Mr. P.'s Blog

Questions about your Carp fishing

2012-01-26T10:26:00.000-08:00

The more correspondence I have with Carp anglers across the country the more curious and fascinated I am with where people Carp fish and how they access Carp. To a certain extent we all have some things in common. Carp behaviors and characteristics seem to be fairly consistent. Strategies and techniques that work are effective many places. Increasingly I realize that some of us are fishing water that is quite different and we are accessing Carp in many different ways.

Often I wade shallow water when I fish for Carp but I also fish from my Zodiac a good deal. I'm not using the Zodiac for transportation to get to the next spot where I will be wading. When I am in the Zodiac I am fishing from the Zodiac the entire day. Some years ago I published a magazine article about the advantages and disadvantages of fishing from Zodiac versus wading.

So here are my questions. I'm not asking for GPS coordinates by any means; you don't even have to name the water you fish.

1. If you are in the United States what State you live in and if you are not from the U. S. what country you live in?

2. Do you fish moving water or still water or both?

3. Is the water you fish typically clear, slightly off color, or just plain brown?

4. What is the bottom like? Is it muddy and dangerous to wade? Is it firm mud, sand, pebbles, cobbles, or jagged rocks?

5. Are there sometimes or typically a lot of weeds where you fish?

6. Do you fish from shore?

7. Do you fish from anything that floats? An aluminum boat, an inflatable boat, a kayak, a canoe, a pontoon boat, a kickboat, or a float tube?

8. If you fish from something that floats how do you move around? Gas motor, electric motor, oars, paddles, fins, push pole?

9. If you use an anchor how do you manage it?

10. Is there anyone out there who does both? By that I mean that you wade and fish from something that floats.

Thanks.

A Tale of Three Farts

2012-01-21T10:10:00.000-08:00

I published this magazine article about 5 years ago. Katy and I have been married 34 years now. In the article I reference having been married 29 years. The first paragraph is possibly slightly exaggerated but not that much. (if at all) The rest happened exactly as I described it.

I am posting this article now in response to the comments and discussion in this post concerning noise and putting Carp "on alert" or just plain scaring them off.

Rereading this and rereading my fishing journal entries from 6 to 8 years ago I am reminded how darn important it is to do everything I can to keep from putting Carp on alert.

The Tale

In order totell this tale I must first make a disclosure. You might feel sorry for me, you might be embarrassed for me, you might identifycompletely, or you might be envious. Whoknows? Maybe it’s a confession, maybeI’m bragging, I don’t know. Either way,it needs to be said, so here it is, I’m good at farting. Actually, I’m quite good at it. Thereit is; I said it. I know you Good Ol’Boys in the South know exactly what I’m talking about. I know y'all do! You boys in the Midwest are down with this skill also; yeah, you betcha. All you boys out here in the West get thepicture. I’m a little concerned though aboutsome of you blue bloods in the Northeast. With your dignified little putt putts, I bet you’re wondering what itmeans to be good at farting and how one gets to be good at this skill. Without going in to too much detail let’sjust agree that in no particular order the measures of “good” are: duration,sound volume, and frequency. Plain andsimply I excel at all three measures. I’mgood at farting and I enjoy it. I don’tknow how other people get good at this but I know how I got good at it. Practice, practice, practice, that’s thekey. I have years of enthusiastic andfrequent practice behind me so to speak. So with the fact that I am good at farting established let us proceedwith our tale.

While stalking Carp I sometimes wadethe flats and I sometimes fish from a small Zodiac. The Zodiac is only 8 ½ feet long. That measurement is for the externallength. The interior space is much lessbecause of the diameter of the tubes and because the transom is over a footfrom the end of the tubes. The Zodiac isa marvelous platform from which to fish but it does have some noticeablelimitations compared to wading. Thefloor in the Zodiac is made of 3/8 inch plywood with aluminum grooves. I am able to stand in the boat and stalkfish. While standing to cast, one of myshins is often touching one of the tubes of the boat. When I change positions from sitting tostanding or visa versa the boards and PVC tubes creak. The boat will even creak if I just shift myweight from one foot to another. Thiscan be very annoying. Normally itwouldn’t seem like much to me, except that is, when I’m Carp fishing. Those darn Carp seem to be hyper sensitive tothe smallest little noise.

On a warm, July day in 2004 I wasfishing from my Zodiac. The eastern Washington wind, whichoften howls, was almost non existent. The water was clear, the sky was blue; amongst the sunbathing andcruising Carp there were feeding fish. Ihad hooked and released some fish; it was shaping up to be a marvelousday. By day’s end several more fish hadbeen deceived by feathers and fur. Lotsof fish to cast to, some willing ones amongst my targets, and perfectconditions, all made for a peak experience. For whatever reason there are days when my confidence in my own castinggoes up or down. Some days I’m sure I’mgoing to place the fly in the desired spot. Other days I just don’t have it. This particular day, my confidence was running high. I had made some “money” casts and got somehookups. There was an occasional breeze whichsometimes helped move me into position to make a cast but sometimes it moved meout of position. A nice fish moved in tothe swim I was working. He began tailingimmediately. I suppose foreshadowing; therewas a gentle puff of wind which moved me slightly closer to my quarry. I was false casting, picturing a perfectcast. Even before I delivered the line Icould see the subtle take in my mind’s eye and feel the first explosiverun. I was making my last back castsetting up for my perfect delivery when suddenly there was a noise. This was no gentle puff of wind; alas, I hadfarted. Keep in mind I’m quite good atit but also keep in mind please that those darn fish are spooked by even theslightest little noise. The fish boltedimmediately. I have seen Carp bolt forsome easy to explain reasons and at times for no apparent reason at all. I assumed that it was only coincidence thatthis fish bolted just as I made some sound. I mean, well, yes, I’m good at it, but while I thought it was funny,there was no way I could have made enough noise for that fish to hear. Good grief he was 35-40 feet away. I laughed to myself about it several timesand laughed when I recounted the story to others, including my very patientwife.

A year later, almost to the day, Iwas back on the same water. Again, I wasin my Zodiac. There were some wispyclouds overhead, the kind that look like someone found a few fat, puffy onesand tried to sweep them away leaving track marks in the sky. There was some wind, enough that it madestalking more difficult, but not enough to make casting impossible. The water was cloudy. It was still clear enough for me to seetailing fish but because the surface was disturbed from the wind the fish were agood deal more challenging to spot from a distance. Because the wind was moving the boat I gotonly one cast at an individual fish as I came into range unless Ianchored. I had fished three hours andhad released only one fish. I wasn’tgetting many casts to good targets. WhenI did cast, if I wasn’t anchored, I was fighting the drift of the boat. The line would belly very quickly; if Imended it I spooked the fish. If I wasanchored, the boat was swinging on the anchor. Again, certainly not impossible conditions, but not ideal either.

I had moved upwind again and wasbeginning to drift down the lake. Therewere some tailing fish but by the time I saw them I was usually too close. The wind subsided as if it had been runningup hill and needed to take a rest. Thesurface of the lake calmed and just like that a tailing fish came intoview. He was off to my side so ratherthan move my feet and risk making noise I turned my upper body to make mycast. Both the Carp and I were fullyengrossed; he looking for hapless critters in the mud, me trying to trick himwith my fake. I had made just two falsecasts and was delivering the line. Justas I let go of the line with my left hand I let go with something else. And yes, it was a good one. Just before the line landed on the water thefish bolted and left me staring at a cloud of mud. I hadn’t moved my feet, the floor boardshadn’t creaked: it just had to be a coincidence; that fish just couldn’t haveheard my rumblings. Rested, the windfound its breath; with renewed energy it started blowing. I dropped anchor and as I did so anothercloud of mud appeared not far from me. Ihad spooked yet another fish. I sat downand grumbled. It wasn’t shaping up to bea marvelous day at all. In fact the singlefish I had already released would end up being my only one for the day.

The previous year I thought that itwas funny when I farted and a fish bolted. It was easier to make jokes about it because I had a great day andbecause I thought it was humorous coincidence. Now I actually started to wonder. Could those fish actually hear or sense a fart? Surely they couldn’t. Or could they? I thought something else made those fish takeoff, possibly a signal from a shoal mate, maybe seeing my funny looking face asthey looked up through the water, maybe the sight of the boat, and maybe themoving shadow made by the fly line just before it hit the water. It just had to be one of these things.

The boat is in obvious contact withthe water so any sound from the boat is easily transmitted. My feet are always touching the floor boardsand my leg is often touching the side of the boat so any sound from me iseasily transmitted to the boat and so on. I started to take my own joke more seriously so I read and reread thingsI had studied the past few years. Inseveral sources I was reminded that Carp have elaborate sensory systems whichenable them to hear better than most fish and to detect subtle changes in theirenvironment. They have the traditionallateral line along with internal Carp ears of sorts. If that’s not enough, quoting from theDictionary of Ichthyology, “The Weberian apparatus is four bones and associatedtissues connecting the gas bladder to the inner ear and conveying pressurechanges and sound.” Now wait a minute, alateral line and internal Carp ears seem fine but not this Weberian thing. That’s just not fair. I think it makes the darn Carp too smart for itsown good. The kidding aside I really wasstarting to believe a Carp could be scared by a good fart.

I headed to the same lake about 10days later. While driving over and while setting up my gear I had again beenwondering about, and actually marveling at, just how sensitive Carp are tochanges in any part of their environment, particularly to sound. It was a calmday, the sky was absolutely clear; the water was only slightly off color. I could spot tailing fish from quite adistance. My sense of anticipation wasvery high as I pulled out from shore. Iwas planning to fish a new Carp pattern. I had tied two dozen of them in couple different sizes. After only a short time out on the water a slowcruising fish stopped for what looked like a serious breakfast. He was about 35-40 feet from me. He wasperpendicular to my line of sight. I hadloosely, coiled line hanging from my left hand, the fly was pinched between myleft thumb and fore finger, rod in hand I was perfectly poised to make a moneycast. Suddenly I felt the urge, so tospeak, to perform a piscatorial assessment. I had to act decisively to make sure that no other variablesintruded. I had to decide if I waswilling to forego casting to this wonderful fish in order to have my questionanswered. I farted. The answer to the assessment was immediate;the fish made a hurried escape.

Please know that each of the threeexperiences actually happened just as I described. The results were also just as Idescribed. Being serious, theexperiences gave me cause to pay much closer attention to the noise I make whenstalking Carp. In so doing, I haveobserved in several different instances that accumulating noise is not nearlyas frightening to Carp as a sudden noise from the same source and of the samevolume. For example, if I am motoringalong with my small electric, I can literally go right over a feeding Carpbefore it will bolt. If I start themotor up even 20 or 30 feet away, the sudden noise is enough to send the fishto deeper water. If my buddy and I aretalking as we approach a swim of tailing fish they aren’t as likely to spook asif we begin talking after we get there or after the fish get to us. I know another Carp fly rodder who fishesfrom a larger boat and uses a gas motor to move from one area to another. Again, the gradual accumulated noise isn’tnearly as bothersome to the fish as the sudden noise. Just last summer he had his motor wide open. Sadly, he hit a sunbathing Carp. If he had been stopped within 60 feet of thatsame fish and then started the motor the fish would have run immediately. Again, the Weberian apparatus makes Carp soalert and discerning. I guess to achieve“World’s Greatest Sportfish” status a fish has to have some serious assets. Indeed, Carp do.

At the end of 2006, as I do eachyear, I wrote out goals for myself covering several parts of my life. Areas that I work on setting goals are: personal,professional, financial, spiritual, family, physical, and social Included ofcourse were my fishing goals. My fishinggoals included among other things: new places to which I plan to go, numbers offish I hope to catch, size of fish I hope to catch, number of days I plan to gofishing, people with whom I plan to fish, flies I intend to tie. As I review my goals I realize that I need toask myself what am planning to do to help myself achieve these goals.

Based on the results of mypiscatorial assessment I am seriously going to work at stalking fish morecarefully. Even if I don’t see a fishbolt that doesn’t mean I haven’t alerted or scared more than one with acareless movement or sound. In fact Ishould assume that I have. I realizefrom the tale above that I am probably scaring fish I never see. I’m not just scaring them away I’m keepingthem from coming anywhere near me since they hear me long before I seethem. This is a critical lesson for me and I need to adjust my tacticsaccordingly. I made a list of things Ineed to stop doing. In a huge way I needto avoid so many things like: the clippers dropping, the radio plopping, theanchor thumping, the boat bumping, me telling, my buddy yelling, my feetpounding, the motor sounding, my backcast splashing, the water thrashing, theboat bag sliding, the trout guys chiding, the gravel crunching, my sandwichmunching, the floorboards creaking, and the boat seat squeaking. All of that said, when stalking feeding Carp, thiscoming year I will do everything I can to minimize the noise I make, even if Ienjoy making the noise.

Epilogue: My lovely wife of nearly three decades justfinished reading this article. Shecommented, “In social settings, in the car, at a movie, at the grocery store, shoppingfor furniture, and during the night when your wife is trying to sleep, none ofthese situations have ever got you to stop farting. But now, finally, after 29 years, you’ll holdback for Carp fishing? What does thattell you? Hmmm…”

Carp Behavior Explanation

2012-01-14T19:29:00.000-08:00

This post is in response to a question from Brian who asked meto explain the difference between clooping, bubbling, and tailing/rooting Carp in his comment in this blog post. Brian, the answer was way too long for the comment character limit so I put it here in a new post.

Very simply stated a tailing Carp is looking down. A clooping Carp is looking up.

A tailing Carp is feeding on the bottom. The behavior of rooting is more specificthan simply tailing. When I say rootingI am picturing a Carp that is tailing in the mud. That fish can literally have all of its bodyconcealed by the cloud of silt that comes up from the mudding or rootingbehavior. A rooting Carp is tailing butI distinguish the behavior largely because of strategy for catching a rootingCarp versus one that is tailing on a hard dirt bottom, on rocks, or in weeds.

When I use the word “bubbling” I mean a Carp that is tailingor shopping very slowly and stopping regularly. He definitely has his nose down. I distinguish bubbling from tailing because I cannot actually see a “bubbler”. I just see the bubbles that his activitycreates but not the fish. Not being able to see the fish is a huge difference tome. Through the years I have had some very good successcatching tailing fish but I have had little to no success catchingbubblers. I had some days on the SnakeRiver where I was able to catch a few bubblers but again my success has been verylimited. Honestly, I largely ignorethese fish. As a result of the exchangein this post I am going to take bubbling fish a good deal more seriously in2012 and attempt to catch them using an indicator. That said, I would sure laugh at myself if Idon’t see another bubbler for two years. I may owe bubbling fish an apology for ignoring them. I sure hope I do.

I’m not sure when or where I first heard the termclooping. I believe it was from JohnJennings, a lifetime UK Carp angler. Whenhe and I started communicating about 6 years ago he sent me some VHS videos andDVD’s that showed Euro-Carping methods. (Not fly fishing) I know thatthere was at least passing reference to clooping Carp in the videos and I knowJohn talked to me about the behavior. From whatever that first introduction was for me, at the time Iunderstood a clooping Carp to be feeding on the surface.

For the first year that I Carp fished I believe I saw onefish, possibly two, take a bug off the surface. By the time I switched to a dryfly and cast it out, that Carp had aged so much he was no longer able to seethe darn bug.

In those early years I tried casting dry flies to sunbathingCarp. It was education by trial and errorfor me. By the way casting dry flies tosunbathers is a total joke.

Through the years I have observed three surface behaviorsfrom Carp. I am not counting sunbathingon the surface as one of those behaviors. I mean three behaviors where the Carp is looking up. I don’t know if the Carp are always feedingwhen I see these behaviors. At thispoint I don’t think they are but I could be wrong. I also don’t know if anglers from the UKwould call all of these behaviors clooping.

The first behavior is when I see Carp rising and taking bugs off the surface of the water. I understand that to be the classic exampleof clooping. I went to Montana to fishthe Missouri River in 2010 specifically to catch some Carp on dry flies. I made a blog post about it and posted aYouTube video.

The second behavior I see where Carp are on the surface iswhen they have their mouths and eyes out of the water and are just sittingthere. I am honestly not sure what theheck these fish are doing. Another Carpangler said to me once that he thought they might actually be getting a smallamount of oxygen out of the air. I haveno idea if that is possible. I don’t seethese fish feeding. They may begathering very small insects that I don’t see but at least a few times I haveobserved this behavior I am virtually sure they were not. It appeared to me that they had come to thesurface just to look. It is like theyare “explorers” seeing what there is beyond the edge of the world. They look out, see a loud, dry, scary place,and head for home. They tell theirfriends that that the place outside the world is a interesting place to visitbut no fish would want to live there. Maybe these fish are sunbathing but they are looking up so I distinguishthe behavior. Also, I have caught a fewof these fish on a cast but find it very difficult to catch a sunbather on acast. I do much better with sunbathersdropping or pitching the fly. Because ofthis, again, I distinguish the behavior.

I was in my second year of Carp fishing before I actuallyheard the noise that is said to be what clooping Carp do. Humor me here please. If you have never heard the noise that Carpmake when they are on the surface, and you would like to hear it now, followthese directions.

1. Say theletter “L” and when you are finished keep your tongue on the roof of yourmouth.
2. With your tongue on the roof of your mouth theentire time say the word “cloop”.
3. Tongue still in place, say the word “cloop” slowlybut inhale while you do it instead of exhaling.

If you followed these directions you just heard the soundclooping Carp are said to make. I haveto say though that I have seen Carp feeding on the surface and not making thissound at all. That first time I actuallyheard and saw Carp making the sound there were so many of them doing it Ithought it was some small birds I had never seen. It took me awhile to realize that all thenoise was being made by Carp. There wereeasily 40 or 50 of them doing this at the same time. It was eerie. I could not see any bugs on the surface of the water but that doesn’tmean they weren’t there. I assume thesefish were feeding but I was never really sure. I cast unweighted Hares Ears to them and got a few to take.

There are two lakes that I have fished where I have observedmost of the sucking sound and the “explorer” behavior. One day there were four explorers allpointing in towards each other like some sort of synchronized swimming. I madea very lucky cast right in the middle of the formation. One of them picked up the fly. I don’t know if he ate it intentionally or ifit sort of fell in his mouth. Eitherway, I would say both the Carp and I were surprised. He was nice enough to pose for a picture whenit was finished.

So what is a clooping Carp? I have to say I’m still learning. I would say a Carp that is feeding on the surface would fit most people’sdefinition of clooping. I would say thatsometimes Carp feeding on the surface make the sucking sound and sometimes theydon’t. I would say that sometimes thefish making the sound are feeding and sometimes they aren’t. I also think that some fish are explorers andthey are just looking out at the edge of the world.

Today, I worked some, I tied a few flies, I wrote this response, and I dreamed of warm days where I was casting to fat Carp...

Lessons from the Carp Lodge: Episode #2--Can you catch every tailing Carp you see?

2012-01-11T10:06:00.000-08:00

Episode #2 of Lessons from the Carp Lodge has been posted on YouTube. This episode has a list of all the Carp behaviors I have observed through the years. That is followed by a list of all the presentation techniques I have used to get these wily buggers to take my fly. Episode #2 shows some careless casting and it shows some good casting. If you look carefully I think you will see a Carp fart on my fly as he swims by it with complete disgust.

I had the Carp behavior list and the presentation techniques list prepared a few years ago for a series of print articles I was writing. It is interesting to me that I added two presentation techniques to my list for this video. As JM pointed out in his comment in the previous blog post, we keep learning, and that's a good thing. When I drafted the print articles I had only tried one kind of swinging of the fly. In 2010 I tried a familiar but completely different swinging technique and got fish. I also added indicator fishing to my techniques list. I point out in the narration that I have not actually caught a Carp using an indicator but that as a result of the exchanges on my blog, and input from Greg and McTage, I will be trying it in 2012.

My wife has been good about supporting me in this endeavor. She patiently answers my questions when I ask her thoughts on what makes more sense or how I might present something. She does not fish at all by the way. She must still love me because she still puts up with my nonsense after 34 years.

She asked me who I thought the "typical viewers" of my videos are. I had to say I really didn't know. She asked if they were people who already were good at fishing for Carp, people who had some experience, or people who hoped to try it for the first time. Again, I had to answer I really don't know. She asked what if a beginner doesn't know what a tailing fish is. She said that if she had not heard me talk about it she would not know. She said that in the videos she has trouble seeing the fish in the water. I told her so do I, even when I'm standing right there making the casts I have trouble seeing the fish sometimes. That is a good part of why there are titles and arrows showing the fish and the fly in the water.

It is hard to know where a good line is between the time spent narrating and presenting information, versus showing fish taking the fly along with playing them. It is difficult to know what a viewer already knows or who a "typical viewer" is. I am in hopes that this series will be useful for both beginners and experienced Carp fly fishermen. I am in hopes that even someone who is extremely good at it will at least find things a bit entertaining during the winter months.

I set out to make this series helpful; not just a bunch of clips of me playing fish. That said, there is a good deal of narration and explanation in this episode. Okay, I imagine there are a couple takes in there too.

Enjoy.

Episode #2 is coming soon

2012-01-07T09:04:00.000-08:00

Episode #2 of Lessons from the Carp Lodge is nearing completion. Making sure I have something to offer is important to me. Figuring out what I want to say, selecting appropriate video to support the message, and then developing the narration are all challenging. Its time consuming but still very enjoyable. I was near completion last weekend, or so I thought, but as I assembled the parts I realized the video was too long for the YouTube limit. As a result I had to cut out the section on pitching the fly and redo the introduction. I will publish the pitching segment in a future episode. For this current episode I am still doing some additional work on the transitions in the title screens and I still have to record the narration for the last take.

In the process of taking all of this video the last two seasons I captured a good deal of Carp behavior. I got some good shots of Carp taking the fly. I also got some "great" video of me making bad casts. Maybe "clear" would be a better word than "great". In episode 2 I show some clear video of my good casting as well as my bad casting.

Once most of the work is finished, as it is now, then I am comfortable saying I will be able to post the video in the next several days. I am hoping to have it up by Wednesday.

Lessons From the Carp Lodge: Episode #1--Early Season Fishing

2011-12-21T06:58:00.000-08:00

It is the Winter Solstice today. It is the shortest day of the year. Tomorrow we will have 5 seconds more of light! That makes me smile. To celebrate, I'm posting the the first episode of Lessons from the Carp Lodge.

I was able to render the video without any problem and I was able to get it to upload to YouTube without any problem. I thought I was home free. I tried to embed the video into this post with YouTube code. It embeds but when you click the play arrow you only see part of the screen. You can click the first orange link to go directly to YouTube. Or on the picture, after you click the play button, you can double click on the video and you will get a full screen view. I'm not sure if this is a problem with my template, eBlogger, my upbringing, my limited understanding of the world, or what. I'll keep working on it. Enjoy.

(Edit after original publication: I believe the screen for the video is small enough to fit now courtesy of some blogger coaching from McTage.)

Early Season Fishing: Episode #1

The Winter Solstice (And Carp Fishing)

2011-12-20T17:21:00.000-08:00

Already it has been good and cold this winter. We have not had snow yet. It is 32 degrees at my house right now. That seems warm compared to 21 degrees just days ago. Winter is upon us in many ways.

But wait. What season is this? Today, Tuesday, December 20, 2011, right now, what season is this? It feels like winter, it looks like winter, it must be winter. Hmmm… It’s still the fall.

The Winter Solstice comes this year on Wednesday, December 21. Here in Washington State, it will occur at 9:30 PM. Our earth rotates on an axis. The Winter Solstice is the time when because of the axial tilt of the earth we are the farthest away from the sun thereby receiving the least direct sunlight. It is also the day when we have the fewest hours of sunlight and the most hours of darkness. For me personally, the long hours of darkness have always bothered me more than extended periods of rain.

It is cold and wet, and yet it is still the fall. The days are short and the nights are long. The coldest and harshest weather is still ahead of us. Winter will “officially” begin here soon.

Even though we are beginning our nastiest season of weather the days will slowly begin getting longer again. I appreciate the irony or paradox of winter beginning as the days begin getting longer. Maybe those aren’t the right words; maybe it’s the symbolism I appreciate. As I have aged the cold weather bothers me more and more. I like winter less and less. It doesn’t feel like it today and it won’t feel like it on the many cold days ahead but the Winter Solstice signals the beginning of change. Even as we prepare for the worst weather of the year change will begin slowly on Wednesday. Longer, warmer days will come again.

