Cold Soup

The water in the river is warming up, but there is still no sign of fish in the shallows. Carp aggregate during the winter and, once the water warms sufficiently, probably move as a group towards the shallows in anticipation of spawning. I think it very likely they will appear all at once. Flats that have been barren for months will quite suddenly fill with fish. The forecast next week is for some calm days with highs in the 70s. I have my fingers crossed.

Some of the small lakes and ponds are warmer and the fish have begun to move around, but the water level is high and the clarity is somewhere between blended spinach and pureed peas. Visibility is so bad that even in the shallowest areas, it is very hard to spot the fish. Often, the only thing to see is the line of a back, or the orange lobe of a tail.

It’s easy to sneak within a rod’s length of these fish, but they are surprisingly hard to hook. It’s nearly impossible to follow Rule Number 2: don’t cast until you can see their head. Dapping blind is a low percentage move, and foul hooking a fin is a real risk. That didn’t stop me from trying a few time this week. There is a lot of guesswork involved – how long the fish is, the depth of the water, what angle the fish is at, whether it is turning right or left. In the turbid water it’s necessary to get the fly literally within two to three inches to entice an eat. I got lucky once when I dropped the fly in the middle of three tailing fish. I counted the fly down and then lifted gently and hooked one fish right in the middle of the top lip. The better option was to wait patiently for a fish to give me a good enough look to see it eat. Usually that meant finding a fish in very shallow water, or finding one feeding near the surface. These opportunities were infrequent and brief, but when I did get the fly in front of fish, they ate. It was cold and not very glamorous, but that’s the carp fishing life in March.

Most of the fish I caught were in the 3-5 pound range, which is normal for that lake, but one fish I hooked in some flooded grass was easily ten pounds. I quickly horsed it to me and water released it so it could get back to eating. In a month that fish will put me into my backing.