30 lbs

Today was a strange day. I covered a lot of water, saw only a handful or truly "catchable" fish, and still managed to put 52 lbs of carp in the net. That is 52 lbs with only two fish caught...like I said, a strange day. This monster broke the ice for me several hours into the day.

It is hard to describe what it felt like to spot this fish. I had been walking and peering into the water for hours and had seen two fish, neither of which were feeding (or looking to feed). This big girl was thirty feet away, tail waving like a flag right up against the bank. Normally I am a proponent of taking the first cast you can make on a big fish...spooky buggers. But today, this big girl had three friends in the mix, all feeding happily away. I weighed my options. Make a cast, and one of the fish was likely to eat, but no way of targeting the one I wanted (all four fish were eating in the same spot). It was blatantly obvious that the big girl was the prize of the group, and I wanted the that fish, not one of her friends. My other option was to stalk in close enough to get the fly to the biggest fish. I went for the stalk.

Apparently I am a stealthy SOB because I got right on top of those feeding fish. After an arduous and painstakingly slow stalk, the eat was almost too easy. I dapped the fly on her head (still rooting) and as it sank a cavernous white mouth opened up and sucked it in. Beautiful. A few minutes later I was weighing her in my net. Just over 30 lbs...a true monster.

 

Fish number two came after hooking up with my friend David. She swam up behind us as we stalked down the bank together, and I happened to turn in time to get a fly to her...she ate without hesitation and tipped the scales at 22 lbs. next up was David.

We spotted some nervous water and David put the stalk on the fish. I watched as he got the fish to turn and try to eat (the white mouth again) only to have the fish miss the fly, mill around and hammer it again. Pretty heady stuff!

That was it for the day...the water is still high and cold and the fish were hard to find today, but the ones we found were worth it. I like to say that good things happen when you keep your boots in the water. It always pays off to keep looking.