In times of reflection, as always, I pray for the good health, overall well being, and safety of my family and friends. I work to trust that during the coming winter, change is already beginning. On Thursday the days will begin getting longer again. Thursday will have 5 seconds more of daylight than Wednesday. The light will return. And I like that.

As the winter begins I will do, and enjoy, winter activities. Fly tying is so satisfying this time of year. We will also do some snow shoeing in January and February.

I accept the bad weather and at the same time I look forward to the spring when fat Carp return to the shallows. As part of looking forward to those warmer days, tomorrow morning I will post a YouTube link to the first episode of "Lessons From the Carp Lodge."

"How To" Carp Video

2011-12-15T07:40:00.000-08:00

Having read a piece I wrote four and half years ago, the publisher of North American Carp Angler magazine asked me to write some articles for him. He asked me to write some more pieces like what he had read. That piece he read was what I would describe as a combination of humor and something useful about fly fishing for Carp. He also asked me to write some “how to” articles along with some tackle and fly selection articles. I wrote some “how to” articles but never chose to submit or publish them.

When I started blogging I thought I would publish my “how to” pieces. Just about the time I was ready to publish them I decided to try and capture video to support the articles. That was late in 2009 before the 2010 Carp season. Sigh... My 2010 video was mostly useless. I did get some good clips that year but didn't really start to get better at it until 2011. That said, my print articles have been waiting patiently on my computer for me to use them in some manner. This winter I have been quietly working on a "how to" Carp video series. The series is called “Lessons from the Carp Lodge”. It incorporates material from my earlier “how to” articles with video and narration.

Since the summer my goal has been to publish my first video in the series on, December 21, the day of the Winter Solstice. If episode one renders without problems and if it uploads without problems then I will make my goal. I actually have some of the work completed for Episode two.

I have put a LOT of time into this. On several occasions I have wondered, “…
What.
The.
HELL!
Are you doing!?...”

I shake my head at myself.

The first challenge:

I had to learn to take the video while I’m fishing. I am not a professional videographer and that of course will show in my work. In many of my early efforts the camera is not pointing where I thought it was. In time I got better at that. The video is HD though and I have captured some clips clearly showing different Carp behavior. I have what I think are some cool clips of takes too. I have some clips of Carp clearly turning away from my fly. How could they?! My flies are so nice. Well they do.

The second challenge: (Hats off to you Dewey)

I had to learn to name, catalog, and file my raw video in a way that was consistent and useable. I had NO idea what this task would involve. If all I had was 20 clips it would hardly matter what I did. I have more video than that. I needed to be able to look at my catalog in three years and understand what it says. I needed to be able to add to my catalog in three years in a way that is consistent with what I had already done. Ideally a stranger could look at my catalog and have an idea of what is there. Again, I had no idea what a challenge this would be; in fact it just devoured time.

Each time I hit approximately “50-title increments” I found new problems with my primitive, evolving cataloging system. More and more I realized that I needed to be able to look at a title and understand what was basically in the video without the name being a paragraph long. I realized that I also needed to be able to search my own catalog to see if I had a clip showing something. I had to anticipate what my search queries would be and then adapt my work accordingly. I had to re-name, re-catalog, and re-file my early efforts a few different times. About the time I had 350 video clips my system was getting refined.

In time I had over 700 clips. I deleted approximately 130 of them because even compared to some of my “not so good” clips these were just plain no good at all. The primary measure of “no good” is that the camera wasn’t pointing where I thought it was.

At this writing I have 578 saved clips. They are all named, cataloged, and filed.

The third challenge:

In my videos, I wanted among other things to be able to have titles, music, and arrows pointing at fish. That meant I had to learn to use a video editing program. It took time but it was much easier than capturing the video in the first place.

The fourth challenge:

The whole project has been somewhat challenging but actually enjoyable. Well, mostly enjoyable. The movie camera I used is small and light. As light as it is it got “heavy” late in the summer—not physically heavy more like “emotionally heavy” I think. I felt like I was starting to focus more on taking video (and pictures) than on just enjoying the fishing. I can do both but I needed a break from the cameras. When I missed capturing video of some excellent takes from large Carp I ended up being frustrated with the day instead of feeling the joy that I could have and should have been experiencing. Actually I got sick of the cameras; having them with me became oppressive. I intentionally left the digital camera and the video camera at home on a couple trips. I intentionally did not blog about those days. I just fished and reflected. It was relief.

Lessons From the Carp Lodge:

In this series I am not going to just publish video of me playing fish. Well okay, there will be some of that of course but not primarily that. I do have some good takes on video and some clips of fish just peeling backing off the reel. One of my goals is to show different Carp behavior in different settings. Another goal is to explain and show strategies and techniques for stalking and catching Carp on a fly.

Episode one of Lessons from the Carp Lodge is called, “Early Season Fishing: Carp Behavior, Strategies and Techniques”. I am planning , well hoping anyway, to publish a new lesson periodically with the video I have already accumulated these past two seasons. I plan to take new video this coming season also.

The images in this post are from Episode one. They are not digital pictures added into the video, they are images taken from the video.

On the Winter Solstice, next Wednesday, December 21, there will be a link in my blog to the first episode.

Indicator Fishing: Part IV--Marker Float System

2011-12-10T16:00:00.000-08:00

As a result of the previous three posts about indicator fishing I know that I have certainly learned a lot from the comments and emails from other Carp anglers, Gregg and JM. JM made a comment in the previous post explaining how he uses the marker float system. He tried to post this picture in the comments but he wasn't able so he emailed it to me to post.

Indicator Fishing for Carp: Part III (Stocking Stuffers)

2011-12-07T06:49:00.001-08:00

This a follow up to the two previous posts on Indicator fishing. This is from a continued email exchange with Gregg who really go this discussion started along with another email exchange that started as a result of these blog posts. Thanks Gregg and Kyle.

There are some other things I forgot to put in the blog post about how I manage fishing Chironomids under an indicator in a lake of varying depths. Often I will carry two rods in the boat. They are set up with two different length leaders. Sometimes, though not very often, I will even take three rods. I do this at Dry Falls Lake where there are fish at decidedly different depths in different parts of the lake. I have rods set up with 10 foot, 15-16 foot, and 28 foot leaders. I measure them by the way so its not an estimate. When I am in the boat I have the "My Buddy" fish finder on the transom. In terms of finding fish it is totally useless. And I do mean totally. It is inexpensive so I am okay with that. It is good for determining depth though and that is all I use it for. With the My Buddy I know exactly when I am over 28 feet of water.

I have fished with Chironomids under an indicator from shore with success also. I just have one rod and typically the fly is not far from the indicator.

Not using a tapered leader allows you to easily move the Quick Release Indicator a foot or two as needed.

When I said to NEVER put the fly in the boat when fishing a long leader that is because as soon as the fly is on the floor of the boat it begins a decided and focused effort to self tangle all of your leader. It is almost a certainty that the fly will succeed. You can count on it. If the fly is in your hand it can be inside the boat. If it isn't in your hand then hang the fly over the side of your boat or float tube as you working on your leader.

I do also indicator fish with one rod in settings where the depth varies. As I said when the leader gets long it is very important to have the indicator near the line. I manage the changes by connecting pieces of leader with loop to loop connections. I take out or add sections in the middle as I move from spot to spot. The loops need to be big enough to get the fly through. I know there are anglers out there who say the fish can might see my connections. The tippet is long so I don't think the fish see the connections. I suppose the fish might see the loops but I still catch fish and sometimes I just don't want to have more than one rod in the boat.

Another thing that really helps with placement of the indicator is a little device I made about 10 years ago. It is a small alligator clip with weight on it. I use this instead of my hemostats to get the fly to the bottom and then place the indicator. Typically I fish the fly a foot off the bottom. I put the clip on the fly. I hold the indicator and drop the clip over the side of the boat. When the fly hits the bottom I push the indicator a foot under water and peg it to the leader. I pull the fly back up, take off the clip, and cast out.

Here are the devices. Number one is an early effort. I started by using Power Pro braided line. It won't cut with regular scissors by the way. The stuff is tough but it does wear out eventually. As a result I started using nylon coated wire. It is used for tippet material for toothy fish. (Like a Pike or Muskie--not a Carp) The wire is held in place by a crimped, barreled, leader sleeve. The plastic cover easily slips off the handle of the clip and there is a convenient hole already there to tie on the braid or wire. Its as if the alligator clips were never really intended for electrical applications; they were really meant for indicator fishing.

These could make great stocking stuffers for your wife. Or your girlfriend; she'll know are interested in a long term relationship. Or your husband. Or your boyfriend. Or your mother-in-law. Well, you get the picture...

Gregg, thanks again for sharing your experience and expertise. You have prompted me to try some indicator fishing for Carp in the 2012 season.

Indicator Fishing for Carp: Part II

2011-11-29T07:11:00.000-08:00

In Part one of this sequence on indicator fishing for Carp I talked about my background with indicator fishing and about an email exchange between Gregg Martin and I. In those emails we talked about alternative materials for Blood Worm imitations and about fishing with an indicator.

Gregg has three grown sons. In 1985 he sustained an injury as a smoke jumper in Alaska. He is a T7/T8 paraplegic. It took him 9 days to regain consciousness after his accident. The injury limits his mobility and causes him continued pain. Gregg still gets out and fishes though. He says that the endorphins from fishing help ease the pain. He is exhausted after a day of fishing and needs to rest for days before he can get out again. Gregg, I don't think you realize how much your emails and your story inspired me. A quote from Gregg that I like is, "I must be flexible when conditions are poor." When he wrote this he was primarily talking about the fishing conditions. His lengthy and informative emails show that he is "flexible when conditions are poor", when it comes to his own personal condition too. Again, I'm inspired Gregg.

Gregg fishes mostly stillwater near his home in Boise, Idaho. His home waters are not very clear. He can see Carp near the surface sometimes but usually sees only bubble trails. He uses an array of flies to trick Carp; his favorite is a peach colored yarn, egg fly. He likes fishing it under a strike indicator. It appears to be his favorite method for catching Carp.

Gregg fishes in water that he describes as, "inches to say 3 to 5 feet deep". He says that even when the water isn't cloudy the glare or the algae make spotting Carp difficult. Even in shallow water he uses an indicator effectively. He sees Carp bubble trails in water up to 9 feet deep but has trouble placing the fly near the target when the water is that deep. Amazingly he fishes the fly just inches under the indicator at times.

When I am indicator fishing for Trout I start the fly a foot off the bottom and work up the water column as needed. Finding the correct depth can be very challenging at times. I don't usually have to go much farther up though. Gregg usually fishes his egg pattern on the bottom.

The guys I know who indicator fish for Trout use some slang. "Burying the indicator" means the fish pulled it under water and out of sight immediately. "Soaking it" means casting out and letting the fly just sit. Moving it is self-explanatory; it means moving the fly and not soaking it. It is important to point out though that the fly is moving VERY slowly. A slow, intermittent hand twist or slow, short strips are typically plenty fast for fishing a Chironomid or Blood Worm.

He says the takes from Carp are, "Not subtle; they are authoritative. Sometimes it (the indicator) slides slowly away". He points out that very often he doesn't need to set the hook as the Carp hook themselves.

In answer to questions about targeting fish and the bubble trails Gregg says, "...they are so obvious. Sometimes the bubbles are hypodermic like and sometimes they are like a toilet flushing under water, it's so obvious and so different from lake bubbles and fry feeding on top."

In terms of targeting strategy Gregg tries to cast to the bubble trail if it appears to be stationary and cast ahead of it if he sees the trail moving. He feels that the indicator is also a good tool for targeting fish that are, "occasionally visible".

Gregg had usually been tying his egg pattern in sizes 6 and 10. He is now tying them in size 2. He relates, "the Allen 105 #2 makes an egg 3/4 of an inch, I can't wait to use them!"

Gregg sent me a picture of his egg pattern:

Here are some of Gregg's other patterns; the all look like they would catch Carp for sure.

Gregg, you wrote to me in one of your emails, "You were so kind to answer things that may seem irrelevant." I find myself feeling somewhat like I did 25 years ago on Chopaka Lake. The difference is that I have a lot of indicator fishing experience now. What is the same is that the indicators are upstairs in a drawer and it has hardly even occurred to me to try them for Carp. Twenty-five years ago the other angler thanked me for giving him flies. I was the one who truly owed him the thank you for showing me how to use a Corkie as a strike indicator.

Gregg, I think you opened another door for me in the "house of indicator fishing". Thank you. Come spring I will commit to trying it places where I see bubble trails but can't see the fish.

Your story and your courage in the face of adversity is an inspiration Gregg. Please accept my heart felt thank you.

Indicator Fishing for Carp: Part I

2011-11-28T21:21:00.000-08:00

Having done a good deal of indicator fishing for Trout since the mid 80's I feel comfortable and proficient with the technique.

At Chopaka Lake, some 25 years ago, I observed another fly fisherman staring at a little pink ball sitting on the water. He was hoping for it to disappear under the surface of the water. Lo and behold it did. Several times.

Rowing nearer the pink ball I asked the owner what he was doing. He explained that the pink ball was a "strike indicator." He offered to give me one and a toothpick to boot. The toothpick was pushed in the pink ball and held it in place. I had never seen a "strike indicator" before but I could sure see that it was working. As I looked at the indicator it looked familiar to me. I asked, "Is this a pink pearl Corkie for Steelhead fishing?" He answered that it was. Who knew? I still had some in a drawer at home from when I used corkies and yarn for winter Steelhead in the 70's. Well, well, I had strike indicators and I didn't even know it.

Even back in the 70's I had already fished Chironomids for Trout for several years. At that time there were floating lines, wet tip lines, and full sinking lines. There were no density compensated lines or clear intermediate lines yet. If there were, they were certainly outside of my experience and not widely in use in the Pacific Northwest.

For Chironomid fishing a floating line wasn't quite right and a sinking line wasn't quite right either. Neither was a wet tip line. I finally created my own Chironomid lines. I took a floating line and cut off the last 5 feet. I spliced a short piece of dacron backing on the fly line. I made three different heads to experiment with. I spliced a piece of dacron on each of the heads. I had a 3.5 foot head, a 5 foot head and a 7.5 foot head. There were wet tip lines at the time with 10 foot sinking tips. I called my creations "wet nose" lines. They got the Chironomid to sink more than a floating line but not as much as a wet tip line. I used a bobbin threader to splice the two pieces of dacron together with each one inside the other. I know that sounds like it isn't possible but it is. They pulled on each other and worked like a Chinese finger trap.

I caught a lot of Trout with my wet nose lines. Over time I was almost exclusively fishing the two shorter tips.

That evening I first saw that guy staring at a Corkie, was a true "door opening experience" for me. I was already tying lots of Chironomids. In fact, I had a good deal more variations than the guy with the indicator. I gave him some flies that evening. He was fishing a TDC, one of the primary Chironomid imitations at the time. He told me it was his Chironomid. It was the only one he had and really the only one he knew of. It was black with a silver rib. Because I gave him some other colors he felt like he got the good end of the informal deal. I knew better; I was the one who got the good end of the deal because I had never seen someone indicator fish until that evening.

The more anglers asked of Corkies as strike indicators the more we all realized their limitations particularly as we tried to fish deeper water. Instead of pushing a toothpick in the Corkie we started pulling pieces of rubber bands through with a bobbin threader. The rubber band held the Corkie in place on the leader but made it much easier to slip down the leader to adjust for different depths.

Through the years I would try many different kinds of strike indicators for Trout and one kind for Steelhead. I moved off the Corkies as soon as I found other viable commercial alternatives.

Many of us tried tying antron yarn to the leader. We experimented with various twist and turn indicators, pinch on sticky foam indicators, and Bio-Strike. I have some funny and frustrating memories of fish taking the Bio-Strike indicator and just not wanting to let go. How could they take that stupid blob of orange goo and ignore my wonderful fly? How could they?!

Eventually, probably about 12 or 13 years ago, I came on the Quick Release Indicator from Waters West fly shop in Port Angeles, WA. While using indicators in deeper and deeper water a decided problem presented itself. If I was fishing a foot off the bottom in 17 feet of water I had 16 feet of leader below the indicator. It was darn difficult to reel in the fish and get it near the net. The Quick Release Indicator opened up yet another door in the "house of indicator fishing". I was now able to fish the deepest parts of Dry Falls Lake with a Chironomid. There were days when we were fishing with 27 foot leaders. The keys to making this work were to keep the indicator very near the fly line, not use a tapered leader, and NEVER put the fly in the boat. If the indicator is near the fly line (this is critical) it is actually surprisingly easy to cast the long leader.

Here's my biggest concern with indicator fishing. I really like indicator fishing when the indicator indicates. When the indicator doesn't indicate and just sits there and sits there, it is boring as hell. When a fish buries the indicator below the surface of the water that is of course very cool. When a fish just barely makes the indicator move sideways or even towards me it is so subtle. The very subtle takes are exciting in their own way and it is a great feeling to have the fish answer on the hookset. Ahh yes, indeed the take is The Premier Moment.

Since first trying the Quick Release Indicator I have also tried the Thingamabobbers, Frog Hair indicators, and O Ring indicators along with some of the newer foam indicators. I still haven't found anything that rivals the Quick Release Indicator.

Before I was writing this blog I was writing a column for North American Carp Angler magazine. As a result of that I would get email with comments and questions. I got a couple emails asking me if I ever indicator fished for Carp. I replied that I just didn't see the need.

McTage made a post in his blog where he talked about catching a Carp using an indicator. Gregg Martin, from Boise, Idaho, made a comment to that post and Gregg also made a comment on my blog. Before the indicator discussion Gregg sent me an email about San Juan Worm imitations and about alternatives. That started a lengthy exchange between Gregg and I. It has been a real eye-opener for me to learn how he is using indicators to catch Carp. I think another door may be opening for me in the "house of indicator fishing."

I asked Gregg a series of questions and his answers were fascinating. What an interesting man!

I will post my questions and his answers very soon.

Feeling My Blessings---80 Things I am Thankful For

2011-11-24T05:51:00.001-08:00

It is before 6:00 AM in the morning here in Bothell, WA. This blog, Mr. P.'s blog, is one of the blogs I write. In 2009 I wrote what follows for a post I made in another one of my blogs, "A Few Words." My blog, "A Few Words" evolved out of the talks I used to give on Fridays. The ending is the way I ended class every Friday. I end my blog posts in A Few Words with it. I just decided to leave it in this post the way it was originally written.

This blog is my fishing blog and I originally intended to "just write about fishing" here. I allowed the lines to blur between the two blogs about two months ago. I made the same post in both blogs. It seemed odd to me at first but I liked it in the end. Most people who read one of my blogs don't know the others even exist. A couple people who read "Mr. P.'s blog" and "A Few Words" emailed and Facebook messaged me and commented that they liked that I made the same post both places.

Just like two years ago, today is Thanksgiving. I spent 5 hours composing this list back then. It is good for me to reread my own list; it reminds me of all that I am thankful for. It reminds me to embrace each day with a gratitude attitude.

From November 2009:

Today is Thanksgiving. This is a list of things for which I am thankful. I believe it is important to "count my blessings" but it is more important to "feel my blessings". These items are intentionally not prioritized. They are in random order and range from simple to serious. Some of these items are at the core of me. Some of them are things I am regularly aware of but are still relatively simple. A couple may make you chuckle. Some are things I just thought of while writing. There are some pictures included also. I didn't have a particular number in mind when I started out. I decided to write until I was ready to be finished.

I have posted some pictures but need to get ready to leave for Thanksgiving dinner. I will post more pictures in the next few days. (I posted those pictures.)

I am extremely grateful for all the many blessings in my life. Here are just a few of the many things for which I am very, very, thankful.

1. Clean drinking water--I just turn on the tap and there it is. Its safe and plentiful.

2. The rule of law--We are all protected by laws, a system of law enforcement, and a judicial system that is amazing.

3. Central heating--I program the thermostat and the heat comes on. In 1970 my girlfriend, Candy, and I spent a night on the ground lost in the woods. Had it rained we likely would have died of hypothermia. I sure appreciate that the heat works in our home. I would add that I am also thankful for Candy.

4. A comfortable bed--Its warm, safe, and suitalby firm for our middle age backs.

5. The sound of rain--I like hearing this when I'm falling asleep in my comfortable bed.

6. The World’s Greatest Wife--Katy is the best. Simply the best. Next month we will have been married 32 years. We are friends, lovers, and soulmates. Marrying her was the smartest thing I ever did.

7. Inspiring people and their stories--I enjoy reading and hearing about what other people have done to overcome adversity. I like the stories of famous people and even more so I like the stories of "not so famous" people.

8. Parents who loved me--Frank and Teresa Pankiewicz loved all five of their kids. It is such a gift too easily taken for granted.

9. My Mom who persevered when my Dad died when we were all young--My parents were married in the 40's. They were happily married; they loved and respected each other. They communicated well and problem solved well. My Dad died very suddenly on February 22, 1967. My mother was devastated. She went back to school, got a job and kept the family together. She is my Hero. She will always be my Hero.

10. Our servicemen and women--Are we as a country always right? We're not. Do we use our force and our might correctly all the time? Probably not. And yet, in so many ways we are the protectors of freedom in the world. Regardless of whether I, or anyone for that matter, agrees with where or when our servicemen and women are fighting at any point in time or history, they are nevertheless risking life and limb. I appreciate that. These are some pictures of the Veteran's Memorial we built on the campus in cooperation with Marysville Rotary. The picture in the snow storm is still my favorite.

11. Being an American--Winston Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government there is. Except for all the others that have been tried." We have our problems here but we are still incredible in so many ways. I'm grateful and proud to be an American.

12. That I enjoy writing and even have some of my articles published--I am the Fly Fishing Editor for North American Carp Angler magazine and have a column each issue. It pleases me to write the column and it pleases me that people enjoy reading it.

13. Fishing--Fishing is in my blood. My earliest memory that I can place in time is of myself fishing with my Dad. It still gives me great enjoyment. I enjoy planning, preparing, traveling, stalking, casting, catching, photograhing and releasing. I still love to fish.

14. Fishing gear--I dig the gear. Its like a bunch of toys for a middle age kid.

15. My Alumni--I had the privilege of being a teacher for 36 years. I loved thousands of kids.

16. And them keeping in touch--Over and over it puts a smile on my face to continue to hear from my Alumni. Email, Facebook messages, letters, phone calls, text messages, meals together, its all such a source of joy to me.

17. Good teachers I had as a student--I am thankful for the good teachers I had through the years. In particular I appreciate the ones who cared and went the extra mile.

18. Good teachers I worked with at the high school--I knew and worked with many high quality, caring teachers and I hold them in very high regard.

19. Good administrators I knew--I appreciated the leadership of most of the principals at the high school.

20. Facebook--What a pleasant surprise this has been. I have connected with Alumni who live literally all over the earth as well as people from other parts of my past.

21. My new career--I have been a real estate agent since 1971. Now that I have left the classroom I am working real estate full time and I have embraced my new life. I have really enjoyed helping people get their homes sold and helping them find new homes. I like the many new aspects of the work and the schedule. I also like the new challenges. Building my webpage, HomeProResults.com, and starting a real estate blog has also been enjoyable. Call me when you are ready to buy or sell a home; I'll take care of you.

22. My hopes and dreams--I am thankful that I have have lots of hopes and dreams. I'm thankful that a lot of my dreams have come true and I believe that I will continue to be thankful as more come true.

23. My creative energy--I am thankful that I still have lots of energy to risk, to try new things, and to look at things differently.

24. Good health--Someone said, "Your health is your wealth." I don't know who said it but I am so thankful for my own good health, Katy's good health, and the good health of my kids.

25. Modern medicine--In part we all have that good health because of some aspect of modern medicine. My father--in--law was a family practice doctor for 42 years. He had been a doctor in the Army in World War II treating burn victims. He died in 1988. I remember him telling me, and getting choked up when he did, what it was like to be able to perscribe Penicillin for the first time. He talked about how mothers would bring their kids in with ear aches. He said that it was something they could die from. Perscribing Penicillin would beat the infection and the kids would live. He said very emotionally, "You can't imagine what a miracle that was."

