A lot happened last weekend and I’m not sure I’m going to get it all in. Last weekend was my bachelor party at Lake Hardin. Between wrapping up the weekend and moving/preparing to move into our new house, it has been fairly difficult to sit down and talk about what went on. I’m going to save you all the ridiculousness that went on and stick to fishing-relating content.
The idea was to have a weekend on the lake where all we did was fish. Well, throw a handful of early to mid-20s guys on the water for a weekend and plans can change. Fortunately I was able to get in a decent amount of fishing during my time there.
While there I was able to exhaust my beetle and spinner flies and haul in bluegill almost on demand. It was nice and hot so they were extremely active on the surface. A well placed cast over a downed log or the old-abandoned boat ramp along with a few twitches of the rod and we were hauling in anything from fingerling bass to well over palm-sized bluegill. Nothing makes you feel like you suck less at fly fishing then when the bluegill mercilessly beat up your flies.
A pleasant surprise came later in the evening when the sun went down and the catfish started coming up and hitting any bright colored fly. I don’t typically hook cats on a fly so this was fairly new to me. They fought well, and I wasn’t complaining when hauling in a 1 1/2 to 3 lb catfish.
What I wasn’t ready for where the carp.
I had at least 3 hooked, but didn’t land a single one. I’m blaming it on my light leader. The fight didn’t last much longer than 5 minutes before the leader broke. I can finally say I understand why people fly fish for carp. When they take the hook the fight is unexpectedly tough. I’m assuming the ones we hooked were well over 5 lbs considering we saw a few come up to the surface and they were huge! Also, my leader was a 5 lb test.
I lost a lot of flies on carp last weekend, and it has given me the fever. After losing fly after fly my friend Panda took out his bow and shot one. We used it for catfish bait, which I highly recommend if you ever need something to do with a dead carp. We wanted to use it for gar fishing too, but I didn’t have a rig for it. I’d love to see someone haul in a gar on a fly.
So now it’s time to start tying some more flies. This time I’d really like to concentrate my tying efforts on some that’ll attract the carp. I’m gonna land one.
Count on it.
Tales from East Yahtam 