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To conserve, protect and restore coldwater fisheries
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Fly fishing for carp (Editor's note: Dick Smith is a long-time board member of SWMTU and avid fisherman. By Dick Smith The carp come onto the long flat to feed and the smallmouths shadow them. Sometimes there will be two or three bass swimming along with a carp. Generally the bigger the carp, the bigger the bass with it. The carp work the bottom and stir things up. The bass feed on whatever the carp chase out and can't catch right away. There is a lot more looking than casting in that kind of fishing. I don't catch much just casting to the water, and when I move around to look for the fish in such shallow water they see me almost as often as I see them. There is a lot of waiting in that kind of fishing. Someone once called it standing in shallow water, deep in thought. The flat is above an island in the Grand River. The sun was way over in the west when I went out one July evening. The air was starting to cool down. The sky was blue overhead and then it paled away into the haze on the horizon. The flycatchers were flying out over the river, having their dinners. Just before sundown, a heron flew past me, croaking. The Ottawa Indians used to say the heron flew out in the evening and croaked loudly to summon the night. A doe with two fawns came down to the river to drink. When I was a boy my Sunday school teacher said it always got so still and quiet at sunset because that was when the animals all stopped whatever they were doing and said their prayers. It was that magical part of a summer day between sunset and darkness that the British call Tom Fool's hour because they say any fool can catch trout on flies then. But carp are harder to catch on flies than trout are. I was using a small crayfish pattern tied with martin fur and when I saw the movement of a fish coming my way, I tried to guess where it was going. It was a big carp and there was good size smallmouth on the other side of it from me. I cast the fly well ahead of it and when the fish got close to it I hopped it about two inches. There was a huge boil as both fish raced for the fly. The line twitched, and I struck. I saw the carp shake its head. The smallmouth tried to grab the fly that was part of the way out of the carp's mouth away from it. Then silt obscured everything, and the carp raced through the shallow water and off the flat. I discovered that those old butterflies that used to hang out in my stomach when I was kid had not all flown away. They were just waiting for something exciting to bring them out of their cocoons. I have taken quite a few good size carp on flies, but that fish was noticeably bigger than any I have caught. An eight pound test tippet and a hundred yards of backing were nothing to that fish. I ran about fifty yards across the flat after it, but it was gone in less than a minute. Two flies have been very good flies for carp for me, a martin fur crayfish pattern, and the picket pin. I tie both of them on keel hooks, but they can be tied on regular hooks. If the hook shanks are heavily weighted, they will ride upside down on the bottom and be fairly weedless.
Hook- a size eight keel hook, or any hook with a down eye and a shank that is five or six times as long as the gap in the hook. The hook is weighted with at least one full length wrap of lead wire. Tail- a pinch of martin fur with the guard hairs removed. Body- martin
fur
with the guard
hairs
still
in
it. Make
a four
inch
loop
in
the
tying
thread
after
tying
in
the
tail.
I wrap
the
thread
over
the
loop
four
or
five
times
and
then
wrap
it
up
to
the
head
of
the
fly,
leaving
the
loop
still
at
the
tail.
Clip
a
good
size
bunch
of
fur
and
put it
into
the
loop
so
it
is
spread
out
nearly
the
length
of
the
loop.
Keep
the
clipped
ends
as
even
as
possible.
Twist
the
thread
until
the
fur Tail- brown hackle. Hackle- brown, palmered the length of the body. Four wraps is about right. Body- peacock herl. Wing- gray squirrel. If you weight the fly heavily, tie the wing on the underside of the fly, so it points toward the point of the hook and the fly will ride upside down when it is in the water. Head- peacock herl that is like a continuation of the body. It goes over the part of the wing that is tied in and continues forward almost to the eye of the hook. |
The martin
fur crayfish pattern is
tied like this.
The
picket
pin is
a
peacock herl
fly
and
it
is
tied
like
this.