Boiling Point

 Another old one I wrote for www.sexyloops.com

Although I fish for carp year round, I usually expect things to have slowed down quite a bitby mid October. Certainly as the days get shorter the amount of good light is reduced which limits the sight fishing. Temperatures have usually dropped too, moving the carp to different parts of the river and slowing their metabolism.

Not so this year. The ridiculous temperatures are keeping them active-it had already gone above 30 degrees by 11am on Monday! This week, after an earthquake left me stuck on a train for most of the night I didn't feel like going far so walked up my local stream after a lazy morning. I walked a few miles upstream and started at a weirpool that reliably holds fish year round. I got rigged up and immediately hooked a little fish on a backstabber. Moving downstream I started seeing a lot of fish moving near the surface and eating off the top. In October!

The local council haven't been as aggressive in cutting the bankside vegetation as they usually are and, although I couldn't see what it was they were eating, fish were definitely reponding to anything that dropped on the surface. They'd turn on the backstabber but immediately lose interest as it sank. It took a couple of fly changes but I eventually found something in my box that would plop enticingly but sink slowly enough to get an eat. The fish were oddly tolerant of repeated presentations and didn't seem possible to spook, but they were being very selective. Eventually I settled on a lightly weighted clouser crayfish that I ripped the claws off of. A perfect little caterillary beast, the fish agreed. I made my way downstream picking fish and getting loads of eats. I didn't hook a huge number, maybe only half a dozen out of 15, partly because of me and partly because carp aren't great at eating on and near the top. But it didn't matter I've caught millions of those small to mid size carp, I still had a lot of enjoyment out of the day even if the temperatures this late in the year are a little worrying.