Today, my buddy Jay said, "Today's a good day for you to go after carp!" Well...why not? The 7-10 mph winds were the calmest its been in weeks, it was sunny, but only 65 degrees. Doesn't everyone else wear a Polo shirt, slacks, and casual dress shoes to go carp fishing??
Maybe it helps to look the part of an elitist fly-angler, regardless of target species? HA!
Anyway, I found feeding carp. Biggest problem was water clarity. Deeper than about 4" of water, the fish disappeared. I could see bubble trails and mud clouds that I hoped indicated feeding carp. Would they even be able to see a fly more than a few inches away?? Strike detection was a problem when carp don't move much to eat anyway. Watching for fish movement or opening mouths was definitely out of the question when the fish simply AREN'T visible. Waa waa waaa...listen to me cry a river over muddy water!
I may have gotten some strikes. A couple of times I actually bothered to set the hook, I spooked fish. I may have been a tad late, or the fly may have bumped the fish. I'll never know. I did foul-hook one decent carp in the dorsal fin. It was a fun fight but I was already a bit tardy to head back to work, so I put a lot of pressure on the line, and the fly popped out.
I didn't get skunked. I caught a small channel catfish.
That's my water, perpetually turbid to algae stained to mud. I DO catch the majority of my carp in these conditions, I have no choice. My egg tie under an indicator, a light walleye type float, over bubbles exactly as you saw does it for me. They see that egg in chocolote water, or find it somehow. One must have faith in what you are doing however.
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I definitely considered the egg! Part of the problem was I didn't know how deep the water was, so it would have been difficult to know where to set the indicator on the line. The other thing was I only had about 20 minutes to fish because this was further from work than some of the other places I fish. Can you tell me how aggressively they hit an egg under an indicator? It wouldn't have any taste/smell or movement to it...do they pull the indicator down well, or is it a pretty quick "taste and spit back out" type of bite?
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