Carp Flies

You know the feeling, you are fishing late Fall or early Spring borderline Wintertime dredging larger pocket water and or any decent size pool you can find. Then after what seems like the millionth swing there is a faint tug, you set the hook with utmost skill the fish moves and you feel its size. Joy fills the soul you yell to your buddy two pools down. It has to be that end/beginning of the season 24” Brown Trout the Euro Nymphing Instagram feeds keep showing. Five minutes later you get the letdown of a lifetime when you hoist that meaty, slimy and unique faced whitefish. This is the tragic story of many an angler. The resulting show and mandatory picture from your friend who sprinted the five second quarter mile upriver to help you out leads to endless jokes and ridicule for years to come. When you are removing the hook, you can almost hear the late evening fireside laughter as you then release the fish back into the watery depths at your feet. Even with Carp coming up in popularity of recent years it’s still a little shocking to pull in that nontraditional game fish when you are sure you set some state record for trout. Well I am here to help you out. Here is a list of witty comebacks to the endless flak you might receive from those rare occurrences you might endure in your fishing lifetime: I was training for that epic flats trip I took last summer. I left like two weeks after that shot was taken. Yeah, that was my 3rd whitey that day but I am just glad to be out on the water. Well I caught more carp than your boyfriend/girlfriend caught total fish that day. Bro it was the biggest fish I saw come out of that lake the whole weekend we were there. They are an invasive species and I am just doing my part to catch and remove them from that fishery. Dude I was fishing dries and it was a total surface take so no matter what that is a legit fish. You had to have seen that from the boat! The Carp came out of nowhere and took that fly before the Musky had a chance to eat. In some countries Whitefish are considered a delicacy. Any educated fly fisherman knows that. I was trying a nymphing technique featured in last month’s Fly Fisherman and that was the result. I don’t usually fish like that. Well one of us did not get skunked that day and it was not the person holding the fish. Your mom likes it when I bring Carp over for dinner….

Carp Flies

Letters from the Vice: Whitefish Master vs Carp Disaster

Year Of The Carp: Fly Selection 101