Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Floodwater carping!

We had a bunch of rain today, like an inch in 30 minutes. I sat in the shed for a long time waiting for it to stop, daydreaming of what was to come. I was ready for this. I saw what I missed last time and I wasn't missing it again! The rain/hail finally cleared and I headed over to the secret spot. Bingo!
Floodwater carping

I walked down right as the drainage water started flowing out hard. The spot was rising an inch every minute for a while. I saw my little bank spot go under then the water creeped up the bank. Slowly but surely I started seeing orange and grey flags emerge from the brown muddy water. The carp and buffs decided to join in!

Carp time means Carp Runner time!
I'll cut to the results. I fished for about an hour and had 6 eats from carp, 2 hookups, and none landed. I hooked 4 buffalo, fought 2 in, and landed 1. I'm planning on going back with Jonathan this afternoon, the water was so mucked up you couldn't make out the carp's heads, just their tail and maybe an inch underwater after that. It was seriously hard fishing because the fish were so shallow and moved so fast, but the challenge is the point of going right?



Carp Runner buff!



Right when the river started to rise everything showed up. Shad schooled up, flickering on the surface. Gar started surfacing. Buffs and carp started to tail and feed heavily. I saw a few gigantic splashes from schooling fish that had to be hybrid stripers or magnum sandbass. Several large schools of minnows showed up. It's almost like the flow brings everything up out of hiding to feed. I've seen this below dams, but never in just an open river. When it topped out at 2 feet above normal, the grass flooded along the bank was the new food source for the carp, and really no casting was involved, just flicking the rod up to 5 feet in front of you, staying extremely quiet, and a whole lot of guesswork.

1 comment:

  1. Nice fly and nice fish. I have yet to fish for carp but it is on my list of things to do.

    Jeff
    www.gotflyfishing.blogspot.com

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