One thing that is nearly always true

If you put your boots in the water and start walking, you are bound to see something cool. That held true throughout the 4 day swing with a couple of legends from MN. I am sure those four days will provide some fodder for the blog and all three of my regular readers can expect a decent stream of photos and updates over the next few days, but for the most part I am having a tough time putting things together in my head. The basics are there (crappy, cold, high water...big winds, limited sun, good company etc) but the details and particulars are still awash in the general awesomeness that is 4 days of flyrod carping with buddies. Four days of nothing but water and sky and fly rods and legions of doom and puffy lips and broken Tippett and bent hooks and good pizza and busted shins and horrible netting techniques and carp. Lots and lots of carp. Granted they weren't always in spots we could catch them and they often were hard to see, fuzzy shapes slinking along in thigh deep cloudy water, ghosts with the potential to thrill and amaze if you could just make them out a little better! Anyone who has done this knows of what I speak...so tantalizingly close to epic that settling for amazing seems too much to bear.

So we went with it, and I will likely spend some time this week doing what we did...putting our boots in the water and walking until we saw something cool. Unable to put any decent structure to those days together in my head, I am just going to plod along and see what comes out. Hell, we got enough good images to tell the story better than my piss poor writing can, so let's just wing this. Starting with a shot taken by Wendy Berrell.






A flat out money shot that came about solely because we kept our boots in the water. With the river a mess we walked into this field and proceeded to wack the carp in knee deep water amongst the small shrubs and large trees. Note WFF in the background stalking some carp. He stuck his share back there too.





The difficulty here was the fish had immediate and dangerous access to piles of bushes, trees, deadfall, blackberry bushes and god knows what else so we basically had to clamp down on their asses and hang on. I broke off 10 fish in one day using 12 lb mono. What a trip!






We found em, but had a heck of a time pulling them out. The basic fact is that if you keep moving, you might find something cool.