Mulberry Watch, Part 2

I got out this past Saturday in the few hours to fish the stretch between Fletchers and Georgetown again. Some of the mulberry fruits are beginning to show light shades of red, but we still have some time to go. Strangely, or maybe not, some of the trees were a little deeper red than the picture, but others weren't even showing any red at all. With warmer weather coming up, we might see the fruit starting to drop next weekend, but certainly by Memorial Day at the latest. The other cue is there's lots of baby geese around now. They're cute, but their parents get a bit angry when you walk past.

Now as far as the fishing. There was some good and some bad.

The Good

• Very clear water - at least for the canal - with about 3 feet of visibility
• Very active fish - lots of fish were poking around, feeding, and cruising
• Very big fish - I'm fairly certain one fish (that wouldn't eat) was easily pushing 30 pounds

The Bad

• The water was extremely high - about 2 or 3 feet above normal. It was actually spilling over the overflow point that's a bit north of Key Bridge.
• A storm rolled in and ruined everything

I was quite surprised when I got to the canal and saw how much water was there. I wasn't sure if it would mean a ruined day or a good day. Turned out to be a little bit of both. It was very easy to find cruising fish. The bad thing was feeding fish were extremely hard to target. It was easy to spot the large plumes of silt, but because the water was so high, the feeding was happening too deep to actually see far enough through the silt to figure out where the fish were. To make it even worse, the silt clouds simply were not dispersing. 

Nonetheless, I still managed to stick two fish, Unfortunately, one escaped my net on my first landing attempt then popped the hook out, and the second fish broke me off while I was trying to scoop him. I pulled the hook out of countless other fish's mouths too.

I went with the Bonefish Gotcha again today after having success last week. I can't quite figure out this fly. Some feeding fish would ignore it, others would attack it very aggressively. I even got a few fish to eat that I never would have expected to pay attention to food with my old techniques. I also have a zero percent success rate in setting the hook if the fish is swimming towards me with this fly. That's the hardest way to set a hook on a carp, but I'd usually at least make contact on a few fish. Maybe it's just a coincidence. 

Keep your eyes out for the next report. I'm going to try to get a mulberry fly tying tutorial up soon too!

Carp on the Canal with a snakehead bonus

I got a couple hours yesterday to run out on the C&O Canal after some carp. I fished a different section than usual - from Georgetown to Fletcher's Cove. This is about a 2.5 mile stretch with minimal opportunity for true sight fishing (I'll get to what that means) outside of mulberry season, but lots of huge fish. Most of this section of the canal is too deep to see bottom, so the sight fishing here is really just finding "bank diggers," which are what I call the carp that are nosing against the banks looking for food. All you need to do is walk along the bank and keep an eye out for muddy water or slight surface disturbances emanating from the bank. The muddy water is the best indicator, but you usually can't see it as far away as the water disturbances. The water disturbances are easily seen and can be from the tail of the carp pushing water or even the back of the fish breaking the surface, but they can also be false alarms from sunfish or frogs. Either way, keep your eyes peeled even if you don't see either sign of a carp - some of them aren't mudding, but are still actively looking for food. Once you find the mud, look for the fish before doing anything. Once you locate the fish, you usually get one shot to drop your fly in front of it's mouth.

You might seen some other obvious signs of fish that are in the middle of the canal (air bubbles from when the carp takes a mouthful of silt), but that fishing gets tough since you need an indicator and have no idea how deep it is out there.

Yesterday, I saw 6 fish total, but only bagged one. I started out with the carp fly I typically use on the Potomac. I spooked the first two, then pulled the fly out of a fish's mouth. After I spooked one more with the Potomac fly, I switched to my normal, unweighted C&O special. The very next fish I saw ate and I got a good hook set. Without even slowing down, he took me out to about 25 yards of backing deep before I could turn him. After another 5 minutes or so, I brought him to the net and he weighed in at just over 9 lbs on my scale. Pardon the terrible carp selfie - no one passed by for me to get to take a picture again.

As a bonus, on the way back to my car, I saw what looked like a bait ball you would see going after pelagics, but with really small reddish-orange fish. Peering in, I saw a snakehead. I quickly switched over to a clouser minnow, dumped it into the fray, and got startled to all heck when I saw a second snakehead come out of nowhere and slam my fly. Unfortunately, the fight with what would have been my first ever snakehead was pretty short lived and my line broke after about 15 seconds. I lost sight of the second snakehead and couldn't draw one back out and elicit another strike. I later learned that what I saw wasn't actually a bait ball, but was almost certainly a snakehead "nest" of their fry. Apparently both the mother and father guard the fry and the strike on my fly was to protect the fry themselves. Pretty cool! The quality of the picture is mediocre since it was with a cell phone through my polarized glasses. Hopefully next time I'll have my big camera with the polarized lens on deck.

