Dry fly fishing for carp

I spent a few hours hunting for smallmouth bass and carp in the Passaic River.  I was surprised
that I saw few feeding carp in an area where I had caught a huge carp last September.

I quickly got back on a bus and rode to an access point near Woodland Park.  I did catch
a small smallmouth bass using my go to fly, a white woolie bugger but carp were not feeding
there either.

The next day started slow as I fished my white woolie bugger.  Carp were foraging  in the
shallow part of a lake.  Try as I might, cast after cast to feeding carp was ignored.
I was using a 3X tippet with a non slip knot.  Finally I had a take and the fish had me watching
my backing peel off my reel and then my tippet snapped.  The fish was gone.

I sat down and tied on a 2X tippet.  My assortment of fluorocarbon tippets is a few years
old and it may be time to throw out the old.  I hate losing fish but especially when the lose
is due to using equipment that has become old and brittle.

The change in tippet worked.  The next carp fought long and hard but was landed, photographed
and released.

The next fish was a beautifully marked Mirror Carp.  I was especially happy that I didn't lose
this fish.  I have caught a few mirrors each year but I have never seen markings like this.

The most exciting way to fish for carp is dry fly fishing for them.  The very first carp I ever
caught was taken on a deer hair fly that was about 30 feet away from where I stood on the
river bank.  Stealth, Patience and Accuracy must be used to catch carp while fishing with flies

Kettle Ponds fishing

For years I have used Google Maps to look for new places to fish.  I never fished Kingfisher Pond,
a kettle pond, before because I believed this to be a Preserve.

 Kingfisher Park is named for the bird that eats fish here.  Eibbs Pond on Staten Island
 is a kettle pond too.






There are frogs, turtles, bluegills and a few carp here.  While I was not able to see the carp
there was clear evidence that carp live here.  I witnessed a few "emergency blows" as carp
become aware of something they did not expect to encounter.

This pond is just as secluded as the other kettle ponds I 've fished.

Kettles are fluvioglacial landforms occurring as the result of blocks of ice calving from the front of a receding glacier and becoming partially to wholly buried by glacial outwash. Glacial outwash is generated when streams of meltwater flow away from the glacier and deposit sediment to form broad outwash plains called sandurs. When the ice blocks melt, kettle holes are left in the sandur. When the development of numerous kettle holes disrupt sandur surfaces, a jumbled array of ridges and mounds form, resembling kame and kettle topography.^[1] Kettle holes can also occur in ridge shaped deposits of loose rock fragments called till.^[2]

Kettle holes can form as the result of floods caused by the sudden drainage of an ice-dammed lake. These floods, called jökulhlaups, often rapidly deposit large quantities of sediment onto the sandur surface. The kettle holes are formed by the melting blocks of sediment-rich ice that were transported and consequently buried by the jökulhlaups. It was found in field observations and laboratory simulations done by Maizels in 1992 that ramparts form around the edge of kettle holes generated by jökulhlaups. The development of distinct types of ramparts depends on the concentration of rock fragments contained in the melted ice block and on how deeply the block was buried by sediment.^[3]

Most kettle holes are less than two kilometres in diameter, although some in the U.S. Midwest exceed ten kilometres. Puslinch Lake in Ontario, Canada, is the largest kettle lake in Canada spanning 160 hectares (400 acres). Fish Lake in the north-central Cascade Mountains of Washington State, USA, is 200 hectares (490 acres).^[4]

A kettle in the Isunngua highland, central-western Greenland

The depth of most kettles is less than ten meters.^[5] In most cases, kettle holes eventually fill with water, sediment, or vegetation. If the kettle is fed by surface or underground rivers or streams, it becomes a kettle lake. If the kettle receives its water from precipitation, the groundwater table, or a combination of the two, it is termed a kettle pond or kettle wetland, if vegetated. Kettle ponds that are not affected by the groundwater table will usually become dry during the warm summer months, in which case they are deemed ephemeral.^[

Bass

I am going to repeat myself, fishing is slow because we are experiencing a heat wave. Most
of  Prospect Park's lakes surface is covered by algae.

