Carp Report for May 2, 2010

This is my first report on Carp fishing.  It will be short, as carp were not what I was after when I went.   I was hoping to get into some creek-run white bass on my first trip to El Dorado.  I glanced at a map before I left the house, and decided it looked easy enough to get to the lake.  I knew the river had to be attached somewhere.   Found the river.  It was muddier than I had hoped (seeing some feeding carp was in the back of my mind).  Downstream I went, hoping to get away from the hard-hit fishing holes.  When I came upon a likely looking riffle I sent a chartreuse and white Clouser Minnow to its imminent death..I thought.  I was right, yeah, first cast.  It was about a 12 inch white that looked exactly the same as the next 15 I caught.  As I rounded a bend my plan changed.  There were orange circles on the surface of a slow pool in front of a log-jam.  And there were cottonwood seeds disappearing into them.  I was prepared for this.  I had tied up some CDC and white foam cottonwood seed flies just for this occasion.  I tied one on, chucked it in front of the fish, and watched it sink. (Not into an orange circle, just to the bottom).  Pretty sure those were supposed to float I thought as I dug through my box for something more buoyant than foam.  Alright!  No dry flies except for some of the first Parachute Adams' I ever attempted to tie!  These things were ugly, and even a liberal amount of floatant couldn't keep the first few on the surface.   Finally I found one that sort of floated.  I eased it right in front of several carp and got plenty of looks, but no takers.   A few casts later I watched a sub-surface fish head ever so slowly rising up beneath that funny-looking cottonwood seed, just 6 more inches and he'll be to my fly.  Wait, where is my fly!  That carp sucked it under from half a foot down!  I strip-set the hook and the fight was on!  There was quite a bit of struggle going on to keep him from going under the log jam, but he wasn't the biggest fish in the Walnut, and I was able to horse him out.  First carp on a dry fly!
There were no more carp to be seen, and the sun was getting low .  I felt satisfied with my catch for the day, so I bushwacked through a half-mile of Poison Ivy  on my short-cut back to the car.  

I Went Carp Fishing, and I feel I Need to Explain Myself

Over the last 6 months I'd been reading a lot about guys goin' out Carpin' throughout the Midwest with fly rods.  It really intrigued me.  Everyone who wrote about it claimed it was the best thing since bull fries.  It was compared to sight-fishing Redfish along the Gulf Coast or flats-style bonefish hunting in some white sands, blue water tropical paradise.  The scenery comparison is definitely more than a bit of a stretch, but the style of fishing is supposedly spot-on.  Casting to "tailing" fish which require a precise, delicate cast so as not to spook them sounded like my kind of fish party.  Not to mention the fact that they can get BIG.   Did I mention they explode into an insanely powerful run the second they know they're hooked, often taking the flyline well into the backing.  Add to that the fact that when other local sportfishing slows down during the heat of the summer, carp become even more active.  I had to try this.

I decided to document my carp fishing excursions on this blog as a way to keep a sort of logbook of my season.  Hopefully I'll be able to update it fairly regularly with reports and pictures of many epic battles with Kansas' Golden Bones.