26. Good books--I just finished "Outliers" and am currently reading a murder mystery set in the times of the Roman Empire. Before that I finished the lengthy, expansive, epic novels "Winds of War" and "War and Rememberance". I am thankful that I can read and that books are easily accessible.

27. Friends--I have been incredibly blessed through the years with many good friends. All of us experience through the years people coming in and out of our lives. I am thankful for those friends as well as the ones who have been friends for decades.

28. Warm sunny days--I am thankful for this simple pleasure. Shorts, t-shirts, Tevas--ahhhhh...

29. Barbecued dinners--I don't want to eat barbecued food every night but when the weather is nice I sure enjoy it.

30. My memory--Well, its good, and I am thankful for that. Partly its the way I was built and partly its something I work at.

31. Recorded music--I would much rather listen to music than have the TV on. I enjoy so many different kinds of music.

32. “Unbiased News” media--Okay, I won't go so far as to say that the news media in our country is all unibased. It just isn't. What we do have is the opportunity to see and hear "opposingly biased" news media and I am thankful for that.

33. My memories--I remember that I wrote "my memory" just a bit ago but this isn't the same thing. My good memory remembers the good and the bad. I am grateful for all of it.

34. Cell phones--I am thankful for this modern convenience.

35. Our kids--I can't imagine my life without our kids, Joe, Mike, and Annie. Through it all I love each of you more than life itself.

36. Do I count my new daughter-in-law as one of my kids? Yup, I do. I love you too Kelly.

37. Being persistent--I am persistent about things and I'm thankful for that.

38. Being persistent--I am persistent about things and I'm thankful for that.

39. Being persistent--Well, maybe I'm stubborn, I don't know, but I'm thankful that I'm persistent even though sometimes I maybe should have just let something go.

40. Oh, and a good sense of humor too--I am thankful that I can laugh at myself, my foibles and mistakes, and at the world. It helps me to get through things, enjoy the day, and find the positive in situations.

41. Sex--with my wife of course.

42. Goretex raingear--Modern gear is so dang nice. Goretex jackets and waders, fleece, and frameless packs to name a few are a pleasure to use.

43. The “Y”--I like working out at the "Y" and I am thankful there is one just ten minutes from our home. I also like that there are people there of so many different ages who have different body sizes and fitness levels all doing something to work towards being healthy.

44. Roses--I babied my rose gardens for 20+ years. They are a lot of work but when a bud was blooming it was like listening to music.

45. My extended family on my Mom’s side--My grandparents, my aunts and uncles, and my cousins have shared something quite unusual. We have remained close for the 65 years that the first cousin was born. I am immensely thankful for this.

46. That I am usually able to fall asleep quickly--I don't always sleep all the way through the night but I almost always fall asleep within minutes of hitting the pillow. I am thankful.

47. Naps--I can take a twenty minute nap almost anywhere. Its an art I guess but a good nap sure feels good.

48. That I woke up this morning and everything works and nothing hurts--I try to be thankful for that every day.

49. Email--It sure makes communicating easy.

50. That I enjoy the little things--I am thankful that I can take genuine pleasure in small things.

51. Fall colors--This year was particularly striking.

52. Christmas music--Yes! I like all kinds of music but sure enjoy my Christmas music for the next month. I tried listening to Christmas music in July one year but it sounded completely out of place.

53. The challenges in my life--I am grateful for the good times and the bad. Its much easier to say that when I'm not immersed in a period of dark days or just plain lost, but I still am grateful for all the challenges.

54. That I don’t just adapt to change sometimes I make it happen--I am grateful for the changes I have experienced and I thankful that I have actively worked to make change in my life and in the world around me.

55. My fat cat--His name is Rudy. He spends a fair amount of his day sleeping. I appreciate the art of napping but he sleeps more than he is awake. He does a few other things besides sleep. I guess he's doing what cats are supposed to do.

56. My new neighbors--Katy and I moved in August 2008. We sold the home we raised our kids in where we had lived for 25 years. We had a new home built and we love it. We are both thankful that we have good neighbors.

57. Bread--Through the years I made a lot of noise about liking chocolate. I do of course but would never consider chocolate comfort food. Bread is comfort food. Even with a diminished appetite of a middle age guy, I can still eat a lot of bread. I especially like all the artisan breads they have today.

58. Italian Food--Pasta, Ravioli, plus lots of other specialty dishes sure are good.

59. That I am willing to try things that don't look easy or haven't been done before--I like like this about myself and I don't like this about myself. When I'm planning or getting ready to try something challenging, I like it. When things come together and work well I really like this about myself. When something doesn't work the way I want it to or hoped it would, I DO NOT like this about myself! Still, I am thankful I am willing to risk and I'm thankful to all the people who have helped me with so many different kinds of risks through the decades.

60. My faith in God--Its strong. It centers me. It grounds me. Its important.

61. The Internet--How on earth did we find things out before the Internet?! How did we communicate? What an amazing invention.

62. The places that I have hiked and fished. Rivers, lakes, saltwater, the mountains, so many beautiful places--I love to fish and am thankful for all the times I have been able to go. In the pursuit of fish I have seen some beautiful places. Being in, on, and around water, always pleases me.

63. My truck and all the highways and roads that let me travel all over chasing fish--I am thankful that my truck and our country's extensive system of roads makes travel easy.

64. Perscription glasses--I would be unable to drive or do a heck of a lot of other things without perscription glasses. Man am I thankful for my glasses.

65. Perscription sunglasses--These are especially nice when I am fishing on a bright, hot, July day in eastern Washington.

66. The bamboo plant and the shamrock on my office desk--They help keep my attitude right.

67. Caller ID--Its nice.

68. Caller Block--We couldn't transport our old landline with us from Mukilteo to Bothell without paying an additional charge. We chose to get a new number instead. The people who had the number before us apparently owe somebody some money. We were getting three or four calls a week from varous collection agencies looking for these people. Even when I would call them back and suggest that they look at their caller ID or look up our name and number online to see that we were new people, they would continue to call and ask for Melissa. Finally we got a phone that blocks their numbers selectively. Its a simple thing but we like it.

69. Computers--Just like the Internet, how on earth did we function without them. I am thankful for computers and all that can do.

70. That I'm a pretty dang fast typist--My back and my rear end get sore sitting at the computer so I'm thankful that I can type quickly.

71. Wildflowers--Someone said, "When the earth smiles, it smiles in flowers". I love it when the earth smiles.

72. Referrals--I have so much appreciated the people who have referred new real estate customers and clients to me. Thank you.

73. Extension cords and surge protectors--They help make our Christmas village light up and they protect various electronic devices in our home.

74. Soft toilet paper--The older I get the more I appreciate it.

75. Prayer--I pray every day. Several times a day actually. I do it formally and informally. At least once a day, we pray outloud together. I believe strongly in the value and importance of prayer. I am thankful for the opportunity to be able to pray.

76. Scenery--Fishing has brought me to some beautiful places and so has hiking. I am thankful for the vastly different places just here in Washington. We have the ocean, mountain ranges, rivers, lakes, and desert. I am very thankful to have grown up in Washington and to have lived here all my life.

77. Blogging--I am thankful for the opportunity to write and for the people who read what I write.

78. Chocolate--Yum, yum, yum. What else is there to say?...

79. Forgiveness--I am thankful for the times I have offered forgiveness and for the times I have been forgiven.

80. Diversity--There is so much diversity in my neighborhood and in our country. We have our problems in this country and I don't want us to ignore them. We are still truly the beacon of hope on this planet. I appreciate the diversity and again, am awful darn thankful to live here.

It is the weekend. Please be good. Drive your cars carefully. Ride with people who drive carefully. Treat yourself with respect. Spend time with people who treat you with respect. Treat other people with respect. Talk nice to yourself; you deserve it. I look forward to hearing from you or seeing you. Keep yourselves whole physically and emotionally.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Feel your blessings.

Euro-Carp Fishing Quiz

2011-11-18T10:56:00.000-08:00

Here are 20 Euro-Carp questions. Its sort of like a quiz. You are trying to explain what each of these statements means. Come on, its just for fun and its easy. You may already know the answers because you use Euro-Carp methods. You may not know a single one. All the answers to this quiz are in this article. You can read the article and test your memory or read it after trying the quiz. Or do both. Here you go.

I don't do this kind of fishing but I sure have enjoyed learning about it and just learning the vocabulary.

Enjoy:

1. We shorted up.

2. I have some serious kit lust.

3. Is there chocolate glug?

4. The bite alarm went off on my margin rod.

5. The chugger liked the strawberry pescaviva.

6. I wasn't prepared for the drop back take.

7. It was time to bag up.

8. I had more hectic sport yesterday.

9. A knicked floater cake was spot on for those popping up.

10. I will be trying the bait boat today.

11. Bloody hell, another crack off!

12. We forgot the marker rod; good thing we have fished here before.

13. What a great swim!

14. We catapulted 15 pounds of freebies. The whole damn lot was hoovered.

15. Good thing my buddy had lock shot; I was out.

16. The mid rods went quiet.

17. Hemp is better than boilies.

18. Blasting into the margins I had the temptation to bully him too hard.

19. There is nothing like a good specimen hunter.

20. Both bivvies, both brollies, and both bait buckets fit in the barrow.

Nets, Slings, and a Tape

2011-11-16T09:22:00.000-08:00

In 2004 when I first started corresponding with Euro-style Carp fisherman a whole new perspective opened up to me. In 2005, after being told by a gentleman, John, from the U. K. that he was "...mistrustful of American Carp fisherman because of the way you treat the fish..." I was a little wide eyed. After exchanging numerous emails we talked on the phone several times. At that point John had fished for Carp for over 50 years. He had lived in England most of his life but was now living in eastern WA. John was pleasant but really had only passing willingness to talk with me on the phone until I answered several questions to his satisfaction. He asked how long I had fished, what kind of fish I liked to target, how long I had Carp fished, why I fly fished for Carp, what I did with fish after I got them to shore, if I weighed them, if I photographed them, how I weighed them, how I photographed them, and how I released them after "capture." (his word) John made me give him my word that I would always treat Carp with the utmost respect worthy of such a great game fish. I said, "You have my word." And he said, "You have my word, for what?" I answered, "You have my word I will always treat Carp with respect."

That first phone conversation lasted 45 minutes and it was the beginning of an education for me indeed. Truly, I felt that I handled fish carefully and treated all species with respect. After our second conversation John offered to send me some of his VHS videos and DVD's on Carp fishing. Carp fishing for John and his friends is with bait. John ended up sending me 10 different titles to watch. I was overwhelmed and thought I couldn't slog through them all and thought I would lose interest after just a few. I mean come on, it was bait fishing after all. It took me awhile; not only did I watch all 10 of them, I watched them all twice. The videos featured Mattie Hayes and Max Cottis primarily and were all set in U. K. The dry, English humor made me laugh but I was truly astounded with everything I saw. As I watched the videos I wrote down the vocabulary that was new to me along with a few comments. Here is a link to my notes from watching the videos. I read those notes a few mornings ago; I hadn't looked at them in years and they made me smile. There is so much to say that it warrants other blog posts.

It is important to me to point out that the reason I knew what a Carp weighing sling was, is because of seeing them in the videos John sent me. The ones in the video were more like cradles and they were hanging from expensive scales that were hanging from tripods. It was all very, very interesting to learn. Those slings were not at all suitable for the wading, Carp fly fisherman but seeing them got me started on tracking down a suitable alternative.

This blog post is about nets and slings so I will stay focused on that. Okay, just one diversion. A couple of the guys in the videos carried, "Carp care kits." The kits had antiseptic in them. They applied the antiseptic to the spot where the hook had been removed and on any sores on the Carp. I could hardly believe it. No wonder John thought Americans were primitive and disrespectful.

When I first talked with John my Carp fishing was about half from my Zodiac and half wading. I do more wading now.

My nets:

For decades I have had a laminated wood net that I use for Trout fishing. I still use it when I fish from my float tube or kickboat. I have attached a magnetic link and stretch cord to the net so if I drop it, well, when I drop it, it doesn't sink to the bottom of the lake. This is my oldest net and I really like it. It is not suitable for any of the Carp fishing I do.

The wood handled net:

Before I started Carp fishing I had a collapsible mesh net that I used for both Pink Salmon and Trout when I was fishing from my Zodiac. It was the net I used to net my first Carp. After just a couple more Carp trips I realized that net was just not sturdy enough to handle some of the Carp I was catching. When I fish from the Zodiac I still use this net at places like Banks Lake where pretty much all of the fish are under 10 pounds. This net is great for those situations..

Light Collapsible Net:

As a result of trying to net some larger Carp and struggling with it I ordered a new Solvkroken net that was much more stout. The handle and frame were great but the bag was not satisfactory. The holes in the net were too big which caused the dorsal rays of the Carp to get tangled in the material if the fish was large. I did some research and found a guy who makes nets for aqua-culturists. He agreed to make me a soft nylon mesh bag for my net to replace the cord bag that the net came with. Since then that net has been perfect for netting Carp when I am in my boat. The bag material is great and the net has performed well with fish just over 20 pounds. The fish can still be in the net, I can attach the scale to the frame, lift the net, and have a weight in just seconds.

The Solvkroken Net:

Just a couple years ago I purchased the Measure-Net for my Trout fishing. I replaced the mesh bag with a rubber bag and am very happy with this net. I am using it in my Zodiac and I carry it with me when I fish Monkey Forks Creek. I point this out because even if I do a lot of walking on Monkey Forks it is still not nearly as much walking as I do when I am Carp fishing. Also, you cannot get in the water at Monkey Forks; you have to fish from the bank. Monkey Forks is a spring fed creek with cut banks. When I am Carp fishing I am almost always in the water. Though I have done it at times, I don't often cast from shore when I am Carp fishing. That said, there is no where to set a net when I'm in the water stalking and casting to a tailing Carp.

If a person was fishing only from the bank and the fish were not too large this could be a good Carp net for smaller Carp.

The Measure-Net:

All of the nets together to give size perspective:

The Sling:

I have tried carrying a net a couple times when I am wading and fishing for Carp. I had it fastened to my hip pack. I found this to be very cumbersome and damn annoying. Lacking a net in which to weigh fish that I have caught when I am wading, I looked hard for an alternative. As a result of watching the videos John had sent me I was aware of weighing slings and looked for a "fly fishing version". There was no such thing anywhere. Again, because of John's videos I had become aware of other "kit" that the Carp bait fisherman use. One of the things they do is "sack" a fish. I looked at various sacks and finally ordered one from a shop in the UK. I knew it would be too big for a weigh sling but I also knew I could get it altered. The cleaner we use is also a tailor. He does alternations and he got a good laugh out of what I was using the sack for.

I have weighed fish over 20 pounds in this sling. It works for me as a fly fisherman who usually covers miles of water in a session. It fits in a zip lock bag and the bag fits in my pants pocket. Mr. Diep, the tailor, sewed cords on the sling to accommodate the scale. After a fish takes a ride in the sling I rinse it out before putting it back in the ziplock bag.

Okay, I have to confess that sometimes I don't bother putting the sling back in the plastic bag, I just stuff the sling in my pants pocket. That means that my pants smell fishy but once I'm catching fish I kinda don't care if I stink like Carp. I might even like it. Yeah I do. So what.

It was 28 degrees out when my wife took this picture in our family room. These are the clothes I wear most of the time when I am Carp fishing. The weighing sling is in my pocket in this picture.

My patient wife is holding the sling.

Here is the sling on the floor. There is a size 12 running shoe to give size perspective. It's my shoe. My joints no longer tolerate running very well. I walk briskly and sort of alternate walking with some shuffling. More accurately, there is a size 12 shuffling shoe next to the sling.

I hooked and played a beautiful 15-16# Mirror into the shallows this summer. It was such a wonderful fish. I was going to photograph him in the water and then send him home. I let the line go slack while I reached in my shirt pocket to get the camera. Just like that the fly just fell out and the Carp slowly swam away. I swore. It was a time when momentarily I wished I had a net. I still think about carrying one when I'm wading but I haven't found one that I feel is worth the hassle at this point. I did see a new one (new to me) online a few weeks ago that I might consider. Time will tell.

The tape:

Sometimes I just can't be bothered weighing fish even when they are large and I have the sling with me. I just measure them and call it good. I do this with several species actually. Here is the vinyl coated tape measure that is always in the pack I wear when I'm stalking Carp. In fact sometimes I can't be bothered measuring them or even taking a picture regardless of how big the fish is. I just say thanks and release them.

Tape measure:

Epilogue:

John and I continued our conversations over a period of a few years. He invited me to go Carp fishing with him. He was absolutely convinced that if I experienced Euro-style Carp fishing with him I would never go back to fly fishing for Carp. He said, "Why on earth would you use flies when bait is so much more effective?" I told him that I would fish with him and do what he did but he should know I would always be a fly fisherman. I was very respectful of him and his methods and anxious as heck to watch it all work. We scheduled a trip several summers ago. Three or four weeks before the trip John called to say that he had a brain tumor and was going to have to cancel the trip. He moved to California for treatment. He survived the treatment and took a new job there.

Carp Bait Fishing Vocabulary

2011-11-14T11:18:00.000-08:00

An English gentleman who used bait to fish for Carp loaned me 10 videos in 2005. This is a copy of the notes I took while watching the videos featuring Matt Hayes and Max Cottis. They fish for Carp with bait in England. It was humorous at times but incredibly illuminating in terms of how serious these anglers are and the great effort they take to care for the fish they catch.

Swim: where you fish

An awkward swim: a difficult place to fish

Leading and plumbing: using the marker rod to figure out depths etc.

Topping up: fish rising

Shorted up: wearing shorts

Umbrella: tent

Winter skin: rain fly

Syndicate lake: pay lake, actually a membership lake

Day ticket lake: This is the pay lake

High double: over 15#

Margins: right up next to the bank

Deck: the bottom of the lake or the bank.

Kit: gear as in a “Piece of Kit”

Boilies: bait balls that come in a jillion flavors

Glugs: Flavors for the bait. (I wonder if Carp like chocolate?)

Pod: holds three rods parallel to the ground

Robust: sturdy

Marginal snags and weeds: stuff near the bank

Goalpost bank stick: I think this is two single rod holders set up next to each other.

Pop over: go to

Fishing at range: casting farther out

2 ¼ -2 ½ Test curve: rods that are 12 feet long. They cast 80-90 yards. Up to 3 ½ pound rod to get out to 130-140 yard class which is considered ultra long range.

Shock leader: heavier than the main line to absorb the hit of a carp suggested to be 18-22 feet

Rod rings: rod guides

Bivvies: tents

Brollies: umbrella or canopy, shelter from the weather

Bite alarm: an alarm is attached to each of the three rods on the pod and sends you a signal when you have a take. They fish during the night this way.

Braid blades: scissors that cut braided line

Take poundage of rod and add ½ to ¾ ounce and you get the optimum lead weight for casting.

Feature: structure or something out of the ordinary on the bottom like a gravel bar or plateau.

Max prefers four foot of drop from the tip ring to the weight

Compress the rod: load the rod

Bait runner: I think it is a reel

Drop back take: buglemouth takes and runs towards you baby

Fishing at range: means fishing at long range whereas fishing at short range means just that and margin fishing means fishing near the bank

Catapult: a very large sling shot. Hilarious to watch.

Throwing stick: Used to fling chum.

True stalking: looking for patrolling fish and lowering the hook bait in front of them.

Ambushing: prebaiting swims with hemp etc. then putting a hook bait in front of them.

Key to this is staying mobile 1 ¼# 12 foot model

Hookbaits and freebies. Hookbait is the one on the hook and freebies are the chum. They’re in the same cooler as his food. They’re more nuts than I am.

Super bit of kit: good gear

Hemp and pellets to prebait: chumming

Crystal waggler float is locked onto the line with lock shot. It appears to be split shot you can squeeze.

Unhooking mat: A padded mat to keep the fish off the ground while it is being unhooked and photographed.

Weighing sling: Check into this. I need to get something like this that I can carry easily.

Tripod: Set up to weigh fish. The scale is at the top of the tripod and the weighing sling hangs from the scale with the unhooking mat below the sling.

Specimen hunter: It’s the scale.

I strike: I set the hook

Mattie said, “If I had to catch a Carp, if my life depended on it, then boilies would be well down the list of bait.”

Uses Hinders Mega Hemp as his best prebaiting material, then uses trout pellets, then live maggots. These guys are crazy!

Red strawberry pescaviva sweet corn is a high choice for these guys.

Mattie “rates worms at the top of the tree for stalking bubbling and patrolling fish.” (Tailing and shopping fish)

Bag up: I think it means catch a lot. But then later I saw them bag fish for the night so they could take their pictures in the AM. I didn’t like that but at least they are in a soft mesh bag.

Bait band: a small rubber band

Crack off: break off a fish

More hectic sport: catching more fish

Floater cake: “a boalie on the surface” He made these in his oven. These guys are WAY into this.

A damn good shake: a damn good shake

Bang on: do well or done well as in “this floater cake is absolutely bang on.”

Knick the hook on the floater cake: barely hook it:

Absolutely spot on: damn good

Talking about particle colors etc. They said that carp can get used to a certain color and it’s good to change. I wonder if this means only in the pay lakes where the same fish see the same bait.

The margin rod went a bit quiet: the rod I’m fishing near the bank ain’t doin’ nothin’.

Distance rod: the one you cast way the heck out.

Mid rod: the one you cast between the distance rod and the margin rod.

This fish is a little chugger: nice and steady.

Blastin’ into the margins: a fish running towards you.

“Izzy Wizzy, let’s get busy, pull a few strokes on Mattie routine”: how the hell do I know what that means?! Mess with Mattie’s gear, talk some smack to Mattie, catch more fish than him, who knows…

The temptation to bully them too hard: puttin’ too much wood to them

A little bit dodgy: a bit difficult

A good stamp of fish: I guess above average size.

Dead easy to do: damn simple

A little bit of jiggery poker: Hmmm… does this mean shenanigans?

Boilie punch: cores a boilie to insert foam so the thing sinks slowly or maybe not even all the way. Yes, he just showed pop-up boilies—maybe they float. These guys are maniacs. I’m thinking they make fly fisherman look tame.

Check out snake skin and snake bite as leader material. He uses it as “hook link” Well, now he’s talking about “Caspar (as in the friendly ghost?) Soft Link”. Good grief, it’s flouracarbon.

Hook link: tippet

The Carp just comes along and hoovers up the whole damn lot: Eats everything.

Boyer Leisure owns Harefield Haulin’ A season permit lake established in 1810. (Darn near 200 years, wow…)

Plummin’: determining water depth for ground baiting.

Net handles detach from bag. They roll up the sides of the net to move the fish to the unhooking mat.

Capture: catch a fish

Session: a day of fishing. Or a night.

They walk in the mud barefoot in the lake. Ain’t happenin’ for this cowboy.

Some of the fish have been in the lake since the late 70’s and early 80’s. How old do they get?!

They say that the fish move down with the wind.

Barrow: a gear cart

Bait boat: sounds like a remote controlled boat to drop off chum.

A lump: A phattie

Specimen: I think this means a big fish too.

Untidy anglers: said with disgust he means shitheads who litter

Carp care kit: Holey Crimeny, they have antiseptics in this little bag to put on the Carp where it was hooked or if it has any sores on its body. That does it; these guys are crazier and more in to this than any trout fly fisherman. No wonder John thinks Americans have no respect for Carp. I had no idea…

Blanket: mucky, whispy looking algae, weeds,

Underwater they put their hands on a Common. Very fascinating.

When One Fish Makes a Perfect Day

2011-11-04T08:46:00.001-07:00

With each step, crunching mud confirmed why my ears hurt so quickly. The cold meant I would have the creek to myself most of the day.

I always hope to catch a lot of fish when I go fishing. Doesn't everyone? I think I do; I'm actually not even sure anymore.

Seeing no rises I put on a Mayfly Emerger. Yes, I did. Because I wanted to. Not because there was any good reason. I like seeing the takes.

The creek was down and there was no wind; I could see fish holding. I could see them ignore my fly with studied indifference as it floated over them. Who knows, maybe it was disdain or contempt, either way they weren't about to take my small dry.