Jay wanted to experience fishing in Prospect Park Lake for bass.  The bass fishing is excellent
in Brooklyn.  Big bass are caught frequently.  It is not easy but it can be done.

The New York State Department of Enviormental Conservation, takes surveys of the lakes on
Long Island.  What these surveys show is that from Flatbush Avenue, in Brooklyn to the Montauk Light
House, at the eastern most tip of Long Island; Prospect Park Lake is the best bass fishery
on Long Island.

The lake is the second largest in the City of New York ( 60 acres).  It has lots of structure too.
There are fallen trees and lily pads for bass and other fish to hide.   The lake in Fresh Meadows,
Queens is larger but it is a tidal lake ( 100 acres) and has no bass.

Jay with his second bass in an hour.

Warinanco Park

Warinanco Park is another of those New Jersey urban lakes that features trout fishing
during the season.

There are catfish, bluegills,maybe a few carp too.  During my visit I saw numerous
turtles.  But no fish activity at all.

The sighting of turtles raises a warning red flag about this lake.  Fishing a lake like this means
trouble, especially during the "dog days of summer" when water temperatures can be excessive.

The pass few days the weather temperature has been nearly 100F.  Fishing is slow.

There is not much more I can add about Warinanco Lake.

Third River carp fishing

One of the toughest places to catch feeding carp is the Third River as it passes through Nutley,
New Jersey.  I noticed that carp in the river are extremely cautious about everything.
Whether you are using flies or bait, fishing here is tedious and slow.

But carp do feed and if you study their behaviour you will catch carp that are "untouchables".
"Untouchables" is the term I use for carp that seem to be immune to standard fishing tactics.
Carp will eat things that do not spook them.

A few seasons ago I was fishing for carp when a man asked me if he could have a nymph
pattern I had in my fly box.  Now this fellow was not a fly fisher.  He wanted to use the fly
because he had no bait.  I gave him the fly.  He cast the hares ear into the lake and that is where
it stayed for about 45 minutes.    I continued fishing.  Suddenly the man became excited as his fishing
line moved across the lake.  A carp had taken the fly and was hooked.

I saw this behavior again in the Third River a year or so later.  I spooked a pod of feeding carp. What I noticed about their behavior was that they very slowly returned to the same spot where they had been feeding earlier.

So the next time I spooked a pod, I decided to cast my fly to the area the spooked fish had
abandoned and let it lie there on the bottom.   A minute, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, after about
twenty five minutes, the carp returned  and took my fly from the place where I had cast it.   It was
amazing to watch as the carp expanded their swim pattern to return to a feeding area.

Today I caught two nice looking carp by letting my fly lie on the river bottom for about twenty minutes
or so.  If you have difficult carp try it.

Carp fishing in small lakes

This is what happens when your fly rod snaps under the assault of an aggressive carp.
The last couple of carp I have hooked have been able to put up tremendous fights.  This one
swam the length  of half the lake.  To keep the distance down I ran along the lake shore and
tried to corral this charging carp.

I became inpatient with trying to land this brute.  He give hard head shakes, runs to the center of
 the lake and a determined effort to teach me a lesson.  In short, he had me confused.

Things were  not going according to my plan.  I tried to "horse" the fish in.  It didn't work.
For the first time ever, my rod snapped at the ferrule.  I stood in disbelief, looking at my now
five foot long fly rod.  This fish was still on but there was no way for me to land him.   So I took
a photo of the fish in the water.

Bags of chum (dry dog food in PVA bags)  If chumming works for you, try using PVA bags.
The bags which dissolve in water, help to keep water fowl away and allow for a controlled
release of of chum.

Carp and chum

More dry fly fishing.  During the dog days of  summer fishing becomes slow.  The heat during the day
is numbing, for the fish especially.  I often leave home , to go fishing in the afternoon as the day's heat
begins to subside.  At a lake where dry fl fishing for carp is routine. every evening carp begin to eat bugs
from the lake's surface.  First from the very center of the lake and as the sun sets, they rise for chum.  I
provide.  Chumming is NOT  a  slam dunk as some believe but can cause fish to actively feed.