Our friend Jeff from the blog Fly Fishing & Tying Obsessed visited Beaver Island with The Fiberglass Manifesto outing in July. Jeff put together a three part post with tons of pictures and commentary about his trip.
Jeff has threatened to return next summer and we hope that he does, a great guy to spend time with.
Part 1 The Carp Trip That Wasn’t
Part 2 The Carp Trip That Wasn’t- Continued
Part 3 Beaver Island Wrap Up- Pros/Cons/Lessons Learned
A few weeks ago we wrapped-up the fishing season on Beaver Island. It was a very cool summer, with water temperatures plummeting back to cold whenever the wind switched and unfortunately the wind shifted often.
Turbulent conditions makes for unhappy fish that just stay deep. This isn’t to say that we didn’t have many good days and many good fish but it was a tougher summer than usual.
Below are some pictures I liked from this summer that didn’t make it onto Third Coast earlier. The one is of a huge ship’s anchor I found while scouting one day. Asking around later, with the lower and clearer water, the anchor seems to be a new find.
While other fly fisherman look forward to mayflies, on the islands it is just the opposite. It turns what would otherwise be perfect conditions into a struggle to find and entice mayfly stuffed carp into eating just one more tiny morsel. You can still get some to eat but all too often a perfectly good tailing carp will simply move over, look at the fly and say, “I just couldn’t”.
For years we just didn’t understand what was happening, the carp would vanish and just about the time we’re ready to cancel the rest of our trips and pack-up for home, the carp would happily hit the flats again.
Thankfully we’re just coming out of what we call the “curse of the mayfly” and the fishing has been getting better the past several days. It is also thankful that we have jumbo smallies, that aren’t affected by the “curse”, like the fat 24 pictured below.
Check out the cool pic of the carp hoovering in a fly.
Our good friend Cameron Mortenson from the Fiberglass Manifesto will be returning to Beaver Island for the third straight summer and this time he’s bringing friends. Cameron will be hosting an outing in early July and by the amount of planning it is bound to be a great event. The inside scoop has it that Cameron’s outing was close to being filled even before he announced it, so don’t hesitate if your interested.
Beaver Island Outings:
Evan’s carptrip.com, June 21-24, 24-27 and 27-30
Fiberglass Manifesto, July 7-11
Rough Fisher, to be announced soon (July 11-16)
