We have some mulberry trees here in the northeast, though not that many. I've long heard of the chaos that occurs under berry trees that lean over bodies of water holding carp and catfish. These stories mostly came from the Midwest, and eventually I started to believe that finding carp chowing down on mulberries here in New England was unlikely at best, and my in fact never happen at all.
Then, completely by accident, I found exactly that in Rhode Island, and it was crazier than my wildest dreams. I'd had a very frustrating morning and was walking along some decent but not that great water when I came to a tree, and underneath it were about a dozen carp. The tree was a mulberry tree, and it was pretty clear why the carp were there. When berries fell from the tree the fish reacted frantically to the sound, trying to beat each other to the food. Looking in my fly box, I didn't really have any berries. What I did have was a Parachute Adams. Maybe they'd eat that?
It turns out the fish under the trees would eat every fly I threw in their general direction, and all the more so if it made a little "plop". The Adams wasn't ideal but it did take a couple of fish, the first of which was a particularly good looking mirror.
As someone quite used to lackadaisical, non-committal, and all around disinterested attitudes from this species, it was a bit of a shock for me to see five or six carp charge m fly as soon as it hit the water. It really was a shocking experience. I threw mops, Black Ops, Hare's Ears, and a few other flies... they all got eaten. It was wild.
In the mix with the slough of mirrors, I actually got my first Rhode Island common. That's how odd this fishery is compared to other East Coast carp fisheries... it is so loaded with mirrors that commons are, well, rare. It makes no sense.
Of course, the fish at each tree did slowly get wise as I caught them. They didn't become picky or anything like that, but they'd spook out as soon as I'd caught a few. Really that wasn't shocking, but at the time I couldn't figure out how to get the fish I was finding away from the trees to eat. If anything, those seemed more difficult than an carp I'd encountered anywhere. They were completely unwilling and completely spooked from the fly. Eventually I would figure out how to get these ones to eat but it didn't happen this day.
Under one tree I actually caught a turtle. It was a red-eared slider, a common invasive turtle species. These sliders are very pretty and easy pets, but as an invasive species they can wreak havoc... not unlike the very carp I was fishing for. The can be a big problem for native turtles.
As the day's fishing came to an end, I'd caught a half dozen mirrors and one common, a few of them on small dry flies. It was crazy, but it had only just begun. I'd be figuring out a lot over the next couple weeks.
This is simply extraordinary.
ReplyDeleteI spent a lot of years finding it extraordinary that this didn't happen all over the place.
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