After five hours of floating that Mayfly over fish I finally changed to a Scud.

Thirty minutes later a Trout took my Scud; he just rapped it. What a great surprise. I had cast most of the line so saying he took me into the backing isn't as impressive as it is when the take is close in. He headed straight across the creek. I reeled him in near to me and he took off upstream. Getting into the backing the second time was much more impressive since he had to go through all of the line. Dang that was nice. Since there was virtually no wind I could hear the fish splash and the reel peel out line. Dang that was nice too. There was no one else on the creek so the splashes and the reel seemed louder.

It was in so many ways it was a perfect day. At the end of the day I could say, "I caught a fish! YES!" I felt so good about that. I realized I didn't need to say, "Well I only caught one fish today but there have been days when I caught this many or that many, or ones that were this big or that big or whatever." I didn't feel good in some sort of conceptual or philosophical way. I wasn't forcing myself to be satisfied with less than hoped for results. Even though I was fishing water that is often heavily fished I was there alone. It was all very solitary. That added tremendously to my enjoyment. I caught a fish and I felt very good. Period.

The fish was strong and healthy. After taking me into the backing twice and posing for a short video he swam away.

There was probably still two and half more hours of light. I could have kept fishing but I didn't. I felt that if I caught another fish it would actually dilute my experience. All that it took was one strong fish to take my fly, run into the backing a couple times, jump, slosh, splash and then come to the net, and I was happy. I probably shouldn't say all that it took was just one fish for me to be happy. It took one fish for me to be happy and that's a lot.

A Carp Sized Trout

2011-10-19T10:25:00.001-07:00

One of the good things about the Carp moving out of the shallows this time of year is that it reminds me that I do enjoy fishing for other fish. Monkey Forks is close to the Carp Lodge so Rich and I headed up there to see if any fish would be kind enough to slurp our flies.

Monkey Forks is one of the few spring creeks here in Washington. Mostly we have freestone rivers. The water in Monkey Forks stays much the same temperature the whole year. It is just a very different venue than we are used to in most of our moving water. It is different in many ways. The water moves slowly and the bottom is weedy and muddy. The regulations prohibit you from getting in the creek for any reason. That means you cast from the edges and need to carry a net. The fish that live, work, and play in Monkey Forks look down for their food AND they look up. That means they will take a dry fly. Well now, as the take is the premier moment, dry fly takes make my face smile.

Oh, and one other thing that makes Monkey Forks different is that there are some whoppers in that creek. Six and one half pounds is the biggest one I released last year.

Here is a picture of Rich playing a fish that was 18 inches.

This fish took my #14 May Fly

I weighed him in the net and he was 7 pounds 3 ounces.

I think I will be returning.

The Premier Moment

2011-10-19T06:43:00.001-07:00

My earliest efforts at keeping a fishing journal basically included the date, where I fished, what I used, and how many fish I caught. I often didn’t use complete sentences. Just notes. Simple and to the point. In the second year I started including weather conditions, water temperature and a few other details. I exercised brevity and saw no need to do otherwise. I did, however, advance to complete sentences and paragraphs.

In the mid 70’s, when I got so I was catching fish on the fly with consistency, I began including a good deal more information and commentary in my journal. It got so easily half of what I was writing was not directly attributable to how many fish I caught that day or what I used.

My journal increasingly had commentary about packing, traveling, taking pictures, variations on the flies I tied, the rods I built, other gear, etc. In the course of writing more and more about my adventures I eventually started posing questions; some of them were profound questions of the universe. At times I answered the questions I posed in the same journal entry and sometimes I just posed the question. Occasionally an answer evolved over a period of many journal entries or even over a period of years.

I wondered age-old questions like what is the meaning of life, what is my purpose here on earth and where will I go after I die… Reviewing notebooks full of decades of my musings does not shed the smallest amount of light on any of these important questions. As important as these profound questions are, alas, I must confess I never really got to any of them.

I care about those questions and know I really ought to spend some time thinking about them but I never answered them because I never had time. I never had time because there were other equally profound questions of the universe to which I gave my most willing and enthusiastic attention. Questions like: if my life depended on catching fish what 6 flies would I want to have, what was the best way to photograph a fish before release, how long should I fish a particular pattern without a take before changing flies, how far will I drive for a “one day” trip, what material is best for gluing to the sole of waders to keep me from slipping on my posterior, how much gear is too darn much, how long after sunset can I still be wading and not drown, could I really fish every day and not work and not get bored… Ah yes, now these were the kind of questions to which I happily devoted many hours of journal time and fishing time.

The question:

A question to which I gave considerable thought and one about which I actually wrote often was, “What is the most enjoyable aspect of fishing?” I broke down the whole experience into pieces or steps. I pictured a fishing trip in a way starting in the winter when I was tying flies, building rods and daydreaming. One year I tied close to 1,800 flies. On some of those cold winter evenings I started wondering if I still enjoyed fishing as much as I did fly tying. Perish the thought, but I was enjoying the fly tying so much I did at least ask the question of myself.

Anticipation:

In my fly tying room I planned the coming year’s trips. I poured over maps and wrote out lists of places to go. I cleaned and maintained my gear and lusted for new gear. I made and revised lists. I tied flies and I built rods. I tied more flies. I learned and practiced new knots. I read and reread my old journal entries and they would transport me to actually being on the water. The lines between remembering fishing trips and anticipating them would blur. When I was planning and preparing for trips I was in heaven, or maybe I was in La La land, I don’t know which, but either way I often felt that the anticipation was the best part of fishing. Oh, those first weekend trips of spring; I packed all week whether I needed to or not. Sometimes I unpacked a bag, knowing full well everything was there, and then packed it again.

Other considerations:

Late Friday afternoon or early Saturday morning I would head to the central or eastern part of the state where the fish were bigger, more plentiful, and hopefully more willing to eagerly snatch up my humble offerings. As tired as I might have been at the end of the week, I always found renewed energy and vigor when it was time to go on a fishing trip.

I traveled alone sometimes; on the first trip of the summer I actually craved the solitude. There was one trip back in the 70’s where I parked my car next to a lake, pitched my tent and proceeded to fish from sunup to sundown for three days. Even though this was not a backpacking trip I never saw another person for those three days and never spoke a word out loud the whole time. When I needed it, the solitude seemed like the best part of fishing.

Much of the time I traveled with friends of mine. The conversation while traveling, the good natured chiding while fishing, reliving the days adventure at dinner (usually eaten after dark) and, on occasion, actually talking about a few of the true profound questions of the universe, all added a special dimension or flavor to the experience. At times the camaraderie became more important than the fishing.

I took hundreds and hundreds of pictures each year. The pictures became an important part of the blur that existed between remembering and anticipating. Sometimes I felt the most enjoyable part of fishing was looking at a particularly satisfying picture that documented memorable catches or special places.

Did I go fishing to fish or to catch fish? In the early years I only went fishing to catch fish; I counted religiously. Certainly there were times when I thought the best part of fishing was the trips when I got over 50 fish in a day. As I brought a few more fish to hand over the years I often wondered if the best parts of fishing weren’t actually catching fish. I dug the gadgets. I loved the smooth rhythm of casting. I loved the challenge of fly fishing. (I still love all these things.) At least in passing I wondered at times if the gear, the gadgets, the casting, and the challenge were the best parts. I wondered whether the best part of fishing might be the solitude, the camaraderie, the pictures and memories, the fly tying, the planning, or the anticipation.

The Premier Moment:

After considerable thought, I wrote in my fishing journal way back in the early 80's that "the take is the premier moment." I compared it to many other parts of the overall fishing experience and decided it was the best. I wrote that anticipation (for all parts of the experience) was second.

I had fly fished for decades before I discovered the World’s Greatest Sportfish. There are so many aspects of fly fishing for Carp that are enjoyable but stalking feeding fish in the shallows is the best. Casting or stripping the fly on to the Carp's "diner plate" and detecting the take visually is so engaging. Planning, memories and anticipation, fly tying, casting, and the overall challenge converge in that split second when a tailing Carp decides ever so casually that my fly looks good enough to eat. The take is the premier moment and that premier moment is only enhanced by a willing Carp.

I submit that in all of life, "the take is the premier moment." In the rest of life I so much DO NOT mean "the take" in terms of tricking someone like we trick fish with our offerings. I mean when your intentions are honorable and a girl who has caught your eye says she'll go out with you. I mean when you apply for a job and you get it. I mean when your young son or daughter beams when you walk in the door and says, "Hi Daddy” or “Hi Mommy". I mean when you deliver a speech and the response of the audience exceeds your expectations. I mean in the classroom when a student's eyes are a little brighter or his/her back is a little straighter because he/she has grown in skills and confidence. I mean when that pretty girl says “yes” when you ask her to marry you. I mean when your teenage son or daughter has an identity of his or her own and you marvel at who she has become. I mean when you plan a project that has never been done and you have to elicit cooperation and support from a wide range of stakeholders and the darn thing works. I mean when you take a chance on yourself, yes yourself, and you are successful. That’s the take. When you risk loving someone, that's the take. When you risk letting someone love you, that's the take. When you risk loving yourself; that's the take, oh baby that's the take. Taking a chance on yourself is like casting a fly to a feeding Carp; sometimes the take can be so subtle. In fishing (particularly Carp fishing), and in all of life, the take is the premier moment.

I wrote this article for the North American Carp Angler magazine some years ago. This article is copyrighted and all rights are reserved.

Epilogue:

When I asked Katy to marry me 34 years ago she said, "Yes," without even telling me she needed time to think about it. That's the take. When I kiss her she kisses back. Still. That's the take. When she kisses me I kiss back. That's the take. Oh, baby, that's the take!

End(s) of the Season

2011-10-16T11:26:00.000-07:00

Would I really want to Carp fish all year? As the season winds down I want to fish, "just one more day..." There are other fish to chase of course and they are fun. Carp are special. Probably they are more special because they aren't available to me all year. I don't want the season to end but its good that it does. I am not resigning myself to it "being good for me" in some sort of stoic way; it is genuinely good that the season ends. I don't want it to end and I'm grateful that it does. Not being able to fish for Carp some of the year heightens the anticipation; it makes me savor the days on the river even more. It helps remind me how important it is to work at having a gratitude attitude. That's not just some fortune cookie crap; having a gratitude attitude is something I work on every day. Often I think saying, "Thank you," is the most profound form of prayer. I'm better at it some days than others.

During the last week of September my work plans changed so I was able to get away to attempt some Carp fishing. I fished stillwater the first day and had a surprisingly enjoyable time. The next day I headed to the river; I just had to see if there would still be some fish in the shallows.

I had to do a fair amount of wading before I saw a tailing fish. Move into place...one very good cast...the fly was stripped to his dinner plate...he turned... and moved away. Keep walking...

For the second fish I really didn't think my cast was all that good; the Carrot landed (I thought) too close to the plate. I got lucky. The Carp didn't mind the fly hitting the water. He picked it up just like it was real food. Dang I like that! With almost no wind the slosh the fish made on the hook set was visible and audible. Heading for deep water he got a good ways into the backing. I really tried to savor that fish thinking it might be the only one I would catch that day and probably the last one of the season. I was very grateful.

They came in spurts. I went more than an hour without seeing a single fish. Then I got four in just over an hour.

At the end of the day, with eight to hand and a couple lost in the weeds I was extremely grateful. Grateful for the mild weather, grateful for just the chance to cast to feeding fish, grateful for the takes, grateful for the golden grass, grateful for sunrise and sunset, grateful for friends and family, grateful for so many blessings. It seemed a perfect ending to the Carp season.

Almost.

I just had to try one more time. If catching fish is the measure of whether or not I should have gone again then I should not have gone. But I still should have gone. I went with my friend, Rich, and we walked the river last Thursday for a few hours. In all that time we saw just one fish swimming near the bank. Was he lost? Did he not know the season was over? What was he doing? A single cast was all he allowed me and he swam away. It was as if he was looking up out of the river at me and thinking, "Is he lost? Does he not know the season is over? What is he doing?"

To the Carp's queries I say, "I am not lost. I am very 'found' when I'm on the river. Yes, I know the season is over. I am fishing. I am grateful."

Looking west from The Carp Lodge with the sunrise behind me.

Sunset at The Carp Lodge

Scientific Analysis of Carp Fishing with a Fly

2011-10-12T05:41:00.001-07:00

Both the left side and the right side of my brain work just fine; I think pretty well actually. (Especially for a guy) The information provided in this post is seriously analytical and like really, really left brained. Having fly fished since 1971 and having worked at accumulating bucket loads of carefully researched and well documented data I provide for you a detailed summary of my personal research. Click the image for a better view

The Sun Was Tired

2011-10-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

During the middle of the last week of September my plans changed so I was able to do some unexpected late season Carp fishing. Maybe I should say end of the season Carp fishing, I don't know. I guess if I go again one more time in October then fishing in September was late season Carp fishing. If I don't go again (or maybe if I go and get totally blanked) then September was the end of the season. We'll see...

Two weeks ago I was pleasantly surprised by the mild weather and by the presence of some fish. I fished still water the first day. The boat is so much easier to manage when the wind is light. Thankfully it was. The sky was only slightly cloudy; the biggest challenge was that the sun was tired. This time of year the sun doesn't wake up early and start an immediate and purposeful ascent to the top of the sky like it does in July. It's like it's just worn out from all that summer work. It gets up late, goes to bed early, and can only seem to drag itself along the horizon rather than make the climb. This time of year it is as if it is 4:00 PM all day. The sun just never quite shines directly into the water. Even in the middle of the day the sunlight is still coming in at an angle so it makes spotting more difficult. Not impossible, but more difficult.

Amazingly I got a fish to the net after just 20 minutes. Five fish came to rest in the mesh. I lost two in the reeds. I took my cue from the sun. It was tired and and didn't want to be out long so neither did I. Five and half hours of fishing was enough.

They love the Carrot; they just love it. It was the only fly I fished. The only time I changed my fly was when the two fish broke me off in the reeds; I just put another Carrot on.

I spent a quiet evening at the Carp Lodge and geared up for a session on the river the next day.

Sunset at the Carp Lodge

An Old Friend Named Moccasin: Parts IV-VI

2011-09-26T15:19:00.001-07:00

Prologue:

Breakfast was a sliced sausage, egg, and cheese on a homemade biscuit. It sure tasted good; the whole thing was yummy. But what was I thinking?

Part IV:

Now that Moccasin is private you can drive right to the shore; that suits my 60 year old joints. Since last being there in 1992, an aerator, a shack with picnic tables, an outhouse, a dock and a few boats were the man-made changes. Nature and time brought more cattails to the lower end of the lake and more brush to the upper end. My old friend had aged well. Looking across the lake I smiled seeing the spot where that first fish surprised and delighted me 40 years ago. Could it really be that long ago? Where has the time gone?...

At 8:30 five anglers met our guide, Kevin, at the gate to the ranch.

Our group included Michael and Nancy, husband and wife, who live in the Okanogan Valley and are hay farmers. Nigel, who is from England, was fishing for the first time in the United States. Al Green lives in the Methow Valley. I should mention that Al is 87 years old. I hope I'm still getting around and fishing when I'm 87.

Al and Nigel:

We started fishing at about 9:45. In a float tube, Nancy was the first one on the lake; she had two fish quite quickly on dry flies. It was very encouraging. Michael, her husband, entered the lake soon after that in a 12 foot aluminum boat he had on a trailer. Al and Nigel were in a river raft with our guide, Kevin. Al had to be helped into the raft but dog gone it he was fishing! Gary and I set up our pontoon boats and were the last ones on the lake. Hopes high, I was experiencing both the anticipation of the present and reliving the anticipation I had known 40 years ago. Time and memories became fluid.

Starting at the shoreline where so many years ago that first fish took my fly was an easy decision; rising trout were luring me like the sirens singing to Odysseus.

My first and smallest fish of the day:

Since that first kiss I shared with Moccasin I have worked hard at learning to fly fish for a variety of species. Unlike the 70's, today, good gear lives at my house and I cast well.

Nigel and Al were only fishing for half a day; at about 1:15 Kevin started bringing them back to the boat launch. At that point the four fish I had caught were just not that big of a thrill to me. They were less of a thrill to me because my stomach was still upset from the damn greasy sausage I ate for breakfast. What was I thinking?

Kevin asked me how Gary and I were doing. I told him I had caught only four fish, Gary had caught 3, and that we were both a little frustrated. I told Kevin that we both understood that he had people in his boat but that one way or another he should have probably checked in with us at least once during the morning. Immediately Kevin was patient and tried to be helpful. He wanted to sit down and talk. Oh, I definitely wanted to sit down, but not to talk. I wanted to get to the outhouse and recycle the last of that damn sausage. What was I thinking?

Part V

Recycling finished and stomach calm it was easier for me to talk to Kevin. He suggested that I come in his boat and that we fish together. It really didn't sound like that good of an idea to me; I wanted to fish in my own pontoon boat. Plus I didn't want to be able to do something that Gary didn't get to do. I tried calling Gary to see if he wanted to get in the river boat also; his phone was off.
Kevin took me down to the far end of the lake. Nigel and Al had not taken a fish on a dry fly for the first part of their morning; they didn't get fish until they started Chironomid fishing. It was good to see them finish with a double both taken on dry flies near the boat launch.

Virtually always with an indicator, I have done a good deal of Chironomid fishing through the years. I had two rods set up; I had hoped to only use the one with the floating line and catch hog after hog on hoppers. Kevin had me switch to the rod with the sinking line. We put on a Red Chironomid and a Black Chironomid for a dropper. We did deep line chironomiding. That is with a sinking line and no indicator. In short order the line is straight down from the tip of the rod. The fly is a foot from the bottom in 20 feet of water.

I honestly felt a little silly being in the guide's boat. I have been in a guide's boat in a river several times but never on a lake. While Gary was getting Chironomids on his sinking line, seemingly for no good reason and totally without warning the tip of my rod went in the water. That fish had some zip. In a few minutes, resting in the net, mouth of the water and fly in his lip, my first fish of the afternoon waited to be unbuttoned. He was 24 inches. My hands were not shaking. Still, I was smiling--outside and inside. That fish began what was a great second part of the day. Six nice fish came to the net and I lost a few others using the deep line method.

Gary got a good number of fish deep lining also.

Gary nets another multi-pound Trout:

When I fish with friends it is important to me that they have a good time and that they catch fish. Gary was catching fish. Here is a link to a video of Gary as he finishes playing a nice fish.

Those deeper water fish reminded me of some of my first kisses at Moccasin. In forty years I have had a lot of kisses. I still want more. Happy enough with the Chironomid fishing I still wanted to get some crushing strikes on a Hopper. In all of life "the take is the premier moment." I want those takes!

Part VI:

Before the last 90 minutes of (fishable) light Kevin suggested that if getting some big fish on dry flies was important we would risk getting no fish but that we could try the edges at a couple spots where the fish feed. I will virtually always trade lots of smaller fish for fewer big fish. I will trade lots of "felt" takes for fewer visual takes.

Moving down the side of the lake several nice fish were kind enough to pick up my Damsel pattern and a Parachute Adams. Still I wanted to see a 4 or 5 pound Trout take the Hopper on the way out of the water, briefly attempt flight, splash like a presto log dropped over the side of the boat, and then make the reel sing.

None of us wanted to break down our gear in the dark; we were running out of light. It was almost time to call it a day. Kevin rowed to the other side of the lake to have me make my last casts of the evening off of a small point. I was ready to call the trip a good one, ready to take a deep breath and reel in. Well, not quite ready. Almost ready. I was still hoping for a big wet kiss; that visual, crushing strike. Kevin probably would have probably allowed me just a few more casts. My Hopper was riding on the surface of the water several feet from shore. Seemingly for no apparent reason and totally without warning a nulti-pound fish became airborne. He had my Hopper in his mouth! Hell yes! The take is the premier moment and that one was excellent. Releasing that Trout was the perfect way to end the fishing for the day.

Time and memories became fluid this day. I had relived some frustration just like my first date with Moccasin. Certainly not to the extent as that first date; after all I'm older and wiser. Still, there was some frustration. I experienced and relived some of those truly wonderful memories I had through 20 years of fishing Moccasin when it was public. In a way, it was if 20 years all happened again in a day. This day clearly exists on it's own though and added to my good memories.

Moccasin, my old friend, it was so good to reconnect with you. I look forward to seeing you in the future.

Kevin was great. Gary and I appreciated how he worked with us both on and off the lake; I plan to book a Steelhead trip with him in the future and expect to fish Moccasin Lake with him again. Thanks a lot Kevin.

Kevin with his 2 1/2 year old son, Jackson.

My favorite picture of the trip at the "moment of the spirit".

Hair, Trout, and Love

2011-09-23T09:39:00.000-07:00

Gary and I arrived in the Methow Valley Tuesday afternoon in anticipation of fishing Moccasin Lake. We had reservations at the Mt. Gardner Inn. Alison, one of the proprietors checked us in. Right away were pleased with setting and the room. Our initial impressions turned out to be true. It was excellent.

After dropping off some gear at our room we fished a local, public lake the first evening. We both caught a few fish in the 12-14 inch range. It was pleasant. The highlight of the evening was two other anglers who showed up shortly after we did. They took an aluminum boat off the top of a pickup truck. George had clearly done this before. His wife, Nancy, mostly watched. George mentioned that she just had knee surgery. After some doing, George got Nancy situated on a swivel seat in the stern of the boat. George sat in the middle and rowed. They laughed and kidded each other like good natured 20 year olds. They had gray hair. The hair that wasn't gray was white. The banter between them made both Gary and I smile and chuckle several times. At one point Nancy fell off of the seat onto the bottom of the boat. George was very solicitous. Not hurt, Nancy just laughed and laughed. Clearly they were old and had been married a long time but they still acted like 20 year olds.

After about 30 minutes Nancy got a fish on; she was not able to bring it to the net and voiced her disappointment. In another hour she really started whooping. I was a ways down the lake now so I thought she fell out of her seat again but as it turned out she had a 16 inch fish on and she got it to the net. She didn't sound 20 years old any longer; she sounded 12. So did George. They were like a couple of kids thrilled with catching a trout and thrilled with being alive. Nancy would catch another 16 inch fish a short time later.

Back at shore I visited with George. I said how much I appreciated that they were both having such a good time. George said that these were the first fish Nancy had ever caught. I asked if she had just started fishing with him and he said yes. To myself I wondered why she hadn't fished with him so many years ago. I asked how old he was and he said that he was 75 and Nancy was 70. If both Katy and I are alive, when I am 75 she and I will have been married 48 years.

I was right about the gray hair and right about them being old. I wasn't exactly right about something else. I asked how long they had been married and he said that they had only known each other for a year and a half and were just recently married. Sometimes the best part of fishing isn't the fishing. The best part of that evening was seeing young love and young hearts with people that had white hair. Inspiring. Yes, it was inspiring. "The heart that loves is always young."

An Old Friend Named Moccasin: Parts IV-VI still coming...

An Old Friend Named Moccasin: Parts I-III

2011-09-21T08:13:00.001-07:00

Part I

Past dark, the full moon was helping, but flashlights were needed to follow the trail out. Walking ten or twelve steps behind was for the best. Childish? Perhaps. Good judgment to help process frustration? Possibly. Who’s to say; it was 40 years ago. Parts of memory fade and blur, parts retain clarity.

How many fish did Howard catch that evening? A lot. Exactly how many? Memory has faded on that. With a good fiberglass rod of the times how well could he cast? Smoothly, effortlessly, beautifully, the line settled on the water with few enough coils left on the reel to begin to see the backing; he made casting a fly rod seem exotic. He made fly fishing seem spiritual. It is.

How many fish did I bring to hand that evening? Memory is clear. None. How well did I cast with a seven foot fiberglass rod and a level, 5 weight line? The wind, the level line, and a simple lack of skill all conspired; memory is clear, I cast poorly. It was June of 1971; Howard had just introduced me to fly fishing the month before. That warm summer evening he introduced me to Moccasin Lake. I wanted to be friends with Moccasin; I wanted us to learn to like each other a lot. I wanted the time we shared together to be wonderful. How could I be friends with someone who was so mean to me?