Makeshift Strike Indicators

When I found myself with all my strike indicators sitting at home in a situation that required one for success, I thought about how I could improvise. Thinking about the times I accidentally catch a leaf, I remembered how well it floated, but how it made casting hard. I came up with a great way of saving the day of fishing with my makeshift strike indicator. I plucked a blade of grass and tied the grass itself to my leader using an overhand knot. The grass will slide down the leader, so you'll need to have a surgeon's knot (or whatever your favorite knot it) connecting your tippet to give the grass a stopper. Tie your tippet the right length, leave the tag end of your surgeon's knot just a little longer than normal, and you've got a makeshift strike indicator! It's not the most durable, and it won't float back to the surface if you sink it, but grass is nearly unlimited in supply, it won't splash at all, and doesn't impede your casting. In a pinch, it can save the day!

A blade of grass can serve as a makeshift strike indicator in a pinch!

Phoenix Carp Fishing

After a conference in Arizona this past week, I found myself with some spare time for fishing. I hit up The Hook Up Outfitters for a couple trips, one being some urban carp fishing. My guide, Dale, took me to the Crystal Gardens, which is a community development with a bunch of ponds stocked with all kinds of carp and koi. Over the half day, he taught me the tricks to getting them to eat, and I pulled in about 5 fish. I went back out on my own the next afternoon and even more. Here's a few pictures, with some pointers for doing it yourself after the jump.

Urban Fly Fishing for Carp in Phoenix

Where to Fish

We hit the Crystal Gardens. This is a community where the ponds are open to the public. You can walk around every pond on the map. You need is a freshwater license. All of the ponds have fish. I only had time to explore a few of them. The ponds all range in size and, at least this past weekend, in water clarity. Some are crystal clear, while others have a foot of visibility or less. My favorite was the pond by the playground because it was one of the crystal clear ones.

What to Catch

There are several different kinds of fish in these ponds. The most common are a type of koi, but don't ask me to break down the species of koi because I have no idea. You'll find lots of different colors though. There's also a healthy population of common carp, with my guide witnessing one catch of a mirror carp. I saw a couple grass carp as I was walking around, too. Of course, there are a bunch of smaller largemouth bass in the 10-14 inch range. I'm sure in the next year or so, they'll keep growing to a decent size, but with the general lack of cover, I doubt you'll run into monsters.

Tackle to Bring

We used 5 and 6 weight rods. The fish are all nice sized, but not are huge, and there are few obstructions from which you need to muscle them away. No need to bring big rods for these guys. Check out my post on picking the right equipment for carp. Leaders need to be VERY light. These fish are spooky. You'll need to run 6X tippet or smaller. I caught all the fish on small egg flies. Orange was the most productive color for me, but pink and yellow also worked. I tried a hare's ear for a little while, but visibility was too much of an issue. I'd suspect a San Juan Worm or something similar would work too, but I never tried it.

Technique to get the Eat

The bad news is these are SPOOKY fish, and you probably have a legitimate shot at around 5% of the fish you will find. The good news is you will find hundreds off fish. To have success, all you need to do is walk around the ponds. Most of the fish swim counter-clockwise, so I walked clockwise. The ponds have a few feet of gentle sloping flats and drop off to about 4 or 5 feet deep about 10 feet out. You'll generally find several different behaviors:

• Fish eating algae off the edge of the wall
• Lone fish (sometimes a pair) poking along the ground on the flats for food
• Small schools of 4 or 5 fish slowly cruising along the edge of the flats or coming onto the flats
• Enormous pods of 50-100 fish cruising along

These fish are spooky. Have I mentioned that already? No? These fish are spooky. In the more clear ponds, they're more spooky. The technique is generally the same for all of the situations, except the wall eaters. Find the closest feeding fish (the further away you can accurately cast to it, the better) and figure out it's relative depth. The eggs sink slowly, so you'll need to lead it enough to have enough time to get it in front of the fish's face. On the first day, I used a tiny bit of split shot to help get it down, but on the second day, the splash would spook the fish. 

When these fish want the fly, they'll swim a few feet for it, so you don't need to be perfect - but you should still try. If the fish looks like he should have seen the fly, but doesn't eat, I found stripping it a few inches would sometimes get them to come after it. Even still, you'll probably have 80% of the fish being completely uninterested in it, and 10% refuse it last second. The remaining 10% are the ones you're looking for. If the fish ignores your offering, move on. There will be many more shots in these ponds. After the closest fish ignores it, go for the next closest. If they're grouped together tightly, you'll need to be careful casting to the next fish. Once one fish spooks, they'll often spook out the entire group. This is especially important on your first cast to the large pods of fish.

When you find a fish eating against the wall, you need to take a slightly different tactic. These guys will often be poking their mouth completely out of the water. They're generally keyed in on algae and pond scum, so you'll have a more difficult time getting it to eat. Your best bet is to gently drop it as close as possible to the fish, and hope you time it well between when he's coming out of the water to eat and when he ducks under to move a few inches down the wall.

Final Word

This should give you enough information to get out there and duplicate my success. It's always a riot catching fish in an an urban setting - in my opinion anyway. Next time you're in Phoenix, swing by Crystal Gardens and let me know how it goes!