Fall Fly Carpin' is Awesome!

I make it clear on this blog that I am a total carp nut. I'll chase sucka mouths in any water, any time, and where. Today Mark Alpert and I just so happened to be chasing them in a big shallow retention pond, the kind of water where carp rule over all else. There are more carp in this pond than any other pond I have seen, and for the most part they are small. I'm cool with that! I enjoy catching lots of small carp as much as I enjoy getting a few giants. To make the fishing more interesting this pond has some crazy looking fish. There are a few different colors of koi, and I suspect there are some mirrors in there too. The reason we went to this crazy pond today is that we were sure it would give us some good late season bites, and we were rewarded for our work!

After a little bit of trial and error I hooked the first fish of the day. I saw a little mud kick-up and put the Carp Mop Fly in the vicinity. I was soon into a flawless little common carp with STUNNING fin color and a super dark head. What an excellent way to start out the carp catching!

Maybe half an hour later Mark and I doubled up with identical twins. Two fish could not look more alike! I thought it was very cool to get such small carp on flies. I've caught many many ten pound plus carp, All of the fish we caught today would have fit between my previous smallest and second smallest. The little guys are usually in perfect condition, as were these ones.

My third carp of the outing came from almost exactly the same spot as the first, and it was a totally blind catch. I didn't see anything to make me think there would be a carp there. I made the cast, looked around for a minute, then lifted the rod to find a fish on the other end!

Mark found a group of carp working one area very aggressively. There were three or four fish mudding in this spot consistently for a very long time. We both hooked and lost fish from this little spot and yet they came back. Eventually I got a good hookup, and landed my fourth and final car of the trip. A couple minutes after I released that fish Mark hooked a second one from the same spot. Though he did not bring the fish to hand it was landed and he had touched the leader before it returned. Six carp in one afternoon... and we both are sure that this pond will, in the future, give up some serious numbers, with 20 fish days being very likely.