I didn’t begrudge Howard his fish; I wanted him to catch a bunch. It’s just that I wanted to catch a bunch too. And I didn’t. I didn’t blame him for hooking fish after fish and I didn’t blame him for me not bringing even one to hand. When it was finally time to leave, we walked, in our hip boots, around the end of the lake and then the mile back to the car. Not wanting at that moment to be consoled for my lack of success on my first date with Moccasin I walked 10 or 12 steps behind him. It helped me to process my frustration. Back at the car I was willing to talk. Howard was patient and helpful.

Located in the Methow Valley, Moccasin Lake is on a working cattle ranch. In the 70’s and 80’s the owners of the ranch allowed the public to walk across their property to the lake. The Washington State Game Department agreed to stock the lake with Trout as long as the owners allowed access to the public. Rich with food, the lake provided the fish the calories they needed to grow big and fat.

Howard was friends with the ranch managers, Roy and Marge Simon. The next evening we had an early dinner with Roy and Marge. After dinner Howard and I walked up the hill; it was my second date with Moccasin. The size of the fish in the lake was no longer just stories to me, I had seen them the night before; my anticipation was high again. My casting had not magically improved during the night; that would only come with practice and better gear. Using the same 7 foot fiberglass rod and level 5 weight fly line I tied a Shrimp pattern on the mono tippet. Large, rising fish close to shore made my hands shake; those fish were in reach and they were so much larger than the fish I was used to catching.

After Howard had released a few fish doubt was creeping in for me. Shaking hands were replaced by a stiff neck and tightening shoulders. Seemingly for no good reason and totally without warning my rod bent and the white line was peeling off my Pflueger Medalist; I could hardly believe it. In a few minutes, mouth out of the water, fly in his lip, my first Moccasin Lake fish was laying on the surface next to me waiting to be unbuttoned. At that point that fish was the biggest Trout I had caught on a fly. It was like a first kiss. While it was enough to make my second date an excellent one I wanted more kisses. Man did I want more kisses. Lots more kisses!

How big was that fish? Memory blurs. Somewhere around 16 inches would be a good estimate. It was big enough to peel out line at a good clip, it was big enough to put a good bend in that 7 foot rod, it was big enough to relax my neck and shoulders and make my hands shake again.

How many fish did Howard catch that evening? Plenty. How many did I catch? I was teased with some strikes and did get a couple more to hand. How many exactly? I don’t know. It was enough that Howard and I walked out together. Moccasin had grabbed me; I was ready to return the following evening. Other lakes in Washington, British Columbia, and Wyoming would grab me in the years ahead. Lenice, Merry, Nunnally, and Chopaka Lakes were some of the early ones; because I have such long history with them they will always be special. Moccasin was the first; the first lake where my hands were shaking so much in anticipation I had to press my wrists against my chest to thread the tippet through the eye of the hook.

The following summer saw me return with an 8 foot rod, a weighted fly line, and finally some casting skills. When did I catch my first fish over 18 inches there? What was the most I ever caught in an evening? What was the biggest fish I ever hooked at Moccasin? Memory has definitely blurred; I don’t know the exact answer to any of those questions. It would take a couple more years but I finally had some evenings where I didn’t care if I caught another fish. Moccasin Lake and I had gotten to be friends. She wasn’t always nice to me, I knew it wasn’t intentional or personal; she just made the fishing darn difficult some times. Sometimes, kiss after kiss, she was wonderful, just wonderful.

It was the early 70’s. Pontoon boats, U-boats, and kickboats, had yet to be invented. Even float tubes were primitive and uncommon at that point. I never even saw one until 1975. To fish the lake we waded a limited amount of shoreline and wore only hip boots.

Through the years I would become friends with Lenice, Merry, and Nunnally Lakes; better friends I suppose but only because I spent so much more time with them. My old friend Moccasin was the first one to send me Trout that charged into open water, the first one to send me Trout that broke tippet, the first one that tested my knots, my patience, and my persistence.

Steelheading was still seven years in my future. Carp fishing was 33 years away.

Part II

The owners of the ranch decided to close the lake to the public; 1992 was the last year. They planned to make it a private lake with limited access. It opened in 1994 and has been private ever since.

That last year, 1992, the lake was open to the public; I went there with two friends, Scott and Kurt. Let’s just say we were part of a larger group outing and that the other guys in the group were not fisherman. They were in town whooping it up at Three Finger Jack’s Saloon. Really whooping it up. Each to his own. Jeff, another member of the group, drove us up to the parking lot for Moccasin. We walked in carrying our float tubes on our heads. Jeff was going to come back and pick us up at “dark”. Well, the fishing was good so I guess “dark” didn’t exactly mean the same thing to everyone. It was about 11:00 when we got back to the parking area and Jeff was mad. He had been waiting for two hours. So he said anyway. He proceeded to curse us vigorously and persistently. He suggested that all three of us had been born out of wedlock. I mean come on, what are the chances that was true for all three of us? He told us that he hoped our afterlife would be most unpleasant and very hot. He suggested several times that we put the fly rods somewhere that ammm…, ammm,… somewhere that something comes out of every morning but nothing ever goes in. It was uncomfortable at first to have him basically yelling at us and telling us repeatedly that we were all “f’n useless!” Finally Scott, Kurt and I all started laughing. It took Jeff close to 20 minutes to stop yelling. We laughed until it was hard to breathe.

I left Moccasin that last trip in May of 1992 with incredible memories. How could I not? We shared some first kisses. I did not plan to go back. I don’t object to paying to fish certain place; I have fished pay venues and had a very good time. I was concerned that if I fished Moccasin as a private lake my wonderful memories would be changed. The blurred ones and the clear ones, the unpleasant ones and the pleasant ones; I didn’t want any of them changed; I liked them all just the way they were.

Part III

The last time I visited Moccasin Lake was 19 years ago—long enough to put a good layer of dust on even my clearest recollections. Dusting off my memories gives me the impression that they become clearer again. I think it is just an impression. Maybe it is the feelings that endure the most clearly rather than the exact details though some details and experiences are still so very clear. I remember feeling frustrated and defeated that first night at Moccasin Lake. Anticipation, excitement, and exhilaration all visited me that second day. The surprise and exhilaration that first fish brought still make me smile.

For no known reason, mostly just in passing, Moccasin Lake started to intrigue me again. After all this time--Why? I just don’t know. Is it seeing pictures on the Internet? I don’t know anyone who had been there recently. Certainly I can fish a lake and have a good time catching small fish or few fish. But the prospect of catching multi-pound Trout on Hoppers lured me. Concerned about sullying my memories, even if I caught a slew of fish, with cautious enthusiasm I agreed to see my old friend, Moccasin.

Parts IV, V, and VI to come.

Cowboy Church and Indian Church

2011-09-11T18:40:00.000-07:00

The fly and a small amount of line are visible in the water near the boat. The line comes up off the water, it straightens out behind me. The first haul helps load the rod for the forward cast, the second haul awakens the road. Aroused by the third haul the rod calls for more line; coils disappear from the floor of the boat. The line shoots forward to the full limit of my ability and settles on the still surface. The weighted fly and clear line begin to sink in search of willing Salmon.

A count of ten is followed by a long series of quick strips until the fly is near the boat again; the process is repeated. I love the smooth rhythm of casting. The sound of the line blends with the warnings of the gulls to not get much closer. Moving around the circle my next cast is made 45 degrees to the right.

On the way to this saltwater beach I pass the Indian Shaker Church; I have driven by many times. What time does Indian Shaker Church start? Do they take up a collection? What kind of prayers do they say? Do they have a choir? Is it an active, rousing service? Possibly quiet and contemplative? Would I be welcome there? What do they call their God? Do they love Jesus? Does Jesus love them?

During the summers sometimes I pass the Cowboy Church on my way to other fishing destinations.

Who goes to Cowboy Church? What do they do there? Is it impolite to take off your hat at Cowboy Church? Could I go to Cowboy Church? Would they welcome me? Do they sing country songs at Cowboy Church? What do they believe? Who started Cowboy Church? Does it start at 8:00 or does it cost $8.00 to get in? Or both? Do they love Jesus? Does Jesus love them?

Does Jesus love one church better than another? Does the Jesus or the God at your church love only you and people like you? Would your Jesus love me? I would like your Jesus or your God a lot if I knew he or she loves people who aren't like you and who aren't like me.

The sun is warm, the wind is down; it is a beautiful, satisfying day. Undistracted by having to net fish, or play fish, my mind wanders.

Racquetball and Fishing

2011-09-07T15:18:00.000-07:00

Awhile back, when I was younger and better looking, I could play racquetball fairly well. In tournament play, for my age division I was second in the state championships one year. (Almost first. Not quite. One point away.) Playing the game is still a very fond memory for me. I loved the cat and mouse and the strategy. Like any sport, racquetball is physical, and like any sport, it is part mental and emotional. To play the game competitively I had to stay in shape. I made decisions about what I would do, along with what I would eat and drink, based on how it would effect my competitive edge on the racquetball court. I loved the very fast pace of the game and I loved being rewarded for quick reflexes, smart play and stamina. (Occasionally I was able to actually play well.)

The game requires players to run; at least if you want to play moderately well it does. I used to run (we called it jogging back then) to be prepared for the running in racquetball.

Racquetball helped keep me in good shape and it helped me make other life decisions that were healthy. After my last state tournament, the year I came in second in my age division, scar tissue was building up in my arm. One of the tendons in my right arm was partially detached. Begrudgingly I had to step away from the game for awhile to let my arm heal. Splinting, a cast, and months of inactivity helped start the healing process. Additional months of physical therapy finally brought my arm back. I had been away from the game for over a year. The physical therapist was anxious to see if I could still play. I went and practiced some of my old drills like I had done for years. The slight echo of my footsteps on the floor, the smell of the court, the snap of the ball coming off the strings, the distinctive "ping" of the ball hitting the wall, were so familiar and comfortable.

After a few weeks of practice I made a decision to not attempt to play competitively. In fact I decided to not play at all. During the preceding years, I ran and lifted weights so I would be in shape to play well in the third game of a championship match. I drilled constantly so I could overcome my almost complete lack of natural athletic gifts. I visualized serves and return of service. I squeezed rubber balls to increase my grip strength. In any match I would dive on the floor several times to dig up a shot.

Today, after finishing a workout at the "Y" occasionally two players will see me standing behind the court watching. And remembering. They don't know what I'm thinking. Or remembering. I nod and smile when they look out. Remembering diving on the floor... If I did it now I would have to be scraped up with a snow shovel and taken to the E.R.

During my racquetball years I had made decisions based on how they would effect my game. Finally, I gave up racquetball because of how it would effect my fishing. Thirteen years have passed since I last hit a racquetball. The chance that my casting arm would never quite work right again was enough to make me stop playing a game I had loved so much.

My racquet rests on the floor behind a book shelf in my fly tying room; I don't know why I won't get rid of it. Noticing it sitting there this morning, I smiled and remembered. Waiting patiently on the floor I wonder if my racquet still holds on to a fleeting hope that it will be put to work again one day. Does it remember like I do? Does it close its eyes and smile? Has it aged well? What does it think about aging? I was glad for all the years I played. And I was glad I stepped away from the game.

Last week I had planned to fish for three days. Katy and I were going to go to the Carp Lodge for a week. We had to change our plans again; we left later in the week and returned sooner than we planned. I had to cancel a Friday outing.

Two days provided me enjoyable and satisfying time on my river. I could wade, I could cast; it's good that I gave up the game I loved. Some days, like this past week, I savor and appreciate how fortunate I am just to be able to step in the river and stalk fish.

Smoked

2011-09-03T07:50:00.000-07:00

I was supposed to Carp fish for three days the last full week of August with a good friend of mine. This has been a summer of changing plans and that trip fell victim to those changes.

This an odd number year so the Pinks (Humpies) are running. The run is late in coming or is not going to be as strong as predicted. On the morning of August 25, I had a chance to fish with Dale, one of the best, saltwater fly fishermen in the area.

We launched Dale's boat at a familiar, popular spot that I have fished many times. Fishing for Pinks, particularly in the salt, can be very hit or miss. When they are running in great numbers they are not difficult to catch. When there aren't many then they get difficult to catch. Typically, if you see them jumping and rolling then there are likely lots of lots of there friends right below them. We weren't seeing any fish jumping. In a couple hours of moving, anchoring, and casting, we didn't get a strike. Going back to the launch, taking out, driving to another spot, and motoring to a place to fish is usually not worth the trouble. We (Dale) decided to give it a try. I was hoping that that is what we (he) would decide particularly since I had never fished the spot he was thinking of.

There were way fewer boats and there were actually some Pinks around. Seeing a few fish jump stoked anticipation for both of us. A hookup came fairly quickly for me but that fish unbuttoned himself. Thirty minutes brought another take tor me from a fish that also self-released.

In the salt, Pinks are way more likely to bite when the change in the tide is "severe". We had a good serious tide change going on but we also had some serious wind. Fishing off a point, the tide rip made it like fishing a river; we cast upcurrent, mended, let the fly sink for a bit, and then started stripping. Pinks respond to a quickly stripped fly.

A female Pink was kind enough to take Dale's fly. I netted it for him; he took the net, and then bled the fish. I had never seen that done before. He cut the gills on each side and in a matter of seconds the fish was bled out. He explained that is what commercial fisherman due to preserve the taste of Salmon and that there are many local restaurants that won't buy Salmon that hasn't been bled when it was caught. Who knew?

Dale had a 90 quart cooler in the boat; the bled out fish was laid on ice. When I finally got one that didn't let itself go Dale netted it and asked to keep it to take it home to smoke. I like smoked Salmon and so does Katy but I don't own a smoker. Bled, and resting on ice, my fish was on his way to the smoker. We each brought another Salmon to the boat or I guess I should say we each brought another Salmon to the cooler to be taken home and smoked by Dale.

Cancer, Ageing, Fishing, & Blessings

2011-08-25T18:29:00.000-07:00

This week I was planning to go Carp fishing with my friend, Keith. I had to cancel the trip and I was disappointed about that.

My wife's sister, Judy, has stage 4 cancer. She is not long for this life. Early last week she suffered what the oncologist called a "sudden and significant decline". We all thought that the cancer had spread. A CAT scan and a blood test revealed that it had not spread so the oncologist hospitalized her and ordered an additional battery of tests. That was just one of the reasons I couldn't leave town to go Carp fishing.

My Mother is my hero. I am the oldest of 5 kids. In 1967 my dad died suddenly. I was 16. My Mother went back to work and kept the family together. It was sometime in the 90's that she told me she almost lost the house after my dad died. My siblings and I had no idea. I have written about her in another blog but not my fishing blog. She is 88 years old. Osteoporosis has racked her body. She trembles constantly. With a walker she moves very slowly. Her hearing is only fair even with hearing aids. Her anxiety can overwhelm her. She can no longer dress herself or bathe herself. She is living with one of my sisters. We made need to move her to an assisted living or skilled nursing home in the very near future. It is a challenging situation. Again, my Mother is my hero.

I took her to a couple assisted living homes this week to check them out. It was yet another reason why I couldn't leave town and had to cancel my trip with Keith.

My hip hurts. It hurts more often and heals more slowly. It would appear that I am ageing too. Not Carp fishing this week gave my hip a rest but the darn thing still hurts.

I am not complaining. I am incredibly blessed. When my mother says grace she always prays for others and for herself. Her prayers for others are always prayers of supplication and her prayers for herself are ALWAYS prayers of gratitude.

I didn't get to go Carp fishing this week like I planned. Even though my hero was part of the reason I couldn't fish she taught me to know that I am still incredibly blessed.

Two Tone Backing

2011-08-20T08:21:00.000-07:00

This report and these pictures are from a day in the first week of August. I got behind on my blogging back then. I had rough drafted a Word document but just never finished it until this morning.

On this particular day I just got lucky I guess. There was blue sky, a slight wind, and the water was just a bit off color. I believe there are Carp all up and down the Columbia but that doesn't mean they are always going to be where I want them to be. I want them to be in easy to wade, shallow water, near a good place to park. I don't ask for much.

This was just a better day than some of my days the week before in late July. I was seeing more fish and best of all they were liking my flies. This one liked the Chocolate Cherry.

Three captures in the 16-18 pound range is always nice. Somewhere I read that 16-18 pound Carp are "apex athletes". I think it was John Montana who said that but I'm not sure. The three larger fish I caught sure earned that moniker. One of them was 18 pounds 9 ounces. I'm still calling that 18 pounds since he didn't make it all the way to 19. It was an amazing, strong, persistent fish. It took me farther into the backing than fish I have caught this summer weighing several pounds more. I honestly didn't realize that the first forty or maybe fifty yards of my backing has become stained from the river. The backing was peeling off the reel and I saw it had just changed to a nice, clean white. I have two tone backing and I didn't even know it. Several times she made the 1X, 10 pound, fluorocarbon tippet whine from too much pressure.

After she showed me the clean backing she took off again.

I felt fortunate to get the fish in. This picture isn't a close up, straight on view like I prefer but I didn't want to traumatize the fish with more poses. This is the fat girl that showed me that I had two tone backing. She took a #8 Carp Carrot tied on a Tiemco 3769 hook.

This was also a very strong fish.

I thanked this Carp for coming out to play and sent him back home.

Be Careful What You Wish For...

2011-08-15T09:11:00.000-07:00

Getting out for two days of Carp fishing this past week found me confronting dramatically different conditions. Day one brought blue sky but from there it was all down hill. The wind was blowing hard for hours. Every bit as bad as that, and probably worse, was that the river was high again and quite cloudy. I walked the edges quite a ways but never actually got in the water. I never saw a fish so I never made a cast. Hmmm... That means I got blanked.

I finished up early knowing it was hopeless. The rest of the afternoon and the evening I wished for blue sky, clear water at lower levels, and NO wind for the next day's fishing.

The Columbia is a huge river. Near the Carp Lodge it is a mile wide. There is just a whole lot of water flowing down this river. Water level can change dramatically in a short period of time as water is released through a damn.

The next day they pulled the plug. Arriving at the river I could see it was down and I could actually see it receding. The water was clear, the sky was blue and there wasn't a bit of wind. I got exactly what I had wished for. Finally seeing some fish was a huge bonus.

It took over two hours before I had a hookup.

I was seeing fish from a good distance away but they were seeing me too. I wasn't seeing many fish but those that I saw were not being as cooperative as I would have liked. I had to work hard for the few fish I caught. With the water being so clear the takes were visible and very satisfying. Its just that the refusals were also very clear.

I found myself wishing for just a small amount of yesterday's wind and just a bit of color in the water. I am going to have to learn to "wish correctly".

As an aside the last two seasons I have had some conversations with a couple of the guys I Carp fish with regarding how the heck a Carp gets hooked on the outside of the mouth. Sometimes we see them turn to the fly but not pick it up. So far the two theories are that the Carp goes for the fly and misses it by accident and then clumsily gets hooked. In the low, clear water this past week, several times I saw a Carp turn to the fly and then turn away from it at the last split second. More and more I'm thinking that it is like a trout coming to the surface and refusing a dry fly at the last moment. I clearly saw enough Carp turn from my fly after moving to it that I'm thinking they change their mind just before eating the fake. At least today I don't think the miss it; I think they decide not to eat it. I will need to do more field research to be sure of this though.

I covered MILES of water

2011-08-08T13:20:00.001-07:00

I have gotten behind on my blogging. My recent post about Cubans and Carp was from a session two weeks ago. I was able to fish two days this past week. On Wednesday, returning to still water and connecting with several nice fish, I finished the day very satisfied.

I had to work much, much harder to find fish this past week than I did the week before. Since there was very little wind I was able to cover miles of water. The electric motor I have on the Zodiac moves the boat right along if Mother Nature (the wind) isn't pushing back. I don't know if I GOT to cover miles of water or HAD to cover miles of water but either way it had to be done to find fish. In one week's time I don't have any idea where the heck they went but they just weren't there in the numbers they were the week before. Two weeks ago I didn't go five minutes without seeing a Carp. They weren't always good targets but they were there in numbers. Last week I motored along for 20 minutes sometimes without seeing a single fish. I just had to work harder at it.

Starting with the Chocolate Cherry I hooked a fish early on but then had some tailing fish and some shoppers turned from the fly. Switching to the Carp Carrot proved to be a good choice.

This fish took the Carp Carrot and then he just "got up and went!" I don't know why some fish are hotter than others but this one was hot. Damn I like that.

This year I have been trying to get some pictures of Carp as I send them back into the water. This is one of my two or three favorites so far.

Two more Carp just before they went home.

This porker took me way into the backing.

This is the last picture I took for this session. It is 5:00 and I am heading back to my Carpwagon. But wait, I see a tailing Carp. Oh swell. I wish it showed up in the picture but it doesn't. The fish is right up against the reeds. He is a good fish and the reason I say he is a good fish is because he ate the Carp Carrot. I set the hook, played him, brought him to the net, thanked him, unbuttoned him, and turned the net over. Thanks again.

Cubans & Carp--Do They All Look Alike?

2011-08-05T08:38:00.001-07:00

In the middle of July I was supposed to connect with John Montana Jr. and John Montana Sr.

Senior calls himself the "real John Montana". I think Senior is the real John Montana. And I think Junior is too.

John Jr.'s high school basketball coach is Julio Delgado. Both Jr. and Sr. became friends with Julio and they have all fished together.

John Senior hurt his ankle just before we were planning to get together so we weren't able to fish the day(s) we had planned. I was disappointed about that. Some days later John Sr., the "real John Montana", sent me and a few other people an email with some pictures of Carp he had caught on the Columbia.

John Jr., also "the real John Montana", responded to his dad, "We need to teach you how to take pictures. I’m reasonably sure that is the same fish in every picture too!"

John Sr. replied, "They are like Cubans...they all look the same. Oh hi Julio!"

Well good grief Sr., what kind of talk is that, saying they all look the same!!? I mean the Carp and the Cubans. Julio, please accept my apology on behalf of John Sr. He is a great guy; he can be just a tad bit rough around the edges sometimes.

I know Cubans don't all look the same. I looked on the Internet.*

The good natured banter between John Sr., John, Jr., and Julio did give me some pause to think about taking pictures of Carp. An ordinary Carp on the Columbia is about 8 or 9 pounds. In some of the still water I fish an ordinary Carp is about the same size. And in some of the still water an ordinary fish is 5 or 6 pounds. I can fish all day and just get a fish or two. Some days I get several and some days I get a whole bunch. A 16 pound Carp clearly looks different than an 8 pound Carp. I wondered what it would be like to take a "parting" picture of each Carp on a couple trips. Last Thursday I decided to take a picture of each fish as I was putting it back in the water. I knew I would only get one chance on each picture. Even if every fish was exactly the same size and shape all the tail shots would be different. It has been a week since that trip. I remember that I caught a lot of fish but I don't remember how many since I have been out twice since then. I counted the pictures and I see that there are ten fish. I had one other fish in the net. The net was laying on the tube of the Zodiac while I reached in my shirt pocket for the camera. The fish just squirmed a little and he fell in the water. I didn't get his picture. I lost two others in the weeds but I don't count those.

The shutter response time or exposure delay is long on my camera so some of the fish are still sliding out of my hand, some are part way in the water, and some are just below the surface leaving only a disturbance to show their path back home.

These next two shots are the same fish. The only difference is that my hand is just opening in the second shot. I knew I missed the previous fish so I was trying to press the shutter just a bit sooner.

This Carp let me know what he thought about being caught. What can I say except this one crapped on me.

A little late on these next two.

I caught this one just a couple casts after the previous one. He was the weakest fish of the day. He was a slug.

Just about the right timing.

A little soon on this one.

This one was too big to hold with one hand. He was strong and took me well into the backing--just a wonderful fish.

The timing was good on this last fish.

I believe that I have successfully demonstrated that both Cubans and Carp do not all look alike.

Again Julio, please accept my apologies for John Sr.'s behavior. Even though you and I haven't met; I got your back man.

John Sr., if you get to WA again this year let's connect. Hope you can make it.

(I am respectful of other people's content and images so I am showing the links to each place I found a picture. My understanding is that none of them require permission to post but I am acknowledging them anyway.)

women smoking

Gloria Estafan, the woman after her, and Paquito Rivera.

