Fall: The Second Best Carp Season

When it comes to carp, spring is king. The fish are feeding and bulking up to prepare for the spawn, they are well fed and eager and strong. Winter is tough in New England but any time there is decent open water you can find carp that are willing to take a fly, and summer can be very productive but the fish are not in the best condition and though it may be easy to find fish they seem to be more picky. Once it starts to cool off again things start improving dramatically. Once the night time temperatures start dipping bellow 60 the average size of the carp I catch in my local waters tends to start going up. Yesterday I was out on the lake for a little while in the morning hoping to capitalize on the continued good water levels (as soon as they begin the fall draw-down the carp go deep) and I caught one of the better carp of the year. Not a true giant but a substantial carp. It was in good shape scale wise but it had some possibly boat collision related issues, more than half of its tail was gone. That meant the fight was not nearly as good as I would have liked. I kind of felt bad for that fish, I'd rather not catch fish that already have a handicap. I told it thank for the fight and was glad to see it swim off strongly.