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.