Fidel Castro

A Carp Tatoo

2011-07-30T18:52:00.000-07:00

I have been selling lots of homes and catching lots of Carp. I think it is making me wild and crazy. It must be because I'm thinking of getting a tatoo. Of a Carp.

A Baker's Dozen (I think)

2011-07-27T22:08:00.000-07:00

Katy and I were supposed to be hiking at Mt. Ranier for a few days this week. The friends with whom we were going to hike with couldn't go. The sliding glass door on the Carp Lodge, I mean the summer home, slides with a good deal of difficulty. It looks like we will be making a warranty claim. The builder is bringing the factory rep to the home on Friday.

Let's see here--no trip to Mt. Ranier, builder and factory rep coming the Carp Lodge on Friday morning... What should I do. Instead of coming over on Thursday night for the meeting Friday morning, I decided to come over on Tuesday afternoon. I figured as long as I had to come over I might as well fish.

Arriving in central WA after lunch on Tuesday I dropped off some things at the Carp Lodge and did a fair amount of driving up the river. I went farther up the river than I have ever gone looking for likely spots and of course looking for fish. I did a good amount of driving and a LOT of walking.

I didn't see a single tailing fish all afternoon. I saw three slow cruisers and and several fast cruisers. No grazers, no shoppers, no sunbathers, and no tailing fish. My fly stayed stayed pretty dry. Needless to say I didn't catch a single fish on Tuesday. I saw a very promising piece of water that I would likely go back to but there were no Carp. What can I say, I got blanked yesterday.

I did so much walking that my hip was a little sore this morning so I decided to go back to stillwater. I had my Zodiac with me so away I went.

It was a good choice. My hip feels better and unlike yesterday I saw lots of tailing fish today. They weren't too excited about the Carrot so I switched to the Chocolate Cherry. They were excited about that.

By the end of the afternoon I had 12 fish. I was heading back to my truck, moving slowly, and still looking for "just one more fish". I saw a couple fish cruising slowly near the reeds so I got ready to make a cast. One of the fish spooked and bolted. The other changed directions. Waiting for the direction changer to settle down I cast the line out at about a 60 degree angle to my left and just let it sit. I casually looked over to about the point where the fly was and saw a Carp turn his head. I thought to myself that Carp just moved like Carp do when they take a fly. Then I thought, that's about where my fly probably is. Then I wondered if he just took my fly. To find out I set the hook. Good grief, that darn Carp had taken my fly.

There are times when I make a cast to a Carp and it moves off. Another Carp will come into range near where the fly is so I will let the fly sit or strip it towards the newcomer. At least that is conscious. I didn't even see that last fish of the day come into view until he was picking up the fly. Since I was almost unconscious I'm not sure I should count that fish. I hooked 12 fish consciously and one unconsciously. I guess that makes a baker's dozen. I don't know, do you count a fish you didn't even cast to?

This one took the Cherry farther down his throat than they usually do.

The Carp spanked me on Tuesday and I spanked them on Wednesday.

This is a picture of the last Carp going back in the water. I was just a split second late.

I will be meeting the builder and the factory rep on Friday morning and then heading home to meet with clients.

I guess as long as I'm here I will fish tomorrow.

This One Jumped!

2011-07-18T18:50:00.001-07:00

Holy Crimeny! This fish actually jumped out of the water. It was simply a magnificent fish on every level. It was feeding, I made a good cast, it turned to the fly, I set the hook and it just took off. It took me into the backing, I got it fairly close to me and off it went into the backing again. It was an amazing, strong fish. All of that alone would have all made it wonderful but then the darn thing jumped all the way out of the water!

Years ago, the very first Carp I caught jumped out of the water on the hook set. I have had that happen at least once every year (except last year) since I started chasing Carp on the fly. It is just not normal Carp behavior, at least not around here. I'm not talking about sloshing around on the top of the water; I'm talking about clearing the water. What an incredible animal this fish was. I felt like I wanted to sit and talk to the fish after the picture. I wanted to say thanks.

The whole day was good. Of the fish I hooked four of them were over 15 pounds. That's always nice. I caught one on a perfect pitch but the rest of them were all on casts. Pitching, plopping, and dropping, is fun but casting is way more fun.

The jumper took a #8 Carp Carrot as did some other nicely cooperative Carp.

I also hooked some on the Chocolate Cherry.

There was a preying mantis on the door mat of the Carp Lodge when I got back. That was kind of cool. It was just an unusual day from start to finish.

I love fly fishing for Carp!

Signed Some Papers, Caught Some Carp

2011-07-17T15:52:00.001-07:00

Katy was already at the Carp Lodge with some of her friends. Oh wait, she calls it the summer home. While her friends where there I came over to pick her up and take her to Moses Lake to sign our final documents. We had a construction loan and it is being converted to a permanent loan. I dropped off some things and said hello to her friends. It wasn't time to go and sign yet so I had to figure out what to do for a few hours. I could sit in my truck and day dream. I could rake the gravel and try to make it look like an ornamental garden. I could jog up and down the street for three hours. Well heck, I just decided to go Carp fishing.

Way back in May of 2004 I brought my first Carp to hand on the fly. I had caught one by accident many years before but did not get it to hand and it was just something I guess I kept in the back of my mind. I consider the one I caught in May 2004 and got to hand as the first one I caught. I was a whopping 3 1/2 pounds. I was fishing a six weight with 3X fluorocarbon. I saw the take, the fish actually jumped straight up when I set the hook, and that about did it for me. I knew I was going to like this a whole lot.

In those few hours of "forced fishing" I was able to get two grabs. Considering I only saw two tailing fish, a few shoppers, and a few cruisers, I felt pretty good about that. I got one of the tailers to pick up the Carp Carrot and I got a shopper to pick up the Carrot too. The tailing fish was the smallest Carp I have caught since catching that first one back in 2004. It was almost an exact replica. He was exactly 3 1/2 pounds. I almost never see Carp this small in the Columbia but it keeps me humble so that's a good thing.

I would like to only post pictures of monster fish all caught on days where all I did was catch big fish and lots of them. I think that I would like every day of Carp fishing to be that way. They are not. I nail 'em some days but certainly not every day. Here is a picture of my little fish from signing day.

This one was bigger and he took the Carrot too.

In building the Carp Lodge we had a terrible experience with the banker and are glad that part of the process is finally over!

Much more importantly we had a tremendous experience with Gary at Triton Custom Homes. Katy and I both feel good about whole heartedly recommending him.

Connecting with John Montana (Not Quite as Many Leaves)

2011-07-14T22:18:00.000-07:00

I met up with John Montana for some fishing on the Columbia. I left the Carp Lodge in plenty of time to be early for our connection. I was down the road a ways when I realized I forgot my wading socks. I had to go back to get them. That made me a half our late. Does that bring me from 4 leaves to three? Nah, not yet; I'm still looking forward to another 4 leaf clover kind of day.

Those of us who fish the Columbia regularly have been subjected to wild differences in water level this year. Snow pack and rain, combined with water level management at the damns makes for huge variations in water levels. This has been an unusual spring and summer so far. Places where there have been fields and roads have been covered in water. We have been seeing things we have never seen in the past.

One could say that the river level is WAY too high for Carp fishing and yet those of us who fish the river regularly have managed to bring fish to hand; we just have had to adapt location and technique. We have been doing a lot of pitching, plopping, and dropping.

After meeting John, I put on my boots and realized I had been driving with my prescription sunglasses but couldn't find my regular glasses. Being late doesn't take a leaf on my four leaf clover but losing my glasses somewhere sure does!

John and I fished some pitching, plopping, and dropping kind of water. This sounds funny to say but the high water was getting too low and the low water was still too high. We had trouble fishing the high water spots because they were draining out.

We decided to head for a spot that fishes best when the water is at a normal level. When we got there I was changing my tippet. We were in John's new Jeep. I had the rod sitting on the back seat of his rig and I had my back to the door blocking it from closing. I stepped out to pull the line through the guides and just like that the wind closed the door. On my fly rod! Damn it! Fly rods are amazing pieces of equipment. It is simply incredible the stress that they can tolerate. They just don't tolerate being closed in doors. My rod was toast. That definitely takes a couple leaves off the clover!

John was very gracious to immediately offer sharing his rod for the remainder of the day. We took turns casting and wading. Actually, it was fun to move up the river together, stalk fish together, and yak. It was good.

We caught fish in the high water spot but the water was apparently way down from the week before when John was there.

Black Betty fooled this Carp.

The water level at this "normal water" spot was too high so we didn't connect there.

I had looked all over for my regular glasses. I looked all through my truck before John and I took off up the river. When I got back to my truck I found my glasses sitting in the corner of the truck bed near a corner. I swear I had looked there four times but never say them. They were too close the tail gate. Finding my glasses added a leaf back on the clover I guess.

In the end I don't know "how many leaf" kind of day it was. Even though we didn't catch a lot of fish it is always good to connect with John. He is truly a hell of a good Carp fisherman. I'm looking forward to the next trip John.

A Four Leaf Clover Kind of Evening

2011-07-08T21:08:00.000-07:00

At the end of our stay at the Carp Lodge this week, I decided to go out and fish for a few hours late yesterday afternoon. This is not something I can do from my home in western Washington. Starting from the Carp Lodge the water is closer so I can go on the spur of the moment. I went thinking I would fish for a couple hours, hopefully get a couple grabs, and head back to the house (Carp Lodge). I call the house the Carp Lodge when I am talking to my fishing friends and when I am blogging. When I am talking to my wife and my family I call it the summer home.

I had low or modest expectations but cautiously high hopes. Put a fly rod in my hand and put me near water and I always am hopeful.

I don't know what this weed is. I mean aquatic plant. I mean good luck charm. It looked like clover but nearly every stem has four leaves so it can't be the same clover that I work to keep out of my lawn. Little did I know what good luck that was going to be for me!

I drove to a spot I have fished several times in the past. Lo and behold there were way more fish there than I expected. I wish I knew why. I wish I could say something clever and insightful. I wish I could show how good I am at predicting where Carp will be and what they will be doing. The truth is as near as I could tell there were so many fish in this spot because they could see the "four leaf clovers". I didn't know what all those fish were doing there and I don't expect to see them next time I go.

Within in minutes I had a fish on. He took me into some brush and broke me off. Again within minutes I had another fish on and I got him to hand. I had two grabs within 20 minutes and I have to say that is NOT normal. It may be normal for some Carp fisherman who are younger and better looking than me but it sure as heck is not normal for me.

I fished for less than three hours and I had 12 fish to hand. I also broke off some others. I have caught 12 Carp in a day before but never have I done it in less than three hours. I am glad that wasn't my first trip chasing Carp on the fly. If it was I would have been deceived into thinking it is always easy. In fact it is not. It is rarely easy for me.

It was a simply wonderful early evening of fly fishing for Carp. I saw a good number of tailing fish, I saw shoppers and grazers, and I saw slow cruisers. I am assigning a person's perception to Carp behavior but I believe some Carp seem to be cruising with purpose and some seem to just be ambling around looking for something to do.

I hooked some tailers as well as shoppers, grazers, and (purposeful) cruisers. I saw a Carp take a caddis off the surface. He was actually pretty close to me. I cast the Chocolate Cherry in front of his path and within 2 seconds he picked it up; it didn't even have a chance to sink. He had to turn on his side to take my fly. I was ecstatic.

I don't expect this to play out again anytime soon. I started with a #8 Chocolate Cherry on a 3769 hook. I fished only that fly. Good grief, I have no idea what happened but I sure had a hell of a good evening.

For all that I think I have learned about locating, stalking, and catching Carp on the fly I wonder if maybe what I need to do is find four leaf clover and there the Carp will be.

The Chocolate Cherry Has Been Producing

2011-07-07T12:04:00.001-07:00

Certainly I love fishing the Carp Carrot because it produces so well. Even though presentation is key, nothing produces all the time. The Chocolate Cherry has produced well for me this week. Tailing fish picked up Cherry as did some Shoppers and Grazers.

Recipe for The Chocolate Cherry

Hook: The flies in this box are in #6 5262 and #6 3769.
Thread: Black
Eyes: 1/8 or 5/32 black dumbbells
Tail: Round white rubber
Body: Dark brown chenille
Hackle: Barred grizzly saddle hackle dyed red. (You may have to jack it from some teenage girl's hair if you don't already own it.)

I myself like Chocolate Cherries and so do the Carp.

This fish also fell for the Cherry:

A Little Heavier Than I Thought

2011-07-05T21:51:00.000-07:00

One of the many things that is great about The Carp Lodge is that water that is 5 hours from my home on the west side is only 2 hours from The Carp Lodge. I can come over with Katy, fish for the day, and be home for dinner. (I helped make the dinner.) I caught Carp today and had dinner with Katy on the patio of The Carp Lodge. Life is good.

I thought I was going to hold this fish with one hand but he was too heavy so I had to brace my hand on the side of my Zodiac. It was a good day.

An Extraordinary Day!

2011-06-25T19:20:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, Katy had a doctor's appointment back in town. She was going to drop me off at the river where I would have had to fish ALL DAYYY LONGGGG! Loyal, dedicated husband that I am, and damn fortunate I might add, I offered to drive Katy from the Carp Lodge to her doctor's appointment.

That meant that I fished yesterday which was Friday. It ended up being quite an extraordinary day. I left the Carp Lodge at a casual pace meaning I didn't start fishing until almost 11:00. I returned to my stillwater roots and am so glad I did. It was an exceptional day, simply exceptional. Lots of things go into saying a day of Carp fishing is extraordinary. Certainly catching a good number of fish is at or near the top of the list. It's not always at the top of the list though. Yesterday, I did catch so many Carp that I was weary of reeling them in. My wrists hurt and my left shoulder still hurts. (I have a hard life.)

For a day of Carp fishing to be truly exceptional I want lots of things. I want the opportunity to cast to tailers, grazers, and shoppers. I don't want them all to take. I want some of them to take and it is very important to me to see the take. "The Take is the Premier Moment." I also want clear sky, good visibility in the water, light wind, and warm temperatures. I want to catch a good mix of sizes and I want some of those fish to be large. I don't want to snag any fish and if I do I want them to get off right away.

With the exception of playing two snagged fish all the way to the boat, yesterday I had it all. Everything just came together. It was wonderful.

Still, something else happened to make Friday probably my most extraordinary day of Carp fishing ever. When I got back to The Carp Lodge yesterday evening, I sat down to look through my pictures. I couldn't find my camera. I looked everywhere and realized that somehow I had left the camera at the lake. I was disappointed because there were a lot of fishing pictures from the last few weeks, there were pictures of The Carp Lodge being finished, pictures of my son and his wife helping us assemble IKEA furniture, and pictures of my Mom at her 88 birthday party at our home. I wanted those darn pictures more than I wanted the camera.

Realizing that the camera was "at" the lake meant that Katy and I took a long drive this morning back to the lake to look for the camera. I hoped it would be laying there in the brush where I had collected my gear before putting in the truck. It was NOT there. There were some other boats on the lake. One of them came in pretty fast because he saw us walking near his truck. He wanted to know why we were so interested in his truck. I explained that I had lost my camera and had been parked exactly where he was the day before. I said I was looking on the ground for my wayward camera. He was suspicious of me and I must confess that I was suspicious that he had my camera. Thinking he might I gave him my cell phone number and told him that if he found it later in the day to give me a call. I offered to pay him for it.

Just like clockwork about 2:00 my cell phone rings from someone with a 509, (eastern Washington) area code. I am doing some real estate work over here but I have those numbers in my contact list. My comment to Katy as I picked up the phone was that it was the guys from this morning, they miraculously found my camera, and would sell it to me.

Answering my cell phone as I always do when I don't recognize the caller I said, "Hi, this is Jim." The caller said, "This is Mike; I have your camera." I said, "Oh, you're one of the guys I talked to this morning and you found my camera after I left." Mike said, "No I was just there a couple hours ago, I wasn't there this morning, and I found your camera in about a foot of water." I asked him how on earth he figured out it was my camera if we hadn't talked. He explained that he and his wife went through all of the pictures on the SD card, 341 of them, and one of the pictures was of the IKEA boxes in the garage of The Carp Lodge. We had the boxes delivered so every box had a label. He could read my name on one of the labels so he Googled it. He found my real estate web page which has my phone number, my Facebook page and this blog. I was speechless. He even offered to mail me the camera. Can you believe it?!! I still can't.

The camera is a Pentax Optio W80. It is not the newest, jazziest model out there but it works for me. It is also waterproof. The manufacturer advertised at the time I purchased it that it can be under 6 feet of water for up to 30 minutes and still remain waterproof. They didn't say anything about how long it could be under one foot of water.

Katy and I drove to Mike's home; we spent most of the day in the truck. For Mike to have looked through my 341 pictures the card still had to be dry. The camera came on and it still takes pictures! The case stinks like lake mud and the spare battery is toast. But that darn camera sat in 12 inches of water for 22 hours. 22hours! And it still works.

Okay, I got to cast to tailers, grazers, and shoppers. Many of them did not take due to my bad casting or just because they are Carp and they don't like flies landing near them. Some of them did take, enough that I knew I could have caught at least a couple more but I was just too tired. I got to see them take and that is such a thrilling part of Carp fishing. The sky was clear, the water visibility was pretty good, there was only light wind, and it was a warm day. I got a good mix of sizes with three of them being under 10 pounds and three of them being over 17. The rest were mostly 12-15 pounds. I also got three Mirrors which is very unusual.

Oh, and did I mention that my camera sat in a foot of water for a day, some guy I never met found it, and then he found me of all things. Now that's an extraordinary day of fishing. You know, getting my camera back to me was a small thing in the grand scheme of things but it made it not just an extraordinary day of fishing but, on a simple level, an extraordinary day of life.

Oh, I did catch some fish yesterday and here are a few pictures. Pictures from my camera that spent a night in the lake.

Finally, some tailing fish!

2011-06-22T22:03:00.000-07:00

The previous two weeks I have stayed at the Carp Lodge for a few nights by myself. I have had work to to do here and I had some fishing to do too. Fishing the Columbia River has been challenging and very different this year. I'm very happy that I have caught some very nice Carp. Still, pitching, plopping, and dropping is not as fun as casting to feeding fish.

Katy and I came over late last night. There were so many bugs hitting my Carpwagon it sounded like it was raining.

I decided to revisit some of my stillwater Carp fishing roots this morning. It has been two years since I fished for Carp from my boat. I am so glad I did!

A tailing fish that is rooting around in the mud or the rocks is a prime target. A shopper can also be a very good target. I recently posted that "shopping" Carp are like my kids when they were teenages looking in the refrigerator or in the pantry to "see if there is anything good to eat." This next type of Carp behavior may seem like an "Internet distinction" and not something that actually happens but I believe it does. Shopping Carp can be caught because they are eating or getting ready to eat. I think some Carp are grazing, again like my kids when they were teenagers. They aren't throwing up a cloud of mud as they do what my friend Keith calls, "tailing violently." Grazers tail for a bit and then move and tail some more.

I am so glad I decided to try some of my old stillwater today! I saw a few spawning fish, a good number of sunbathers, AND I saw tailing fish! I saw shoppers and grazers also. What a relief to be making serious casts. It really felt so good.

I was able to get several fish well into the teens; seeing those fish turn on the fly was just so satisfying.

This was the best fighting fish of the day.

I caught fish on the Carp Carrot, Black Betty, and on a Chocolate Cherry Carp Woollie. I have enormous faith in the Carp Carrot but today it just didn't produce as well as Black Betty.

Katy has to go back into town to see a Dr. tomorrow. She is going to drop me off at the river on the way. She said she was worried I would have to fish all day and that if I wanted to leave I would be stuck. I guess I will just have to keep fishing. Even at my advanced age I think I can do it. I'm sure going to try.

Pitching, Plopping, and Dropping: Part Deux

2011-06-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

I wish I could say that I have been making 60 foot casts to tailing fish. And that my casts land perfectly on the Carp's dinner plate without disturbing her and then she turns on the fly just like it was part of her lunch.

I'm getting the fly on the dinner plate but it sure as heck ain't with 60 foot casts! Heck, virtually all the fish I have been catching have not even been with 25 foot casts. The water is still high and I am still pitching, plopping and dropping. Fishing water that is usually desert, sage brush, and trees has been the only way to get into fish the last few weeks.

I would much prefer to be casting to tailing fish and making longer casts but for now there is just too much water. Also, since I can wade for hours and not see a true tailing fish I am forced to pitch, plop and drop to sunbathers and slow cruisers. It isn't as fun as casting to tailing fish but catching fish is a whole lot more fun than not catching them so for now I pitch, plop and drop.

I have caught a number of fish in the high teens so I'm not complaining, I just miss the flats I am used to. I'm thinking it is time to return to some of my stillwater Carp roots at least for a day or two.

Small Fly, Big Fish

2011-06-19T06:46:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I didn't frame this picture very well; I was in a hurry to get the fish back in the water. The fish actually has a complete head and a mouth. She used her mouth to pick up a small Carp Carrot. It was a beautiful day; some clouds, very low wind and some Carp that cooperated.

Sunbathing Carp are darn difficult to catch. Some of them seem like they are asleep. I have dangled a fly in front of them and even had the fly slip down the front of their noses and then have them act like they are completely unaware. Carp that have made my fly as a fake and or have made me for an intruder are impossible targets. The moment they accelerate even a bit to get away from the fly or from me they turned into "not a chance" fish. Fast cruisers are also almost impossible targets. Tailing fish are feeding and they are prime targets.

A slow cruiser will take the fly and it is a ton of fun to lead one and have them turn on the pattern. Some slow cruisers are just milling around in groups just passing Carp time with each other. Some slow cruisers are solitary but still not particularly interested in a fly or even real bugs for that matter. Some of them seem to be shopping. It reminds me of when my kids were teenagers and they would open the refrigerator or the pantry to "see if there was anything good to eat." We could ask them, "What would you like?" and they would say, "I don't know, I'm just looking for something good." Sometimes when the kids were looking they would end up not eating anything and sometimes I swear they would eat the equilivalent of two meals. I guess they found something good. A shopping Carp is like my teenagers. I think those Carp might keep shopping and not eat but they just might stop and eat a whole bunch. Those slow cruisers who are shopping can also be prime targets. Again, it is tons of fun to lead one and get it to pick up the fly.

The big girl in this picture was a shopper; whe was looking for "something good to eat." I cast the Carrot in her path and she picked it as if it was exactly what she was looking for. She came in at 19 1/2 pounds. Seeing the fish moving slowly in the shallows with brief pauses, casting, and clearly seeing the take, reinforced why I love fly fishing for Carp this time of year.

Pitching, Plopping and Dropping

2011-06-13T16:02:00.000-07:00

This has been such a different spring. There is a heck of a lot of water in the Columbia! Where the banks of the river are in some cases straight up and down, the river just moves (vertically) higher up the basalt cliffs. Where the bank is somewhat sloped, in some cases the river moves up the bank more horizontally. It just gets a lot wider. Where the banks are flat or where the space between banks just can't hold all the water then the river just starts to spill all over everywhere.

This has created some real challenges to the wading, fly rod, Carp angler. Naively I have gone to some of my usual haunts thinking the water will be "just a bit higher". Dear God, the water is so high I can't even get in the river.

The name of the game has become adaptability. Yes, adaptability. I have to look for fish where I have never seen them before. The reason I have never seen Carp in some of the places I have been catching them is because I have never seen water there.

I am literally walking in submerged desert, sage brush, other brush, and trees. I am finding Carp in some of these places but often in tight quarters. By tight quarters I mean they are holding and cruising near, or even in, all kinds of hazards.

In many cases the Carp I have been catching are very close to me. I mentioned in an earlier post that I had the rod in my right hand and the fly in my left hand. A fish would come in to view so close to me that I just sort of pitched the fly (like a shovel pass) towards the fish. In other cases the fish is so close I just hold out the rod and drop the fly in front of the fish. I have caught some fish with legitimate casts but not the majority recently. In some cases I have made some very short casts to fish that are just of reach for a drop. I'm not sure if the fly seems to plop more because it is so near me and I can hear it better or because it is hitting the water harder. I have not had as much chance to cast to fish lately as I have had pitching, plopping, and dropping to them. It works so I'm not complaining. I am ready for the water level to go down though.

