Next up

The one and only McTage comes to town. This has been a crazy spring, one in which I have not fished my "home" waters in the month of June. Wow, I feel like I need to double check that statement, but it is true. Not complaining as I have had great trips this spring, but I miss my flats.

Thankfully, in just a short time McTage flies in and he and I have several days of stalking my home water. Anyone who reads Fly Carpin knows that McTage knows his carp...And he put the hurting on the OR fish last year.

See you in a week or so Trevor!

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Slab of the Month!

Moldy Chum

 

Thanks to all who voted for me! Nice to see a carp take home the slab of the month!

 

 

Day Four

Or, we slink home with our tails between our legs. The truth is, we got crushed this trip. Last year we caught at least 80 carp...this year (with an extra fisherman) we caught 11. The fish were there, but not in a feeding mode. I couldn't tell you if they were about to spawn, or they just spawned, but they wouldn't eat. We did everything we could, pushed hard, walked far, tried every technique in the book, but we couldn't get them to eat consistently. Thankfully, these guys are not so complicated.

Recollections on the bass vary since we really didn't target them, just took the ones that sort of offered themselves up, or caught a few blind casting in bad light but I can say this with complete faith. On day two, we landed a minimum of 80 bass between the three of us. That was clearly the biggest bass total of the trip, but we caught bass every day, and with few extended dry periods.

The largest bass was between 19.5-20 inches. Many, many, many bass were 17-18...really high quality bass. They ate pretty much anything we threw, but a rust orange bunny leech was my best overall pattern of the trip. I landed the bulk of my fish on that fly, including five of my six carp. Yep, I only caught six carp. Big carp of the trip...two fish at 17 lbs. Tough, tough fishing.

Big thanks to a bunch of people for another fun trip. First off, my lovely wife and kids for letting me run off on these adventures. I miss them everyday that I am gone and can't wait for the kids to join me and Wendy. Big thanks to Wendy and Joe's families as well. We all have young kids and very significant others, and are fortunate to get to spend this time together. Lastly, thanks to Joe and Wendy. You could not find two better guys to spend four days with. When things are tough, we laugh it off, and when they are good we cheer each other on...till next year boys!

 

 

Day Three

Tough. The carp fishing is tough. The bass fishing continues to be solid through fantastic, and a smarter group of fisherman would just bite the bullet and go full on after bass. But not these guys. We are catching some bass but we keep on walking, we keep on scanning, and we keep on casting to mostly negative carp. We are getting a few.

Gone are the aggressive fish we found last year, replaced with more lethargic and lazy carp. I landed two today, and both takes were signified by the carp simply stopping above my fly. No charging, chasing carp this year!

I caught one on a big leechy pattern (weird that the carp just sucked that big fly off the bottom) and one on a small carp stew by McTage. Wendy's fish fell to a brown leech on a similarly minimal take. Joe didn't connect with a carp today but caught a sweet bass.

 

We will fish for a good chunk of tomorrow, hoping to close the books with at least a few carp to hand!

Day two

Carp are tough. Bottom line, if they don't want to eat, they are not going to eat. We saw hundreds of carp today but they simply wouldn't eat. We caught two.

Fortunately, Smallmouth bass are not tough. We hammered the bass. It was routine for bass to charge our flies from ten feet away. Frequently the bass would bust right through the middle of a group of carp to eat the fly. They were everywhere, and they ate with abandon. I am not going to complain about catching 70-80 bass (best estimate between the three of us) but the carp were just killing us. We could not get those fish to eat.

We will give them another shot tomorrow...and likely catch a bunch more bass and a few more drum.

By the way...at one point I decided to see how many bass I could catch on consecutive casts...the answer is six. There is literally no telling how many bass we could have caught had we spent the day only fishing to bass. The bass around here are just crazy.

 

Day one

A little of this:

A little of that:

And a lot of this:

Solid day, but not huge numbers. We found LOTS of carp, but only brought 6 to hand. The bass are everywhere though and we had multiple instances of bass charging through groups of carp to eat our flies. Fun stuff, more to come.

Oh, and jousting got that gar to eat a bunny leech.

Here we go again

The journey to Lake MI starts tomorrow.

Somehow, Wendy and I have managed to keep spending time together every spring despite distance and difficulties. The engine behind our adventures? Our loving wives. Thanks in advance to Emily for letting me borrow Wendy for a few days, and as always, thanks to my wife Kelly. She is quite simply the best person I know, and I would be lost without her.

The next several days bring the best of many worlds together...family, friends and fish. Lake MI, here we come!

 

Happy Father's Day!

Just want to say, happy Father's day to my dad, who taught me everything he knows. Thankfully, I learned a little more.

I love you Dad!

More ID

Prett place. Images keep coming back...it kind of sticks with you.