Be Careful What You Wish For...

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.