All the carp water I usually fish is locked up with thick ice. The big river is free of ice but where the carp go this time of year is a mystery to me. Some warm water thermocline? Hibernate? I don't know but I'm ready for a thaw and pre-spawn excitement.
Usually I see "orange" crayfish patterns, don't leave home without having a few natural-colored mud bugs in your fly boxes.
Part of the fun of carping is wet wading mudflats, slipping on smooth basalt slabs coated with algae or slinking through tules trying to dap a fly right in front of a feeding carp (Warning: watch your rod tip doing this).
Pock marked bottom: carp have been busy rooting around for nymphs. One Englishman I met fished pretty much exclusively with small nymphs, a carrot nymph was his go to carp fly.
Jigs a passing trend, right? These little things sometimes are just killer. Two years past I was fishing for pre-spawn carp. The water was too cold for my old body to wet wade so I wadered up. I knotted one of these jigs on and suspended it under an Airlock bobber. I don't usually "bobber" fish for carp but on this day, it was the right thing to do. Two rainbow trout ate, several smallmouth bass ate (man, a hungry bass hits and that bobber is GONE!) and several carp ate the suspended jig.
Smallmouth live along the same shoreline that carp frequent. Love me those red-eyed fish! (Carp Candy)
A rare trout when carping (jig under a bobber)
Engee with a nice mirror carp. This guy is crazy carp fishy. He gets really intense when stalking carp. One day we were fishing the Columbia River. I had run back to the launch to get something from my truck. As I got close to where Engee was wet wading, I shut the motor off and started poling towards him. He was fixated on a fish and didn't know I was nearby. All of a sudden, he sets the hook, HARD. The rod gets jerked out of his hand as the carp heads for deep water. Engee dove in headfirst to rescue his rod. I wish I'd got that on video.
It doesn't happen too often that we double up when carping. Brutes!
I'm always looking for the next great carp fly. When I started fishing for carp, my fly boxes contained a dozen black wooly worms and they worked well. I've found that crayfish patterns don't work well on muddy bottoms. Jon Luke's Carp Candy is dynamite. Engee tied up some all-black crayfish patterns that just whacked carp on a wasteway.
Last summer I got a call from a man I'd met 40 years ago when I was a member of Puget Sound Fly Fishers. Gerry has decided he wants to fish for carp (he's a youngster at 81 - tougher than hell). He's become a good friend and we're exchanging ideas for flies, sharing links of carp fishing videos. I'm looking forward to getting him into a 15 pounder this year.
Peace.
