First Carp

I often heard that catching a carp on a fly rod is something not to be missed. Like most anglers who primarily honed their fishing skills with fly rod in hand, I looked down on the carp. Bottom feeder (like the bonefish!). I saw smart carp, moving upstream in tandem to root up the vegetation and then swim down stream to wait for the tasty dislodged morsels. When living in England, I saw anglers spend thousands of dollars and countless hours fishing for one of their premier fish. Still I had my doubts.

Today I was on the shores of Lake Michigan within a stones through of my house to try for smallmouth. I arrived just after five in the morning just as the red sun broke the horizon over the water. Two anglers we in the parking lot getting geared up with me. They were loaded for carp with packs of rods, rod holders, cans of corn, and buckets on which to sit. We exchanged friendly conversation and headed our own ways.

After an hour of nothing except a few small crappie on the end of the line, I was ready to head home. On the way back to the truck, I stopped down to the area where the carp fisherman were stationed. After a few minutes Dan told me to "get that little flyrod over here." He showed me a section of the pool a few feet deep lined with carp. I put a small tan crayfish pattern on, and on Dan's reco a kernel of corn on the hook (umm....to give it extra weight, right?). After a few casts across the pool, the current swept my flyline out and then the line stopped. I set the hook, felt that nice solid hook up immediately saw the surface explode. Ahh, that sweet noise. Not the little splash of a small fish slapping its side on the surface followed by drops of water. Rather, the big swoosh sound that a heavy fish makes when it displaces a large volume of water across the surface.

And a heavy fish it was, especially for my 5 wt rod with 4 lb test tippet. He slowly pulled, and thrashed the surface, and pulled. I backed up on the beach, put the angles to him, and eventually beached him enough that Dan was able to get a net under him.

" A mirror!", said Dan. He yelled across the pool to Juan, "He caught a mirror", referring to the relatively rare Mirror carp which is not seen as often as its cousin the Common carp. Juan came over to see the fish, about 30 inches and very heavy, and Dan was gracisou enough to snap a photo, take my email down, and offer to send the picture to me.

Doubt no more, the carp has been added to my list of fish for which I would gladly fish again.