Rough Fish

My first destination fishing of the year is an Easter trip to West Texas for carp on a certain Rio Grande trib. I also think I finally found a local mulberry spot on the banks of the Hudson (scouted it late last fall). Carp are fun.
 
My friend said the outflow of the Lancaster sewer was packed with carp this past weekend. I guess they like the warmer water.
And for the same reason, nearly as soon as the ice melts off the lakes they start to congregate in the shallowest, mud bottom coves. You may not know that they are there though because they don’t splash around like they do in late May or June when spawning in similar habitat. Certainly, by the middle of March they should be in those shallow coves and if we have more weather like that of yesterday, they’ll show up on similar days even before mid-March. As long as we don’t have a sudden cold front go through around March 14, the walleye closure date, in good channel cat lakes the larger specimens will also show up in those coves followed at the end month by striped bass hybrids mixed in with the carp if the hybrids are in the lakes that you fish.
 
Thought i’d start a thread dedicated to rough fish. This could be carp, suckers, fall fish, catfish, or any other fish that people often ignore or don’t target. I’ve always enjoyed targeting specifically white suckers on the fly. Anyways i’d love to see any pictures of fish you guys are catching that you’d consider rough fish, or any flies you tie to target them. I’ll start things off with a nice white sucker I caught today on a pink scud.😁View attachment 1641240351View attachment 1641240350
Nice fish. I was wondering if they had started to make thier move. I’ve been mostly ice fishing lately so I haven’t checked out local streams. I used to see a ton of suckers entering a creek on the Delaware this time of the year under the right conditions. Reminded me of a salmon run. I might have to take ride over and check. Thanks for thread.
 
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