A Bump in the Flows, Makes Them Go.

The beginning of July was all about the Mulberries.  Once they stopped it was all about the water levels, or lack there of.  I did have one great outing after an all day rain but after that it was pretty tough.  Water levels were so low that all my ambush points were dry.  Weeds were exposed and rotting in the sun make for some smelly and undesirable conditions.  Add that to me being exposed to someone who might have been in contact with a positive Covid-19 Person, and it made for a frustrating couple of weeks.  This past weekend though that all changed after we received rain and all persons exposed tested negative.

I spent most of the weekend up at my Mom’s taking care of some chores.  While I was north it was raining back home and it rained all day Sunday on my drive home.  Once I got unpacked and the rain stopped I grabbed my 8 wt. Scott Flex and headed to the river.  The river levels were back to normal but a bit muddy.  I didn’t care, all my spots were full of water again and they were full of actively feeding carp.  So many carp that I had to be extra careful sneaking up on them.  Lot’s of extra eyes to look for danger so I literally approached each spot at a snails pace to make sure I didn’t spook any at my feet.  Such was the case at my first stop.  I could see carp feeding about 10 yards ahead of me in some dirty water.  Before I moved on them I scanned the area carefully first and sure enough, there was a closer one not 5 feet from me.  I placed my fly in front of him and a second later he as hooked and headed for the main river.  I kept him close and after several failed attempts to get him into my net I finally landed him.

He trashed the area so I just moved on.  The next spots were more of the same.  Fish in all of them but with the dirty water it was hard to see them and because of that I spooked a lot of them.  I managed to pick up a few smaller ones as I bounced back and forth between my spots.  As I was leaning up against a tree, trying to figure out how I could get to a carp that was half under a bush, I saw a swirl downstream from me.  The water was rising now and getting dirtier so I figured I had a chance to sneak up on what was down there.  as I worked my way into position I could see 3 or 4 fish just ahead of a log.  I cast my fly up ahead of the group and let it drift down.  The first fish swam up to the fly and engulfed it.  I lifted up and off he went.  Fortunately for me he headed up stream and not down towards the log.  He was a bigger fish and since I was dealing with him in the current of the main river, I had my hands full.  I just let him run to tire himself out.  About 5 minutes later I was able to get him in the net.

After that one I headed for home.  It was starting to rain again and the river was getting dirtier and higher by the minute.  I had been out for about 2 hours and the river rose about a foot in that time.  Hopefully the levels don’t drop two feet in the next 12 hours like it did after the last rain we got.