The Ecstasy of Grass

White amur, more commonly known as grass carp, are not a common species in CT waters. There are only a handful of places with targetable grass carp populations. Their native range exists in East Asia, from Vietnam to the Amur River. Grass Carp are the largest reported aquaculture in the world.  In the United States, their introduction can be attributed in large part to people not wanting their ponds to be completely filled with weeds. You see, grass carp aren't called grass carp because they like sitting in the grass. No, they like eating grass. The bulk of a grass carp's diet consists of plants and algae. They also eat insects, and fortunately for me, bread.

I've found exactly one place in my exploration in which grass carp are targetable. It is a small park pond with a few dozen small commons and a handful of grass carp, a couple of which are absolute behemoths. The grassers don't often present themselves as viable fly targets here, but it is possible to make them show themselves by throwing out small bits of white bread. But, just because it is easy to get a grasser to eat the bread you've thrown out doesn't make it any easier to fool them and subsequently land them, it just gives you more shots. Grass carp might be the smartest fish I've ever targeted. They seem to have the ability to memorize bank structure. And if something in their frame of vision wasn't there the last time they looked at that bit of shoreline and isn't just a typical part of the environment like a fallen branch, they become less comfortable. With any other fish I've targeted, if I was wearing natural colors and not moving I had little to worry about. But with grassers, they new something was wrong and went on edge. They'd come back for the bread, but they weren't completely comfortable and it made them harder to catch. I say harder because even if they didn't spook from the sight of my hunched down 10 feet away from the bank, the leader, the rod tip, or just the fly itself put the fish on edge more than any other species I've seen. Then there was the problem of hooking up. Even if the fish grabbed the fly, it took no time at all for it to either reject it or to react so violently that it just broke clean off. Time after time I was rejected, missed the fish, or just couldn't keep them engaged. But I knew it was a game of odds, so I kept going back, over and over again.

And yesterday it payed off finally. While hiding behind a tree with my rod laying flat in the grass next to me and just the 14 foot leader over the water, I watched a grasser come up and suck my modified foam Humpy down. I picked up the rod and set the hook in one swift motion. About 15 minutes later Noah tailed the fish for me.

This grass carp was a long time coming. I was ecstatic. One of my biggest freshwater fish, #84 on my life-list: Ctenopharyngodon idella. No fish feels better than the one that takes a couple years of hard work to catch. If you don't fish non-stop like I do I'm not sure I can adequately explain it to you. Hopefully some of the photos Noah got with my new camera might do the trick. 

And that's that. I got my grasser. And I don't really know that I'll be targeting them in CT for a while again, they are a pain!