Monday, May 28, 2012

The Agony of Defeat

That was a very big fish.

9 comments:

Gregg said...

Not defeat really, but it's too bad you did not connect. You know, I know, we all know, you see and will see as large a carp as anyone in North America and that there will be more.

Gregg

BrookfieldAngler said...

I did that same thing today! After watching a ton of average sizers for about 10 minutes today, I saw a pair of HUGE carp cruising. I put a backstabber a few feet in front of them and they both made a mad dash to it. The slightly bigger one won the race and I set the the hook. Withing 10 seconds I was 25 yards into my backing when all the sudden the line went slack!! Son of beep!!!!!!!!!!!!!

John Montana said...

I had that fish. We spotted it tailing from a couple of hundred feet away and I snuck up on the shoreline in ninja stealth mode. Had to get really close due to cloud cover (my rule, don't cast until you can see the head) but somehow I got there without spooking the fish. Put the soft hackle on her and saw a big white bucket mouth open up...waited for it to close and set the hook. Had the fish for a split second. A painful, crushing miss on that fish.

Brent Wilson said...

Hey - if it makes you feel any better, it dumped snow over here most of the holiday weekend.

Mr. P. said...

Thanks for the call today John. I enjoyed hearing about your trip. Tough to lose those big ones.

Wendy Berrell said...

I could feel the pain on this one. But there plenty of well-demonstrated how-to hookups and stalking too by JM.

"they both made a mad dash to it"
[quote from Brookfield Angler]

We didn't see any mad dashes on this trip. More on that later.

John Montana said...

Truthfully...this one still hurts.

WindKnot said...

Trout set? On a carp?

Not a criticism, just actually curious. I can see you dudes catch a hell of a lot of big fish, but (not knowing any different) I started out using a strip set, like in salt water.

Just got into the carping game myself (as a frustrated, geographically misplaced bonefisher) and have found the standard smooth, easy strip to be very effective in hooking carp. Raising the rod moves the fly too fast for the hook tip to catch and b) a flyrod is a very poor hook-setting tool.

Anyways, love the blog -- great pics, verbage and humour. Keep 'er rollin'.

John Montana said...

Where are you located wind knot? As for the trout set vs strip set, for me it depends on the fly I am fishing and how I am fishing it. If I am using a lot of motion and getting the fish to move to follow or chase the fly, I am with you on the strip set. Out here, the carp rarely move and it is more of a "feed the fish the fly" game. Usually the fly is sinking, or motionless on the bottom and the take is subtle...often just a flaring of the gills or turn of the head. In those cases (which represent the vast bulk of what I do) I have found that I hook up much better with a trout set.

Now, in about three weeks I will be on lake MI...that is strip set central for a carp addict! Those fish CHASE!