What a Fantastic Day!

What a good day today as! Just awesome. I took a nice walk to the lake carrying the 8 weight and ready to do battle with the bronze backed red eyed bass. As I crossed a canal I realized I would probably be editing that plan. In that channel were some nice feeding carp. With a brown Woolly Bugger tied to my tippet I carefully cast to the closer and bigger of the fish. He took. I set to hard and missed. I got another smaller fish to sniff the fly before moving on to give the fish a break. In the side pond I chose to fish next another carp was digging in the leaves on the bottom. What's going on? I expected the carp to be in the post spawn lethargy. They are, somewhat, but feeding very well. It took me one cast to nail into the that little common, and he gave a good scrap. He was about 8 or 9 pounds, skinny, but had the most gorgeous dark coloration.

Alright then, after releasing that fish I returned to the main lake. The water is fairly clear right now, and I could see plenty of bass, perch, and bluegills swimming around. I proceeded to catch some. The smallmouth did some good jumps and runs. Oh, a there as a garter snake swimming around in the pond:

I eventually made my way back to the canal to see if the carp were still there, and sure enough there were some feeders. I tied on a little dark dragonfly imitation, got the perfect shot at a fish facing me, and was soon doing battle with a big carp in small water with plenty of opportunities to loose the fish. I was flirting with danger, really, hooking a fish that big on a fly rod in tight quarters. The fish did one really impressive run right under a bunch of docks, but I recovered and was able to land her.

Sorry for poking you in the eye fish! 

After that I messed around some trying to get some bass on poppers. I had one take. Eventually I took to slowly walking the beach looking for tailing carp. I got one shot at a mid-teen carp that looked like either a fully scaled mirror or just a common with atypically large scales. When that fish departed I began walking home. I happened to run into the father of a good friend of mine. I hadn't seen him in a very long time and it was good to talk to him again. He introduced me to an elderly friend of his who told me a story about catching carp by hand in the Connecticut river years ago. I always enjoy hearing those kinds of fishing stories. 

I continued on my way very glad to have chosen to fish there. Those are the first carp I have ever landed out of the lake, this is the first time I have ever caught more than one in a day, and I got to talk with an old friend all very good things.