ive done well in spring and summer with hoppers as long as there are hoppers around i would feel comfortable fishing them for the carp
i use a 6x tippet and somtimes strieght 2# and landed 5# fish with out much trouble in unubstructed waters now if there is a lot of snags that might not work so well
honestly... if you know there are big carp in the lake, pond, river, whatever... fish with the heaviest rod you have, such as a 7, 8 or 9 weight rod. now, if there are smaller fish, then yeah, light tackle can be fun... but its a lot easier to fight them with a heavier rod.
I've done best with large nymphs similar to Clouser's swimming nymph or Brad Befus' carp nymph. I think Umpqua now sells the latter. When you have a lot of cottonwood "cotton" on the water, try a small clump of white CDC, and if you get a good hopper hatch, a floating or drowned hopper imitation can get you action as well. Some of my carp-fishing friends (fiends?) use various colors of wooly buggers with deadly effect as well. Finally, if the lake has a good crawdad population, bring some small (size 8 or smaller) crawdad patterns along, because the golden ghost of the mudflats will pounce on those as well.
As for tackle, I use everything from my 3-weight to my 7-weight on carp. It all depends on how many obstructions are present in the water (the more there are, the heavier the tackle should be) and how big the carp are likely to be. The little reel on my 3-weight doesn't have enough backing for carp much bigger than 5 pounds, but I've only been in danger of being spooled once on the 7-weight (150-yds of backing is a good thing if you stalk carp in a big river where they can get into the current). I vary my leader strength as a function of fish size, but rarely drop below 4 to 6-lb fluoro, normally use 8-lb, and may go as high as 12-lb when stalking the big boys. That may be heavier than I really need, but I like to be able to apply a bit of "come-thee-hither" when the carp is making a beeline for a snag, or weedbed, or towards the end of the fight when I want to land it now and not fight it to complete exhaustion. Of course, all of the 20-pound class carp I've hooked in the past two years have giggled at my "come-thee-hither" tactics as they steamed happily towards the horizon. Maybe I should go with 15-lb fluoro... ;D
Here's a 12-lb carp I took on my version of the swimming nymph, a 7-weight rod, and 8-lb fluoro tippet. I lost one bigger fish that day that terminated my tippet in a dense weedbed.
Good stuff Doc! I am making it on of my priorities this year to catch carp on a fly. Strong and great fighting fish although ugly. I hooked a 20 + carp at chatfield last year on a ML spinning rod and tube jig. Thing dam near kicked my butt......
i havnt caught on on a fly but back home in az we used to go after grass carp alot and we used a standard bass rod and spinnign reel with a small hook no weight or swivel and fresh bread balled on the hook. the shad would push the ball around and you left the bail open till it started to go at a good pace. i carried 4 other spools after the first time i went and on the third one of the night i got spooled that sucked. me and few guy went every night and in one weeks time broke and set the state record 22 times man was that a fun week.
I went out fishing for carp today at the small pond located in Littleton that is on the current fishing report section - I had 3 hook-ups but also found I need to learn a lot more about it. 2 of them snapped me off after a battle right by shore, the other spit the hook after one run. I was using corn - but was sight fishing the whole time - tried to cast over them and slowly bring it back. I noticed several times they would slurp the corn up - I wouldn't even set the hook yet and they would bolt off all of a sudden. Several also spooked when my hook hit the water. I didn't know whether to set the hook right when they took the bait - when I did that and missed they spooked right away and bolted off. Anyone have ideas about fishing with corn or other baits?
Stern Park in Littleton - on the reports page there is a map. It is tiny but does hold carp. I didn't see any monsters but they are in there. There is also a tiny pond south of the Arapahoe County offices near Santa Fe/Belleview that holds carp as well.
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