I pitched a strike to this Carp and he hit it!

Who Ran Down the Road?

2011-06-12T09:48:00.000-07:00

Which of these have I seen in the last 6 weeks?

A. The dog picked up the ball and ran down the road.

B. The driver picked up the hitchhiker and ran down the road.

C. The Carp picked up the Carrot and ran down the road.

D. All of the above.

"D" is the correct answer. The Columbia is higher than I have ever seen it since I have been fly fishing for Carp. I have fly fished since 1971 and have chased Carp on the fly since 2004. I was really only somewhat aware of the water level in the Columbia until I started frequenting it. There is so much water coming down that river, just so darn much water! The water is spilling into places it just doesn't usually go.

I caught this Carp in a wheel rut. He picked up the Carp Carrot and ran down the road. Literally, he ran down the road.

This is not a wheel rut that has been submerged for decades due to the damning of the river. This is a wheel rut that people drive on. Regularly.

The two lighter parts in this picture are the wheel ruts. I caught Carp on the Carrot and on a Rubber Leg Hare's Ear right on this road.

What a different, crazy, amazing, Carp season! I am fishing places I have parked my Carpwagon in seasons past. Having the water be so high is unsettling. We currently have some record snow pack. The prospect of rain on melting snow could mean some dangerous flooding in the weeks to come. I'm having fun looking for new places to Carp fish and looking differently at old places to find fish literally in fields and on roads.

Gerhard's Flies

2011-06-05T10:07:00.000-07:00

Carp Fishing and blogging have been fascinating to me because I hear from and communicate with people all over the country and even in other countries. I corresponded with a guy in France who inquired about the Carp Carrot.

Last year, in a fairly short period of time, I got a series of questions from three different anglers. I exchanged email with each of these fishermen and I answered each of them in blog posts. Gerhard, from Ontario, Canada, asked about variations of the Carp Carrot. Klint, from here in Washington State, asked about fishing the San Juan Worm. And Robert, from Minnesota, asked about fishing for Carp in dirty water and whether there were any flies that would work and how to keep from snagging the fish.

Gerhard and I have continued to correspond some. After I made my blog post about The Wild Thing Gerhard sent me some flies that he and his friends use for Steelhead. It is amazing to see the variations of existing flies that guys develop. There are lots of "Internet flies" out there that have never been in a fish's mouth but seeing flies that have been used effectively in another part of the country or world is always very interesting and just plain fun.

Gerhard's flies:

Gerhard, it took me too long to respond with this blog post. Thanks so much for sending these flies. I have tied you a dozen of The Wild Thing. I tied them in two hook sizes with different size beads. I have used both sizes and don't have a preference at this point. They are packaged up and I will take them to the post office tomorrow.

Our Carp season is delayed or at least disrupted here because of high water but things will settle down eventually. I will try your flies this summer and let you know how they produce. Thanks Gerhard.

P

The Beginning of the Season

2011-05-19T22:07:00.001-07:00

During the first week of May I made my first trip Carp trip of the season to the Columbia River. I wrote a long blog post the following week and had it saved as a draft. On May 11, eBlogger had an outage. Grrrr... It was down for almost a day. From what I understand they were able to restore posts that had been published but not the drafts. There was a message that said they would be able to restore drafts and comments. There have been six efforts that have shown up trying to restore the draft. There is nothing in the posts so I had to start over. Dang it!!

I suppose on the second telling of this trip I could "remember" catching more fish on that first day than I "remember" from the initial telling.

Day One:

Wow, on the first day I didn't catch a fish under 20 pounds! That's so incredible. Okay fine, I didn't catch one under 20 pounds either. I still remember that, so here's the truth.

I had been very busy with home sales and was following up with some transactions that Tuesday morning so I left home later than I had planned. I didn't get to the river until after lunch. The sky was mostly cloudy, the river was high and off color. And the wind was blowing pretty hard too. I just had to remind myself of that old question and answer: "What is the best time to go fishing?" "When you can." I could go for a few days so I did.

I started with familiar water that is easy to wade particularly since the river was so high. I had walked for half an hour and finally saw my first Carp. The rod was in my right hand, there was some line out, and I had the fly pinched between my thumb and forefinger on my left hand. The fish was stationary. Without even thinking I just flicked the fly with my left hand toward the fish. It was a Cy Young award winning flick; the fly landed right on the Carp's dinner plate. I'm sure he could see it there. He sat there for a bit and slowly headed away. I saw two more fish in 90 minutes of walking. I spooked one as I got close to it and the other was a slow cruiser moving away from me. He was out of sight in just a second or two.

I decided to try some new water that I have been eyeing for a few years. I have fished downriver from this spot but never up river. The water upriver from this spot is decidely different than the downriver stretch. Downriver, the bottom of the river is firm and easy to wade. There are some shallows that Carp come in to so it has been a spot where I have experienced some success. From the road the upriver section appears to have some bays that look very interesting; it's just that the access down looks difficult. I suppose I should say dangerous.

Heading down the hill I was having second thoughts. For a long way back from what I guess I could call the river bank there was marsh. Thick cattails, both growing and matted down from the past year, covered a muddy and uneven "bottom". From the road I could see what I thought was the easiest way through the weeds. It took me over a half hour to get to a point where I realized I was not going to reach the river and that even if I did I wouldn't be able to stand and fish.

From where I was I could not see my truck or the road. I knew which way the road was so I turned and headed for my Carpwagon. Not able to retrace my steps I soon found myself really struggling as I continued to step through the matted down reeds and into deep mud. There were some points were one leg was all the way through the weeds and much of it was in the mud and the only thing that kept me from being totally stuck was that my butt didn't go through. I was caught a few times with my right leg through the reeds while I was squatted down with my left knee right in front of my nose.

It was a lot of effort to pull myself out; at one point I thought I would actually not be able to get back to the truck and would have to call 911. My legs were getting so tired and sore fighting with the mud that I could only take 10 or 12 steps and then I had to stop and rest.

It ended up being a day where I never actually made a cast to a fish. I made one throw and that was it. I was so glad to get out of that damn marsh that I pretty much forgot I got blanked.

Day Two:
Well now, day two just looked a whole lot different when I greeted it. The sky was blue, the wind was calm, AND the river had come down. It wasn't exactly clear but it wasn't as bad as the day before.

Familiar, SAFE, water beckoned me. In just a matter of minutes I saw a tailing fish; after four casts to him he knew the fly was a fake and he moved on. The next tailer didn't know the fly was a fake until I set the hook. When he made the familiar, subtle, but not seen for months head turn, I actually remembered what to do. Damn, I love fly fishing for Carp!

He fell for The Wild Thing. I plan to fish this fly a good deal this summer. I'm hoping that it is an improvement of the San Juan Worm but I'm not convinced it is yet. Lots of field testing will be required.

Several other fish including some tailers and some shoppers refused to pick up my fly. Concered that they were just not be ready for a fly as advanced and sophisticated as The Wild Thing. I switched to the venerable Carp Carrot. Bam. Bam. Bam! Nothing works all the time on every fish but they sure do like the Carrot.

I had shots at a good number of fish and a bunch of them cooperated.

I didn't want to take pictures of all of them; I just wanted to go catch another one. I realized that I was shaking some of the time after releasing a fish. I felt like I was 12 years old again. I think I might have been for about 5 hours. After taking me into the backing

one of the fish scraped the leader against some rocks. I was lucky to get that fish in. I didn’t even want to take time to change leader because I just wanted to go catch another Carp. I don’t bother with a tapered leader when I’m fishing for Carp. I go with about 6 feet of 12# for the butt section and then about 2 feet of tippet. Usually the tippet is 1X floro. It was good to change the leader because it gave me a chance, or made me, rest. Fresh leader, a new Carp Carrot, and tight knots; I was ready to start stalking again. It took over half an hour before I was into another fish and it was a nice one. It happened just as it should—the fish was tailing, I put the Carrot past him, and stripped it on to his dinner plate. He even picked it up on the first cast. Like I said, just as it should be. There I am, the fish is ripping out line, just as it should be, but wait, oh hell, the line goes slack. He was in open water so I didn’t think he had cut the leader on a rock. He broke me off sounds good but the “broken” end of leader had a pig tail on it which only means one thing. Arrhhh:...My knot slipped!! Dang it, dang it, dang it!

Day two was simply wonderful. What else is there to say? I brought 11 fish to hand that were all over 12 pounds with some of them in the high teens. Dang it I love catching Carp on the fly. I just love it. It's challenging, it's frustrating, and when it works it's just so much fun.

Day Three:
The weather isn't always cooperative, particularly in the spring. Heck, even in the summer the weather isn't always cooperative. Starting day three I knew getting blown off the river was not just a possibility but a probability.

My legs were still tired and sore from day one so I chose familiar water with easy wading. The river had come up again and the sky was overcast; conditions were more difficult than the day before. Sticking with the Carrot from the previous day the first few tailing fish I came across gave me no love. No love.

After close to an hour this fish turned on the Carrot just like he should and I felt "life is good".

After a couple hours and three fish to hand the wind just got to be more than I wanted to deal with.

The Carp Lodge is almost finished so I'm looking forward to a lot more of chasing Carp on the fly.

Carpaloopers and Super Duper Carpaloopers

2011-04-23T21:01:00.000-07:00

In the winter I don’t fish nearly as much as the rest of the year. It’s just too darn cold. That works out fine because I can tie flies in the winter. Besides replenishing my fly boxes fly tying gives me a great deal of satisfaction.

There is orderliness and precision to fly tying. Results are immediate and tangible. Repetition and production are relaxing. It is rewarding to fill storage boxes with dozens upon dozens of flies. It is even more satisfying to line up little armies of flies in the boxes I use when I’m fishing.

There is a creative, imaginative part to fly tying. It is fascinating to experiment with new tying materials and to play with variations of tried and true patterns. Sometimes that experimentation yields wonderful results, sometimes questionable results, and sometimes laughably bad results.

While sitting at the vise on a cold, wet day, daydreaming about warm summer days stalking Carp on the flats I can convince myself that just about any new fly or modification of a proven pattern will be the absolute best Carp fly in the universe. Flies like this have not only never been in a Carp’s mouth they have never even bet wet. Is it okay for me to call a fly that has never been wet a Carp fly? Sure it is. I think as long as I can laugh at myself it is.

As fly fishing for Carp is gaining more and more traction and as there are an ever increasing number of bloggers and fishing forums, imaginative “Carp flies” abound. There are so many Carp flies out there that have never been in a Carp’s mouth, and never been in the water, it’s just plain funny.

In anticipation of the coming Carp season I have a couple variations on existing patterns that I think are going to work. The first is The Wild Thing.

Actually I have already caught some Carp on this fly last spring but only a few. The San Juan Worm is a proven Carp pattern and I’m hoping this is an improvement. It is tied with a rubber band. No matter how it lands it is always three dimensional. The Wild Thing has caught some Carp so it is not really an Internet fly.

Experimenting with some of my Salmon flies I started using rubber tails this winter. I decided to add a rubber tail to a Carp fly and see what happens. Again, when its dark and cold out I can talk myself into believing anything will work. I actually do think this fly has a lot of potential. I talk myself into believing that the Carp will be attracted to the movement of tail. Who knows if it is true? Maybe it will scare them and maybe it won’t make a bit of difference. Time will tell.

The Rubber Tail Carp Woollie:

I tied two flies for this article that I thought were silly or more like downright ridiculous. I put a rattle on the first one and I’m calling it The Carpalooper.

The Carpalooper:

Sitting at the vise I can say the Carp will be attracted to the fly because of the noise. I think that is funny because they are so easily scared. But the more I daydream about it I start to wonder; maybe it will work. I think maybe I’ll put the fly on my blog and say that it will be this year’s big fly.

This next fly is the pièce de résistance, the crème de la crème, the cat’s whiskers, the best of the best of the best. This is not just A Carp fly, this is THE Carp fly. Fly fishing for Carp was revolutionized the day this fly came off my vise. It’s not just a Carpalooper it’s the Super Duper Carpalooper! Not only does it have a rattle; it has a propeller. Noise and motion; how can the Cyprinids resist? They can’t. Fly fishing for Carp will get so easy with this fly it will make things almost boring. (The rattle is made of glass and has two beads inside it. It is inside the mylar tubing on the Carpalooper and under the chenille on the Super Duper Carpalooper.)

The Super Duper Carpalooper:

The rattle I used:

Okay I tied the Carpalooper and the Super Duper Carpalooper because I thought it was funny. It is funny to me because of all the Carp flies on the Internet that have never caught a single fish and particularly because of all the flies I have personally tried for Carp that just haven’t worked. Sitting at the vise and then blogging I can say anything is a good Carp fly. Who would know?

I really do think that The Wild Thing will produce for Carp. I think I can catch fish on the rubber tail fly but I don’t know if it is an actual improvement. Maybe both flies will just end up being Internet flies that don’t catch fish. But here’s the thing. The more I look at my Carpalooper and the Super Duper Carpalooper I find myself thinking I just might actually try these flies. I tied these flies because I thought it was funny and to poke a bit of fun at all the Carp flies on the Internet that have never been fished and to poke fun at myself because of all the flies that I’ve tried that have not worked. Sitting at the vise I have talked myself into thinking these flies just might work. HA! Wouldn’t it be funny if I never catch another fish on The Wild Thing and the Carp just love the Super Duper Carpalooper? Well there you go; I ended up falling for my own silly flies.

Jim is a freelance writer living in Bothell, WA. His home water is the Columbia River.

Reprinted by permission from the NACA magazine. All rights reserved.

A Question From the Hillbilly

2011-04-16T17:39:00.000-07:00

Eric, AKA the Hillbilly from West Virginia, or should I say Eric, THE hillbilly , put a question to me. Here is what he said. "As always Mr P, Great Read! I just got into tying my own flies a month or so ago and So far I am Hooked! I just leaned how to tie the San Juan Worm As I posted on my Blog ( http://hillbillybonez.com/home/?p=445 ). My Question is, is it the shape of the worm that catches the carps eye or is it the color or is it a mix of the Presentation and so forth?"

I'm sorry that it took me awhile to get back to you Eric. Thanks for the positive feedback here and in the past. Presentation is most important when it comes to sight fishing for Carp with a fly. There is just no getting around that. You have a better chance of catching a tailing Carp with a poor fly if your presentation is good than you do of catching a Carp with a good fly if your presentation is bad. In the past I have mentioned the dinner plate or spaghetti platter in my blog and in my print articles. Think of the space in front of and around a tailing Carp as a dinner plate or spaghetti platter. For the most part the fly needs to be on his platter for him to pick it up. They will often ignore something farther out even if they can see it. The fly needs to be cast on to the fishes platter or cast beyond it and stripped to the platter. Sometimes the fly will be sitting still and the fish will move. His platter moves with him. He won't even be moving to the platter but because he did move sometimes the fly ends up on his platter and he will pick it up. It is a real dilemna to try and cast the fly on the Carp's platter without spooking the darn fish. Again, presentation is absolutely critical.

What's next on the list? Hmmm... You asked about color and shape. I would add size to the question. I have tried a lot of different flies for Carp that don't work AT ALL. These are flies that work for other fish. I will make a generalization here based on my experience chasing Carp on the fly in three states. I think dark colors work better than bright flashy colors. (Subliminal message submitted here: Presentation is CRITICAL.) So yes, I believe color is important. I think shape is important and I do believe they respond to it but I'm not sure exactly how important it is compared to color. Size also comes into play. If the water is particularly shallow and clear and the wind is down then smaller flies work better. Sometimes you have no alternative but to use a larger, heavily weighted fly to get it down on the fish's dinner plate.

I have caught a few Carp on The Wild Thing but not enough to say it is truly better than the traditional San Juan Worm. I think it will be but I will have a better idea in September or October when I have field tested this pattern for a full season.

Got Some Tugs

2011-04-16T15:14:00.000-07:00

I went to Monkey Forks to fish seriously for the first time last year. In 40 years of fly fishing I finally did it. I went again this week with my friend Gary. The first day the weather was pleasant, the wind was light and the fish were nice to us. I really wanted to get fish on dry flies. Like catching Carp on the fly, fishing dry flies is very visual and I love that.

For the most part anglers use Scud patterns on Monkey Forks. I tied some Scuds but I also tied Skitters in small sizes and I'm sure glad I did. I got two fish early on and then went quite awhile without a strike. Then there was a stretch of a couple hours when the fish were feeding on the surface and I caught me a mess 'o them Monkey Forks Trout. This one picked that Skitter up as it slid over where he had risen just 10 seconds before. Since I was really jonesin' for some tugs these fish really hit the spot for me. Not only did I get some nice trout I took them all on dry flies. Even when the hatch disipated I stuck with the dry fly because it is so darn fun.

The second day we worked a lot harder to get just a few fish. That's because the wind was working WAY harder too. How can there be white caps on a small, spring creek? Well there were.

Now I'm jonesin' for some tugs by big fat Carp. Soon, very soon...

Jonesin' for some tugs!

2011-04-12T20:42:00.000-07:00

I fished for Trout one time a couple weeks ago. I had a nice day. Still I am really Jonesin' for some tugs. Its not quite time for Carp fishing yet. Early tomorrow morning I'm going to Monkey Forks Creek to chase big Rainbow. I hope they will pick up my dry flies. Wish me luck.

The Wild Thing: A Better San Juan Worm

2011-03-09T15:17:00.001-08:00

I'm excited for the Carp Lodge, I mean summer home, to be completed. Part of that of course is to spend time there with Katy. Part of that excitement is also for the weather to be warm and to go fishing for Carp. Hell yes!

Having worked virtually seven days a week for the last three and a half months I have not tied as many flies as I was planning. When you are in sales you have to work when you have work. I have had a lot of work and I'm very grateful.

The San Juan Worm is definitely one of the "go to" Carp flies. I would think that would be true pretty much everywhere but I don't fish everywhere, I fish in the Pacific Northwest and here, it is a Carp staple to be sure. I feel it is particularly effective when a Carp has his nose down and is working hard in the mud. If they see the worm in the silt cloud there is as good a chance that they will pick up the SJW as any fly out there.

The San Juan Worm is such a simple fly. Could there possibly be a simpler fly? I think the majority if not all effective Carp flies are simple patterns.

I have experimented some with rubber band bodies for some different flies through the years. I have tried a few different kinds, widths, and colors of rubber bands. For the record, if any of you want my blue rubber bands you are more than welcome to them. (I may have already thrown them away.) I'm keeping the black ones and the red ones.

The San Juan Worm wasn't a fly that I have actually fished that much at least not until I started Carp Fishing. I fish lots of Chironomids and Blood Worms but they are not tied like the San Juan Worm. Its okay, and in some cases important, to say that a fly is just fine the way it is. Blogging and fishing forums have made "improved" versions of flies common but often they are not an improvement at all.

Mindful of that I think that The Wild Thing is an improvement over the San Juan Worm but I really feel it needs lots more field testing for me to be sure. I made a blog post about The Wild Thing last spring but didn't say any more about it throughout the season. It certainly is a more durable worm imitation than the San Juan Worm. The other thing I like is that it is always three dimensional. By that I mean that no matter how it lands part of it always sticks up. I think that makes it easier for Carp to see. Some Carp have been tricked by it but I need a few days this spring where I see lots and lots of Carp pick it up. I'm anxious for the grand opening of The Carp Lodge. I'm anxious to really press this pattern into extensive service and I'm anxious for the guys I fish with to try it. I'm also anxious for some people who I exchange flies with in other parts of the country to give it a try for Carp on their home waters. I know Carp like The Wild Thing but I want to be able to say they LOOOOOOVVVE The Wild Thing.

'bout Froze My Apples Off! The Carp Lodge Part IV

2011-03-06T10:00:00.000-08:00

Icicles in distance

Icicles at midistance

Last week when we traveled to The Carp Lodge it was cold. Darn cold! We met with our builder for a few hours to make some choices about lighting and fixtures. We tried to meet on site but the cold just got to all of us so we finally had to go to a restaurant to talk. Both Katy and I dislike cold weather more and more as we get older. Part of why we are building The Carp Lodge in central Washington is so that we can go there in the spring, summer, and fall, when it is warm and sometimes just plain hot. Ahhh... We are both really looking forward to that.

There is Carp fishing over there too of course but I'm not talking about fishing now I'm talking about the weather. It's just a coincidence that there is Carp fishing near the Carp Lodge, that's all, just a coincidence.

When we got up on Friday morning it was 10°. During the night it had gotten down to 5°. That doesn't even count the bloody wind chill factor which was taking it below zero. That's too cold! It had been cold during the week to be sure but the temperature had dropped quickly, it had dropped a lot, and the wind had come up again.

There are a lot of orchards near The Carp Lodge. When we passed one it had thousands of icicles hanging from the branches. It was both beautiful and eeire.

Icicles close up

Framing is coming along nicely. The home is Santa Fe style. It will have a slightly pitched roof behind parapets. The exterior will be stucco and it will have scuppers and false vigas.

This picture is with my back to the river.

There will be no television at The Carp Lodge. We think of these two living room windows as "side by side big screen TV."

And even though it is only a coincidence that there is Carp fishing near The Carp Lodge I am sure looking forward to warm weather with big Carp in the flats.

Hurricanes & Mirror Carp: The Carp Lodge Part III

2011-03-02T12:59:00.000-08:00

Dear Fat Mirror Carp,

On February 12, hurricane force winds blew at The Carp Lodge. A neighbor's anemometer (wind guage) registered 98 mph. Someone else observed 106 mph. That is inside of the guidelines for a force II hurricane. The winds lifted a guy's boat and trailer up, moved it across his yard and planted it up against the house with the motor stuck in the ground.

The wind certainly blows hard in central Washington but not usually that hard. I'm glad I wasn't there. It blew so darn hard that it actually tipped part of The Carp Lodge. The builder got it all straightened out and sheeted so things are fine.

We don't see many of you Mirror Carp in the Columbia; a few of course but Common Carp are the norm. Because I don't get to see you Mirror Carp very often it makes you more interesting and exotic. I really don't think that catching you or playing you is any different than catching or playing a Common, its just that you're unusual.

I try not to believe in bad luck; I prefer to believe in good luck. I think that it was very good luck that The Carp Lodge didn't tip all the way over. I think that good luck is going to continue this summer and I would really like one of you porky, 30 pound Mirror Carp to take my fly this summer. I'm really looking forward to it. I hope you are too. See you when the wind calms down.

P

Foundation and Framing: The Carp Lodge Part II

2011-02-28T22:06:00.001-08:00

Dear Common Carp,

The foundation for the Carp Lodge was poured and framing began. As you are aware this is a weekend and summer home for Katy and I. Please know that I want you to think of this as your lodge too my Common Carp friends. You and I will be spending more quality time together in the months and years to come. I am already picking out pictures of some of your Columbia River friends taken in years past. Their pretty faces will adorn the walls of the Carp Lodge. If you have a rotund stomach and you take my fly you too can achieve immortality on the walls of the Carp Lodge. I'm looking forward to meeting you; especially if you are just plain fat. I hope you are looking forward to meeting me.

P

Excavation: The Carp Lodge Part I

2011-02-21T22:19:00.001-08:00

Katy and I have talked about owning recreational property for years. We have looked off and on during much of that time. The fact is, we could never really afford it. I have changed jobs late in my life (well sort of late) and I'm making more money.

Carp fishing, particularly on the Columbia, got me looking again for possible property in central Washington.

There is so much, actually too much, to say about how we came to finally make an offer on a piece of property on the Columbia. In June 2010 we did. The offer was accepted but we had to go back and forth with the listing agent about the septic "As-Built". Finally, we got it and the loan was approved. It took months. We had met a great builder early in the process.

What can I say except that Katy and I are building a home on the Columbia River. We will enjoy it together, we will enjoy it with friends and family, we will enjoy it with our seperate friends, oh and one more thing, I will enjoy it for Carp fishing. She is very patient with me when I refer to it as The Carp Lodge. Holey Crimeny when the Carp Lodge is finished I will be able to stay on the river for a week. Suddenly Carp fishing will be a series of day trips from my home instead of an overnight trip. I can fish for a few days and then rest my middle age knees for a day and then fish for a few more days.

