Carptastic

Rik and I went carping today. It wasn't an all out carpfest. But I would say it was pretty carptastic. First, I will say that the places we worked through were not for the faint of heart: dirty, urban, polluted, sometimes loud, and honestly a pain to fish and and move around in. But, anything for a big ol' golden bone on the fly, right? I decided to use my 6'6" 3wt St. Croix Avid at the first spot since I personally have never seen a fish over 10lbs there. That worked out fine. I caught one small common and missed a handful of other takes. Funny thing is, right when we got to the pond there were no signs of life. Then, right around 8:00, it was like someone flipped a switch and the carp started to show themselves. The new weed growth made that pond a pain, so we did not stay there for as long as we could have. We decided to check out the Park River in Hartford. I had hear rumors of carp there. What we found was a shallow gravel ditch with no signs of having reasonable carp fishing. I've fished for carp in city canals before, but this just wasn't good.

We went to a place that is a sure bet and has some grotesquely fat carp. Even the bass and bluegills there were fat, and we caught a bunch between the two of us. 

Did we find carp? Yes we did! And I royally carped up a hookset on an absolute giant, probably would have been my 2nd biggest ever. Then one came unbuttoned. Then I missed the same fish twice... I was just carping up left and right. But eventually I pulled my head out of my carp and made a good shot at a cruising fish. It turned hard and at the black woolly bugger as it fell. I stuck that fish and I stuck it hard. After so many botched chances I was done fooling around. I was using my 5wt CGR, so no surprise I got a heck of a fight out of that fish. It wasn't really that big, but it was a beauty. Props go to Rik who was behind the lens this time, no one arming the fight or self timer use this time.

This isn't exactly over, but for now I will leave you with this. This is a species I have dreamed of catching for years now. Can you guess what they are?