Bernd Ziesche | Wednesday, 15 July 2015
During the past week Marina and I still have been fly fishing for carp. Having caught a fair number of carps on fly during the past decade my mission was to catch a serious big one this summer. Heavy target for a fly fisherman of course!
We fished every day (almost) from dawn until dusk. Fair to say we saw a few large shadows in between smaller ones passing our position during the days. But it was in the late evening when one of them couldn’t resist my fly and finally took it. It was one of these days in which I couldn’t stop fishing and it was exactly that what paid off again. Ok, Marina probably would claim to never have spent a day fishing with me in which I stopped fishing early!
Catching large carp – that to me is 10+Kg – definitely isn’t easy with a fly rod. We need to spot the fish first and then mostly we will have one (maybe two) presentations before the fish will be spooked or at least hesitate to take the fly (which they do mostly anyway). So I was pretty much satisfied to have caught at least one of them.
Of course Marina watching me catching that fish then wanted to catch such a fish either! I taught her all the details of where and how to present the fly. One of the main things to learn is to understand the angle of refraction and depending on the distance between the carp and the surface to estimate the perfect position for the fly. Usually large carps do not like it much to rise for a fly and they even less like to go down for a fly. So the key is in presenting the fly in the water depth where the fish is and then don’t force him to leave his course. Make the carp to just have to open his mouth and you may be in the game!
In the end of the week something remarkable happened. Marina suddenly got pretty nervous and started to cast her fly to a spot not far of her position. For a moment she wasn’t moving and then she hit it. A large fish was on – what a fantastic moment to share! After a serious fight she released the fish – a fantastic carp. For a moment I thought that carp to look quite similar to the big one I caught 4 days earlier.
The next day I checked our two pictures and compared: Indeed we both managed to fool the same carp to take our fly. Seemed as if this one carp was a bit more willing to take our flies as were the other few big ones we saw! I have seen that with different species of fish. Often there is one among them who is in a striking mood for quite a while and based on that he may even get caught several times. Marina and I both agreed to not want to catch that fine fish again. Great to know he is back home now. Our mission was done!
At the moment I am back home running a few fly casting courses while heading for pike and pike perch in between.
Hopefully you had a great week either and could nail down your mission as well!?
All my best
Some pictures of the past week…