In 2010, Charlie and I called our carp by fly adventures the Carp Crusades. In 2011 we came back with the Carp Redux, but, 2011 was a disaster because of the severe drought and temperatures.
In 2012, our carp by fly effort will be labeled Conversations With Carp, and today... Charlie started the conversations early.
I say he started early because generally we don't begin to fly fish for carp until March. To tell you the truth we don't see a lot of carp out and about during the winter months. However, this winter has been weird to say the least. Yesterday morning I was freezing while on Blue River. Today, it is somewhere in the sixties.
Charlie sent me a message earlier today saying he was going to go to the local creek and at least scout for the carp, so I decide to join him. When I catch up with Charlie he is armed with his fly rod and has spotted carp.
The wind today was howling at 35 miles per hour or more and it created a terrible chop on the creek. Standing high on the bank we could see the images of the carp, but, once you got on the same plane as the creek you lost that visual. So, Charlie went down to the creek and I stayed high trying to spot for him.
The first eight or ten casts produced nothing except I'm quite sure one carp picked his fly up and we were just late recognizing it.
Soon however, Charlie would holler "I've got one!" And, he did have one.
Charlie was using a make-shift hastily tied bonefish shrimp pattern I tied last year. We didn't get to use it much at all.
The difference in the one Charlie was using today was that it was predominately white with a red sac instead of pink.
Charlie hooked up with this carp on the blind. About eighty percent of the carp we catch here on this current of the prairie ocean is by sight, but, we've come to catch more and more on the blind.
With the prairie schooner being lame and me not being able to drive out of town and get to Blue... Charlie made my afternoon with his antics.
The only thing that could have been better is if the result turned out differently.
