carpe diem

So it seems as though I’m still shooting .000 on catching a carp on the fly. Turns out the “carp” I thought I was catching on the Kanawha on streamers were actually “Buffalo” which are a completely seperate, and native, species. According to WVU research, buffalo are the most prevalant gamefish in the Kanawha River.

My experience with real carp is fairly limited. When I used to work at an environmental laboratory in Spencer my two coworkers and I would leave work at 5:00 and head to Spring Creek, between Reedy and Spencer, to tackle giant carp. Man that was a barrel of monkeys. Of course, we were using spinning rods in those days and normally baited up with corn. One time we were into so many giant carp that when storm clouds so thick they blotted out the sun arrived we decided to keep fishing instead of ducking for cover. That was a mistake. We were creekside when a lightening bolt hit about 50 yards from where we were standing. In order to get back to the car we had to run across a large open hayfield so instead we humped up in the willows along the edge of the creek and got battered with hail.

Those were the glory days for me and carp fishing. Hadn’t gone back after them at all until about 2 years ago when Lee and I decided that catching a giant carp on a flyrod seemed like a happening thing to do. That’s when we recruited the services of my good friend Andy who owns a flats skiff to take us out on the shallows along the Ohio River in search of giant carp. We found them alright, but no matter what we threw at them, we could not elicit a strike. I even tried chumming with real corn and then using a corn fly…that’s how desperate I was. Hey, it is a freaking carp, what ethics?!

On flyfisherman.com there is a messageboard solely dedicated to carp fly angling. We inquired the experts and found that carp will often suck up your fly and spit it out almost instantly once detected. In the depth of water we were fishing there was no way to tell if we had gotten strikes or not. Geez this ain’t gonna be easy. So it is back to the drawing board. I do intend to pull this off this summer, along with catching a gar on the fly.