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.