nothing. The duck foot gives you a big enough footprint to actually push the boat, and it doesn't get sucked into the bottom on every stroke. First few trips I just thought that was the handle end, but after I flipped it "upside-down," I got better purchase on the softer bottoms. So find myself running it that way more often than not.
It's stiff enough. It's fiberglass, not carbon, and a serious flats guy poling a real skiff in the Keys would tell you it flexes more than they'd want. For a 16-ft aluminum boat being moved 50 yards at a time across a shallow Columbia flat, the flex is a non-issue. I'm not muscling a 22-ft Hell's Bay across a half-mile of ocean flat. I'm easing a tin boat 30 feet so I can put a fly in front of the next goldfish.
It cost a fraction of what the carbon competition costs. The Stiffy and TFO carbon poles are absolutely better products. They are also $700 to $1,200 products. The Superstick is around $200 retail. For someone repurposing the tool to a niche use case nobody designed it for, that's the right price point. I'm not going to convince myself I need the Burkheimer of push poles to fish for carp.
What It's Taught Me
The honest takeaway from all of this isn't really about the Superstick. It's that the PNW has world-class sight-fishing opportunities that we mostly ignore because the gear conventions in this region are built around salmon, steelhead, sea-run cutthroat, rainbows, and bass. We rig our boats around trolling motors and downriggers. We don't think about flats fishing because we don't think we have flats.
We have flats. We have a lot of them. Lower Columbia, lower Snake, parts of the Willamette, plenty of high desert lakes, some of the Central WA reservoirs. And we have a fish in those flats that eats flies, fights hard, gets big, and is on essentially nobody's pressure list.
Once I started thinking about that fishery the way a Keys captain thinks about a permit flat, the gear list reorganized itself. Push pole. Polarized glasses dialed for muddy water. A fiberglass 7-weight that a fellow forum member built (ok that's kind of the opposite of what you'd take to the keys, but it sure is fun). Crayfish patterns, damsels, and general "buggery" flies. Some patience, some stealth. Recipe for good times without a plane ticket.
A Caveat on Buying One
Something I noticed while prepping this review: the Superstick's distribution situation is a little weird right now. The manufacturer's website appears to be having issues, Amazon shows the 6-12 as unavailable, and some dealers are showing intermittent stock. The product is apparently still being made and you can still find them at Bass Pro / Cabela's and a handful of regional dealers, but if you're going to pull the trigger, do it through a real retailer rather than a sketchy listing on the secondary market. Register the warranty if you can. As of right now, I don't know of any PNW-based fly shops or dealers that carry them or would really have reason to. I don't think we're there yet.
Bottom Line
A push pole on a 16-ft aluminum boat is, on paper, a ridiculous setup. In practice, it's the single most useful piece of gear I've added to my Columbia carp setup in years. The Superstick is built for a type of fishery that isn't supposed to exist here. Turns out we do and this piece of kit works just fine for it.
If you've ever floated past a tailing carp in the summer and wondered if there was a better way to do this; there is. Pole the flats (or walk them, that works well, too if we're honest). Cast at the feeding, tailing fish you can see. Stop pretending carp (and capr) aren't worth the effort.
