The dry spell is over! JJ and I lucked into spotting a few fish today. I only had the chance to put the fly in front of one, but it was a big fish. The first two casts seemed to wake the fish up and he started moving around more, looking for something. On the third cast it came together and the fly sank about 1 ft in front and 1 ft to the left of the big carp. JJ was standing holding onto my leg patiently when the carp eased over and down out of sight in the murky water. I counted to three in my head, figured he either had it, spit it, or wasn't going to eat it and I set the hook! Fish on! I dropped to my knees and held the rod in front of JJ. He grabbed it with both hands and tugged back as hard as he could. It was pretty funny...when the fish took off and the reel started screaming I had to keep JJ's hands out of the way, but in between runs JJ would grab the knob and reel as fast as his little 18 month old hands would allow. In due time we brought the fish in together. The biggest problem was that I didn't have a net, or scale with me. In fact, on leaving the car I left everything inside except rod, reel and one fly that I stuck in my hat. I really hadn't epxected to see any fish. I hauled the big fish into the shallows, reached down and the barbless fly slid out with no effort. I'm guessing the carp was between 18-21 lbs. Hard to tell without actually hefting the fish, but I've caught enough that size to make a pretty good guess.

JJ was a trooper...I had to pry the flyrod from his hands to finally land the fish. More to come...it is almost time out here in OR! The fly that worked was the recently tied rubber legged walking hare's ear pictured below.