It has been a public relations coup any politician or spin-doctor would love on their resume. The single most derided fish in freshwater has become trendy.
Somehow, that scum-sucking scourge of the waterways, the carp, is being described as the bonefish of inland waterways. Big name magazines are devoting pages to the where, how and why. Hell there are even Carp On Fly schools up and running. The Michigan Lower Peninsula this past summer became Carp Central USA, with otherwise well-credentialled and sensible trout fly fishers running around like schoolboys, talking excitedly of golden shapes across sand flats rather than their normal urbane cool towards the Brown drake and Hexagenia hatches.



One of my acquaintance, a highly-regarded author, guardian of endangered native trout, and angler of high skill and ethics, was informing all and sundry in an affected British accent that his new nickname was “Chumley”, while brewing up fearsome batches of corn based berley (chum to US readers) in order to get “one bloody carp” to eat his flies.
My local club has an annual Carp Fest social competition and barbecue_ the trophy for a biggest carp is a sculpture of the scum sucker, appropriately made from cow manure. Even Flip Pallot hauled his skiff north for a recent episode of Walker Cay Chronicles on the Michigan flats with the master Dave Whitlock.
Funnily enough, carp are still the same fast breeding, out competing, highly adaptive species that has spread through inland waterways virtually all over the globe. In most places they are still a pest, a noxious import that shouldn’t be there, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t fun to catch.
Carp fishing used to be an esoteric little backwater of fly fishing, the sort of thing you wouldn’t bring up until knowing your companions well, and one of those things done Hillary style “because it is there”, and the more favored trout aren’t.
Increasingly fly fishers are coming to the realization that carp are a challenge to hook on the fly, grow and damn site bigger than a trout and pull a lot harder. In most places, they are more accessible, with carp able to tolerate warmer, more polluted waters in cities and climates across the globe.

Carpe Carpio
Finding a place to fish for carp is a damn sight easier than seizing one. Carp inhabit inland waterways across Australia, Europe Asia and the US. Even the polluted drains of Los Angeles hold their share of monsters. The US Great Lakes flats, particularly those near Traverse City, have become the Mecca for flyrodders due to publicity this last summer, but there would be few impoundments without them, and I’ve watch 20 and 30 pound carp leaping on a local lake in Arkansas.
Australia’s inland river systems have plenty as to the warmer inland lakes through NSW and Queensland.
Most people think of carp as scum suckers, in fact they eat most foods familiar to trout fishers. Insects, nymphs, yabbies (crawfish) and they are also known to take some fibre for their diet including seeds, berries or other wild fruit, corn.
I guess I was slow to be convinced by the whole carp bug myself despite having a secret carp spot close to my home in LA _ maybe the Australian abhorrence of the fish was involved. Back home there are desperate efforts to clean them out of inland waterways, and in many places its illegal to return them to the water alive. I preferred to stay out of the carp forays in Michigan, despite plenty of offers, instead chasing trout properly on dry flies.
But when I got back to Arkansas, I started to find myself increasingly on the carp flats, 10 minutes from home, until it was virtually every day.
Partly it was convenience but it was probably more due to the fact I was refusing to believe I couldn’t work out how to catch a carp. I was skunked repeatedly and so was everyone else I was fishing with. Of course when I finally managed a carp or two the camera was nowhere to be found!

Carp Flies
The list of carp flies is probably about as long as your leg. You can choose nymphs, streamers, egg patterns, dry flies or even white marabou “bread” flies or deerhair clipped to a corn kernel shape to match your berley.
Chum, or berley, is optional according to your personal tastes in these matters. Certainly it may help you to both find carp in murky water and to get them eating _ two of the key factors we will examine below, but I guess I’ve been brainwashed enough to consider it vaguely cheating. Besides there is a challenge in doing the “proper” way.
In this vein I prefer to use nymphs, the first a size 12 or 14 plump Hares Ear with a turkey wingcase, under the smallest indicator I can get away with, usually a white Lightning Strike football.

If I could fish my hole without and indicator I would, but it’s convenient to set the depth, and avoid the worst of the debris scattering the bottom, and in detecting subtle takes. Pheasant Tails and plain dark brown nymphs have also worked. Fellow carp chaser Todd Moncrieff likes the Clouser Swimming Nymph or lobbing Shane Stalcup’s crawfish imitation, the Crazydad in brown. Egg patterns are also productive in orange or yellow.
I’ve read of carp tackle being used in the 10-weights but this is overkill, and really not stealthy enough for the areas I fish anyway. A 6 weight or 7 weight is all you need, even for big carp, although you may need a bit more backing than you are used to on your reel, particularly on big lakes.

