What does a fly shop manager and fishing guide do on his first day off in over a month in the middle of a Montana summer? Laundry? Grocery shopping? Relax at home all day? Nope. He goes carp fishing. And luckily, he takes me with him.
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that I have been trying (with no success) to catch a carp for a damn long time. For some reason these fish have gotten under my skin. It’s the challenge, the novelty and the fact that there really aren’t too many fish that broach double digit weights and can take you into your backing multiple times during a fight.
Peter is an old hand at carp fishing, so I was pretty excited to spend some time in the boat and learn from him. Shane and I have never fished for these damn things out of a boat, so maybe that’s been our problem. We were joined by Peter’s old friend Pat who was visiting from across the pond. Pat doesn’t do a whole lot of fly fishing, but still agreed to come along and enjoy the day.
I’ve always liked fish that actively chase down flies. There is nothing like the adrenaline burst of stripping a fly back and watching some big, dark shape chase it down and try to eat it. I never would have imagined that carp would do that. But they do.
The angler, perched on the very bow of the drift boat, would spot a fish, put the fly a few feet in front of him, throw a big upstream mend to let it sink, then twitch it away right under their nose. Pretty damn cool to watch 10-15 pound fish move out of their way and attack a little black fly.
Photo by Peter King
Fishing turned out to be a bit slow that day. They had just bumped the flow out of Toston Dam that morning so that put the fish on edge. Still, we got a lot of chases. They were interested, just unwilling to commit.
One thing we all noticed was how quiet it was. That particular stretch of river runs through open ranch and farm land. It isn’t lined with vacation homes and the nearest highway is far enough away you can’t even hear it. It was the last week of July, the very peak of the tourist season, and we saw one boat and three other anglers all day long. Not many places you can find that around here at this time of year. That alone makes carp fishing worth it.
Ever seen carp eat off the surface? It’s just about the weirdest damn thing you’ll see. You can study a foam line in a back eddy and you’ll see dark backs and bright orange lips pushing through the debris. If you can put just about anything (say, a hopper) in front of them, they’ll eat it. An afternoon shower had popped up, and cloudy conditions are not very conducive to sight fishing. We were targeting rising fish in the foam lines when I dropped a hopper right in front of one and watched those nasty orange lips close around it…
Holy shit, I’d hooked a carp.
Photo by Peter King
Never in this state have I had a fish fight as hard as that. Or for as long. Or weigh as much when we finally brought it in. It felt damn good to hold that slimy, stinky bastard and check that one off my list.
Throwing dries to the feeding fish brought Pat his first carp, and Peter managed to get one to eat a Silvey’s Leech. He kept saying that the fishing usually is a lot better, so hopefully we can make it back out there again sometime soon. Even though not a whole lot of fish were caught, being able to check that one off my list made it a damn good day. There’s been lots of those this summer…
