Fishing with my dad

The plan was to fish for a couple of hours on some water that we don't fish often. It is good to cover new water...walk areas that you have only looked at once or twice. Often times it is even better to try someplace you have never been, but my dad doesn't cover ground like he used to, so he leaves the full on exploration to me! This time, we wandered down a flat that I rarely fish, not because it isn't good, simply because all the river is good. It didn't take long to find the fish.









The sun was high, the wind was down and my dad and I were wandering knee deep flats with seven weight fly rods. That pretty much sums up the day. We didn't fish long or particularly well, in fact, the first hour or so was actually pretty tough. The fish were there but they were not reacting well to the green nymph. They ate it, don't get me wrong but with no wind and great visibility we were making roughly 35 ft casts and the trick was detecting the take. Many times the fly would be I position, the fish on it and then they would dart away. "spooked on the fly" my dad would say...my own theory is different. I think they ate, spit, then spooked. After a while I switched from a green nymph to an orange nymph (courtesy of singled barbed's awesome Free Range Dubbing) and immediately the tide turned in our favor. Suddenly the takes were more noticeable...the fish reacted and moved more assertively to the fly and we started catching the fish we should catch.









Amazing what a difference the color of the body made in this day. In a couple of hours, I landed 9 and my dad 4. All but one of mine was in the orange nymph, the other one on the green. I think most of my dad's came in the orange as well.

Best take of the day came when I was off by myself for a bit. I was walking on a gravel bank with fantastic visibility and spotted a nicer fish holding just off the bank in some relatively heavy current. I put the fly well upriver and could just envision the nymph dropping to the gravel and tumbling along like in a trout stream. As the fly neared the fish's position the carp darted sideways like a trout and ate something...I set the hook and the fish blasted downriver into my backing. I could not stop this fish, and he went further into my backing than any fish I have ever hooked. Scaled out at 16 lbs...really fun tale and fish.



That is a lot of line missing.

As always, great to fish with my dad. He really has taken to this carp thing...and every once in a while he even listens to me and changes flies!