Tully Carp 08/18/2010

[jdaddy]

Was doing maintenence to TU Tully house today and walked down to the stream as I noticed flows were real nice. As I have said before, really great looking water back there, but it is too warm to fish right now (for trout). Walking down the bank, I found a few large carp lying around. Having never targeted carp I went and grabbed my rod.

Tully carp are actively taking floating buggers close up on the banks. I was sighting them up on the banks, laying in the mounds of weeds, and tossing a bugger in front of them and letting it sit still with no action. This was in frog water in the very, lower sections of the creek. Black bugger, unweighted, floating. Couple of hours of fun.

 

[Acristickid]

Sounds fun.

 

[Fredrick]

Well how many did you hook ?

 

[sholgate]

One of the things that amaze me about the carp in there is that they are basically trapped. There is the Blue Marsh dam, the Grings Mill dam, and the lower Tully dam (just up from the Schyulkill river). As big as they are, they are not working up from the main river BUT they must always be in there. I've caught a couple over 18" (not trying, but surprised on nymphs) and always wondered, "where did you come from?" I guess I really don't understand the life of a carp.

 

[jdaddy]

Hooked and landed 3. Fun stuff.

I never really thought about the "how and why". Those are large bodies of water between the dams, the fish are very resilient and obviously reproduce well. Tons of grass, debris, etc for them to eat, lots of slow water. It's about perfect and no real need to "grow up big" in the Schyulkill move up into the Tully.

I thought that bottom dam (just above Schyulkill) was taken out in the last few years? Pretty sure it was, though I have not been down there.

 

[sholgate]

I was down there a couple of weeks ago, the dam is still there. It is why the water slows down and backs up in front of the Berks Co Leisure area. The last set of riffles under the steel bridge hold some nice fish, but just a hundred yards down, it is slow and warm. (Many good size rock bass though.)

It makes you wonder "what could be?"

 

[brookieaddict]

This time of year at the spillway its carp heaven.

 

[TossinFlies15]

There are some monster carp around my section of the swatty that I've shot with my bow but never on a fly rod. What will they take?

 

[jdaddy]

What will they take?

I have only fished for them that single time but they were taking a small black wooly bugger floating on top. They were shallow and grazing on something on top (could not see bugs and it was not grass like usual).

http://www.google.com/images?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=carp+flies&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=XsZ3TLK1LoSdlgelv-zrCw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CEQQsAQwAw&biw=1503&bih=693