What do you do after a long day of fly fishing for carp on the Columbia, after dinner has been eaten and the dishes have been washed? Go fishing for smallmouth bass!
sunset smallie
carp fishing at dusk
Here in the tropics, the seasonal shift in daylight hours is pretty minimal, from about 12 hours of daylight in the winter to about 14 in the summer. This has many advantages, but I cannot deny my fondness for those extraordinarily long summer days that can be enjoyed as one moves further from the equator.
This past summer in Oregon we settled into a pleasant routine of heading down to the river after dinner to enjoy the sunset. Initially I had plans of casting bait for carp while we sat and enjoyed the twilight, but after several fruitless evenings, we shifted to smallmouth bass.
For me, carp fishing is a focused and intense experience, but these evening sessions were pure joy. We caught a lot of fish, but it wasn’t really about fishing at all, just about taking pleasure in the last moments of the day.
The Fishing Dojo 