Katy and I are very excited. The view from The Carp Lodge is wonderful. The Carp Lodge is big enough that we can have guests over and they can have their own bedroom and their own bathroom. Did I mention that the view is very cool?

Construction on the Carp Lodge just started in December. These pictures are from that first day of excavation.

Dear Columbia River Commons and Mirrors--Come this summer you and I will be dancing regularly. I'm looking forward to it; I hope you, my fish friends, are looking forward to it too.

Boom, Boom, Pow!--Before I blogged: Part III

2011-02-15T21:41:00.000-08:00

BOOM!

BOOM!

POW!!!

Gotta get-get, gotta get-get, Gotta get-get,...
Boom boom boom, Gotta get-get
Boom boom boom, Gotta get-get...

Yo, I got the flies that rock
You got that bluff overload
I got the that rock and roll
That future flow

I like that boom boom pow
Them chickens jackin' my flies
They try to copy my swagger
I'm on that next trip now

I'm so 3008
You so 2000 and late
I got that boom, boom, boom
That future boom, boom, boom
Let me get it now

Boom boom boom, gotta get-get
Boom boom boom, gotta get-get
Boom boom boom, gotta get-get
Boom boom boom, gotta get-get

Boom boom boom, now
Boom boom boom, now
Boom boom pow
Boom boom pow...

Let the beat rock
Let the beat rock
Let the beat rock

This beat be bumpin', bumpin'
This beat go boom, boom...

I'm on the supersonic boom
Y'all hear the spaceship zoom
When, when I step inside the water
Them Carp go ape, uh yuh...

I like that boom boom pow!!...

"A Stomach with a Handle"--Before I blogged: Part II

2011-02-09T12:08:00.000-08:00

Again, going through pictures and trips from before I blogged... This fish had such a fat stomach; it made his tail look like it was a handle. I worked the Washington Sportsmen's Show all day Friday and Saturday a couple weekends ago. I talked to scores of guys about fly fishing for Carp. A few had tried it, a surprising number said they were already planning to try it this season, some said they "had heard about guys who did that", and some asked, "Why would you want to do that? They're so ugly!"

Myself, "I think Carp lips are dang purdy; they ain't ugly a tall." The heck with their lips, look at the gut on this thing!

A Major Phattie in Black & White--Before I blogged: Part I

2011-02-04T15:48:00.000-08:00

For years I resisted putting pictures of myself on the Internet. Even when I made posts on fishing forums not only did I have no desire to post pictures of myself and my fishing but I had an aversion to doing it. Somewhere back in time, 2006 I believe, I got talked into posting a picture of myself with a Grass Carp I had caught on a fly. Well one thing led to another and a few years later I started blogging.

I have been working a lot the last few months but I am still day dreaming about Carp fishing. Going back through some of my old pictures from before I blogged I got a good chuckle out of this one. The fish was large and he fought well. I had a new camera that I was learning to use. I didn't know that I had just changed the setting to black and white. This picture was also noteworthy because it was my first effort and editing an image. If you look "very carefully" you can see where I tried to blot out the background.

How much longer until the spring and summer roll around?

How much longer until the spring and summer roll around?

Did I already say that?

Sand Lance Minnow

2011-01-16T17:42:00.000-08:00

Anadromous fish spawn in fresh water but migrate to salt water to spend most of their lives. Locally, our anadromous fish population includes 5 species of Pacific Salmon. They are Chinook (King), Coho (Silver), Chum (Dog), Pink (Humpy), and Sockeye (Red). They migrate to the ocean because there are zillions upon zillions of baitfish for them to eat and grow big. On the return trip to spawn in their natal stream they still are eating while they move through the Straights, and the Sound. Locally some of those baitfish the Salmon eat include Herring and Sand Lance.

This Minnow Pattern looks the most like a Sand Lance. Tying a bunch of these involves grumbling at the Angel Hair material because it is so wispy, stacking multiple colors of the angel hair on the hook, tacking on eyes, gluing them on, and then spinning them dry. Gluing the eyes on with 5 minute epoxy is as much work as tying. If I haven't tied this fly in awhile (and I hadn't) it takes me a few flies to remember how to get the glue even on the eyes.

I am looking forward to using these flies this coming fall. I fish this fly in the salt water as the Silvers and the Humpies are returning to look for "dates" in their natal streams. This fly has not produced well for me at all in the rivers but has been good to me in the salt.

Salmon Slammer

2010-12-29T12:07:00.000-08:00

It's winter; we woke up to three inches of new snow this morning. It's snowing again right now. That makes it a great time to tie flies! Here is a fly I have tied for some years. Oh, I should mention, the fly works extremely well for Pink Salmon. Pinks are also called Humpies because the males grow a large hump when they migrate to their natal streams to spawn.

I start the body of the Salmon Slammer near the point of the hook. I leave more bare hook towards the shank than I might otherwise on another fly because the Salmon are very toothy. Those teeth just really beat up flies. I also counter rib the fly with wire, again, because the fish are so hard on the flies. For the Salmon Slammer sparse is good.

In Washington the Humpies run almost exclusively in the odd years. I'm hoping for a stellar year of fishing for them this coming fall. Just about the time I am starting to wind down on my Carp fishing the Humpies will wind up. It's time to stock up on several dozen Salmon Slammers.

Christmas at a Carp Fisherman's Home

2010-12-18T12:55:00.002-08:00

No trip, no weather, no wind, no sun, no clouds, no flies, no casting, no fish (at least not real ones anyway) no pictures; I guess that means this isn't a fishing report. What can I say, it's Christmas time. I have been fishing since I was 4, that would be 1954, and I have been fly fishing since 1971. Awhile for sure. But it is Christmas time not fishing time.

The weather forecast called for some snow yesterday; not exactly fly rod Carping weather. I worked yesterday, tied a few flies and listened to Christmas music. I have worked some today, tied a few more flies and am listening to Christmas music again.

Katy and I both enjoy the Christmas season. What it involves for us has evolved through the decades as we moved from being newlyweds, to parents of young kids, parents of teenagers, and now empty nesters. Its all good. Christmas can be a stressful time of year but we both still enjoy it. Part of the fun is decorating our home and visiting with friends and family.

Decorating a Carp fisherman's home for Christmas is no different than anyone else's home. You just decorate.

We still put up a Christmas tree every year though we have long since given up cutting our own. This is a nice artificial tree that gets people to ask if it is real. Of course its real; real plastic. (Notice the fat little snowman on the hearth next to the poinsettias.)

Our real, plastic Christmas tree has 8 strings of lights and some regular ornaments on it. Here is a regular snowman ornament just like you would find at a normal person's home. See, it's Christmas time, not fishing time.

A traditional red and green ornament like this would fit at anyone's home. Like I said, its Christmas time not fishing time.

And here is a snowman ornament that could fit at anyone's home too. No, wait, that snowman fishes. Now how did he get on that tree?

Three pictures up what was that bell shaped ornament next to the snowman's face? From the time our kids were little we gave them each a Christmas ornament every year. One year I made the ornaments, one for each of our three kids along with one for Katy and one for me. Looking back at that snowman head ornament there is another "fishing intruder". There is one of the ornaments I made back in 1995 I believe. It has a fly suspended in it. The fly is a Charlie's Special. It is one of my favorite trout dry flies. Fished wet, it is also one of my favorite Steelhead flies. I tie the fly, including the head, exactly the way I was shown way back in the 70's.

What the heck is that next to and below the fly ornament? Oh good grief, it looks like a Carp; it's funny colors but it's a Carp.

Here is the Bass ornament.

And here is the Trout ornament.

Here is the fishing vest ornament.

And here is the fly reel ornament.

Okay, so what, maybe it's not like a normal person's home but it still looks like Christmas.

We have villages set up on two bookshelves in the family room and on the hutch in the dining room. One would hope I could keep the fishing out of the villages.

There is a guy catching lobster in the hutch village but I don't think that exactly counts as fishing does it...

Okay, this bookshelf village doesn't have a single thing that has anything to do with fishing. There we go; just like a normal person.

This is a nice looking village on the other family room bookshelf. What is that in the center?

Well, will you look at that. It's a guy fly fishing at this pond and the best thing of all is that the pond has two fish--a Koi and a Carp.

In the first picture next to the poinsettias on the floor is a fat little snowman. I'll be darned, he fishes too. Can you believe it.

And best of all is that the fireplace hearth snowman has caught two Christmas Carp. What a clever snowman!

Merry Christmas readers and a Happy New Year! I wish all of you peace and the joy of the season. May your lives be filled with the warmth of friends and family.

Monkey Forks

2010-12-07T07:24:00.001-08:00

Having fly fished since 1971 one would think that I would have fished Monkey Forks Creek many times. After all, it is right here in Washington where I live and it grows some lunker Rainbow trout. I have listened to people talk about it, seen pictures of big fish, day dreamed about it, hummed and hawed about it, and driven by it. Twice in the past 15 years a buddy and I have stopped at Monkey Forks for an hour. We only did it as an afterthought on the way home from some other spot. I don't know why I have never made a serious effort to fish there. Maybe its that the creek is so small you can cast all the way across it. Maybe it is that Monkey Forks has jillions of ticks. Maybe I have been distracted by so many other places. I just don't know why I haven't fished it.

Did I mention that the Rainbow in Monkey Forks can get real big? They eat and eat and eat. Scuds, Mayflies, Caddis, Chironomids, Damsels, Dragonflies, and some terrestials (when the wind blows) all help to fatten these piggies up. And they do get fat. And long.

Some of the time the fat Monkey Fork Piggies will even take a dry fly. I'm not sure why that single thing has not been enough to get me over there for at least one trip a year, or heck, at least one trip in the last 39 years, but it hasn't. Maybe I just have it in the back of my mind that a 5 pound trout in a small creek wouldn't have anywhere to run. I don't know. I really don't.

At the beginning of 2010 I set several fishing goals for the year; one of them was to make a trip to Monkey Forks Creek in the spring. I meant to spend two days there and fish only the creek. My friend, Gary, has fished there many times so I asked him to go with me.

I suppose me blogging about Monkey Forks is kind of like me going there. It took me a heck of a long time to plan a trip there and I didn't get around to writing about it for 9 months. Maybe Monkey Forks makes me lackadaisical. It's not my fault I never planned a trip to a creek that has multi-pound trout in it and it's not my fault it took me so many months to make a blog post about it. It's the creek's fault. It's a bad influence on me.

Gary and I went in the middle of March. The weather was cool but still very manageable; virtually no wind was also a nice plus. We fished floating lines the entire time. Dead drifting small nymphs is a favorite technique at Monkey Forks.

It produced this beefy boy.

The most satisfying fish for me was a porker that fell for an adult May Fly on the first afternoon. He rose about 40 feet from me near a cut on the opposite side of the creek. The distance on my first cast was just right and the fly landed about 5 feet upstream from the fish. The fly drifted casually over the holding spot and just like that the trout picked the fly off the surface. The fish was actually into the backing before he stopped and headed back upstream towards the very spot he had been tricked. You'll just have to trust me that the tape is stretched out to the fish's tail. The fish was flopping in the grass and I didn't want him out of the water any longer.

Gary and I caught fish but apparently not at the pace he is used to. The fish pictured above is the only one that took me into the backing. For their size I'm not sure the fish I caught fought all that well. Maybe that is because of the time of year and maybe the fish in Monkey Forks are just not "hot" fish. I will have to go again to do some field testing on that to make a determination.

In town things are pretty relaxed too. Here is the line at the espresso stand.

Oh, and one more thing. If you look for Monkey Forks on a map or do an Internet search for it, you won't find it. A couple days before we left for the trip I was talking to a loan rep I work with. His name is D. R. I told him I was going to fish Rocky Ford Creek and he misunderstood me. He asked, "Monkey Forks Creek? Is that in Washington?" I liked Monkey Forks better than Rocky Ford so I have just kept calling it that since then.

71° and 10°

2010-11-23T22:21:00.000-08:00

Two days ago it was 10° here at home. This isn’t the Midwest; good grief it is western Washington. Ten degrees is too darn cold! At this moment it is snowing and the roads are covered with ice.

On November 4, just a mere three weeks ago, I went trout fishing. It was 71°. Is that possible? This isn't southern California or Arizona; good grief it is western Washington. I even wore sunscreen.

Normally at the beginning of November I would be fishing for Chum Salmon. The Chum run is very depleted so the local rivers are closed. My friend, Jerry, had invited me to go to the Harrison River in British Columbia for some Chum fishing but days before we were to go it was also closed also due to a diminished return.

The weather forecaster was predicting unseasonably warm weather for November 4, so Jerry and I agreed to meet at a local lake. This is Jerry with the pram he uses to fish local lakes. People say he is a MEAN OLD man. I tell him not to listen to that kind of talk because it's not true. (He isn't that old.)

Just the week before I had made my latest Carp trip ever. I had spent the summer largely fishing 7 and 8 weight rods with short leaders and 1X or 2X tippet. This first day of fall trout fishing I found myself adjusting to a 4 weight rod, a 17 foot leader with a 5X tippet, and a strike indicator. For the first several casts the four weight felt a little funny but its all good.

To my pleasant surprise after about 10 or 15 minutes the strike indicator disappeared. A nice 18 inch trout buried the thing. I like indicators that indicate! The night before this trip I had put a new rubber bag on my Measure Net and was glad for the chance to give it a field test. The Measure Net has inch markings across the bottom of the bag going up in both directions. Zero is in the center so if a fish's nose is at 11 on one side and his tail is at 8 on the other side, he is 19 inches. It is great for releasing fish without ever having to touch them.

The indicator kept on indicating for several hours. The first six Trout all stayed on and helped me test the new rubber bag in the net. For the next 20-25 strikes many of the fish were teasing me with little taps just taking the indicator barely under the surface but not getting hooked. Some that were hooked came unbuttoned before getting all the way to the net. I helped eight more get the fly out of their lip.

Several other fly club members fished that day also. Dale Dennis, Bob Banks, and Jake Jacobsen were all there. We weren't exactly all fishing together as much as we were fishing at the same time. Jerry and I fished together probably half or two thirds of the day. Indicator fishing is only fun when the indicatator indicates. Otherwise it is deadly dull. Of note was that Jake Jacobsen fell asleep while staring at his indicator. Bob Banks came by and caught him in the act.

The sun on the indicator at the top of the post made it look a different color than it actually is. It is just a plain old orange indicator; the actual color is the darker one in the picture.

The weather was wonderful; it was such an anomaly for a November day. The day turned out to be tremendous. There were cooperative fish in the lake and the company was good. I was packed up and off the lake in time to be home before 6:00 PM.

The Sun Finally Sets on This Year's Carp Season

2010-11-09T18:38:00.001-08:00

This was a year of discovery for me with my Carp fishing. I fished familiar water to be sure but I also made a point of trying a good deal of new water. Heck, I even went to Montana to catch Carp on a dry fly. I started the season earlier than I ever have and ended MUCH later than any other year. I look back and say, WOW, it was a tremendous season on so many levels. This year I was still fly fishing for Carp at the end of October. The last many years I would have been fly fishing for Salmon and only dreaming of Carp at this point. What can I say? I just had to see how long I could go and still find Carp in the margins of the Columbia River.

So what happens when I go looking for Carp in late October? Well, it's not 100 degrees out. It's not 90, it's not 80, heck it wasn't even 60. I wore chest waders, a flannel shirt, and a fleece jacket. It reminded me of fishing for them back in April which was also pushing the "boundaries" of the season.

October fly fishing for Carp on the Columbia was not like July and August. The water was still; there was no wind and there were no waves. The river was also very low. The day was shorter and my shadow was longer.

The sun sort of slides across the horizon on a shallow arc rather than moving straight up overhead and then back down again. The water was as clear as I have seen it but even in the middle of the day the sun rays were still bouncing off the water rather than penetrating because the sun was still so low.

Stuck and Stuck

Fishing so late in the season, heck I wasn't even sure if it still was Carp season, I went to familiar water. I parked my Carpwagon, strung up the rod, put on my chest waders and then decided to pee before I put the boots on. I only walked 10 steps from my truck. On the way back I felt something sticking in my foot. I sat on the tailgate thinking I would have to take off the waders to take something out of my sock. I looked at the bottom of the waders and found this darn thing.

Let's see now, if I can feel it in my skin, that means it went through the sock. If it went through the sock it also went through the waders. Grrr... I got STUCK and I hadn't even got down to the river. I tried to take it as a good omen that I would be sticking a lot of Carp on this fall day.

I approached the water, gave thanks for all my blessings, and began to look for Mr. Buglemouth. I walked for well over an hour before I saw a single Carp. The truth is I had gotten a little lackadaisical because I had gone so long without even seeing one. The sun was bouncing off the water so by the time I saw the first Carp I was almost on top of him. He wasn't exactly sunbathing because it was too cold for that. I don't know what he was doing there. Just sitting and doing nothing. I stripped off some line and made a short cast towards him and he swam out to deeper water. I went 10 or 15 more minutes before I saw another fish. Okay, this one was tailing. See the Carp; catch the Carp. My first cast was too short. The second one was money. The Black Betty settled to the bottom, I gave two strips, the Carp moved over to eat the fake, and I stuck him. Maybe me getting stuck was a good omen after all. Even in the cool weather he took me well into the backing. It made me smile.

Black Betty "Bam a Lam. She's always ready. She's so rock steady. Bam a Lam..."

The fish posed for a few pictures and then went back in the river to contemplate his mistake. I continued to wade slowly and carefully; it was so odd to have such clear water and clear sky but not be able to see because the sun was low in the sky.

Seeing very few additional fish the rest of the day told me I was pushing the limits of the end of the season. I got a couple others to take Black Betty. Considering how few fish I saw I felt pretty good about that.

I spent the night in an inexpensive, okay cheap, motel.

The air temperature was in the low 40's when I headed for the river that next morning. Not exactly what I think of as prime weather to fly fish for Carp. Mean Rocks Flats is a place that I enjoy and a place I have had some good success through the years. Again, I didn't want to explore new water, I wanted to see how late in the year I could still get a Carp on a fly in the Columbia River. For now I am still able to fish here but the day will come when I just won't be able to wade on these "mean" rocks.

Overcast? Well I think the sky was overcast, when I parked my truck, but how would I know? It was so darn foggy I couldn't see the sky.

It was so odd to be Carp fishing in what I would normally think of as Salmon fishing weather. A client appointment later that day was limiting me to just a few hours of fishing on what would be my last day of Carp fishing for 2010. I did not see a single fish. Not a sunbather, not a cruiser, not a tailer, not a single one. I really felt like I had eeked out the last possible day of Carp fishing for the season. Walking back to the truck it was still in the 40's. I felt like I had fished the absolute "tail end" of the season. I wasn't seeing any fish and there was a small wet spot forming on my left sock. Go figure.

Could I catch more Carp now? If I saw some feeding I could catch them. Well, I think I could anyway. Would I see tailing fish if I went back to the Columbia here in November? Not many; maybe none. It's time to chase other species until spring and to stock up on the Carp Carrot, Black Betty, San Juan Worms, Carp Woollies, and Rubber Legged Hare's Ears.

I was, and am, very grateful for a tremendous season of fly fishing for Carp.

Carp on a Dry Fly

2010-10-13T15:20:00.001-07:00

I traveled to Montana trying to catch a bunch of Carp on a dry fly. I met up with my good friend Keith and we fished for 4 1/2 days. I had hoped to get 4 or 5 Carp on dry flies each day. Plus another 10 or 15 on wet flies too. Okay, maybe not the first day; we only fished for a few hours. But the other days, heck yes, I was hoping to slay 'em. Well it didn't quite happen that way but we did manage to get Mr. Buglemouth to take our wet flies and then to finally come up and take a Skitter off the surface.

A caddis imitation called Skitter

The Skitter tricked this Montana Carp

.

We fished the Missouri River and it was very different than the Columbia where I usually fish. The river is beautiful.

Some of the fish were even nice enough to grab our flies.

The take truly is the premier moment. Here is a video of Carp on a Dry Fly

Dry Flies for Carp

2010-08-22T23:50:00.001-07:00

Well, slop on Lone Lake or no slop, I want to catch a Carp on a dry fly. Here in Washington and Oregon I virtually never see a Carp feeding on the surface. I have seen Carp in Banks Lake just resting at the surface of the water with their mouths in the air. It is as if they are looking to see what the heck goes on outside their watery world. I have seen several of them in a group doing this at the same time. I have caught them but I feel that what really happened was that I cast the fly in their mouth. They weren't actively feeding on the surface.

Having heard stories of Carp feeding on the surface in other locales I have decided to travel to far away Montana in search of clooping Carp.

Eight or nine years ago I fished for trout in Wyoming. There were so many bugs around the lake that it was eerie. On the surface, we fished some foam hopper imitations and large caddis imitations. Below the surface we fished some minnow imitations stripped quickly and erratically. Here at a lake in eastern Washington I have used an adult Dragon Fly imitation with some success. Like many dry flies it only works when the fish are feeding on the natural.

Hearing that there are millions of Hoppers and even more Caddis near the river we are traveling to, I am tying up some of my old Trout patterns for Carp. I have decided against tying any Foam Hoppers. I am going with the Caddis and the Dragon Fly imitation. The Dragon Fly can double as a hopper or even as a Stone Fly. Well, I think it can; we'll see what the Carp think.

This caddis imitation is called a Skitter. It is meant to imitate the skating caddis, as the Canadians say, the traveling sedge. It was taught to me by Bob Simm in the middle 70's. I have caught many trout on this pattern and am going to see if the Carp will eat it. I grease this fly so it will float better. This is not a dry fly hook I am using for this pattern because the Carp will straighten it out. Well, they will straighten out the hook if I can catch one. We'll see.

Hook: Tiemco 3769 size 10 or 12
Thread: Black 6/0
Tail & Body: Deer hair Hackle: Grizzly
Wing: Deer Hair

I tie down for the tail and then wrap the deer hair around the shank for the body. I also tie it exactly the way Bob showed me with the head showing the ends of the deer hair.

I originally tied this next pattern for a couple lakes in eastern Washington where we see dragon fly hatches in the late summer and early fall. There is a species of dragon flies that we see that are about half the length of many other species and they are orange. When they are buzzing around the water the trout will actually take them out of the air sometimes. I hope the Carp will do that.

Hook: Tiemco 5262 size 6 or 8
Thread: Black 6/0
Body: Nylon Cord
Wing: Deer Hair
Hackle: Black Saddle
Collar: Fine Black chenille

The body of this fly is attached by slipping the hook through the inside of the nylon cord.

This fly could double as a hopper or a stone fly. It could double as a Volkswagon for all I care if the Carp will eat Volkswagons.

Inspired by slop, it's time to catch a Carp on a dry fly.

2010-08-19T10:11:00.000-07:00

Braving the 90 degree plus heat last week, I ventured over to Lone Lake to chase Grass Carp again. The heat, well I assume it is the heat, and the lack of vegitation had turned the lake into a soup of algae. It was colorful and interesting in a way but it was eerie. I wasn't sure if I even wanted to put my boat in the water and after I got in the water I really wasn't sure I wanted to fish. I had gotten a good start on the day. There wasn't even a breath of wind. The algae looked like it could have been in the swamp where Yoda meets Luke Skywalker. It looked like it could have been some sort of nuclear run off. It really was uncomfortable at first. I moved around the margins but of course could not have begun to see a fish feeding in all of this. I spent more than an hour without making a cast and thought I should probably just head home.

A slight breeze came up and started to move the slime towards the southwest corner of the lake. That is until the wind changed directions and started to bring it back. After a while I did have some partially open water and was able to land one fish on a "Real Grass Fly". I estimated that he was 27 1/2 inches and about 9.5 pounds.

I did bonk him on the head with a Seattle Mariners kids's souvenir bat and dispose of him in accordance with the Grass Carp Reduction guidelines. As an aside that little bat seems to be getting as many "hits" lately as the Mariner's bats are but whatever. I called it quits after a few hours.

As I said, the slop was eeire. It was worse on the surface but was also clouding the water below the surface. I don't know if I will do this again.

Inspired by the slop, I really think I am ready to go catch some Carp on a dry fly. (Commons and Mirrors) Yup, next week, that's what I want to do, catch some Carp on a dry fly. I am tying the flies this week and getting ready for the big trip. Wish me luck.