Morning Walk

 Sometimes its all too easy to ignore what you have right at home. I live so close to a diverse and fishy lake and yet so often I'm travelling an hour or more away to fish for some of the same species I have right by the house. I try to remind myself of this sometimes and get back to the basics, if you will. When I was still in school I'd walk and bike the lake on weekends and during summer break. Carp were the primary target. I got quite good at spotting them, even when moving quite fast. Smallmouth bass were secondary, and really most of the time I'd only fish for them if I wasn't seeing any carp. Three or four shots at tailing fish were reasonable in a morning, three carp to hand was exceptional. The fish weren't big either. But they were tough enough to be good practice. Not unwilling, but finicky enough that often I'd wonder how I couldn't convert. It was exceptionally good practice with the species. I'm certainly not so cocky as to say I have that all figured out by now, far from it. So why not take that morning walk every now and then?

Recently I took to the sidewalk again one early morning, looking into the glare of the sun for the boils and swirls that denote waving tails. Feeding carp reveal themselves in many way... these are the sorts of things I learned out there on those morning walks. Observation showed me that looking for a waving tail in the air was good but not good enough. Many of the fish revealed themselves with the faintest surface disturbances and small, sporadic bubble patches. These local waters are the places where I devised methods for targeting carp that I actually couldn't see, but which were bubbling- to this day I've yet to see a more effective set of strategies from any other angler be devised to target bubblers, and I've managed to put multiple clients on carp that neither they nor I can actually see by fishing to the bubble patches. I also learned that on this lake, not only does substrate dictate nitrogen production but some years I'd simply not see any bubblers at all. This wasn't because there weren't carp feeding there but because the bottom wasn't releasing any gas. All of these little details came to me as I walked- rod in one hand and net in the other -along that walkway I'd trod so many times before. 

I ended up getting three good quality shots at fish. The first was a bubbler in a little creek off the main lake, a consistently reliable spot that has given up many carp over the years. It was a difficult shot and, semi predictably, I blew it. I then covered quite a lot of ground before seeing another fish. This one was tailing in tight to a rocky bank. I really thought it would be an easy one if I didn't spook it by making my presence known, but it was too smart for that. On three presentations it gently refused a squirmy hybrid variation by dodging carefully around it, swimming a few feet over, then continuing to feed. It was this sort of behavior that endeared carp to me. I'll never really know how to or be able to catch every feeding carp I see, but every year I get a bit better at it. More than a decade after my first attempts I'd certainly hope to be making a little headway anyway. 

The third and final shot was to a bubbler. Bubblers often require a significant number of casts. Since they're generally feeding deeper (otherwise they would just be tailing) bubblers are generally harder to spook. I presented to this one 6 times before it took. I never really saw the take either, the hook set was an educated guess. It often impresses clients when I say "set" and they hook a carp without any visual que. The question often gets asked "how did you see that?" Well, I didn't.

Like many of the carp I'd caught from this lake over the years, this one had a bit of a deformity. I don't know exactly what it is that has caused this and why its so prevalent there. Despite the deformity, the fish was taken as a minor victory on my part and released to mud up the bottom of the lake some more. Though I might not walk the lake daily or even weekly anymore I certainly can't ignore the impact it has had on my growth as an angler and guide. 

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