Carp Lessons
Firstly I have to say the carp are still winning, so these aren’t the words of a carp expert but I know a fair bit more about carp than I did at the start of summer, from my losses probably more than successes.
Most of the carp fishing you read about is across the flats of lakes, where tailing or mudding carp can be found. My carp hole is different, a spring creek, trickling down along a major state highway, with the service entrance of a shopping centre as a backdrop, but if you keep your eyes below the banks it could almost be trout water.
The flow isn’t strong here, but enough so you have to mend regularly, and it takes a few days to clear after rain _ which is the first important lesson.
Sightfishing to carp raises your chances of success tenfold. I’ve taken carp blind drifting a fly, so it does work, but the rate per hours spent fishing is too low for my liking. High sun helps spotting the blighters, whose bronze color blends particularly nicely in the stained water I fish. But once your eyes become accustomed to finding cruising carp, or those lying on the fin they can be relatively easy to spot due to their sheer size. And in the spring and fall, sunny days stimulate their metabolism for them to start feeding.
Lesson two is that feeding carp are a damn sight easier to catch than those fish cruising a pool (often in pairs), those lying at rest, and particularly those annoying fish rolling on the surface to fully illustrate their size. Feeding fish can often be found “mudding”, the carp’s practice of sifting silty bottoms searching our their food, usually the carp is just behind the first stain of silt. You can also often spot the flash of a feeding carp as it rolls nose down to feed.
Lesson Three is that carp are spooky. They are quickly aware of sudden movements, noisy wading and the like. A drifting flyline will cause them to shy away from their path, as will indicators, even a dry used as a dropper. The plink of a fly can sometime spark a feeding reaction but land your cast too heavily or too close to a carp and the resulting bow wave will let you know you have messed up. But stand still and they will return, often through the same paths, or beats as trout fly fishers know such behavior. Similarly they will run from the sight of your flyline tip retrieved across the pool, when twitching a Clouser or Crazydad.

Carp Fishing
So you have found a feeding carp, the standard practice would be to cast across or upstream to present your fly into its feeding zone. It’s not a bad start but your cast will have to be good, to put the fly into the carp’s feeding window and avoid spooking the fish. If you are fishing a nymph its harder still as invariably they won’t move far. Good luck!
The problem I’ve found stems from the length of flyline floating laterally across the carp’s vision, and not just the target carp but those who inevitably wander between you and fish you are after. Carp will often move at the sight of the drifting line or indicator or both. Thirdly, although the drift is slow in my hole its often enough to whisk it out of the path of a feeding carp, before being spotted or felt.
My solution for much of the summer was to ignore convention and fish downstream, virtually straight at a targeted carp. I was fishing at 90 degrees to the sun’s rays but happily enough there was a stand of darkgreen treses at the far end, clearing glare enough to see the feeders. Careful manipulation of the line and fly mean you can almost stall the fly downstream of the indicator and leader, and leave it for the carp to find, much in the same way that lake carp experts do.
The next major hurdle is actually working out when there is a take. I have watched a large specimen suck in and spit out an egg pattern before my eyes, and certainly before my reflexes, without twitching the indicator. Sometimes you will see a standard indicator movement, or a swirl on your fly, but by the most part you have to read the carp’s behaviour
My first two carp fell to this technique, the smallest running 22-24 inches, the first several inches longer both within about 30 minutes from the same pool. For one afternoon I thought I had cracked the code, but its just part of the picture.
Carp are demanding because they demand skill in spotting fish, skill in presenting your fly and skill in working out when to lift the rod. After all that the fight is relatively easy, just quick repeated runs into your backing, and a dogged determination to avoid being beached. If you’re a trout fisher, this will test your patience, your wrist strength and importantly your ability to deal with a heavy fish on light tackle. Don’t use the standard vertical rod trout tactic. Jam the butt of your rod into your belt or belly, get the tip low and at 45 degrees to the line to the fish, and bend the rod into the butt. You can safely double the pressure on the fish this way, which shouldn’t matter on 5x or 4 x tippet.
Otherwise, you risk over stressing the fish and a mortality on your hands.

For other carp fishing references check out
Carp on the Fly: A Flyfishing Guide by Barry Reynolds, Brad Befus, John Berryman and Dave Whitlock. Johnson Books.

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