The Carp Crusades - Gonna Need A Bigger Net

Actually... any net at all would've been a big help this morning. In Charlie's Pasture I hooked up with a Boeing 747 of a carp. The beast took me within a foot of the backing and once I got him turned the poor old tired and worn out Okuma was free spooling, so getting this fish on the reel wasn't going to happen. It's amazing to me he didn't break off while I was fighting him by line hand, but after about ten minutes he was within leaders length of me. It was totally stupid what I did next. I thought he had tired enough that I could grab the leader and bring him to hand since I couldn't beach the creature because of the high bank. As soon as I grabbed the leader he took off again with the red San Juan worm ball still in the upper corner of his mouth.



Conditions today included a mill pond still creek with hardly any wind, underneath a completely overcast and threatening sky. The temperature was sixty-eight degrees when I started at 10 o'clock. The carp were crazy at the pasture. There were carp coming downstream, carp going upstream, carp crossing to the far bank, and carp from the far bank coming to the near side. Talk about cross town traffic...geezzzz.

I went upstream to the island and here there is a small riffle and within that riffle was seven or eight large carp, so I targeted them and that's when I hooked up with old big boy.



Saw my first sneaky snake on Rock Creek this spring. He kept swimming around exactly where I was fishing. If only I had a BB gun... ping... right in the arse!

After the worm ball went with the fish, I tied another one on that was created last night. This new version is gobbier (such a word?)... in other words it has more worms in the ball but the carp didn't seem to like it. Refusal after refusal. Then came the chartreuse and white Clouser and refusal after refusal. Next, the Backstabber and refusal after refusal. Something was wrong but just couldn't figure it out.

I left Charlie's Pasture to go to the Vendome Well Springs, and here it was the same thing, refusal after refusal and few carp to pick from. So... what do you do when all else fails? Wooly Bugger!!!!! Size 10 solid black with gold beadhead.

The bugger took carp number one in no time flat and he was an excellent fighter. On this fish I was unable to see his mouth and the suck, so the old Zen kicked in today and I got a blind hook-set.



Shortly thereafter, carp number two would come along, but I could plainly see the suck on this one so the hook-set was rather easy.

I decided to go look at Mother Hole, and on my way out met a young man who was fly-fishing for carp also. He was from Lone Grove and told me he'd been following this blog. He'd tied up some worm balls, but, as he said, he didn't have the right hooks to use so I gave him one of mine before leaving, and warned him also it wasn't too popular of a pattern on this day.



Mother Hole was a total mess - zero visibility almost and I don't know why unless it's all those clown carp keeping it stirred up. I simply turned around and went home.

Tomorrow - some much needed vise time and much needed crawdad patterns... since I have none left.