Mirror carp on a 3/4 weight fly rod

After being "skunked" at Clove Lake Park on Staten Island,

I decided to take my act to  Loeb Lake in Central Park, the next day.

 Armed with an ultra light fly rod, I began looking for carp.

Central Park has an abundance of turtles, as do most urban lakes and ponds.

So you must try to keep nuisance fish away.  Today there were scores of 

turtles looking for handouts from the tourists that want to see the turtles

that gather here,

It was almost dusk when I got a take.  There was no power run like most

carp make. I thought I was stuck on some debris in the lake.  Slowly,

I was able to budge the line a little, not much but enough to let me know

that I was not hung up on something. I thought it was a big snapping turtle

I had to pump my rod and retrieve line. This was a slow process because

there was a tremendous weight on the fly line. After several minutes of this,

I was able to put line back on the fly reel. My rod was bent completely in half,

I was making progress. Finally I saw the carp's mouth. I had an onlooker take

my net and I steered the carp into the net.  My first mirror carp in a couple

of years,

 

King Fisher Pond

I've  been anxious to fish King Fisher Pond for some time because it is one of the cities kettle ponds

Kettle Ponds were formed more than fifteen thousand years ago when glaciers left this area; leaving

pockets in the earth's surface. Some of these pockets have their own source of water. Other kettle ponds

are filled with water when it rains.

King Fisher has bass, bluegills, crappie, and catfish. Bringing an ultra light fly rod like a 2 wt

is a blast!

One problem is there are water plants, lots of them.  causing hooks to snag on them.

I fished a #12 green hornsberg.

I switched to a #12 black stalking bug. I wanted to try and catch a bass. 

 

Hughes Lake

One of my favorite places to fish is Hughes Lake. It was the best carp lake in the greater

 New York area. In an effort to improve the quality of the lake, it was drained and dredged.

Bass were added to the lake and many of the large carp were released into the Passaic River.

The established patterns that the carp had, are long gone.  It is challenging now to find 

where carp are holding.  The lake is deeper than it used to be. The lily pads are new too.

 After observing the behavior of some of the carp, I realized that the carp were closer to the edge of the lake and tailing there.  I lost a few in the lily pads but caught this one on the Blue Maxcatch glass rod

using the old Thinkfish Bold semi automatic fly reel.

Kissena

I traveled back to the place where I caught my biggest carp ever, Kissena park lake.

In April 2013, at the end of the day my buddy, Dennis and I hooked two large carp.  We were

using deer hair flies on # 10 hooks.  We saw several really big carp feeding on the surface.

 To say that we were excited is an understatement. We had just climbed a fence to get into

 this place in the park.  Our backs were up against a wall. There was no room to back cast.

  But we used Spey casting technique to reach the open mouths of these fish.

 It took me an hour to finally land my fish It made more than eight runs across

the lake.  A few years later, the lake had an emergency that required The Department of Parks to pump water into the lake in order to raise the oxygen levels.  Fish did die. Today was the first time

 I returned to the lake. And, I was skunked.