Butt Kicking Mud Wrestling Carp

I had an appointment to get the oil changed in the truck this morning. Well - on the way back home, I just happen to pass a well known carp hole. Since I was in the area... I figured I should let my inner redneck shineYou can see the mud puffs in the middle of this pictures. There are carp feeding at the upstream end (left side) of the puffs. Yeah you - I got your number!!! Lots of people use the C&O Trail as a part of their running path. Little do they know that there are a bunch of mud wrestling beasts just hanging out waiting to kick some butt! Well - I got my butt kicked - but I was using a tenkara rod to even up the odds. I got the carp to take the Montana Hybrid fly (awesome fly by the way - google it if you are interested) and as I set the hook, I started looking for a place to get down the embankment... should have thought about that before I cast the fly. I got the fish turned a couple of times and they it bolted and took the tippet with it. I lost a good fly - the carp got a new "lip piercing". You win some, you lose some! I walked around a bit looking for more carp - they were there - I'll have to come back with a 6 wt (so I can use 2X tippet and win the wrestling match). This was the first time I had been to the Lock 7 area when the leaves were not filled in. You could see all the accesses to the other cuts. I tried walking through some of the brush last year and got hit by poison "something growing in the weeds" - I had flashbacks of the bad itchy scratchies. I just got hypochondriatic heebee jeebees...

Look But No Touching - Turned Down By The Locals

Based on last week's carpocalypse, I figured going back to Lock 7 to fish on Saturday morning would be a surefire way to fill my stoke bank. The weather this week has been awesome - Fall temperatures and low humidity. Very comfortable for humans, but for cold blooded animals the lower temps slow things down. I saw five carp just hanging out in the canal - but they weren't interested in any of the flies I presented. I was looking for feeders grubbing around the bottom and I saw mudding plumes and bubble columns, but instead of feeding carp, I learned that turtles generate the same signs. This turtle was huge - hard to gain scale from the picture but it was about 24" in diameter. The heron in the picture did catch a fish. Just minutes before this picture it had caught and eaten a decent sized carp. Sometimes it's okay to not catch fish.

Lock 7 Carping

I went to Lock 7 along the C&O Trail this morning. I got two carp to take my flies - the first was one of my pink sabiki flies, the second was a pink squirmy wormy - but both broke off. I did catch four bluegill - I'll be back to this place - this year I wanted to catch a snakehead, a gar and a carp - this is the place I'll catch the carp (target rich environment).