We had two days of tough weather. Tough weather is almost always paralleled by tough carp fishing, no sun equals no carp. Then the weather turned warm and bright and so did the carp’s attitude.
Early in the morning we made the unusual switch to black and never turned back. I find that black is rarely a good choice but when conditions are right it is the best. On this day almost every carp we got the fly in front of would react in a positive way.
This fly is just an old black bunny leach but with a couple twists. Evan copied the six eyes from a friend’s pattern back in Missouri and then added a bright pink head. It worked!
Just before lunch I pointed out a big fish moving along the transition line to Evan who was on deck. It was a minute or so wait and I said to make as long a cast as he could right at the carp that was still 150 feet out. Evan made the cast, anxiously waited another minute and then stripped in line to perfectly intersect the carp. When the carp was about two feet from the fly, Evan gave it a strip, the carp turned, then tipped and the line tightened.
Textbook Great Lakes carp fishing.
As big fish often do, it headed-out and never stopped. Evan said that his backing was getting low and I hustled to pull anchor and start rowing. Evan said that at the point that he started gaining line he was down to about 20 wraps. Before the trip Evan had just made the switch from standard backing to the newest ultra-thin and we still would have gotten spooled if we hadn’t chased.
We weighed it a 32 pounds, Evan’s largest so far.
