2023 Carpin’ Thread

Great fish, hooker!! Your persistence is starting to pay off. Sometimes finding some brand new water and targeting some unsuspecting fish is the answer. Awesome job!
 
I was on the stream this morning at 5:45 stalking silt clouds. I had a brand new carp bug with me to change things up on them (every now and then, as hard as it is to do, it just needs to be done). Things have changed a lot over the past few weeks. The water is very low and extremely clear and the vegetation has either withered from dry conditions and fell over or it was flattened by the corn and bobber chuckers. Either way much of the vegetation that I used for cover all year is not in play anymore. I saw numerous feeding fish but really struggled trying to jockey for position to get a good shot at them. I spent a lot of time just watching and waiting hoping a carp would feed into an area that would give me a legitimate shot.

I actually only really took two shots at fish this morning and both of them slammed my new carp tie (a version of a Duracell Nymph tied as a carp bug). Sometimes just a different offering makes all the difference. I cleaned up a bit of trash along the stream from the corn chuckers that were there sometime earlier and chalked it up to a good morning of carpin’ (I hope nobody had to go to the ER for stitches after opening up the bottom of that can of corn). Tight lines and screamin’ reels - carpers!!

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Caught the skunk this morning. Spooked every fish I took a shot at, and that was in some seriously off colored water which made it really tough to figure out where I needed to be. Maybe I lined ‘em all!

Had my first face to face encounter with some competition this morning. I’ll keep after them, hope you all do the same.
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have a question for you carp guys. In a local steam I have a ton of carp that seem to be focused on eating in weeds. I’ve had multiple shots at them and can get them to consider my fly. They aren’t mudding but they make this sucking noise on to of the water. Any recommendations on how to target these fish?
 
marcq said:
have a question for you carp guys. In a local steam I have a ton of carp that seem to be focused on eating in weeds. I’ve had multiple shots at them and can get them to consider my fly. They aren’t mudding but they make this sucking noise on to of the water. Any recommendations on how to target these fish?
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“Clooping” carp in heavy weeds are tough. I have caught some over the years but you need to be in real close and softly dap your fly right into the zone where they are “clooping”. If you’re good enough to put your fly right in their mouth - all the better. The biggest problem is if you get tangled up in the weeds before the carp actually sees your fly it’s “game over”. Sometimes I think they are feeding on nymphs, sometimes they may actually be eating the weeds themselves or I think they occasionally just come up and suck some air - that’s when you need to flip it right into their mouth. It can drive you into the nut bin very quickly but it is doable.
 
My Carpin’ season is starting to wind down. Once bow season starts my Carpin’ is pretty much over for the year, but the month of September usually still provides an opportunity to stick a few more carp yet this year.

I went out this morning at daybreak and couldn’t close the deal on any this morning. The stream conditions are extremely low and clear in my home area of Lancaster Co. making for some very challenging carp fishing. I only had two legitimate shots at carp this morning. The first one clearly saw my nymph and aggressively followed it but just refused to eat it. The second one was a feeder in a deep section and all I could see was the tip of its tail and the bubbles. I tried to get in tight with it and spooked it badly, probably by either bouncing the fly off of the fish or lining it.

I hope to get out a few more times yet in September or possibly maybe end my carpin’ season by sticking one in the Juniata River at the WW jam in a few weeks. Good luck to all the late season carpers!
 
I've been doing a lot of drive-bys and finding nothing to cast to. Actually had reason to put my waders on today, but I have a feeling the mud clouds I found were actually turtles. No fish confirmed.

I also checked out some new water I'd been eyeing, but it looks a little too gnarly for even carp fishing. Seems possible it is actual outflow from a slaughterhouse/beef farm (and requires maybe trespassing to boot). Pass.

Back to almost 90 degrees here, so I was happy to quit after an hour or two of failure.
 
hooker-of-men said:
I've been doing a lot of drive-bys and finding nothing to cast to. Actually had reason to put my waders on today, but I have a feeling the mud clouds I found were actually turtles. No fish confirmed.

I also checked out some new water I'd been eyeing, but it looks a little too gnarly for even carp fishing. Seems possible it is actual outflow from a slaughterhouse/beef farm (and requires maybe trespassing to boot). Pass.

Back to almost 90 degrees here, so I was happy to quit after an hour or two of failure.
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Yep, sometimes it’s tough to distinguish between the carp and the turtles. There can at times be a subtle difference in the bubbles between carp and snappers. I’ve noticed that the bubbles created by the turtles are usually in fairly straight line as opposed to a pile of bubbles in the same area made by a carp with its head down rooting in the silt.

And yes, it is very important to be able to accept and take home the “skunk” with dignity when flyfishing for carp. If you have a serious issue with this, flyfishing for carp just might not be your game.
 
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