Martyn White | Thursday, 25 July 2024
Just a quick one from me this week. It's boiling in Japan, a few places were over 40 Celsius this week, luckily we only had 38 here with 90% humidity so Chuck an I took advantage of the clement weather to do a bit of carping.
Chuck came down to my local as it's teeming with fish and an ideal place to get someone started in carping. Chuck has caught the odd one before but more but chance than design. SO we met and headed up the river spotting fish on the way. Actually I didn't fish much, being more interested in getting Chuck onto a fish, I might have made four shots all day, but that was fine.
We got set up in the shade of a bridge and I showed Chuck the drag and drop on a neutral looking fish that surprisingly ate the fly- a nice 9lb fish to start the day. As we moved along we were seeing a lot of fish mooching around the surface so I gave him a woolly worm to put on. In the beginning all his shots were too far away, but at least they were mostly in front of the fish! Eventually he put a couple of good shots in but got refused, then had an eat that he didn't set on because he couldn't see the fly, but was trying to look for it rather than watching the fish. I suggested switching to a glo-bug which worked, but the next 3 eats he got went unseen and unhooked.. the fly hadn't completely disappeared, he didn't feel it, he didn't realise it had eaten the fly. These are all pretty typical things when I have tried to get people started carping on the fly. So after all these fish being spooked but not caught we stopped for a drink and a wait. A pod of fish appeared and Chuck put his egg in front of one, a bit far away but not terrible. The target fish didn't eat but a crucian swam a good 4 feet to eat the fly.. cruicians almost never eat, and they don't eat big glo-bugs. Chuck is spooky like that-when I took him seabassing for the first time he caught a rare blackfin seabass, I've only ever caught 2 of them in years on the bay! Anyway, he was off the mark and had started to get the visual cues.
My local is a very target rich environment so there are loads of opportunities and chuck had a plenty, some shots were good, many weren't but he was dialing things in and my advice was gradually percolating and starting to take effect. AS we moved downstream it was back to a weighted fly, I gave him a scruffy bug with a fluo. pink tail so he could see it. I really wanted him to read the fish rather than focusing on the fly but that will take time. He caught a fish under a bush on the far bank, the shot was perfect and he didn't need to drag & drop because the fish don't spook from things dropping off the bush. A small fish, but well earned. A bit further on we found a nice fish hanging in an eddy that he didn't get a shot at, I can't remember what went wrong but the shot didn't happen. Luckily the area wasn't spooked and there were fish periodically moving out of the current to the slack water, the next one to come in sat calmly feeding while Chuck's first drag and drop put the fly behind the fish. Fortunately it gave him another chance and he put the fly about 8" in front of the fish's right eye, it turned charged and ate so clearly that he was in no doubt and set the hook. The fish took off down stream and around a bush which meant a bit of a mad scramble to get it to the net, but we did. A nice little carp of around 3lb caught at close range in clear water. That's about as good as it gets.
Aside from starting a new sight fishing addiction, it was good to get him a bit of practice at seeing fish before the Okinawa trip, he'll need to practise a lot more and do a lot more work on his casting. But he's started on the road to the flats now.